The end -- of the Liturgical year

Today, 29 Nov 2014, is Saturday of the 34th week in ordinary time, the last day of the liturgical year.

The Liturgy of the Hours offers for the non-Biblical reading a segment of a sermon by St Augustine:

Do not be lazy, but sing to make your journey more enjoyable.  Sing, but keep going.  What do I mean by keep going?  Keep on making progress.  This progress, however, must be in virtue; for there are some, the Apostle warns, whose only progress is in vice.

 We hear many people saying today to "move forward," to "make progress" as though any change were good or for the good.  St. Augustine reminds us that it matters what we are progressing in, virtue or vice.

What is the object of our quest?  Sacrosanctum Concilium tells us:

The Church is essentially both human and divine, visible but endowed with invisible realities, zealous in action and dedicated to contemplation, present in the world, but as a pilgrim, so constituted that in her the human is directed toward and subordinated to the divine, the visible to the invisible, action to contemplation, and this present world to that city yet to come, the object of our quest.

If we are making progress in our journey to "that city yet to come," the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, where the Justice of God will reside, then we are growing in virtue and not in vice.

In a world that has lost any sense of virtue and vice it is difficult to know whether one is growing in virtue unless you are grounded in the Church, the scriptures and in Christ who is the same yesterday, today and forever.

 

Cardinal George on Marriage

At Our Sunday Visitor, Cardinal Francis George, the archbishop emeritus of Chicago, has an article about how Marriage can transform a culture and the world.

He begins by stating that Marriage is not a hobby, and says of our society:

“Leadership” is confused with willfulness.

Near the end he writes:

Marriage is a full-time vocation. In drawing a man and a woman together, as husband and wife, into a communion of life and love, it calls them to overcome self-centeredness and give themselves entirely to each other, as Christ gives himself to his Church.

In their concern and care for each other and for their families, husbands and wives show the world, in a particular way, how to live according to the Great Commandment, with all one’s heart, mind and strength. It requires of them a great deal of realism and a large dose of forgiveness. It brings joy, often tempered by sorrows. It transforms people and the entire world.

You should read the whole article.

Dives in Misericordia -- another part

In reading more of Dives in Misericordia,  I was struck by the closing paragraph of chapter 7 Mercy Revealed in the Cross and Resurrection:

For mercy is an indispensable dimension of love; it is as it were love's second name and, at the same time, the specific manner in which love is revealed and effected vis-a-vis the reality of the evil that is in the world, affecting and besieging man, insinuating itself even into his heart and capable of causing him to "perish in Gehenna."⁸⁰

Thanks be to God that he loves us too much to let us die in our sins. No, he sent Jesus, God from God, Light from Light, to make it possible that we might be with him forever.

And as St John Paul II writes in chapter 8 Love More Powerful Than Death, More Powerful Than Sin:

Here is the Son of God, who in His resurrection experienced in a radical way mercy shown to Himself, that is to say the love of the Father which is more powerful than death. And it is also the same Christ, the Son of God, who at the end of His messianic mission - and, in a certain sense, even beyond the end - reveals Himself as the inexhaustible source of mercy, of the same love that, in a subsequent perspective of the history of salvation in the Church, is to be everlastingly confirmed as more powerful than sin. The paschal Christ is the definitive incarnation of mercy, its living sign in salvation history and in eschatology. In the same spirit, the liturgy of Eastertide places on our lips the words of the Psalm: Misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo.¹⁰⁰

For those of us who do not read latin:

I will sing of your mercy forever, LORD^a

Reflection -- 16 November 2014

In Today's Gospel Reading, Jesus tells a parable about a man who goes on a Journey and entrusts some of his wealth to three of his servants.  At the close of the parable Jesus says:

For to everyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

 

I am always reminded of the song "God Bless the Child" by Blood Sweat and Tears.  It opens with this passage from the gospel.

 

 

But this song misses the point that Jesus is making in the parable.

Jesus' point is not about money, for he says "You cannot serve both God and Mammon."

 

His point is about the gifts we have each received from God, Our Father, from whom we have received everything, including our existence.

 

Let us use our gifts to produce a profit for the Kingdom of God, let us steward our gifts and provide God with his portion of the fruit of our lives, our labors, our loves.  Let us give to God what is God's.

 

 

 

 

 

 

St Martin of Tours

Today, 11 Nov 2014, is the memorial of St Martin of Tours.

In September of 2013, I was on pilgrimage  to Rome, It, and prayed in the Church of St Martin on the Mountain.  It is a short walk from St Mary Major.

This painting depicts a significant scene in the life of St Martin, and his conversion to Christianity.

The Apse of St Martin on the Mountain

The nave of St Martin on the Mountain

There is a chapel devoted to St Martin of Tours in the lower church, in the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi.  It is adjacent to one dedicated to the Immaculate Conception.

My parents named me after St Martin of Tours.

Dives in Misericordia

I have begun rereading dives in misericordia, and was struck by a passage in Chapter 2 (The Incarnation of Mercy).

Christ confers on the whole of the Old Testament tradition about God's mercy a definitive meaning. Not only does He speak of it and explain it by the use of comparisons and parables, but above all He Himself makes it incarnate and personifies it. He Himself, in a certain sense, is mercy. To the person who sees it in Him - and finds it in Him - God becomes "visible" in a particular way as the Father who is rich in mercy."¹³

I think of this passage in respect to my reflection on Jesus' parable of the landowner and the ungrateful tenants.

November 4 -- St Charles Borromeo

Today is the memorial of St Charles Borromeo.  When I was in Rome in September of 2013, I went to Mass at the Basilica of Sts Ambrose and Charles, as I recounted here.

One point I didn't include in that post was that the heart of St Charles was reserved in a monstrance, in a chapel behind the main altar for veneration.