Learning takes place day by day; it goes on and on. That’s true about faith as well. We’re learning each day, which is why our church calendar is so important. We need to listen to that verse of the psalms: Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart.
John Chrysostom, one of this month’s saints, complained that people of his time didn’t know much about the church’s calendar; they were hardly aware of it: “Many people today just about know the names of the feasts we celebrate in church. They know hardly anything about their history and meaning…What a shame.”
Chrysostom loved the feasts of our Lord and his saints, seasons like Lent and Advent, which teach us how to live and what to hope for. They’re an ongoing school; they “teach us to number our days aright and gain wisdom of heart.”
September’s a good example, with a parade of interesting saints, like Gregory the Great, John Chrysostom himself, Peter Claver, Matthew the tax collector, Cornelius and Cyprian, Vincent De Paul, Jerome. All important teachers of faith.
There are two big feasts of Mary, the mother of Jesus, this month, her birth on September 8th and her sorrows on September 15, right after the great feast of the Triumph of the Cross, September 14.
I like the way the Feast of our Mother of Sorrows, September 15th, follows the Lord’s Triumph of the Cross. Mary’s greatest sorrow was standing beneath the cross of her Son, but sorrow spanned her whole life. She teaches that bearing the Lord’s cross is not the same as sharing his physical sufferings. Her patient waiting, her struggle to understand God’s plan, her experience of faith’s darkness show the mystery of the cross in other forms.
Then, there are the prayers and readings in the liturgy day by day. Who says we’re not going to school.
I like the way psalms say it all. “Rejoice in the Lord, you just!” one psalm says. No need to make a prayer up on your own or think hard about saying something to God. Let the psalms help you. “Rejoice in the Lord, you just!”
“Let the earth rejoice in God, our king.” Why not join the earth praying? The “many isles are glad.” Be glad with them. The psalms call you to creation. They’re good prayers for the Season of Creation.
The psalms still our souls and draw them into the quiet grace of God’s presence. We think everything depends on us. No, it doesn’t. God “melts the mountains like wax” and “guards the lives of his faithful ones.” We think we have to know everything. No, we don’t. But God does.
The psalms draw us closer to God. They feed our minds and hearts, little by little. Their special grace is their simplicity as they tell us, for example, “rest in God as a child in a mother’s arms.”
Most of the psalms in our liturgy are songs of praise. “Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good.” Other psalms cry for help. Cry to the Lord, they say. “I cry to the Lord that he may hear me.”
The psalms call to a simple, deep prayer. Keep your eye on them in the liturgy of the Mass, Use them in your daily prayer. They’re wonderful basic prayers for everyone.
“Although the whole of Scripture breathes God’s grace upon us, this is especially true of that delightful book, the book of the psalms.” (St. Ambrose)
Every day the church meets the morning praying the psalms; every evening we end the day with these great prayers. A good way to pray always, as Jesus asks us to do.
Mark’s gospel today tells the gruesome story of the death of John the Baptist, which prefigures the death of Jesus. King Herod ordered his death, prompted by Herodias. Human sinfulness is on display in this court banquet, which the artist (above) describes very well. The women smugly presenting John’s head. The man pointing his finger at Herod and Herod denying it all. John’ eyes are still open, his mouth still speaks.
Venerable Bede says that John’s death is like Jesus’ death because they both embraced the same values. If John stayed silent about Herod’s conduct, he may have gained a few peaceful years of life, but he was more concerned with what God thought than what powerful people on earth thought.
“His persecutor had demanded not that he should deny Christ, but only that he should keep silent about the truth. Nevertheless, he died for Christ. Does Christ not say: I am the truth?
“He preached the freedom of heavenly peace, yet was thrown into irons by ungodly men; he was locked away in the darkness of prison, though he came bearing witness to the Light of life.
“But heaven notices– not the span of our lives, but how we live them, speaking the truth.” (Bede, Homily)
Wonderful line: It doesn’t matter how many years we live, but how we live them, “speaking the truth.”
For John that meant dying for the truth. What does it mean for us? It may not mean getting our heads chopped off, but we should expect some scars from the daily battle for God’s truth. ” May we fight hard for the confession of what you teach.” (Opening prayer)
St. Augustine was born in North Africa in 354 to Patricius, a pagan, and Monica, a fervent Christian. Monica, venerated as a saint, raised Augustine as a Christian, but he drifted away from that faith and practice, finding no wisdom in the Christian scriptures.
Intelligent, ambitious, and interested in everything the world had to offer, he found prestigious teaching positions in Rome and later in Milan, constantly searching for meaning in the philosophies of the day. For some years he lived with a woman with whom he had a son, Adeodatus.
In Milan, his mother Monica encouraged him to listen to the bishop Ambrose, who introduced him to the beauty and truth of the scriptures. Augustine was baptized and for more than 35 year was bishop of Hippo in Roman Africa, where he died on August 28, 430, as Vandal armies prepared to lay siege to the city.
Augustine’s many writings are treasured in the church. The classic account of his life, his Confessions, describes his discovery of how God was with him from life’s beginning till the present. He was thirsting for God and only God brings true happiness, he said. Augustine came to know God in an intimate way:
“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 have not 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.”
“O eternal Truth, true Love, and beloved Eternity, you are my God, and for you I sigh day and night. As I first began to know you, you lifted me up and showed me that, while that which I might see exists indeed, I was not yet capable of seeing it. Your rays beamed intensely on me, beating back my feeble gaze, and I trembled with love and dread. I knew myself to be far away from you in a region of unlikeness, and I seemed to hear your voice from on high: ‘I am the food of the mature: grow, then, and you shall eat me. You will not change me into yourself like bodily food; but you will be changed into me’”
Here’s a biography of Augustine by Pope Benedict XVI
We remember a mother and her son this week, St. Monica and her son St. Augustine. I heard a song long ago that said: “A Mother’s Love’s a Blessing.” Augustine could have sung that song.
In his “Confessions,” he praised God for bringing him “late” to a faith he found beautiful; he also acknowledged a mother’s tears and prayers helped bring him to Jesus Christ. She was like the woman in the gospel. As she brought her dead son to be buried, she met Jesus. He saw her tears, stopped the funeral procession and raised her son to life.
“ I was like that son,” Augustine says. ‘I was dead. My mother’s tears won me God’s life.”
Like many women of her time, we don’t know much about Monica. She married a man named Patricius, a tough husband who put her down and went out with other women. They had three kids, but Augustine was special; she followed him, hoping be would be the person she knew he could be. Above all, she wanted him to have faith.
He was a hard son to deal with, smart, well educated, hooked on the “lovely things” about him, deaf to her advice, blind to the path she wanted him to take, but she followed him anyway, convinced God had something big for him to do, and she finally got her wish
Doesn’t she sound like many today? How many today love their kids, or their husbands or their wives or their friends, but worry they’ll get mixed up in the wrong things–not going to church, deaf to the gospel? But they stick by them anyway.
That’s not easy to do and so it’s good to remember Monica and the moving words to God Augustine wrote in his Confessions. Did he ever show them to her, I wonder?
“O beauty every ancient, O beauty ever new. Late have I have loved thee. 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 have not 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.”
Fittingly, the church celebrates Monica’s feast on August 27th, the day before her son’s.
Saints speak in different ways. Listen first to the prose of St. Thomas Aquinas and then the poetry of St.Bernard:
“Why did the Son of God have to suffer for us? There was a great need, and it can be considered in a twofold way: in the first place, as a remedy for sin, and secondly, as an example of how to act.
It is a remedy, for, in the face of all the evils which we incur on account of our sins, we have found relief through the passion of Christ. Yet, it is no less an example, for the passion of Christ completely suffices to fashion our lives.” ( Thomas Aquinas)
“Where can the weak find a place of firm security and peace, except in the wounds of the Saviour? Indeed, the more secure is my place there, the more he can do to help me. The world rages, the flesh is heavy, and the devil lays his snares, but I do not fall, for my feet are planted on firm rock. I may have sinned gravely. My conscience would be distressed, but it would not be in turmoil, for I would recall the wounds of the Lord: he was wounded for our iniquities…
They pierced his hands and feet and opened his side with a spear… But the piercing nail has become a key to unlock the door, that I may see the good will of the Lord. And what can I see as I look through the hole? Both the nail and the wound cry out that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. The sword pierced his soul and came close to his heart, so that he might be able to feel compassion for me in my weaknesses.
Through these sacred wounds we can see the secret of his heart, the great mystery of love, the sincerity of his mercy with which he visited us from on high. Where have your love, your mercy, your compassion shone out more luminously than in your wounds, sweet, gentle Lord of mercy? More mercy than this no one has than that he lay down his life for those who are doomed to death.” (St. Bernard)
August 20th we remember St. Bernard, a spiritual teacher who never goes out of date and a major figure in the renewal of the church in the 12th century.
The image of Jesus communing with Bernard from a painting from 16th century Florence captures the spirituality of the saint. Bernard was attracted to the humanity of Christ, especially his love shown on Calvary. In this scene, Jesus bends down to Bernard to embrace him. The nails cannot hold him from loving the one kneeling before him. Christ’s love is stronger than the images of death, pictured beneath the cross. That has to be the City of Florence in the background. Christ’s love in never confined to one person or age or place.
Bernard lived in “an age of love”, which saw Jesus reaching out to humanity, not primarily humanity crippled by sin, but humanity as his beloved. It’s not surprising that Bernard’s sermons on “The Song of Songs” is considered his greatest work. “The Bridegroom’s love, or rather the love which is the Bridegroom, asks nothing in return but faithful love. Let the beloved, then, love in return. Should not a bride love, and above all, Love’s bride? Could it be that Love not be loved?… It is true that the creature loves less because she is less. But if she loves with her whole being, nothing is lacking where everything is given.”
Bernard was a leader in the 11th century Cistercian reform of Benedictine monasticism which emphasized simplicity of life and devotion to the humanity of Christ. He became a monk at the monastery of Clairvaux in 1112, and then its abbot. By the time of his death in 1153 the order numbered 339 monasteries throughout Europe.
Growth of the Cistercians was due to their support of church reform initiated by Pope Gregory VII, who enlisted monastic orders in his crucial efforts for reforming the papacy. Bernard played an important part in the Gregorian reform as advisor to popes, bishops and secular leaders.
He was a tireless writer whose letters and sermons inspired Christians throughout Europe. He was a healer whose presence drew crowds of people seeking healing. He was a powerful voice promoting the Crusades to rescue the Holy Land..
Here is how he advises we approach God::
“The first involves humbling ourselves before God: “Heal me, Lord, and I shall be healed; save me and I shall be saved. And again, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul because I have sinned against you.
Then, leaving sorrow and ourselves behind, it’s time to “abide rather in the Spirit of God with great delight. No longer do we consider what is the will of God for us, but rather what it is in itself.
Under the guidance of the Spirit who gazes into the deep things of God, let us reflect how gracious the Lord is and how good he is in himself. Let us join the Prophet in praying that we may see the Lord’s will and frequent not our own hearts but the Lord’s temple; and let us also say, My soul is humbled within me, therefore I shall be mindful of you.
These two stages sum up the whole of the spiritual life: when we contemplate ourselves we are troubled, but our sadness saves us and brings us to contemplate God. That contemplation in turn gives us the consolation of the joy of the Holy Spirit.
Contemplating ourselves brings fear and humility; contemplating God brings us hope and love.”
“Jesus, what made you so small? Love.”
Lord God, you made Saint Bernard burn with zeal for your house, and gave him grace to enkindle and enlighten others in your Church.Grant that by his prayer we may be filled with the same spirit and always live as children of the light.Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.Amen.
Little prayers are just that–the small, taken-for-granted prayers we pray all the time. Like “Amen.” How many times do we say that word in prayer? Usually we end all our prayers with it.
What does it mean? I suppose we could say it means “yes” in English. “Si” in Spanish or Italian. “Ya” in German. If you look it up in the dictionary, you find it traced back into the Greek and then to the Hebrew. Amen means “so be it”; a strong “yes,” and it’s been part of the language of our faith for centuries.
Here we are in the 21st century using a word generations before us have used; we draw on the faith of generations before us to say, “Yes, I believe,” “Amen” to God’s word to us and our word to God.
“The Lord be with you,” “And with your spirit.” Another little prayer, wishing that God be with us and bring us together in faith. We can trace that little prayer back generations too.
Little prayers can give us a way to express what we can hardly put into words or understand. Besides words, they can also be simple gestures, like the Sign of the Cross; they can be moments of listening or seeing and waiting in silent attention before God.
Psalm 123 describes a servant waiting and watching before her mistress.
“To you I lift up my eyes, you who dwell in the heavens. My eyes like the eyes of slaves On the hand of their lords. Like the eyes of a servant On the hand of her mistress, So our eyes are on the Lord our God Till he show us his mercy.”
Little prayers can be a cry or even tears. You often hear that kind of prayer in the psalms:
“I cried to you, Lord, and you heard me,” the psalmist says in Psalm 30.
Remember the simple cry of the Canaanite woman: “Have pity on me, Son of David…Please, Lord” (Matthew 15:21).
Little prayers are important, they’re not little at all.
We celebrate the Feast of the Assumption of Mary into heaven August 15th. It’s the most important feast of Mary in the church’s calendar. Where did it come from?
There’s no account of Mary’s death or assumption into heaven in scripture. An account in the apocryphal body of literature called the Transitus Mariae, popular in the Christian churches of the east from the 5th century, describes the return of the apostles to Jerusalem for Mary’s burial and their discovery that her body was taken up to heaven. The writings attest to an early interest in the death of Mary in some parts of the early church.
The first liturgical celebrations of Mary’s death and assumption to heaven took place in Jerusalem at her tomb (above) on the Mount of Olives about the 5th century. The Roman Catholic Church draws her present belief from this early tradition and her conviction that Mary is “wholly united with her son in the work of salvation.” For scriptural support, the church looks to sources like Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians–the second reading at Mass for August 15th – to understand this mystery.
Paul wrote that letter about the year 56 AD to Corinthian Christians who had questions about the resurrection of Jesus. Their precise difficulty seems to be that they saw only the soul surviving death and not the body, a common conception of the Greek mindset of the day. That belief brought a low appreciation of the body and the place of creation itself in the mystery of redemption. The created world wasn’t worth much and was passing away, so let it go.
Paul countered that opinion with the belief he received, a belief from the beginning: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15: 3-6).
Jesus was raised bodily from the dead, Paul affirms, and we will rise bodily too. Jesus is “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Mary’s bodily assumption follows the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Because of her unique role in the mystery of redemption she is among the “first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Her assumption is part of the mystery of the resurrection; it’s an affirmation we will follow Jesus who rose body and soul.
In her prayer, the Magnificat – the gospel read on the Feast of the Assumption – Mary accepts her mission from God to share in the mission of her Son, the Word made flesh, who came to redeem the world.
The church gradually understood the mystery of Mary’s Assumption over time. A rising Gnosticism in the 3rd and 4th centuries certainly promoted appreciation of this mystery. Gnosticism promised escape from the limits of bodily life through a higher knowledge. As a result, human life and creation itself didn’t matter.
Mary’s Assumption claims they do.
The Roman Catholic Church formally defined the dogma of the Assumption on November 1, 1959, on the Feast of All Saints, but the belief was firmly held for centuries before:
“…the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death.” The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians: ‘In giving birth you kept your virginity; in your Dormition you did not leave the world, O Mother of God, but were joined to the source of Life. You conceived the living God and, by your prayers, will deliver our souls from death'” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 966).
Mary’s Assumption was defined in a century when human life and the planet itself were threatened. World War I ended in 1918 after four years when millions perished. World War II, ending in 1945, left the real possibility that war and nuclear weapons could bring about the destruction of the human race. The Holocaust seemed to prove the capability of human evil.
Threats to human life continue and creation itself is increasingly endangered by climate change and consequent poverty. August 15, the date for the celebration of this feast from earliest times, is the time of harvest for most of the Western Hemisphere. Our belief in the resurrection of the body sees creation itself promised a share in this mystery. The readings and prayers of the feast describe Mary in heaven as the woman clothed with the sun, the moon and the stars beneath her feet. (Revelation 11)
The Feast of Mary’s Assumption is the oldest and most important of Mary’s feasts in our church calendar.
St. Dominic, who’s feast is August 8th, is a saint universally celebrated in the Catholic Church. Why is he universally celebrated?
Dominic, who lived at the beginning of the 13th century, faced the Albigensians , a gnostic movement strongly entrenched around Toulouse in France that was drawing believers away from the church. Dominic gathered preachers to bring the teaching of the gospel to the area. Preaching the gospel, according to Dominic, meant not only to understand your faith, but to know what those who differ from you believe. He established communities of followers, the Dominicans, near universities such as Paris and Bologna.
They were to study and pray. Study and prayer and a simple life would help them know the truth and bring it to their world.His community still has that vital role in the church today.
The prayers for Dominic’s feast ask that the gifts of study and prayer and a simple life remain in the church. We need people who think and pray and preach.
One of Dominic’s biographers mentions something about him that’s true of all the saints, I think. Saints look redeemed. Dominic’s face was joyful, which came from a joyful heart and a soul at peace. He believed God was with him.
“He was a man of great equanimity, except when moved to compassion and mercy. And since a joyful heart animate the face, he displayed the peaceful composure of a spiritual man in the kindness he manifested outwardly and by the cheerfulness of his countenance.”
That same “cheerfulness of countenance” seems to be what people remark about Pope Francis. That doesn’t mean smiling continuously, but that joy is our “default,” it’s the attitude usually there. Fra Angelico seems to capture the peacefulness of Dominic in his portrait of the saint. (above)
