FEAST OF THE VISITATION


Yesterday was the Feast of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary to her cousin Elizabeth,
as recounted beautifully in the Gospel of Luke with Elizabeth's greeting and
what has come to be known as the Magnificat of Mary:




Gospel - Lk 1:39-56

Mary set out
nd traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah,
where she entered the house of Zechariah
and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting,
the infant leaped in her womb,
and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit,
cried out in a loud voice and said,
"Most blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And how does this happen to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears,
the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
Blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled."

And Mary said:
"My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever."

Mary remained with her about three months
and then returned to her home.

====================================================================

I have not had time to search for Visitation paintings except the early 16th-century paintings
shown above, the one on the left by Jacopo Pontormo, painted in 1528, the other, also 16th century
whose exact attribution I still have to get.

But any search for paintings about the Magnificat yields practically just one - Sandro Botticelli's Madonna of the Magnificat.



Botticelli, Madonna of the Magnificat, 1480-81, Tempera on panel, diameter 118 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Here's a description from an art book:

The painting contains nearly life-size figures. The Virgin, being crowned by two angels,
is depicted as the Queen of Heaven. Two of the wingless angels are crowning the Queen of Heaven.
The crown is a delicate piece of goldsmiths work consisting of innumerable stars; they are
an allusion to the 'Stella matutina' (morning star), one of the Mother of God's names
in contemporary hymns devoted to Mary.

Encouraged by the Christ Child, the Virgin is about to dip her quill and write the last words
of the Magnificat, beginning on the right page with the large initial "M". The pomegranate
which the mother and child are both holding is a symbol of the Passion and adds to the basic
melancholy and meditative mood of the painting, characteristic of Boticelli..

The background of the picture opens out into a landscape which point to the influence exerted
upon Botticelli by contemporary Netherlands' artists such as Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden
and Hubert van der Goes. Trading relations between Italy and the Netherlands had been growing
more intensive since the 15th century. The Italian painters particularly admired
the realistic fashioning of the figures in the pictures, and the atmospheric effect of
the landscapes as rendered in the art of their colleagues north of the Alps.

This portrait of the Virgin represents the costliest tondo that Botticelli ever created:
in no other painting did he employ so much gold as in this one, using it for the ornamentation
of the robes, for the divine rays, and for Mary's crown, and even utilizing it to heighten
the hair colour of Mary and the angels.


=====================================================================

A very belated P.S. - This is one of the many treasures buried in the official site for the Papal visit to Austria
that I did not get around to translating earlier, but which I am posting here, among other places, because the homily
is based on the Gospel pasage about the the Visitation. It sounds and reads like one of those particularly inspired
extemporaneous homilies by Cardinal Ratzinger:


Homily of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
Pilgrimage of Central European Notaries
Basilica of Mariazell, October 2, 2004


Dear brothers in the episcopal and priestly service,
Honorable notaries from all the states of Europe,
Dear brothers and sisters in the Lord:

Maria hurries across the Judean hills in order to announce to Elizabeth the joy that she has received. She is
impelled to visit her with whom she can rejoice over the secret of the coming of God to this world. She must share
the joy that is hers. Love must be shared, and joy must be shared.

The Church Fathers saw in Mary’s journey to Elizabeth an image of the Church which, like Mary, carries Jesus in
its bosom, across the mountains of the world, through its heights and depths, with the mission to share the joy
of God throughout the world.

Yes, God is here, he has a face, he has a name, he is one of us, he is God with us, he is the Almighty of goodness
and healing. The Church preaches the Gospel not to win power nor to be able to say that a great number of persons
belong to it. It preaches the Gospel because it must pass on the joy which it cannot keep to itself alone, because
the love which has been given to us demands to be shared.

Christianity, in its deepest essence, is joy. We have translated the first word with which the New Testament begins –
the angel’s greeting to Mary – as “Hail, Mary”, but the Greek words are “Rejoice, Mary”. That is the opening and
the real beginning of Christian history, that God came to this world in joy.

But when we hear this, we may think there is a contradiction. That to us, Christianity seems effortful, stale,
full of misery and difficulties. It seems to constrict life instead of opening it up. But if we come nearer to its
real core, when we listen and allow ourselves to be moved by its innermost reality, it is also supreme joy:
joy in the knowledge that chance did not bring us into an existence without sense; joy in the knowledge that we
were willed by Love which does not cease and which will never abandon us, on which we can always rely;
joy that there is a God who knows us and who is not a cruel judge, but a God of justice, a justice that is good
and which desires our healing.

Therefore the first appeal this day makes to us is to rediscover joy, and faith as joy, and to be moved anew
by this innermost essence of the faith, and from all this, to be able to bear all burdens and help us to change.

Let us look at the meeting between the two women as also the first meeting between their two children.
John leapt in the womb of his mother Elizabeth. In the entire fabric of his narration of Christ’s infancy
and childhood, Luke suggests David’s dance before the Ark of the Covenant. Now here it was, the true Ark
of the Covenant, signifying not only that the remote God knows us and speaks to us, but that the living dwelling
of God is in our midst.

God does not live in stones, he dwells in living men, and dwells incarnate among us. He loves men so much that
he himself became man. There is the Ark of the Covenant, the holy Tabernacle, in which he dwells.

That sacred power of joy, which made the child in his mother’s womb leap, alo sets the rhythm of joy for us, which
expresses itself in liturgy, in its holy symbols, in singing and praying, somewhat like a new dance before the Ark
of the Covenant, before God, who is truly present and who invites us to be, ourselves, an Ark of the Covenant.

When God gives His body to us in the Eucharist, he wants us to be God’s dwelling ourselves, from which his joy
can radiate to the world.

Let us listen to the words of the two women. Elizabeth completes the greeting of the angel: “Hail, Mary,
full of grace, the Lord is with you” - words that the Holy Spirit has spoken through her, as Luke tells us:
“Blessed are you among all women, blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

Thus the first and central great Marian prayer of the Church was not an invention of men, but a gift from the angel,
who brought greetings from the Father, a gift from the Holy Spirit, who spoke through this woman, Elizabeth.

When we pray it, we say the words that God himself lays on our lips, and we fulfill the promise that Mary announces
in her Magnificat: “From here on, all generations will call me blessed.”

Marian veneration is not a belated invention of the Church nor a coming off the unique center of our faith, Jesus
Christ. It was offered to us by the Holy Spirit himself. Because God wishes that we should recognize his glory not
just in his own pure light. But also in other men who reflect his glory and makes it accessible to us.

In the saints, and above all, in Mary, the Mother of the Lord, we recognize what God himself is, we see
the reflection of his glory in a human face, coming to us from a human life.

Equally important is what Elizabeth further tells Mary: “Blessed is she who believed.” She reaches back to
the beginnings of the Old Covenant, to Abraham, the Father of the faith, whom God trusted and who dared
the impossible, leaving his homeland for an unknown land because God had bidden him to do so, in order to
begin a new history for man.

This torch of faith that was first lit in Abraham was then carried forward by the Patriarchs and the Prophets,
the holy men and women of the Old Covenant, and now burns to its full glory in Mary.

She believes and thereby, she tears the heavens apart, she opens the doors of Heaven, and we see that God
is there and accepts us and cares about us. Mary believes and dares to accept the enormity of God’s irruption
into her life by making her the Mother of his son. She believed something that must disrupt any person’s
life beyond one’s own hopes and expectations. But she entrusts herself to God, and doing so, she opens
the doors between heaven and earth.

“Blessed is she who believed.” Elizabeth is also calling on us: Believe in God, put aside your pride and
your doubt, dare to trust in him and to go with him. But go with him truly, so that you may experience that
what he says is true, that he really is there. We cannot subject God to experiment. What kind of God is it
that we could research in a laboratory?

No, he only wants the courage of faith and communion, and in communion, he sheds His light on us, so that
we will know that Yes, he is here, he who shows us the way. He calls us to faith, in a time when the crumbling
of faith is not making the world brighter but darker, when the darker forces of man are breaking through
again, times during which faith has been shackled, when the Light of God no longer shines.

Let us pray: “Lord, I believe. Help me in my lack of faith.” And let us keep before our eyes what President
Weissmann has already told us: We do not need to believe alone, we do not need to force ourselves alone into
a higher plane that seems unreachable.

Faith always means to believe with the whole living Church. Faith means believing with the entire company
of saints, those who - in fields where so many weeds grow - were a reflection of God’s light.

Faith is being part of the ‘we’ in the church of believers. Mary calls us again on this day to dare this
shared belief so that like her, we can believe with Abraham and Israel, and find God’s Word open to us anew.
Let us ask the Lord that we may find the courage to believe with the Church and therefore open anew the doors
between heaven and earth.

To Elizabeth’s greeting, Mary replied: “My soul extols the greatness of the Lord.” Literally it means,
“My soul sees God as great.” And that is what Mary does on this day: She steps back so that the world
can see him in all his greatness.

When we extol God, we do not need to fear that doing so will make us smaller. Only when we extol God will
we ourselves be great. But when we write God in small letters, when we belittle God, then we belittle ourselves.
Then he becomes nothing more than an incidental product that evolution has cast ashore, about whom one
no longer knows whether it matters whether he is there or not.

And we would be no more than an eyeblink in the endless light years of the universe, that comes and goes as
an ancient Roman pagan grave inscription says, “From nothing, itself nothing, and towards nothing.” And that
becomes our ultimate definition.

We do not become great when we belittle God. Only when God is writ large in our life and when we give him room
in this world, do we become great. Then we are creatures of God’s love, then we are the reflection of his face
in the world, willed by eternal love and destined for his eternal love.

Under Communist rule, a book of Solzhenitsyn’s could not be printed because he insisted adamantly that the word
God must be written with a capital G, which was not allowed – under this ideological power, God must be written
in small letters only. Just as human dignity itself came to be writ ever smaller.

We know that such a world, which Solzhenitsyn describes in another book, became the first circle of Hell.
Because Hell is wherever God is forbidden, into which his light is no longer allowed to shine. To extol God –
that links together the words of the two women. It means nothing other than faith.

In the Magnificat, which Mary creates out of the Old Testament, taking from its treasury of prayers and
bringing it into the realm of the Church, she also tells us what works against faith. She names three elements:
pride in one’s heart, the mighty who would push God off his throne, and the rich who set store only by possessions.

First, pride, which was also Adam’s real sin. Pride means wanting to be God himself and not to acknowledge
anyone else, to be completely autonomous and declare oneself emancipated from God, to consider eternal love
not as a gift, as the basis for our existence, but rather as subordination. But that is exactly how man falls.

Opposed to pride is humility, which accepts love, which acknowledges that we need it, which believes that it is
a gift from God to those who trust in him, and in this, we can find that the true greatness of man.

Beside pride, there is the worship of power, in which whoever can destroy or threaten to destroy is considered
mighty. Real power is not the power to destroy but the power to build. Sacred Scripture tells us that God’s
omnipotence essentially lies in his power to forgive and to be merciful.

Trusting in that power, we set forth into the world with a faith that is often trampled on, but which has
shone through in the stories of martyrs and many suffering men. The other kind of power, that which would destroy
the earth, is a caricature.

Finally, Mary speaks of wealth as the worship of property. It is not that men should not increase the gifts
of creation and may not serve the whole through having possessions. But when man worships possessions,
he becomes a slave to them. He will be possessed by his possessions and is no longer the lord of creation as
the image of the true Lord.

Therefore, it is worth liberating ourselves from that which seems to be the promise of life but which really
takes away the greatness that builds us up. Let us entreat Mary that she may help us to extol God and that
she may thereby lead us to true greatness.

“Sub tuum presidium’ – “Under your protection and shield we shall escape”: the choir will sing this during
the preparation for the Offertory. We thank Maestro Planyavsky, who composed the work that is his gift to us
today and to the Church, and the musicians who will help us with this music to praise Mary and thus let
the light of God into the world.

“Under your protection and shield, we shall escape”: This is the oldest post-Biblical Marian prayer in
Christianity. It was found in an ancient Egyptian papyrus from the fourth century. We can imagine that it came
from an Egyptian monastic circle and tells of all the troubles that these men were subjected to: oppressed
by political power, as well as threatened by the forces of nature and of society - finding refuge in the Mother,
as the truly protective and reliable power.

“Under your protection ad shield, we shall escape” – Here in Mariazell, where for almost 900 years, Mary has
been prayed to, where men come to ask for her protection and defense, and strength for their lives, we feel
the prayers of the centuries present and take our place in the great procession of those who pray.

We entreat her that she may help us to believe; from our faith, become hopeful; and from faith and hope,
become loving. We entreat her that she may help you as notaries, and all of us, to be in the service of true
justice, of that justice which yields peace.

Here she has spread her cloak over the numerous peoples represented here today, sheltered under her cloak
together, one with each other across all borders.

We entreat her to help us build Europe at this time, a Europe where, as President Weissmann said, one does
not confuse the tree with its root, in which we will learn to live again from the roots of our faith.

We entreat the Mother of God that she may help Europe to find its soul again, the great ethical and human
strength that comes from faith and that has made this continent great.

We entreat to her to guide us through the distresses of life. We entreat her for peace and unity, and that
terror may be overcome through the greater power of good.

We entreat her: Show us Jesus, the blessed fruit of your womb. Amen.

Thanks for this beautiful post, Teresa! That Boticelli is stunning and the text of the Magnificat has always been one of my favourite Biblical poems. No wonder it has inspired so many great composers to musical settings.

From Cardinal Ratzinger's Trinity Sunday homily delivered at the Cathedral of Bayeux, France, on June 6, 2004
(full text posted in the thread IN HIS OWN WORDS):


The most beautiful artistic depiction of this mystery was left to us by Andrei Rublev in the fifteenth century:
the world-renowned icon of the Trinity.

Of course, it does not portray the eternal mystery of God in himself, who would dare to do that?
It attempts, rather, to represent this mystery as it is reflected in the gift of itself in history, as in
the visit of the three men to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre (Gen 18:1-33). Abraham immediately recognized
that they were not just like any other men, but that God himself was coming to him through them.

In Rublev's icon, the mystery of this event is made visible, presented as an event that can be
contemplated in its many dimensions: thus the mystery as such is respected. The artistic richness
of this icon allows me to underscore another characteristic: the natural surroundings of this event,
which express the mystery of the Persons.

We are near the oaks of Mamre, which Rublev depicts in stylized form as a single tree representing the tree
of life; and this tree of life is none other than the trinitarian love that created the world, sustains it,
saves it, and is the source of all life. We see also the tent, the dwelling of Abraham, which recalls the
Prologue of John's Gospel: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn 1:14).

The body of the incarnate Word of God became itself the tent, the place where God dwells: God becomes
our refuge and our dwelling place. Finally, the gift that Abraham offers, "a calf, tender and good",
is replaced, in the icon, with a cup, a symbol of the Eucharist, a sign of the gift in which God gives
himself: "Love, sacrifice, and self-immolation preceded the act by which the world was created and are
the source of that creation."

The tree, the tent, and the cup: these elements show us the mystery of God, allow us to immerse ourselves
in the contemplation of its intimate depths, in his trinitarian love. This is the God that we celebrate.
This is the God who gives us joy. He is the true hope of our world. Amen.



Andrei Rublev: Trinity, c. 1411, Tempera on panel, 142 x 114 cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow


Here is some background history about the icon:

Many scholars consider Rublev's Trinity the most perfect of all Russian icons and perhaps the most perfect
of all the icons ever painted. The work was created for the abbot of the Trinity Monastery, Nikon of Radonezh,
a disciple of the famous Sergius, one of the leaders of the monastic revival in the 14th-century Russia. Asking
Rublev to paint the icon of the Holy Trinity, Nikon wanted to commemorate Sergius as a man whose life
and deeds embodied the most progressive processes in the late 14th-century Russia.

From the earliest times, the idea of the Trinity was controversial and difficult to understand, especially
for the uneducated masses. Even though Christianity replaced the pagan polytheism, it gave the believers
a monotheistic religion with a difficult concept of one God in three hypostases - God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit.

Not only the uneducated population but many theologians had difficulties with the concept of the triune God;
from time to time, a heretical movement, like Arianism, questioned the doctrine, causing long debates, violent
persecutions, and even greater general confusion.

Trying to portray the Trinity, but always aware of the Biblical prohibition against depicting God,
icon painters turned to the story of the hospitality of Abraham who was visited by three wanderers. In their
compositions, icon painters included many details - the figures of Abraham and Sarah, a servant killing a calf
in preparation for the feast, the rock, the tree of Mamre, and the house (tent) - trying to render as faithfully
as possible the events described in the text:

"And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day;
And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them
from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground..." [The complete story from Genesis is reproduced below].

Very few artists before Rublev dared to eliminate all the narrative elements from the story, leaving only
the three angels; usually those who did so had to deal with limited space. The results of their efforts
did not find general acceptance or many copyists.

Rublev was the first to make a conscious decision not to include in his composition the figures of Abraham
and Sarah because he did not set out to illustrate the story of the hospitality of Abraham, as did many painters
before him, but to convey through his image the idea of the unity and indivisibility of the three persons
of the Trinity.

The doctrine of the Trinity, difficult to explain logically, found various interpretations. Some thought
that the Trinity consisted of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Others believed that
it was just God and two angels.

In the 14th and 15th-century Russia, in the period of many heretical movements, the idea of the Trinity
was often questioned. The heretics in Novgorod claimed that it is not permissible to paint the Trinity
on icons because Abraham did not see the Trinity but only God and two angels. Other heretics rejected
the idea of the three hypostases of God altogether.

The church fought the heresies with all the means it had - usually with polemical treaties, but also with force,
if necessary. Russian icon painters before Rublev subscribed to the same point of view that Abraham was
visited by God (in Christ's image) and two angels. Hence, Christ was represented in icons of the Trinity
as the middle angel and was symbolically set apart either by a halo with a cross, by a considerable enlargement
of his figure, by widely spread wings or by a scroll in His hand.


Trinity Icons. From left to right: Holy Trinity, a part of a quadripartite icon from Novgorod
(first half of the 15th c.), Holy Trinity (Hospitality of Abraham), Novgorod School (middle of the 16th c.),
Holy Trinity, Pskov School (15th c.)

In Rublev's icon for the first time all the angels are equally important. Only this icon truly conforms
to the Orthodox idea of the Trinity. But Rublev's genius allows the painter to go beyond the constraints of
theological theme. His icon is a special kind of challenge to the antitrinitarians - instead of forcing them
to accept the dogma, Rublev softly and gently tries to bring them to the dogmatic understanding of
the icon's meaning.

All scholars agree that the three hypostases of the Trinity are represented in Rublev's icon. But there are
greatly differing views as to which angel represents which hypostasis. Many see Christ in the middle angel
and God the Father in the left. Others see God the Father in the middle angel, and Christ in the left one.



The middle angel occupies a special place in the icon: it is set apart not only by its central position,
but also by a "regal" turn of its head towards the left angel, and by pointing with its hand towards the cup
on the table. Both the turn of the head and the gesture are important clues to the hidden meaning of
the icon.

Equal among equals, the middle angel has such expressive power that one hesitates not to see in it a symbolic
representation of God the Father. On the other hand one cannot fail to notice that the left angel is also
essential: two other angels lower their heads towards it and seem to address it. Therefore, if we assume that
the left angel is God the Father, the middle angel, dressed in the clothes customarily used in compositions
depicting the second person of the Trinity (a blue himation and a crimson tunic), should represent Christ.

This amazing and perhaps purposeful encoding of these two persons of the Trinity by Rublev does not give us
a clear clue for a single interpretation. Whatever the case, the icon shows a dialogue between two angels:
The Father turns to His Son and explains the necessity of His sacrifice, and the Son answers by agreeing
with His Father's wish.

Neither of these interpretations impacts the interpretation of the Trinity as triune God and as a representation
of the sacrament of the Eucharist. The cup on the table is an eucharistic symbol. In the cup we see the head
of the calf which Abraham used for the feast. The church interprets this calf as a prototype of the New Testament
Lamb, and thus the cup acquires its Eucharistic meaning.

The left and the middle angels bless the cup: The Father blesses His Son on his Deed, on His death on the cross
for the sake of man's salvation, and the Son, blessing the cup, expresses his readiness to sacrifice Himself.
The third angel does not bless the cup and does not participate in the conversation, but is present as
a Comforter, the undying, a symbol of eternal youth and the upcoming Resurrection.

As early as in the 14th century, the popularity of the cult of the Trinity was not based only on its theological
content but also on its relationship to the concrete situation in Russian political and social history. It was
a time of constant feudal wars that undermined the weak economy of Russian principalities.

The best minds of the time (for instance, St. Sergius of Radonezh) understood that feudal quarrels are
the greatest evil because they weaken Russia and make it an easy prey for its enemies. For that reason
they tried to end the wars and free Russia from the Mongol yoke at any cost. In the idea of the Trinity
they found the criticism of the feudal divisions and the Mongol yoke as well as an encouragement to "collect"
the divided lands and become free.

But perhaps the most important thought Rublev wanted to convey when he painted his great icon was the thought
about the necessity and goodness of love, a bond based on the trust between individuals. The old texts about
Trinity as three hypostases of the Divinity talk about love which fills the Trinity: "Trinity is love,"
"The Son loves His Father, the Father loves His Son," "The Love of the Heavenly Father Is Given to the World
through His Son."

Since the theological ideas were understandable only to a few, something else must have made the icon
attractive for a wider spectrum of viewers and believers. Obviously, the content of the Trinity is not restricted
to the theological ideas. Rublev's Trinity is not only a representation of the three hypostases of God
and the symbol of the Eucharist, but it is also an all-encompassing symbol of unity and an image of divine love.

This last, important interpretation is beautifully supported by the words of Henri Nouwen:
"Andrew Rublev painted this icon not only to share the fruits of his own meditation on the mystery of the Holy
Trinity but also to offer his fellow monks a way to keep their hearts centered in God while living in
the midst of political unrest. The more we look at this holy image with the eyes of faith, the more we come
to realize that it is painted not as a lovely decoration for a convent church, nor as a helpful explanation
of a difficult doctrine, but as a holy place to enter and stay within. As we place ourselves in front of
the icon in prayer, we come to experience a gentle invitation to participate in the intimate conversation
that is taking place among the three divine angels and to join them around the table. The movement from the Father
toward the Son and the movement of both Son and Spirit toward the Father become a movement in which the one
who prays is lifted up and held secure. . . .

Through the contemplation of this icon we come to see with our inner eyes that all engagements in this world
can bear fruit only when they take place within this divine circle. The words of the psalm, "The sparrow
has found its home at last.... Happy are those who live in your house"(Ps 84: 3,4) are given new depth
and new breadth; they become words revealing the possibility of being in the world without being of it.
We can be involved in struggles for justice and in actions for peace. We can be part of the ambiguities
of family and community life. We can study, teach, write and hold a regular job. We can do all of this without
ever having to leave the house of love...Rublev's icon gives us a glimpse of the house of perfect love" (Nouwen 20-22).


What follows is commentary as meditative aid on the icon, from a site called Wellsprings
by two Catholic women from Eastleigh, Hampshire, in the UK:




A blue robe speaking of divinity -
A green robe representing new life -
- The Spirit -

If you can, spend time gazing at the newly unfurled leaves against a blue sky.
(If the season is not appropriate - live on the memory!)
Reflect on the link between what you see and the figure in the icon.

The Spirit touches the table - earthing the divine life of God.
Reflect on that touch and the words of invocation:
"Lord, You are holy indeed, the fountain of all holiness.
Let Your Spirit come upon these gifts to make them holy...."
Reflect on that touch and its meaning for the life of the world...

Behind the figure is a mountain.
Mountains are places where people often encountered God -
places where heaven and earth seem to touch.
Moses met God on mountains.
Jesus was transfigured whilst in prayer on a mountain.
Reflect on your own "mountain top" experiences -
times when you have felt very close to God -
when you have felt transfigured and filled with the Spirit.
(These need not necessarily have taken place on mountain tops!)

Elijah could not find God in the earthquake -
- the wind -
- the fire on the mountain -
but in the gentle breeze
which carried the voice of God
deep into his being.
When have you been aware of the presence of the dynamic stillness
which is the Spirit within you?

The Spirit inclines - drawing our gaze to the central figure - representing Christ.



The figure wears the blue of divinity.
The brown garment speaks of the earth - of His humanity.
The gold stripe speaks of kingship.
- The Christ -
Reflect on the form of kingship being represented here...

The Christ figure rests two fingers on the table -
laying onto it His divine and His human nature.
He points to a cup filled with wine...
What does this represent?

Behind the figure is a tree.
This could be the oak tree at Mamre
under which the three angelic visitors rested.
The hospitality of Abraham and Sarah was rewarded in the gift of a son.
What does this tell us of the importance of hospitality?

The tree may also represent the Cross -
the tree on which our Saviour died.
The tree of death which becomes the tree of eternal life -
lost to humanity by the disobedience of Adam and Eve -
restored to us by the obedience of Jesus.
Reflect on the paradox of the Cross -
- the place where death and life confront each other -
- where death gives way to resurrection -
and eternal life.

It may also be the tree of life in Revelation
bearing twelve kinds of fruit
one for each month of the year
and the leaves of this tree are for the healing of the nations...
What is the promise here - waiting to be fulfilled?

The Christ figure in turn inclines towards the figure on the left -
and we are drawn to gaze there too.



A figure at rest within Itself.
The blue garment almost hidden by a shimmering ethereal robe.
- The Father -
the One who is Creator who cannot be seen by His human creatures.

Both hands clasp the staff
All authority in heaven and on earth belong to the Father.

Behind the figure is a house
the dwelling place of God.
"In my Father's House are many mansions -
I go to prepare a place for you..."

"Those who love Me will keep My word
and My Father will love them -
and we will come to them and make our home with them".

===================================================================

Here is Genesis 13, about God's visitation to Abraham in Mamre (from the New American Bible):

1
The LORD appeared to Abraham by the terebinth of Mamre, as he sat in the entrance of his tent, while the day was growing hot.
2
Looking up, he saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them;
and bowing to the ground,
3
1 he said: "Sir, if I may ask you this favor, please do not go on past your servant.
4
Let some water be brought, that you may bathe your feet, and then rest yourselves under the tree.
5
Now that you have come this close to your servant, let me bring you a little food, that you may refresh
yourselves; and afterward you may go on your way." "Very well," they replied, "do as you have said."
6
2 Abraham hastened into the tent and told Sarah, "Quick, three seahs of fine flour! Knead it and make rolls."
7
He ran to the herd, picked out a tender, choice steer, and gave it to a servant, who quickly prepared it.
8
3 Then he got some curds and milk, as well as the steer that had been prepared, and set these before them;
and he waited on them under the tree while they ate.
9
"Where is your wife Sarah?" they asked him. "There in the tent," he replied.
10
4 One of them said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah will then have a son."
Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent, just behind him.
11
Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years, and Sarah had stopped having her womanly periods.
12
5 So Sarah laughed to herself and said, "Now that I am so withered and my husband is so old, am I still
to have sexual pleasure?"
13
But the LORD said to Abraham: "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Shall I really bear a child, old as I am?'
14
Is anything too marvelous for the LORD to do? At the appointed time, about this time next year, I will
return to you, and Sarah will have a son."
15
Because she was afraid, Sarah dissembled, saying, "I didn't laugh." But he said, "Yes you did."
16
The men set out from there and looked down toward Sodom; Abraham was walking with them, to see them
on their way.
17
The LORD reflected: "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do,
18
now that he is to become a great and populous nation, and all the nations of the earth are to find
blessing in him?
19
Indeed, I have singled him out that he may direct his sons and his posterity to keep the way of the LORD
by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD may carry into effect for Abraham the promises he made
about him."
20
6 Then the LORD said: "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave,
21
that I must go down and see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them
that comes to me. I mean to find out."
22
While the two men walked on farther toward Sodom, the LORD remained standing before Abraham.
23
Then Abraham drew nearer to him and said: "Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty?
24
Suppose there were fifty innocent people in the city; would you wipe out the place, rather than spare it
for the sake of the fifty innocent people within it?
25
Far be it from you to do such a thing, to make the innocent die with the guilty, so that the innocent
and the guilty would be treated alike! Should not the judge of all the world act with justice?"
26
The LORD replied, "If I find fifty innocent people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place
for their sake."
27
Abraham spoke up again: "See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am but dust and ashes!
28
What if there are five less than fifty innocent people? Will you destroy the whole city because
of those five?" "I will not destroy it," he answered, "if I find forty-five there."
29
But Abraham persisted, saying, "What if only forty are found there?" He replied, "I will forebear doing it
for the sake of the forty."
30
Then he said, "Let not my Lord grow impatient if I go on. What if only thirty are found there?"
He replied, "I will forebear doing it if I can find but thirty there."
31
Still he went on, "Since I have thus dared to speak to my Lord, what if there are no more than twenty?"
"I will not destroy it," he answered, "for the sake of the twenty."
32
But he still persisted: "Please, let not my Lord grow angry if I speak up this last time. What if
there are at least ten there?" "For the sake of those ten," he replied, "I will not destroy it."
33
The LORD departed as soon as he had finished speaking with Abraham, and Abraham returned home.

June 13
MEMORIAL OF
Antony (Anthony) of Padua, OFM
Doctor Evangelicus
Born in Lisbon, Portugal, 1195
Died in Padua, Italy, June 13, 1231
Canonized 1232 by Pope Gregory IX
Declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XII in 1946.

"Consider every day that you are then for the first time - as it were - beginning;
and always act with the same fervour as on the first day you began."
-Saint Antony of Padua.


El Greco, St. Anthony, 16th cent.
[I am unable to get the usual data anywhere on line!]

At the age of 15, Ferdinand de Bulhoes, son of a knight at the court of King Alfonso II, became an Augustinian monk
at San Vincente just outside Lisbon. He had studied under the priests of the Lisbon cathedral, who had inspired him.

In 1212, Ferdinand migrated to the priory of Santa Cruz at Coîmbra because he found the visits of friends too disturbing.
At Coîmbra Ferdinand was well-educated by teachers from Montpellier, Toulouse, and Paris in Scripture, which was presented
in a way intended to refute the Moors and heretics. He was ordained in 1219 or 1220.

He had lived a quiet life as a canon in Coîmbra for eight years when Don Pedro of Portugal brought from Morocco in 1220
the relics of recent Franciscan martyrs. On hearing of their glorious end, Antony was fired with missionary zeal,
which he had little hope of fulfilling as a canon regular. He laid his heart bare before some Franciscans who had come
to Holy Cross Monastery to beg. With their encouragement, Ferdinand transferred to the Franciscan Order at Olivares
in 1221 and took the name Antony, in honor of the great patriarch of monks, Antony the Abbot.

Thus, at the age of 26, inspired by the memory of the five Franciscans whom he had met before their martyrdom,
he sailed for Ceuta in Morocco. It was his ambition to convert the Islamics to Christianity, but sometimes even saints
mistake their will for God's will. God, however, always arranges things so that we realize our mistake. For Antony,
God's intervention took the form of allowing the saint's body to betray him upon arrival in Morocco - he fell so ill
that he had no choice but to return home.

On the return to Portugal, his ship was driven by storm upon the coast of Sicily and he landed at Messina. From Sicily
he made his way to Assisi and found himself at the general chapter of Assisi in 1221, the last chapter open to all members
of the order. Brother Elias, vicar general, presided over the gathering, with Saint Francis seated at his feet.
At the conclusion of the chapter, the brothers returned to their respective posts, but poor Antony belonged nowhere.

But when he sought admission into a monastery in Italy, he met with difficulty on account of his sickly appearance. He was
assigned at last, out of pure compassion, to the rural hospice of San Paolo near Forli outside Bologna, a choice
made after considering his poor health. There he appears to have lived as a hermit and was put to work in the kitchen.

Here he toiled with great humility, none suspecting his talents or learning, among a group of simple and untutored monks.
One day, however, on the occasion of an ordination, when a great many visiting Dominican monks were present, there was some
misunderstanding over who should preach.

The Franciscans naturally expected that one of the Dominicans would occupy the pulpit, for they were renowned for their
preaching; the Dominicans, on the other hand, had come unprepared, thinking that a Franciscan would be the homilist.

In this quandary, the head of the hermitage, who had no one among his own humble friars suitable for the occasion, called
upon Antony, whom he suspected was most fitted, and told to speak whatever the Holy Spirit should put into his mouth.

"But," replied Antony, "my task is washing dishes and scrubbing floors!" His objections, however, were overruled,
and his sermon created a deep impression. Not only his rich voice and arresting manner, but the entire theme and
substance of his discourse and his moving eloquence held the attention of his hearers.

Antony was commissioned by Brother Gratian, the minister provincial, to preach the Gospel throughout Lombardy. From then on
his skills were used to the utmost by the Church. Although Antony had been denied a martyr's death at the hands of
the Islamics, he was a martyr of the Word, a martyr of the road, a martyr of the crowds.

News of his ability reached Saint Francis who at once gave Antony license to expound theology in all the monasteries
of the order by appointing him the first lector in theology to his brethren. Occasionally he took another post, as a teacher,
for instance, at the universities of Montpellier and Toulouse, but it was as a preacher that Antony revealed his supreme gift.

In 1226, after attending the chapter at Arles, France, and preaching in Provence, Antony returned to Italy and served as envoy
from the general chapter to Pope Gregory IX. At the papal court, his preaching was hailed as a 'jewel case of the Bible,' and
he was commissioned to produce 'Sermons for Feast Days'.

He was elected minister provincial of Emilia or Romagna on May 30, 1227, which required much travel to supervise the friaries
under his charge. During these three years he wrote his "Sermons for Sundays."

In June 1230, he secured from the pope a release from his duties of office so that he could preach exclusively. From that time
Antony resided at the monastery of Santa Maria in Padua. The following winter he composed his sermons on the saints.

He had a remarkable knowledge of the Bible, and his sermons impressed the erudite no less than the simple, whether he was
speaking on behalf of Christian living or against false doctrine. He was strong and fearless, merciless towards oppressors
of the defenseless and towards venal clergy.

At Bourges, France, after delivering his sermon to the faithful, Antony turned towards the archbishop and openly reprimanded
him for his vices. He worked to abolish debtors' prisons and usury, and for justice. (His last public act was a journey to Verona
to procure the release of prisoners.)

In his lifetime he was called "hammer of heretics." Though small of stature and even chubby, Antony was one of the most powerful
preachers of the 13th century. It seems he could by his brilliant personality overwhelm the sinful and convert them to God.

He preached to crowded congregations; the shops were shut, people waited all night to hear him, and church buildings were
too small to hold the numbers who flocked to listen; and wherever he came, his words broke down the barriers of apathy and
impenitence.

Antony radiated holiness; sometimes the mere sight of him brought sinners to their knees. He had a wonderful memory,
great energy, and a remarkable voice. One woman, forbidden by her husband to attend his preaching, flung open her bedroom
window, so that his sermon, though at a distance, filled the room, and her husband, astonished by what he thought was a miracle,
was moved to the heart by Antony's words.

After the death of Saint Francis, he and Adam, an English friar, held out against the relaxation of Franciscan austerities.
He became ill with dropsy and, in 1231, went to the woodland retreat at Camposanpiero with two other friars for a respite. There
he lived in a cell that was built for him under the branches
of a walnut tree. Saint Antony died at the Poor Clare convent at Arcella on the way back to Padua at the age of 36.

The texts of many of his sermons have survived, and because of these and his reputation as a biblical scholar the Church has
honored him with the title "Doctor."

The Poor Clare sisters claimed Antony's body, but it was enshrined in Our Lady's Church at Padua. A great basilican church
was begun the year after his death. Fittingly for one who had hoped to work in Morocco, the building has domes and a bell-tower
like an Arab minaret. Antony's tomb lies behind the altar of his chapel in the north transept of this Basilica di Sant'Antonio,
with nine superb reliefs lining the walls.

He was translated to this site in 1263, at which time his incorrupt tongue and two bones were detached from his body. At this
famous pilgrimage site, many miracles occurred at his intercession. Many legends gathered around his name and he is among the
most popular of the medieval saints.

In art, Saint Antony is portrayed as a young Franciscan holding the child Jesus, which is a representation of an episode in which
his spying host is said to seen him holding and talking to the Infant Jesus.


Bartolome Esteban Murillo, The Vision of St. Anthony, 1650?,
Oil on panel, 210 x 145 cm, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

While Antony is usually depicted as a rosy-cheeked youth with wavy hair, a contemporary described him thusly: "Like most
Spaniards his coloring was swarthy. He was less than the average height and was corpulent. His skin was dark and rough
as a result of the great austerities of his life and the sickness from which he suffered."


Left, a typical St. Anthony prayer card; center, a 14th century anonymous painting long-known
as the 'True Portrait' of Antony; right, reconstruction based on scientific data gathered when
his remains were examined in 1981[compare this to El Greco's painting]

In 1981, his tomb was reopened and the relics were scientifically examined to verify his physical characteristics. It can
be said that Antony had a long, thin face, deep-set eyes, and long, delicate hands. The state of his bones indicated a poor diet
(through frequent, long fasts) and fatigue caused by journeys on foot.

He may sometimes be shown (1) with a lily (symbol for his knowledge of scripture according to White) and book; (2) with a flame
in his left hand or on his breast and book; (3) with a cross and the child on a book; or (4) holding corn, which recognizes
miracles he is reputed to have performed. He once saved a field of grain from foraging birds, and on another occasion restored
an abundant harvest to a field trampled by people who had come to hear him.

Older pictures may show Antony preaching to the fish at Rimini (a story told in the Fioretti similar to the tale of Francis
with the birds) or with him showing a consecrated Host to a mule who immediately venerated it, rejecting a bundle of hay.
The point of these stories is that sometimes animals were more receptive to the living Word of God than certain people.

Some medieval artists preferred to portray Antony in a nut-tree in memory of his solitude and the esteem Saint Bonaventure
had for him. The Limbourg brothers painted an image of Saint Anthony Attacked by Devils.

Antony is the patron of the poor and oppressed; alms given for his intercession are called "Saint Antony's Bread". This charity,
devoted to the relief of the starving still flourishes, especially in the Third World. In Sicily huge loaves in the shape of
a crown are still baked on his feast day.

He is also patron of barren women, harvests, Brazil, Padua, and Flemish men. He is often invoked to help find lost objects
("Saint Antony, Saint Antony, please come around. Something is lost and needs to be found."). This was probably spawned by
the story that a novice ran away with a psalter Antony had been using and was forced by an apparition to return it.




Left: Claudio Coello, The Vision of Saint Anthony of Padua, 1663, Oil on canvas, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va.
Right: P. Pereda, St Anthony of Padua with Christ Child, Oil on canvas, 177 x 205 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

In anticipation of the Holy Father's personal pilgrimage and pastoral visit to Assisi on Sunday, June 17,
here is one of the more concise biographies available online about St. Francis of Assisi.

Other good readable biographies which are about 2-3 times the length of this one may be found in:
www.newadvent.org/cathen/06221a.htm
and
www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/FRANCIS.htm


FRANCIS OF ASSISI
Founder of the Order of Friars Minor (OFM)
Co-Patron of Italy
Born in Assisi, Umbria, Italy, c. 1181
Died at Porziuncola, October 3, 1226
Canonized 1228
Declared Patron of Italy in 1939 by Pius XII
Declared patron of ecologists in 1979 by John Paul II

"Our friends, then, are all those who unjustly afflict us with trials and ordeals, shame and injustice, sorrows
and torments, martyrdom and death; we must love them greatly for we all possess eternal life because of them."
- Saint Francis

"Sanctify yourself and you will sanctify society."
- Saint Francis



Botticelli, Saint Francis of Assisi with Angels, 1475-80,
Egg tempera and oil on wood, 49.5 x 31.8 cm, National Gallery, London;
El Greco, Saint Francis in Prayer, 1580-85, oil on canvas,
115.5 x 103 cm., Joslyn Art Museum


One of the greatest saints God ever gave us was the son of Peter Bernadone, a wealthy silk merchant, and his wife
Pica, a Frenchwoman. He was born while his father was away on business and his mother christened him with the name
John (Giovanni). When his father returned, he insisted that the child be renamed Francesco (the Frenchman). And so
it happened.

Like most privileged youth, Francis of the small hands, broad body, and liquid eyes indulged himself in extravagant
living and pleasure-seeking. He wasn't interested in his father's business or study. Influenced by the ideals of
chivalry, Francis went gaily to war, and was taken prisoner by the nearby Perugians in 1202. Upon his release he
resumed his dissolute ways and became seriously ill for a time.

Upon his recovery in 1205, he decided to join the forces of Walter (Gualtier) de Brienne, who was setting off for
the Crusades from southern Italy. Francis outfitted himself with expensive new equipment, but, according to some,
he met a poorly clothed man to whom he gave his finery.

A vision of Christ (urging him to turn back) during another illness in Spoleto, followed by another on his return
to Assisi, caused him to change his lifestyle. At home he was faced with accusations of cowardice.

In 1205, while praying one day in the ruined chapel of San Damiano near the gates of Assisi, three times Francis
heard a voice say from the crucifix before which he was praying: "Francis, go and repair my house which
you see is now close to ruin."

Characteristically, Francis took these words literally and set out to repair the chapel, but eventually he got it
right. At that time he rushed to his father's warehouse, took as much cloth as a horse could carry, sold the cloth
and gave the money to the priest in charge of the ruined chapel. He asked permission to remain with the priest.
The priest agreed but refused Francis' donation.

His irate father sought him out but Francis hid. After days of fasting and prayer, Francis came out of hiding.
His looks were so altered that people threw things at him and called him mad. His father treated him as such: He took
Francis home, beat him, bound him up, and locked him in a room. While his father was away from home, Pica released
Francis, who promptly returned to San Damiano.

He was followed by his father, angrily denounced as a madman, and disinherited in one of the most dramatic scenes
in religious history. When his father summoned him before the bishop of Assisi, who instructed Francis to return the
money from the cloth and to trust in God. The saint solemnly took off all his clothes and gave them back to his father.
The bishop gave him a cloak for which Francis thanked him for his first alms. Upon the cloak the saint marked the cross
in chalk.

Francis said he now had only one father, his Father in heaven and singing the divine praises, Francis went in search
of shelter. En route his met a band of robbers, who asked him to identify himself. Francis responded: "I am the herald
of the great King." They beat him and left him in a ditch of snow. Undeterred he continued singing. At a monastery
he received alms and work. In Gubbio, an acquaintance gave him the shabby tunic, belt, and shoes that Francis wore
for the next two years before returning to Assisi and San Damiano.

Francis begged for alms to restore the church and was mocked by the townspeople who had known him as a rich man's son.
In 1206, he went on pilgrimage to Rome in rags. There he met a leper and not only gave him money but went so far as
to kiss the man's diseased hand - an unthinkable act at a time when this was a debilitating, communicable disease.
On his return home he devoted himself to a life of poverty and care of the sick and the poor.

After repairing several churches in Assisi, he retired to a little chapel, the Porziuncola (Portiuncula) at Santa
Maria degli Angeli, and devoted himself completely to his life's work of poverty and preaching. Porziuncola
belonged to the abbey founded by the great Saint Benedict, about two miles from Assisi. The chapel was neglected
and in disrepair until Francis restored it with his own hands while living nearby.

On the feast of Saint Matthias in 1209, Francis really heard the way for his life: "Do not possess gold . . . nor
two coats nor shoes nor a staff. . . ." Francis understood and undertook to live the rule of poverty in Saint
Matthew's Gospel literally. He gave away his shoes, the walking staff he had used in his travels, and his girdle.
He kept his undyed, woolen cloak - the dress of shepherds and peasants -which he tied with a cord.

The saint's preaching soon attracted numerous disciples who agreed that Christ's disciples should have virtually
nothing of their own. Among those drawn to the severe Gospel were several leading citizens, Bernard da Quintavalla,
a rich merchant, and Peter of Cattaneo, a canon of the cathedral, whom he robed on April 16, 1209, thus founding
the Friars Minor. The third to join them was Brother Giles, a simple, wise man.

In 1210, he received verbal approval of a rule he had drawn up from Pope Innocent III as well as authorization for
Francis and 11 companions to be roving preachers of repentance. They lived together in a little cottage at Rivo Torto
until a dispute with a peasant who wanted the cottage to shelter his donkey. In 1212 they moved their headquarters to
the Porziuncola chapel, which the abbot of Monte Subasio gave them on the condition that it should always remain
the motherhouse for the Friars Minor.

Many more men were attracted to this saint for whom poverty was his "lady"; any illness, a "sister"; and his body,
"brother donkey." Soon so many recruits flocked in that another friary was built in Bologna. Throughout Italy
the brothers called the people of all stations to faith and repentance. The brothers refused even corporate
ownership of property, human learning, and ecclesiastical preferment (initially few of them were in holy orders).

Also in 1212, Saint Clare joined him over the violent objections of her family. Together they founded the first
community of Poor Ladies (later known as the Poor Clares).

Obsessed with the desire to preach to the Saracens, Francis set out for Syria in the fall of 1212, but was shipwrecked
along the coast of Dalmatia on the way. He and his companions returned to Ancona as stowaways. Francis preached
for a year in central Italy during which the lord of Chiusi placed the Apennine retreat of Monte Alvernia at the
disposal of the order. A second attempt was made to evangelize the Islamics in 1213-14, but it also failed when
Francis fell ill in Spain while on the way to Morocco and was forced to return to Italy.

Francis obtained the famous Porziuncola indulgence or pardon of Assisi from Pope Innocent III in 1216. The following
year (when he probably met Saint Dominic in Rome), Francis convened the first general chapter of his order at the
Porziuncola to organize the huge number of followers he had attracted to his way of life.

Francis wanted to preach in France, but Cardinal Ugolino advised against it. By 1217 the order's many members were
divided into provinces and groups of friars were sent to countries outside Italy, including Brothers Pacifico and
Agnello to England.

In 1219, he sent his first missionaries to Tunis and Morocco from another general chapter, attended by some 5,000
friars. He himself went to Egypt to evangelize the Islamics in Palestine and Egypt with 12 friars under the protection
of Gaultier de Brienne. In the camp of the Crusaders, he was shocked by the immoral lifestyle. He requested permission,
was warned against, and finally allowed to meet with Sultan Malek al-Kamel at Damietta, Egypt, which was being besieged
by Crusaders. The sultan was interested in their discussions and asked Francis to stay with him. A few days later
the sultan sent him back to camp. His mission was a failure both among the Saracens and the Crusaders, so Francis
went on pilgrimage to Akka (Acra).

He was obliged, however, to hasten back to Italy to combat a movement in his order to mitigate his original rule
of simplicity, humility, and poverty led by Matthew of Narni and Gregory of Naples. When Francis found the brothers o
f Bologna living in a fine monastery, he castigated the superior and ordered the friars to leave.

Having secured the appointment of Cardinal Ugolino as protector of the order from Pope Honorius III, Francis presented
a revised rule to a general chapter at the Porziuncola in 1221, which maintained his ideals of poverty, humility,
evangelical freedom, respect and obedience to Church authorities, and doctrinal orthodoxy.

Friars slept on the ground, used no tables or chairs, and had very few books. It was not until later that they became
an order whose theology won attention in universities. A movement in the order toward mitigating his rule, led by Brother
Elias, began to spread and was met by Francis with still another slight revision, but this time he secured for it
the approval of Pope Honorius III in 1223.

Francis and his adviser Cardinal Ugolino may have drawn up a rule for the lay people who associated themselves with
the Friars Minor -the Franciscan tertiaries. This became a massive movement and source of much of the piety and sanctity
of the age - a re-evangelization throughout Europe.

By this time Francis had retired from the practical activities of the order, and its direction was mainly in the hands
of Brother Elias. At Christmas of 1223, Francis built a crèche at Grecchia in the valley of Rieti. It is probably not
the first time the scene in Bethlehem was acted out, but Francis' doing it established the manager scene as a Christmas
custom observed all over the Christian world to the present day.


Fra ANGELICO, St Francis Receiving the Stigmata, c. 1440
Tempera on wood, 28 x 33 cm, Pinacoteca, Vatican


Two years before his death at the beginning of a 40-day fast, while praying in his cell on Mount Alverna (Monte La Verna)
in the Apennines on September 14 and long after his reputation was well-established, Francis received the marks which
were to confirm his sanctity. They did not bleed, but were instead impressions of the heads of nails, round and black
and standing clear from the flesh. These wounds were one of the sources of the physical pain and weakness he suffered
increasingly until he welcomed "Sister Death."

Francis kept these stigmata a secret by wearing shoes and stockings and covering his hands with his habit. He is the first
known saint to have experienced the stigmata.

In 1225, Cardinal Ugolino and the vicar Elias convinced Francis to see the pope's physician at Rieti. En route he stopped
to see Saint Clare at San Damiano for the last time. In terrible discomfort, he wrote the Canticle of Brother Sun,
set it to music, and taught the brothers how to sing it. At Mount Rainerio he underwent primitive surgery and a painful
treatment that brought him some relief.

In Assisi, doctors told him he had only a few weeks to live. Francis asked to be taken to Porziuncola on a stretcher and
that they send to Rome for Lady Giacoma di Settesoli, an old friend. She was asked to bring candles and a gray gown for
his burial and some favorite cakes. She arrived before the messenger started out. As he wished, Francis died lying on
he ground covered with an old habit.

Brother Elias described the five wounds of the stigmata in a letter shortly after Francis's death. Blood often trickled
from his side. Brother Leo wrote, "The blessed Francis, two years before his death, kept a Lent in the hermitage of
Alverna in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of God, and Blessed Michael the Archangel, from the Feast of
the Assumption of St. Mary the Virgin to the Feast of St. Michael in September. . . . After the vision and speech he had
of a seraph, and the impression in his body of the Stigmata of Christ, he made these praises . . . giving thanks
to God for the favor that had been conferred on him." Others claim he received the marks only a few weeks before his death.

The saint asked to be buried in the criminals' cemetery on the Colle d'Inferno, but his body was taken to the Church of
Saint George in Assisi. It remained there until 1230, when it was secretly removed to the basilica built by Brother Elias.
His relics were rediscovered in 1818 and reburied, first in an ornate tomb, and then, in 1932, in a very simple one.

Though never ordained, Francis' impact on religious life since his times has been enormous. Probably no saint has affected
so many in so varied ways as the gentle saint of Assisi who, born to wealth, devoted his life to poverty, concern for the poor
and sick, and so delighted in God's creation.

His cultus has grown enormously in the last hundred years among Christians of all denominations and others. There is
a compelling appeal in his Canticle of the sun and in what we are told about him by the Little flowers of Saint Francis
(Fioretti) and the Mirror of perfection .

==================================================================
From the Chapel of St. Gregory at the Benedictine monastery in Subiaco come these two contemporary
portraits (painted in their lifetime) showing St. Francis and his friend who went on to become Pope
and who canonized him:


Saint Francis, frescoed by the Maestro di Frate Francesco in the Capella di San Gregorio. This particular
image is not simply arresting, it is unique amongst the thousands of existing images of Saint Francis,
because it must have been completed during the Saint's life. The The saint is shown without a halo or
the marks of the stigmata - which means he was painted before 1224. On the right, a fresco showing the chapel
being consecrated by Cardinal Ugoliano (1143-1241), who went on to become Pope Gregory IX in 1227. It was
Gregory who canonized his friend Saint Francis (and the other great contemporary Franciscan Saint, Anthony
of Padua) and also Saint Dominic and Saint Elizabeth (of Hungary). Gregory lived till he was 98.

In anticipation of tomorrow's feast, I found this beautiful entry from a blog called VULTUS CHRISTI ('the face of Christ')
vultus.stblogs.org/
whose epigram is the psalm
Tibi dixit cor meum, quaesivi vultum tuum, vultum tuum, Domine, requiram: ne avertas faciem tuam a me (Ps 26:8,9
("My heart hath said to thee: My face hath sought thee: thy face, O Lord, will I still seek. Turn not away thy face from me")
which is rightfully on the back cover of the Italian edition of JESUS OF NAZARETH but not to be found in the English edition.



John the Baptist
and the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Joy and Gladness Shall Be Thine

Today is the Vigil of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist: eight days after the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
John the Baptist, while yet an infant hidden in Saint Elizabeth's womb, was the first to experience the sweet mediation
of the Virgin Mother's Immaculate Heart.



It was the God-bearing Virgin's Heart, full of solicitude for her cousin Elizabeth, that moved her to "arise and go with haste
into the hill country, to a city of Judah" (cf. Lk 1:39). There the Mother of God bearing her Son beneath her Immaculate Heart,
"entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth" (Lk 1:40).

The Light of the Real Presence Shining in Her Eyes

This was, in a sense, the first mission of the Immaculate Heart of Mary: to carry the hidden Christ to the "little child"
(Lk 1:76) destined to be the Friend of the Bridegroom (Jn 3:29), the Prophet of the Most High (Lk 1:76).

With the flame of love burning in her Immaculate Heart and the light of the real presence shining in her eyes, Mary "became
in some way a 'tabernacle' - the first tabernacle in history" (John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, art. 55).

With the arrival of the Virgin-Tabernacle enclosing within her the 'Dayspring from on high' (Lk 1:78), John the Baptist was
sanctified, washed clean of original sin, and quickened by the Holy Spirit.

Jubilation

The birth of John the Baptist was an occasion of jubilation. Having already been touched by the Heart of Mary, the Cause of
our Joy, the Baptist comes into the world as the Herald of Joy. His prophetic ministry, even as he advances toward a cruel death,
is illumined by a supernatural joy.

"He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the
bridegroom's voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full. He must increase, but I must decrease (Jn 3:29-30).

The Infallible Sign of the Presence of God

For what gift does the Church make us ask in the Collect of tomorrow's solemnity? For 'the grace of spiritual joys'.
Already by his birth, Saint John the Baptist teaches us that the first of these spiritual joys is a living, personal contact
with the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

At every moment, the Mother of God is ready to grace us with her presence. She comes always to reveal the Face of her Son,
hidden now in the Eucharist as He was hidden in the tabernacle of her womb when she visited Elizabeth.

The fruit of that mysterious encounter between the Infant Christ and the Infant Forerunner had the unmistakable taste of
divine joy, the joy that Blessed Abbot Marmion called 'the infallible sign of the presence of God'.


BOTTICELLI, Madonna and Child and the Young St John the Baptist, 1490-95
Tempera on canvas, 134 x 92 cm, Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence


Look at this marvelous painting by Botticelli depicting the Mother of God, the Child Jesus and His little cousin, the Baptist.
What I find most striking is that at the very center of the painting is the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The Virgin is holding her Child; he appears heavy in her arms. She bows low to allow the little Baptist to give her Jesus a hug
and a kiss. The small boys appear to be about two years old. The Baptist has to stretch to reach the Face of Jesus; he is
lready dressed in his desert garb and carrying his little wooden staff. The top of the staff has the form of the Cross;
the Cross thus appears directly over the head of the Infant Christ, a portent of His sacrifice.

The Mother of God wears a blood red gown; something about her posture suggests an outpouring of blood, an effusion of
the heart. Just behind the Virgin is a rose bush in full bloom: a symbol of spiritual joys.

Let Me Give Thy Son a Kiss

More than my words ever could, Botticelli's painting suggests that the mission of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is to introduce
all of us, as she did the little Baptist, into a reverent and tender intimacy with her Son.

The Mother of God bends over each of us, her garments dyed red in the Blood that flowed on Calvary, the very Blood that won
for us every spiritual joy. Where the Mother of God is present, there charity is poured out and there spiritual joys abound.
Put yourself today in the position of the child John the Baptist. Ask the Blessed Virgin to let you embrace her Son and
offer Him a kiss. Her Immaculate Heart will not refuse you this.


=====================================================================


The blogger is Father Mark, O.Cist. - a Benedictine-Cistercian priest of the Abbey of the Basilica of the Holy Cross of
Jerusalem (Santa Croce in Gerusalemme) in Rome, and I am very glad I discovered his site, as you will be when you visit it.

From another site, here is a recent discussion about the 'historical' John the Baptist from the Redemptorist
Fathers site, written in preparation for June 24. The Sunday homilies on the site are attributed to the "Administrator'
but I have been unable to get his name. For now, I take it on trust that he is quoting recent scholarship accurately.



There is a new interest in the historical John the Baptist. Very recently, in August 2004, some archeologists claimed a discovery of the original cave
of John the Baptist. The evidence so far has not been all that convincing to most scholars, but the jury is still out. It is surely a cave where
devotees of the Baptist honoured him, possibly in slightly later times than his own.

Some recent studies have proposed that John is less a (revivalist) preacher (not an American Southern Baptist!), than a ritualist. He practised a kind of
baptismal ablution like some ceremonies at Qumran. John seems to have acted as if his baptism was the real way of access to the true God,
and thus a better ritual of reconciliation than the Temple cult. He would thus have acted in an anti-Temple vein.

John seems to have been a critic of other Jewish ways of living. He seems to have presented himself as the person in whom the Jews of the day could find
(baptismal) salvation, and, indeed, do so as often as they came to him, with frequent baptisms, and not just one (as has usually been assumed).

John practiced baptism by immersion. [John the Immerser = Jack the Dipper?] He gathered people on the far side of Jordan, as Joshua had gathered the original
chosen people there. They went down to the river. He walked with them through the waters of the Jordan into the Land promised and given to them by the Lord.

John re-enacted this as a land-rights procession in protest against Roman domination of the Land. It is a blatantly political act. Not a pious exhortation, or
'liturgy'. He focused on the radical holiness asked of the people by a Holy God who gave them his own Holy Land. They had to be holy to live there.

John was not like the Pharisees who focused on the ethical implications of the Torah in ordinary civic life. John was a 'desert' man, a real prophet.
But the Pharisees themselves would surely not have been negative to a holiness movement of this kind.

It is not likely that the numbers John attracted where he had been baptizing were very large. Almost no one lived there. Passing travellers, pilgrims en route
to Jerusalem, escapees from the cold of Jerusalem in winter, and the curious (perhaps from Jericho) would have made up his 'audience'. As is obvious, these people
are not 'the poor'.

To go to the people at large, he had to go to more populated areas, that is, to the provinces of Palestine where he had not yet been, Samaria, Judea, and Galilee.
He crossed the Jordan to get to these places. It was itself a re-enactment of the exodus, from desert to the Land. The whole thing was this land-rights
procession, a claim to the Land against the Roman occupation of it. He was telling the people how to live appropriately in this Land that God had given them.

After Jesus was baptized, John's whole operation moved with missionary urgency to the West Bank of the Jordan. John seems to have gone to Samaria
himself, while sending Jesus, his helper(???), to Judea. Jesus worked as a baptist at this time. [Note: he was a Jew]. This means that he worked in the tradition
of John, and preached the message of John.

Jesus himself baptized during this stage of his ministry. This may have been an innovation: someone other than John was doing the baptizing, even though
it was 'with the baptism of John'. Jesus appears to have developed followers of his own, who had, for the most part, been previously followers of the larger
baptist group.

John, at some point, decided to go to Galilee, the only province not yet touched by his message. Galilee was under direct control of Herod Antipas. Some time
prior to 23 CE, Antipas had dismissed his wife and married Herodias, his brother's wife, who was also his niece. As a Jew, and a Jewish Client-Ruler (even if by
Roman placet), he had publicly violated Jewish law.

Almost immediately on coming to Galilee, John engaged in strong public criticism of Antipas. Perhaps he had done so earlier, while he was still in Samaria
(it, like Judea, was not under the control of Antipas, but under direct Roman administration.) Perhaps he had even done so while he was still on the East side
of the Jordan, in Perea, which was under Antipas' control.

It is possible that his motivation in crossing the Jordan into Samaria was not exclusively spiritual, but also included a measure of political safety
for himself. If this is the case, his going to Galilee was, in the circumstances, a courageous option. When he arrived there, he stepped up his criticisms
against Antipas. His motivation in doing so is interesting. It has little directly to do with the sanctity of Jewish or Christian marriage.

Antipas wanted to be accepted as the true Messiah-King, and wanted to be the Messiah-King who would save the Jewish people by inculturating them into
Roman ways of living. In God's Holy Land! His father was a Jew, but his mother had been a Samaritan of Arab blood. He thought that by dismissing
his foreign wife, and marrying someone of the best Maccabean Jewish blood line, he would be more accepted as this kind of Messiah. John objected strongly.

The dismissed wife of Antipas was a Nabatean princess, the daughter of Aretas IV of Petra. When she was rejected, she engineered a visit to the great
fortress of Machaerus in the south of Perea, overlooking the Dead Sea, (still in the territory of Antipas), and then slipped across the border to her
father in Nabatea. Aretas would seek revenge for the insult offered by Antipas to the Nabatean royal family.

This revenge would normally amount to a border war, in which Antipas would be humiliated. Antipas then was politically and militarily vulnerable, and needed
the support of the Jews of Galilee in a particular way at this time. John's public attack on him, and especially on his Messianic aspirations, alienated them.

Antipas had the Baptist arrested, probably initially at Tiberias. Arrest, in those times and places, amounted to much the same thing as elimination, at least
in due time, and perhaps with undue haste, even if without due process. [There are interesting parallels here with the eventual demise of Jesus].

To forestall the Nabatean invasion of Perea, Antipas then moved south to Macherus, and brought his prisoner with him. There he executed him.
Some accept the basic historicity of Mark's story, repeated in Matthew, of the beheading of John at the request of Herodias' dancing daughter, Salome:
others are more hesitant or even negative about it, because there are parallels to the story in earlier Greek literature. In any event, Antipas had
desired to be rid of John for some time.

Aretas won the small border war, and Antipas retreated to Galilee, to a people who believed in the Baptist, and now blamed Antipas's military defeat and
loss of honour on his refusal to heed the Baptist's warning and on his disposal of the Baptist. The entire movement of the Baptist was now intertwined with
major political, and even international agenda.

How important is John the Baptist? He was the only real prophet to emerge among the Jews for a long time. Jesus bought his message, and joined his band.
At that time, Jesus said that of all those born of women, a greater than John had never been seen. The whole Law and the Prophets lead to John. He was Elijah,
risen from the dead.

John had left behind him the scene in Galilee where Jesus would begin his ministry. John introduced Jesus to the religious and political world of the time.
John was the fore-runner of Jesus. Jesus came to Galilee to pick up where John had left off. [No wonder he takes precedence over the Sunday liturgy!]

====================================================================


Father Mark's site made me realise also that I totally missed noting the feast of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher on June 22,
and although I noted the feast of St. Aloysius Gonzaga on June 21, I did not find the time to do anything about him. Father Mark
helps me make up for both oversights.

It seemed providential that the Church marked the martyrdom of two of the greatest medieval English saints the day before
Tony Blair was to visit Pope Benedict XVI.


July 22
Saints John Fisher and Thomas More


Men of Fire and of Light
by Father Mark, Vultus Christi

Today is the feast of two martyrs, one a bishop and the other a husband, father, lawyer, statesman, and philosopher:
Saints John Fisher and Thomas More.

Both were men of fire and of light. Both fought manfully and suffered the martyrdom of John the Baptist, the Friend
of the Bridegroom of whom Our Lord said, He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while
in his light (Jn 5:35).

The Sun Snatched from the Universe

Saint John Fisher was alone among all the bishops of the realm to stand against Henry VIII in the great affair of
his divorce and against the Act of Supremacy by which the King repudiated the jurisdiction of the Pope over the Church
in England. The Church in England was to become the Church of England.

Protestantization would follow and, above all, the suppression of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered according to the
rite of the Church of Rome. Concerning Holy Mass, Bishop John Fisher had written: "He who goes about to take the Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass from the Church, plots no less a calamity than if he tried to snatch the sun from the universe."

An entire national body of bishops save one broke the bond of their communion with Peter and fell into schism and heresy.
A sobering lesson! There is no security in the Catholic faith apart from a loyal attachment to the See of Peter expressed
in a joyful communion of mind and heart, and in an effective obedience. Today, the Anglican Communion worldwide is torn
and broken apart into factions, and factions of factions. In the absence of a supreme magisterium nothing remains but
opinions and options.

Imitating Saints John Fisher and Thomas More, may we spurn the temptation to prefer 'our way' to The Way and also,
like them, cheerfully and resolutely put nothing before the love of Christ who says: "I came to cast fire upon the earth; and
would that it were already kindled" (Lk 12:49, Magnificat Antiphon at First Vespers of the Sacred Heart).


ST. JOHN FISHER, Bishop and Martyr
Died on Tower Hill, London, on June 22, 1535
Canonized in 1935
Feast day formerly on June 13 (Roman calendar) and July 9 (locally).


"Had you but tasted one drop of the sweetness which inebriates the souls of those religious from their worship of
this Sacrament, you would never have written as you have, nor have apostatized from the faith that you formerly professed.
- John Fisher, writing to the bishop of Winchester



The son of a textile merchant who died while John was still a boy, Saint John Fisher was a Catholic of high ideals. He was
equally distinguished as a humanistic scholar, a fosterer of sound learning in others, and a faithful bishop. Educated at
Michaelhouse at Cambridge (since merged into Trinity) from age 14, forever afterwards he was connected with the life of
the university. Fisher was ordained a priest under a special dispensation at the age of 22. He became a doctor of divinity,
master of Michaelhouse, and vice chancellor.

In 1502, he resigned his mastership to become the chaplain of the king's mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, countess of Richmond
and Derby. Under his direction, Lady Margaret founded Christ's College and Saint John's College at Cambridge, and established
there and at Oxford a Lady Margaret divinity chair. Because of this and other princely gifts, she has come to be regarded as
Cambridge's greatest benefactress.

Fisher's contributions have not been as readily recognized. He was the first to fill the divinity chair at Cambridge. But more
important than that, he himself endowed scholarships, provided for Greek and Hebrew in the curriculum, and engaged his friend,
the famous humanist, Erasmus, as a professor of divinity and Greek at a time was the school's scholarship was at its lowest ebb.
Before that no Greek or Hebrew was taught, and the library had been reduced to 300 volumes. In 1504, Fisher was elected
chancellor of the university. As such he did much to further the growth and progress of his alma mater, of which he may
justly be considered the second founder.

John Fisher lived in the last days of Catholic England and reached high office under Henry VII. After serving as chaplain
to his patron Margaret Beaufort, he was appointed bishop of Rochester in 1504. He was only 35 years old, young to be
a bishop. He accepted the office warily, as it added greatly to his responsibilities (he was still university chancellor until
his death). It was the smallest and poorest diocese in England, but so great was his love for it that, later, he refused
the richer sees of Ely and Lincoln, saying he "would not leave his poor old wife for the richest widow in England."
The climate was so damp and the state of his palace so ruinous that Erasmus, when staying with him, was appalled;
yet for 30 years Fisher chose to remain there and was one of the most faithful of the English bishops of the period.

Fisher was a zealous and thorough pastor. He regularly made visitations, administered confirmation, disciplined his clergy,
visited the sick poor, and distributed alms with his own hands. His personal life was strict and simple. "He kept a good table
for every one but himself." He was such an articulate preacher that when King Henry VII died in 1509, he preached the funeral
sermon, as he did for Lady Margaret in her turn.

He discharged his public offices with dignity and courage. His reputation both at home and abroad was that of a great and
distinguished figure. In the words of Erasmus: "There is not in the nation a more learned man nor a holier bishop." Henry VIII,
before Fisher had roused his vindictive rage, openly gloried "that no other prince or kingdom had so distinguished a prelate."

During this time, he continued to write books and pursue his own studies, beginning to learn Greek at age 48, and Hebrew at 51.
Fisher lived austerely, sleeping and eating little, and he kept a skull in front of him at meals to remind himself of his
mortality. He formed one of the most exceptional libraries in Europe with the intention of bequeathing it to the university.

Fisher fully realized the urgent need of reform in the church, from popes and bishops downwards, but was opposed to Lutheran
ideas of reform and wrote four weighty volumes against them. He preached at Paul's Cross in defense of Christian doctrine
when Luther's books were banned and burned. Yet he preferred prayer and example before controversy.

With the utmost boldness and not without justification, Fisher censured the clergy at a synod in the presence of Cardinal
Wolsey himself for their corruption, vanity, laxity, and love of gain. Most of the higher clergy had won their preferments
through secular service to the state or by private interest. As a member of the House of Lords, Fisher vigorously opposed
the government's policy of war and criticized the measures against the clergy that were being forced through the Commons.

He uttered another great protest in convocation when that assembly was called upon to agree that Henry VIII was the head
of the Church of England. He did suggest adding to the oath the words, "So far as the law of Christ allows" which smoothed
the path of many who signed. But boldest of all was his uncompromising attitude to the scandalous divorce of
Catherine of Aragon by Henry.

As Queen Catherine's confessor, he appeared on her behalf before the commissioners at Blackfriars in 1529 and also spoke
and wrote vigorously against it. This infuriated the king and when, later, Fisher refused to take the Oath of Supremacy
acknowledging the king to be head of the English Church, he was deprived of his bishopric and committed to the Tower.

The warnings of friends and the threats of his enemies were not necessary to bring home to Fisher the danger he now ran
by his opposition to the ruling powers. Despite being imprisoned for two short periods, and being the object of poisoning and
a shooting attempt, Fisher persisted in espousing his views. Thomas Cromwell unsuccessfully tried to link him with Elizabeth
Barton, the 'Holy Maid of Kent,' a nun who had trances and made personal attacks upon Henry for trying to divorce the queen.

He was summoned to Lambeth, despite being so ill that he fainted on the road between Rochester and London, to sign the oath
of the bill of succession. He refused, because it was in essence an oath of supremacy. He was at Rochester at the time he was
arrested, and from the country round people flocked into the city to bid him farewell. After settling his affairs and making gifts
to the poor, he rode bareheaded through the streets giving his blessing to the crowd.

On his arrival in London, when confronted with the Oath he replied: "My answer is that forasmuch as mine own conscience
cannot be satisfied, I do absolutely refuse the Oath. I do not condemn any other men's consciences. Their consciences may save
them, and mine must save me." In April 1534, the 66-year-old prelate began a 15- month imprisonment in the Tower of London,
his property was confiscated, and he was stripped of his offices. A confidential messenger from Henry asked him to declare,
for the king's ears alone, his opinion on royal supremacy. His negative opinion sealed his conviction.

During this time Pope Paul III named him a cardinal. King Henry was furious, and within a month Fisher was brought to trial in
Westminster Hall, charged with treason in that he had denied the king's ecclesiastical supremacy and found guilty. Some of
the judges cried as "the most holy and learned prelate in Christendom" was sentenced to death on June 17, 1535.

On a June morning a few days later, John was awakened at 5:00 a.m. and told that he was to be executed that day. He asked
to rest a little longer and slept for two hours. So frail and emaciated by illness that he could barely stand, Fisher
was carried in a chair from the Tower to the place of execution.

He courteously thanked his guards for their attentive trouble and pains. Saying that he was dying for he faith, he asked
the people to pray that he might have courage. He carried his little New Testament, and at Tower Gate opened it at the words:
"This is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. I have glorified Thee
upon the earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do" (John 17:3-5).

Closing the book, he said: "Here is learning enough for me to my life's end." As he mounted the scaffold, facing the morning sun,
he lifted his hands and cried: "They had an eye unto Him, and were lightened; and their faces were not ashamed." Then kneeling
in prayer, he repeated Psalm 31, In Thee, O Lord, have I put my trust (others say that he died with the words of the Te Deum
on his lips), and was beheaded with an axe.

His friend Thomas More wrote of Saint John of Rochester: "I reckon in this realm no one man, in wisdom, learning, and long
approved virtue together, meet to be matched and compared with him."

John Fisher was buried in the churchyard of All Hallows, Barking, without rites or a shroud. His head was exhibited on London
Bridge for two weeks, then was thrown into the Thames.

In art, Saint John Fisher is shown robed as a cardinal, with haggard ascetic features, or with an axe or his hat at his feet.



ST. THOMAS MORE, Martyr
Born in London, England, 1478
Died there in 1535
Canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1935
as the 'Martyr of the Papacy'
Feast day formerly on July 6.



Fr. Mark says this icon of Saint Thomas More
"is by the graced hand of Brother Claude Lane,
O.S.B., monk of Mount Angel Abbey."


"If I am distracted, Holy Communion helps me become recollected. If opportunities are offered by each day to offend my God,
I arm myself anew each day for the combat by reception of the Eucharist. If I am in need of special light and prudence
in order to discharge my burdensome duties, I draw nigh to my Savior and seek counsel and light from Him."

"These things, good Lord, that we pray for, give us Thy grace to labor for."

"It is a shorter thing and sooner done, to write heresies, than to answer them."

- Saint Thomas More.


Thomas More studied at Canterbury Hall, Oxford, and read law at the Inns of Court, being called to the bar in 1501. Thomas was
happiest in the bosom of his family - three generations living under one roof in Chelsea, and the congenial group of poets,
scientists, and humanists that often gathered in his home, rather than at court.

Henry VIII was a man of rare personal magnetism; even Sir Thomas yielded to his charm. Thomas's daughter Margaret married
Roper, who writes of More's friendship with Henry VIII: when the king had finished his devotions on holy days, he would talk
to More about diverse matters, often far into the night.

More often dined with the king and queen. Thomas would try to get two days per month to spend with his family, but he would be
recalled to court. So Thomas tried to change his disposition before the king to be less likable, until the king started to come
to Chelsea with Thomas and to be merry there. He recognized early that Henry's whims might prove dangerous to Thomas's health
and life.

More had considered the priesthood in his youth, and of joining the Franciscans, but his confessor advised against it. In 1505,
he married Jane Colt, though it is said he preferred her younger sister. She bore him four children: Margaret (married Roper);
Elizabeth, Cecily, and John. In the evening, Jane would study
for an hour or two because Thomas wished her to be a scholar, or she would sing or play the clavichord. Jane died in 1510.

Soon after Jane's death, he married Alice Middleton, an older woman. Margaret, the eldest child, was five. Alice was unlearned,
but had a great sense of humor. Thomas scolded her for her vanity and she reproached him for his lack of ambition.

More cared strongly for his children and their education, especially for Margaret. His home was a menagerie of birds, monkeys,
foxes, ferrets, weasels, etc.

More rose rapidly in public life despite his lack of ambition. He was a renowned lawyer and elected to Parliament in 1504 (
at age 22). In 1510, he was appointed Undersheriff of London; 1518, Secretary to Henry VIII; 1521, he was knighted; 1523,
chosen Speaker of Parliament; 1529, Lord Chancellor in succession to Cardinal Wolsey. Nevertheless, he continued to read, study,
and write, and is known more as a scholar than as a jurist. Yet he was realistic and wrote in Utopia (1516), "philosophy had
no place among kings....it is not possible for all things to be well, unless all men were good, which I think will not be
this good many years."

He had a horror of luxury and worldly pomp. He found the lies and flatteries of court nauseating. It wearied him to be
constantly at the King's command. He felt the scholars life was conducive to a virtuous life of piety toward God and service
of his neighbor.

Virtue and religion were the supreme concerns of his life. He considered pride the chief danger of education. Education
should inculcate a spirit of detachment from riches and earthly possessions, along with a spirit of gentleness.

During Henry's reign, 12,000 people were put to death for theft. Thomas as Chancellor was hesitant to apply the death
penalty to heretics.

More was a leader of the humanists, champion of the study of Greek and Latin classics, sympathetic to the Renaissance, and
an advocate of needed Church reform; yet he was grounded in the Catholic tradition of the Middle Ages. He was also a friend
of Erasmus. In 1527, Erasmus wrote in a letter, "I wrote the Praise of Folly in times of peace; I should never have written it
if I had foreseen this tempest" of the Reformation.

Again, Erasmus in a letter to a monk about to leave his monastery, "...I see no one becoming better, every one becoming
worse, so that I am deeply grieved that in my writings I once preached the liberty of the spirit....What I desired then
was that the abatement of external ceremonies might much redound to the increase of true piety. But as it is, the ceremonies
have been so destroyed that in place of them we have not the liberty of the spirit but the unbridled license of the flesh....
What liberty is that which forbids us to say our prayers, and forbids us the sacrifice of the Mass?"

Thomas More did not think his Utopia, which is written in Latin, could be safely read by the multitude.

Thomas was imprisoned in the Tower, because he would not help Henry VIII put away Catherine of Aragon and supplant the Pope
as the head of the Church of England. Thomas More did not wish to die. "I am not so holy that I dare rush upon death," he declared.
"Were I so presumptuous, God might suffer me to fall." But he could not accept that Henry VIII was supreme head of the church.
He resigned rather than be seen to support the king's divorce.

Thomas More and John Fisher, two of the noblest men England ever produced, were both sent to the Tower in 1534 for refusing
to take the Oath of Succession, which would obligate them to recognize Anne Boleyn's children as heirs to the Crown.
Both said they would swear allegiance to any heir the king and Parliament would agree upon, but this was not satisfactory
to Boleyn.

Next Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which made it high treason to refuse to accept the king as the only head
on earth of the Church of England. More was brought to trial on the perjured testimony of Richard Rich and defended himself
against the inferred act of treason.

He was convicted of high treason, and martyred for his steadfast defense of the indissolubility of marriage and the supremacy
of the pope. After the sentence was issued, he broke his silence. On the scaffold, he said simply, "I have been ever the king's
good and loyal servant, but God's first".

In art, Saint Thomas wears a scholar's cap, furred gown, and the chain of the Chancellor of England. A chalice, Host,
and papal insignia may be near him.

He is the patron saint of lawyers, judges, civil servants, politicians, statesmen, large families and troubled marriages.

June 24
Nativity of John the Baptist



PIETRO BERNINI, St John the Baptist, 1612-15
Marble, height: 243 cm, Sant'Andrea della Valle, Rome



FRA BARTOLOMEO, The Holy Family with St John the Baptist, 1506-07
Oil on panel, 62 x 47 cm, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid [/DIM}


John the Baptist, the last of the prophets and the forerunner of our Lord, was a man of the desert. The son of a priestly line, born of aged parents
as if by a miracle, was brought up as a Nazarite, that is, dedicated from birth to God's service with lifelong obligations never to shave, take wine,
or indulge in human pleasures.

He lived in the wilderness, a rugged and magnetic figure, clothed in the skin of a camel, living on locusts and wild honey.

He is the most startling figure in the Gospel narrative, a man of mystery, not as other men, bronzed by the desert sun, with piercing words of ominous
malediction, uncompromising and aggressive. No greater contrast can be imagined than the appearance by the river of this prophet of fire and the figure of
Jesus as 'the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world.'

Crowds followed him, held by his hypnotic power and rugged eloquence and lashed by his bitter invective. "You offspring of vipers, who has warned you
to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth fruits meet for repentance. The axe is laid to the rotten trees. The wheat is being threshed and
the stubble burnt in the empty fields." It was the voice of the old dispensation, the last echo of Moses and Elijah, the final challenge of the fire and
thunder of the God of the ancient Jews.

But John also prepared the way for Jesus, and with all his fierceness exercised a vital and realistic ministry. With it went a surprising humility and tenderness,
for he recognized his own limitations and that he was but a forerunner and a road-builder; and when the time came, he graciously made way for our Lord.

He shrank even from the thought of baptizing Him, and spoke of Him with wonder and devotion. I am not the Christ, he said, I am but a voice. "He that comes
after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear."


ANDREI RUBLEV, St. John the Precursor, Moscow

His end was tragic, the result of a squalid intrigue. With characteristic boldness he had denounced the unlawful marriage of the infamous Herodias, and,
as a result, had been thrown into the gloomy fortress of Machaerus on the shores of the Dead Sea.

Then, to gratify the cruel and frivolous whim of a dancing girl, Salome, the daughter of Herodias, who had been prompted by her mother, Herod, to his own disgust,
but unwilling to take back his word, put him to death, and there followed the shameful display of his head on a charger.

Thus ended the life of this sublime and extraordinary figure who blazed the trail for our Lord. The disciples gave his body decent burial and then broke
the tragic news to Jesus, who, overcome by grief and unable to face the crowds that thronged Him, took a boat and retired for a while to a desert place apart.

===================================================================

The Baptist is one of the most painted subjects in art history. The Bernini sculpture in Sant'Andrea della Valle is a personal favorite because it shows
the Baptist as I imagined from the first childhood stories I heard about him and also because for years, it was the most accessible for me, sopmething I could visit
at will. But there are dozens of memorable paintings and sculptures good for multiple posts. I am still looking online for my favorite painting of the boy John
by the Spanish painter Murillo....The Baptist is one of my most invoked saints, if only because he figures twice in the mysteries of the Rosary, and I generally say
a little prayer to the principal protagonists of each mystery before I go to the Our Father...


Meanwhile, here's Father Mark's meditation today on John the Baptist, which he illustrates with the famous Bronzino painting of John as a young man:


BRONZINO, Agnolo. St John the Baptist, 1550-55
Oil on wood, 120 x 92 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome


THE BIRTHDAY OF THE BRIDEGROOM'S FRIEND:
'Ah, I Cannot Speak'

At today's Office of Vigils, the stammering words of the prophet Jeremiah were placed in the mouth of the Saint John the Baptist:
"Ah, ah, ah, Lord God;
behold, I cannot speak, for I am a child" (Jer 1:6). The First Reading uses the words of the prophet Isaiah in the same way. This is the liturgy's way of
telling us that John is the greatest of the prophets, greater than Isaiah and Jeremiah put together, and that he is more than a prophet.

John's mysterious greatness in the plan of salvation is no mere human choice; it is something divine in origin. Saint John himself said, "A man cannot
receive any thing, unless it be given him from heaven" (Jn 3:27).

"The Lord," he says, "hath called me from the womb, from the bowels of my mother he hath been mindful of my name" (Is 49:1). This certainty makes the Baptist
very humble. He does not want to be mistaken for more than he really is. "You yourselves do bear me witness, that I said, 'I am not Christ, but that I am sent before him'" (Jn 3:28).

From his tender childhood John knows that he is sent before One who is greater than himself. John's father, the priest Zechariah, must have repeated to him
many times over what he sang under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit on the eighth day after his birth: "And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest;
for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways"(Lk 1:76-77). In the monastic tradition, the same text is chanted at the clothing of a novice.
John the Baptist remains, for all time, the model of the monk: child, prophet, herald, and friend of the Bridegroom.


Hieronymus BOSCH, St John the Baptist in the Wilderness
Oil on panel, 48 x 40 cm, Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid

Saint Luke tells us that John grew and became strong in spirit and lived hidden in the wilderness anticipating the moment set by God for his appearance to Israel.
We can only wonder what transpired between the young prophet and the God of Israel during those years of hidden life in the desert. John, like Jesus, is prepared
for his mission by years of silence, far from the multitudes and the tumult of the cities. We are reminded of the words of Hosea, "Thou shalt know no God but me,
and there is no Saviour beside me. I knew thee in the desert, in the land of the wilderness" (Os 13:4-5). The earliest hermits and monks of the Church looked to
Saint John the desert-dweller as their model and advocate. John is the friend of all those who seek the Face of God in silence; he is the friend of those
who live a humble life, 'hidden with Christ in God' (Col 3:3).

I was struck last night while singing the Great Responsory at First Vespers by the play on the word eremus; it means both desert and hermitage or monastery.
The Responsory suggests that the role of Saint John the Baptist remains actual, especially in the context of the eremitical or cenobitical monastic life.
His is "the voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths" (Mk 1:3).

When, after years of preparation in the desert, John speaks, he does so out of a profound interior silence, and it is that causes his words to flash like fire
bringing sinners to repentance. In Orientale Lumen, Pope John Paul II insisted on the necessity of silence for all Christians:

"We must confess that we all have need of this silence, filled with the presence of Him who is adored; in theology, so as to exploit fully its own sapiential
and spiritual soul; in prayer, so that we may never forget that seeing God means coming down the mountain with a face so radiant that we are obliged to
cover it with a veil (cf. Ex 34:33), and that our gatherings may make room for God's presence and avoid self-celebration; in preaching, so as not to delude
ourselves that it is enough to heap word upon word to attract people to the experience of God; in commitment, so that we will refuse to be locked in a struggle
without love and forgiveness.

"This is what man needs today; he is often unable to be silent for fear of meeting himself, of feeling the emptiness that asks itself about meaning; man who deafens
himself with noise. All, believers and non-believers alike, need to learn a silence that allows the Other to speak when and how he wishes, and allows us to understand
his words. (OL 16)

Silence prepared and sustained the preaching of Saint John the Baptist; and it was in silence, in the mysterious encounter with the Lord of the desert that John
became profoundly humble. Humility is not an attitude that can be improvised and cultivated from without. Humility blossoms from within. True humility,
Christian humility is the fruit of the experience of God, an experience that throws us to the ground with our foreheads in the dust, an experience that
fills us with the spirit of adoration.

The link between humility and adoration cannot be emphasized enough. The adoring soul will be humble; the humble soul will adore. John emerges from the silence
of the desert a profoundly humble man. In the desert he came face to face with God and everything in him became adoration.

Saint John insists that his mission is one of humble preparation: "I am not he whom you think me to be: but behold, there cometh one after me, whose shoes
of his feet I am not worthy to loose" (Ac 13:25). The people are impressed by this wild-looking prophet who comes out of years of silence and austerity
in the desert.

John dispels all ambiguity concerning his own person. "I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. He that hath the bride, is the bridegroom" (Jn 3:29).
Even when admiring crowds gather around him and respond to his word, John remains utterly lucid. His humility is not swayed; he is at the service of the Bridegroom,
and to the Bridegroom alone belongs the bride.

Saint John gives himself the most beautiful title to which a servant of Christ, especially a priest, can aspire. John is the friend of the Bridegroom.
"The friend of the bridegroom," he says, "who standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth with joy because of the bridegroom's voice. This my joy, therefore, is fulfilled.
He must increase, but I must decrease" (Jn 3:29-30).

The vocation of John, the humble friend of the Bridegroom, was to be visible only for a time. "He was a burning and shining lamp," says Our Lord, "and you were
willing to rejoice for a while in his light"(Jn 5:35). John's shining light was to be hidden away in the darkness of a prison cell. The Bridegroom had
arrived; the Friend of the Bridegroom had to disappear.

The voice of John the Baptist had been heard crying in the wilderness, denouncing sin, calling men to justice and sinners to repentance. But, then,
the voice of the Eternal Father was heard, coming from heaven: "Thou art my Son, the Beloved; with thee I am well pleased" (Lk 3:22). After this, the voice
of the Baptist was heard less and less, until finally, it was silenced by death, a cruel and ignominious death not unlike the immolation of the Lamb
which it prefigured.

Today's solemnity confirms and deepens the monastic call to silence and to humility. Graced from the womb of his mother in view of an extraordinary mission,
Saint John the Baptist served the designs of the Father for the length of time and in the place determined by the Father's loving providence.

"Sent from God, he came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light"
(Jn 1:6-8).

John the Baptist knew that he was destined to return to the hidden life, to a life of silence and obscurity, like the grain of wheat which falls into the earth
and dies in order to bear much fruit (Jn 12:24). He shows us that every vocation is subject to mysterious and unexpected turns and yes, every vocation is subject
to the mystery of the Cross, sometimes in dramatic ways, but more often in the humble obscurity of day to day existence. These things are necessary if we are to
decrease and allow the Lord Jesus to increase. To each one of us, Saint John the Baptist says: "Prepare to disappear."

Saint John the Baptist shows us that the hidden and silent life is a necessary and inescapable part of discipleship. A vocation that is not marked with the sign
of the Cross is suspect. A life that is without its moments of obscurity, silence and apparent uselessness, does not bear the imprint of the Lamb. The more
a soul is surrendered to the love of the Bridegroom, the more deeply will that soul be marked by the Cross.

Ultimately, the sign of the authenticity of the mission of Saint John the Baptist is his participation in the Passion and Cross of Jesus, in Jesus's paschal
humiliation, in Jesus's going down into the valley of the shadow of death. And the sign that any vocation is blessed by God is that it is marked by the Cross.

===================================================================
Just for good measure, let me re-post here the Verrocchio painting of the Baptism of Christ, first posted on Page 3 of this thread, with some notes about the painting.
The young Leonardo, who was an apprentice to Verrocchio, is thought to have painted the angel holding the robe...Strangely, there are not many paintings of the Baptism of Christ.


Andrea del Verrocchio, The Baptism of Christ, ca. 1475?
Painting on wood, 171x151 cm , Uffizi, Florence



Piero della Francesca, Baptism of Christ, 1448-50
Tempera on panel, 167 x 116 cm, National Gallery, London


Sorry, I had trouble earlier accessing the Giotto cycle in the Arena Chapel of Padua - his Baptism of Jesus antedates the other
two by some one-and-a-half centuries...The colors are remarkably vivid...


Giotto, Baptism of Christ, 1304-06
Fresco, 200 x 185 cm, Cappella Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), Padua

[Edited by TERESA BENEDETTA 6/25/2007 2:14 AM]

I obviously missed this completely, and I feel very badly because I do invoke Our Mother of Perpetual Help everyday -
the Redemptorist shrine to her in Manila is our largest Marian sanctuary in the Philippines and draws thousands
and thousands of pilgrims throughout the day every Wednesday, which is the day dedicated to her, and of course, on Sundays.

Father Mark in his blog Vultus Christi shares this Mass celebration and meditation with us. The lectionary of the day
is extraordinarily beautiful.



June 27
Feast of Our Mother of Perpetual Help



ROME - This morning I walked to the Church of Sant' Alfonso, the Shrine of Our Mother of Perpetual Help.
It was quiet and peaceful there with but a few pilgrims kneeling before the miraculous icon.
Earlier, I had celebrated the Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Perpetual Help in the Chapel of
San Gregorio here at Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.


Introit
Rejoice we all in the Lord,
as we keep festival in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
whose solemnity makes angels joyful
and sets them praising the Son of God.
V. Joyful the thoughts that well up from my heart,
I shall speak of the works of the King (Ps 44:2).


Gaudeamus is a magnificent festal chant originally composed for the virgin martyr Saint Agatha,
and then adapted to other occasions. It is used on a number of other feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
making it familiar enough to be sung with a certain jubilant ease. The gentle balancing of the first-mode
melody evokes the ceaseless, sweeping joys of the heavenly liturgy celebrated by "the voice of
many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands" (Ap 5:11). The verse,
drawn from Psalm 44, the exuberant messianic wedding song, is placed in the mouth of the Church,
the Bride of Christ, as she declares the wonders wrought through the intercession of the Virgin Mother
of Perpetual Help.


Collect
Lord Jesus Christ, by whose gift Mary Thy Mother,
that Mary whose glorious image we revere,
is our Mother too, and ready at all times to succour us,
we pray Thee grant that we,
who earnestly beg her maternal help,
may be counted worthy to reap through all eternity
the fruit of Thy redeeming work.
Thou who art God living and reigning with God the Father,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
forever and ever.

As are many liturgical prayers of recent composition, the Collect is
addressed to Christ rather than to the Father. Orations addressed to the Son are exceptional in
the Roman liturgy; in the East they are the norm. While it is not traditional to direct the Collect
to the Son in the classic Roman liturgy, there are moments when it can be quite fitting to do so.
The feast of Our Mother of Perpetual Help may be one of those moments.

The Collect refers straightaway to the gift of the Virgin Mary's motherhood extended to every
disciple of her Son, the very mystery that will be evoked in the Gospel; and to the veneration
of her glorious image. It acknowledges that Mary is perpetually ready to help us, and asks that,
through her motherly power, we may reap through all eternity the fruit of Christ's redemption.
The last phrase is certainly an allusion to the charism of the Redemptorists, custodians of
the miraculous icon and, in the tradition of Saint Alphonsus, tireless preachers of Mary's
universal mediation and inexhaustible clemency.


Reading (Ecclesiasticus 24:23-31)
As the vine I have brought forth a pleasant odour:
and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches.
I am the mother of fair love, and of fear,
and of knowledge, and of holy hope.
In me is all grace of the way and of the truth,
in me is all hope of life and of virtue.
Come over to me, all ye that desire me,
and be filled with my fruits.
For my spirit is sweet above honey,
and my inheritance above honey and the honeycomb.
My memory is unto everlasting generations.
They that eat me, shall yet hunger:
and they that drink me, shall yet thirst.
He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded:
and they that work by me, shall not sin.
They that explain me shall have life everlasting.

I so regret that the reformed liturgy uses this text so sparingly in the context
of Marian feasts. It is quoted by all the great Marian doctors and mystics. It articulates
the ineffable experience of those who, having consecrated themselves to Mary, found themselves
inwardly changed. The very last line is a promise to those who promote the icon of Our Mother
of Perpetual Help and explain its significance.

Gradual
All lovely and gentle art thou,
daughter of Sion;
beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun,
terrible as an army drawn up for battle (Ct 6:3,9).
V. What blessing the power of the Lord hath granted thee,
making use of thee to bring our enemies to nothing (Jud 13:22).

The Gradual artfully juxtaposes two traditional Marian texts. In the Canticle
of Canticles the Church sees her as lovely, gentle, beautiful, radiant and . . . terrible as
an army drawn up for battle. The imagery is related to that of the "woman clothed with the sun,
with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars" (Ap 12:1).

The verse from the book of Judith says that it has pleased God to grant Mary a singular blessing,
that of bringing our enemies to nothing. Again, this reflects the experiece of the Church through
the ages, as well as the intimate experience of the saints who, in the thick of spiritual combat,
had recourse to Mary and prevailed over the powers of darkness.

Alleluia
Alleluia, alleluia.
V. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee;
blessed art thou among women (Lk 1:28).
Alleluia.

The Alleluia Verse repeats the salutation of the Archangel Gabriel at the Annunciation
at Nazareth; but here the words of the Angel serve to introduce another annunciation, the words of
Jesus from the Cross on Calvary.

Gospel (John 19:25-27)
Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother,
and his mother's sister, Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalen.
When Jesus therefore had seen his mother
and the disciple standing whom he loved,
he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son.
After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother.
And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own.

The words of Our Lord to His beloved disciple, "Behold thy mother,"
are an invitation to contemplate Mary. In the context of today's feast of the icon of the Blessed
Virgin Mary of Perpetual Help, the words of the Crucified invite us to behold our Mother as she is
depicted in her miraculous image.

"And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own" (Jn 19:27). Wheresoever the image of Our Mother
of Perpetual Help is given a place of honour, Mary herself is welcomed and received there.
It has been said that there is scarcely a family in Ireland without an image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

I have heard similar reports coming from the Philippines and from Haiti. When families,
communities, and individuals welcome an image of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in their homes,
they are, in effect, imitating the Apostle Saint John. The presence of the icon expresses a spiritual
desire to abide with Mary and to remain beneath her gaze in an attitude of total consecration to her.

Offertory
Remember, O Virgin Mother,
where thou standest before the face of God,
to plead on our behalf,
and to avert His anger from us (Jer 18:20).

The Church lifts this text directly from the prophet Jeremiah and, in the liberty
that comes from the Holy Spirit, addresses it to the Virgin Mother. The antiphon acknowledges that
Mary stands before the face of God to plead on our behalf: a clear allusion to her role as
Mediatrix and Advocate. As Mediatrix, Mary participates in the work of her risen and ascended Son;
as Advocate, she participates in the work of the Holy Spirit. We ask her to plead on our behalf that,
in spite of our sins, the anger of God may be turned away from us.

Secret
By thy gracious mercy, O Lord,
and at the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mother Mary,
let this offering bring us prosperity and peace,
now and forevermore.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son,
Who is God, living and reigning with Thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
forever and ever.

Here the gracious mercy of God and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin meet.
The Most Holy Eucharist is the fulfillment of what God, in His mercy, seeks to give us, and
of what Mary, in her maternal solicitide, seeks to obtain for us: prosperity and peace.

Communion
Most worthy Queen of the world,
O Mary ever-virgin,
who didst bear Christ, the Lord and Saviour of us all,
intercede for our peace and salvation.

It is unusual that a Communion Antiphon should be addressed to the Mother of God.
Here the Church calls her "most worthy Queen of the world" and "Mary ever-virgin who didst bear Christ,
the Lord and Saviour of us all." All who partake of the Sacred Mysteries become, with Mary,
bearers of Christ, the Lord and Saviour of all. The peace and salvation for which we ask
Mary's intercession, are given us sacramentally in Holy Communion.

Postcommunion
May the august intercession
of Thy immaculate and ever-virgin Mother Mary help us,
we beseech Thee, O Lord,
that through her lovingkindness,
we, upon whom she has heaped lasting benefits,
may be freed from every peril
and made one in heart and mind.
Thou who art God, living and reigning with the Father,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
forever and ever.

This prayer alludes to the countless favours attributed to Our Mother
of Perpetual Help. She has, in fact, "heaped lasting benefits" on those devoted to her.
She continues to do so. We ask that we may be freed from the perils that threaten our souls
and bodies, and we pray that the full effect of the Most Holy Eucharist be given us,
that is: oneness in heart and mind.

The Redemptorists offer the Mass of Our Lady of Perpetual Help as celebrated in the current
reformed liturgy found here-
www.redemptoristspirituality.net/eng2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=72&It...

Having failed to appropriately mark June 29 on this thread, I am glad Elizabeth Lev has written the following for ZENIT.
I may still come back to post something appropriate. Maybe during the pope's three-week summer vacation, I will have
a breathing spell to catch up and make up for many things I have failed to do for lack of time.


Grim Beginnings; Rome's Duality
Italians Mark Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul
By Elizabeth Lev

ROME, JULY 5, 2007 (Zenit.org).- June 29 reigns as one of the most glorious holidays in Rome. For the solemnity
of Sts. Peter and Paul, the basilicas of the two great martyrs are decked in all their finery. The freshly polished
baldachin of St. Peter's glistens, the marble floors of St. Paul's gleam, the bronze statue of St. Peter is adorned
with a splendid tiara, ring and cope, and both churches are filled with fragrant red roses to symbolize and honor
their martyrdoms.

But the origins of this grand feast day were in a far grimmer place. We find them, not in a glamorously festooned
basilica, nor in a sunny piazza, but in the dark, dank, underground chamber of the Mamertine prison. The "carcer"
or prison of Rome was a small underground cell, next door to the Senate building and described in 40 B.C. by
Roman author Sallust as "12 feet deep, closed all around by strong walls and a stone vault. Its aspect is repugnant
and fearsome from its neglect, darkness and stench."

The prison was not used for long-term incarceration - that was not a Roman practice - but for execution of
defeated enemy rulers after they had walked in the triumphal parade of the victorious generals. Thus King Jugurtha
of Numidia was left to starve underground by Gaius Marius and Vercingetorix was strangled in the wake
of Caesar's triumph.

But for all the famous warriors who defied Rome, it would be a fisherman and a tent maker, imprisoned just
a few feet away from where Caesar had been cremated and deified, who would overthrow the empire.

According to tradition, Peter and Paul were imprisoned by Emperor Nero after the apostles had exposed the deceits
of Simon Magus. The two apostles were in the custody of two Roman soldiers, Processus and Martinian.

These two guards were converted by Peter and Paul and longed to be baptized, but no water was to be had in
the foul prison. So Peter struck the ground with his staff causing water to bubble forth. Cleansed of original sin
by the prince of the apostles himself, Processus and Martinian also became witnesses to Christ, following Peter and
Paul as martyrs. Their feast day falls three days later on July 2.

On June 29, Peter and Paul were taken from their prison. The two men saluted each other one last time before Paul
was led out the eastern gate of Rome to be beheaded and Peter was brought west to the Vatican hill where he was
crucified upside down.

To this day, the basilicas of St. Peter's and St. Paul Outside the Walls face each other from opposite sides of
the city watching over and protecting Rome in their embrace. Halfway between the two, the Mamertine prison
lies hidden under the 16th-century church of St. Joseph of the Carpenters.

Since the fourth century, pilgrims have come to visit the little cell, to see the rock where the apostles were
chained, the fountain formed by Peter's staff and remember the humble beginnings of Christianity in Rome.

Sacred and Profane

Sts. Peter and Paul are the patrons of Rome, and even with the secularization of Italy and various political
vicissitudes, patron days remain major holidays. Even Bologna under communist administration honored the feast of
St. Petronius. Everything - banks, supermarkets and gas stations - are closed for the day, and the streets are
devoid of the daily Roman traffic.

Side by side with the religious celebrations, however, entertainment and activities that seem to have no relation
to the supreme sacrifice of the martyrs animate the day. But in Rome, the sacred and profane often meet in
unexpected places.

In the Rome of Early Christianity, the Romans celebrated June 29 with processions, accompanying the Pope to
the three churches associated with the martyrs. From St. Peter's Basilica, they made their way to St. Paul
Outside the Walls and ended at the catacombs in Basilica of St. Sebastian.

The remains of Sts. Peter and Paul were removed to the catacombs of St. Sebastian during the era of persecutions
for safekeeping. In fact, several scholars suppose that June 29 was the date of the return of the relics to their
original sites rather than the day of the martyrdoms.

The Romans have always loved festivities, and gradually the solemn processions were followed by spectacles, music
and banquets. As with the solemnity of the Epiphany, where the solemn Masses for the Three Wise Men were
complemented by the child's tale of the Befana, yesterday Rome exhibited its dual nature again.

While Benedict XVI distributed the pallium to the new archbishops, and diaconate ordinations were taking place,
300 volunteer organizations were setting up stands in the city center for the "Notte Bianca," or white night,
evocative of pagan celebrations of the summer solstice, when stores, museums and restaurants remain open all night.

Watching the Romans dancing in the streets in the shadow of the pagan temples of Hercules and Portunus, one's
first impression might be that Rome had come full circle to when St. Paul first disembarked on the shores of the Tiber.

But a closer look showed that the evening paid homage to Italians who volunteer their time and talents, from
firemen to teachers, and that a theme was to encourage the Romans to offer assistance to those in need. In this
light, the evening bore a surprising similarity to early Christian Rome, where even the Emperor Julian the Apostate
was impressed by the "impious Galileans, who take care of their own poor and ours."

Granted, many of these organizations are still a long way from the spirit of Deus Caritas Est, Benedict XVI's
first encyclical, but a willingness to give of oneself is certainly a step in the right direction.

The spirit of Sts. Peter and Paul didn't limit itself to healing social breaches, but also seemed to unite political
divides. Two opposing political factions cooperated to celebrate Italian volunteers and their works.

For this special day, the sacred and profane in Rome didn't clash, but complemented each other in bringing out
the best of the Italians.

Argent-on-the-Tiber sognodargento.blogspot.com/
simplified my task today regarding

ST. BENEDICT, PATRON OF EUROPE
July 11





On the occasion of the dedication of the rebuilt monastery of Monte Cassino in 1964, Pope Paul VI proclaimed St. Benedict
the principal, heavenly patron of the whole of Europe. The title piously exaggerates the place of Benedict but in many
respects it is true.

St. Benedict did not establish the monastery of Monte Cassino in order to preserve the learning of the ages, but in fact
the monasteries that later followed his Rule were places where learning and manuscripts were preserved. For some six
centuries or more the Christian culture of medieval Europe was nearly identical with the monastic centers of piety
and learning.

Saint Benedict was not the founder of Christian monasticism, since he lived two and a half to three centuries after its
beginnings in Egypt, Palestine, and Asia Minor. He became a monk as a young man and thereafter learned the tradition by
associating with monks and reading the monastic literature. He was caught up in the monastic movement but ended by
channeling the stream into new and fruitful ways. This is evident in the Rule which he wrote for monasteries and which was
and is still used in many monasteries and convents around the world.

Tradition teaches that St. Benedict lived from 480 to 547, though we cannot be sure that these dates are historically accurate.
His biographer, St. Gregory the Great, pope from 590 to 604, does not record the dates of his birth and death, though he
refers to a Rule written by Benedict. Scholars debate the dating of the Rule though they seem to agree that it was written
in the second third of the sixth century.

Saint Gregory wrote about St. Benedict in his Second Book of Dialogues, but his account of the life and miracles of
Benedict cannot be regarded as a biography in the modern sense of the term.

Gregory's purpose in writing Benedict's life was to edify and to inspire, not to seek out the particulars of his daily life.
Gregory sought to show that saints of God, particularly St. Benedict, were still operative in the Christian Church
in spite of all the political and religious chaos present in the realm.

At the same time it would be inaccurate to claim that Gregory presented no facts about Benedict's life and works.

According to Gregory's Dialogues Benedict was born in Nursia, a village high in the mountains northeast of Rome.
His parents sent him to Rome for classical studies but he found the life of the eternal city too degenerate for his tastes.
Consequently he fled to a place southeast of Rome called
Subiaco where he lived as a hermit for three years tended by the monk Romanus.

The hermit, Benedict, was then discovered by a group of monks who prevailed upon him to become their spiritual leader.
His regime soon became too much for the lukewarm monks so they plotted to poison him. Gregory recounts the tale of
Benedict's rescue; when he blessed the pitcher of poisoned wine, it broke into many pieces. Thereafter he left the
undisciplined monks.

Benedict left the wayward monks and established twelve monasteries with twelve monks each in the area south of Rome.
Later, perhaps in 529, he moved to Monte Cassino, about eighty miles southeast of Rome; there he destroyed the pagan temple
dedicated to Apollo and built his premier monastery. It was there too that he wrote the Rule for the monastery of
Monte Cassino though he envisioned that it could be used elsewhere.

The thirty-eight short chapters of the Second Book of Dialogues contain accounts of Benedict's life and miracles.
Some chapters recount his ability to read other persons' minds; other chapters tell of his miraculous works, e.g.,
making water flow from rocks, sending a disciple to walk on the water, making oil continue to flow from a flask.

The miracle stories echo the events of certain prophets of Israel as well as happenings in the life of Jesus.
The message is clear: Benedict's holiness mirrors the saints and prophets of old and God has not abandoned his people;
he continues to bless them with holy persons.

Benedict is viewed as a monastic leader, not a scholar. Still he probably read Latin rather well, an ability that gave
him access to the works of Cassian and other monastic writings, both rules and sayings. The Rule is the sole known example
of Benedict's writing, but it manifests his genius to crystallize the best of the monastic tradition and to pass it on
to the European West.

Gregory presents Benedict as the model of a saint who flees temptation to pursue a life of attention to God. Through
a balanced pattern of living and praying Benedict reached the point where he glimpsed the glory of God.

Gregory recounts a vision that Benedict received toward the end of his life: In the dead of night he suddenly beheld a flood
of light shining down from above more brilliant than the sun, and with it every trace of darkness cleared away. According to
his own description, the whole world was gathered up
before his eyes "in what appeared to be a single
ray of light" (ch. 34). St. Benedict, the monk par excellence, led a monastic life that reached the vision of God.

~From The Modern Catholic Encyclopedia (A Michael Glazier Book), Liturgical Press (1995) 78-79




From the Rule of Benedict:

Whenever you begin any good work you should first of all make a most pressing appeal to Christ our Lord to bring it to
perfection; that he, who has honoured us by counting us among his children, may never be grieved by our evil deeds.

For we must always serve him with the good things he has given us in such a way that he may never  as an angry father
disinherits his sons or even like a master who inspires fear  grow impatient with our sins and consign us to everlasting
punishment, like wicked servants who would not follow him to glory.

So we should at long last rouse ourselves, prompted by the words of Scripture: Now is the time for us to rise from sleep.
Our eyes should be open to the God-given light, and we should listen in wonderment to the message of the divine voice as it
daily cries out:

Today, if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts; and again: If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen to what
the Spirit is saying to the churches.

And what does the Spirit say? Come my sons, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Hurry, while you have
the light of life, so that deaths darkness may not overtake you.

And the Lord as he seeks the one who will do his work among the throng of people to whom he makes that appeal, says again:
Which of you wants to live to the full; who loves long life and the enjoyment of prosperity?

And, if when you hear this you say, I do, God says to you: If you desire true and everlasting life, keep your tongue from
evil and your lips from deceit; turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. And when you have done these
things my eyes will be upon you and my ears will be attentive to your prayers; and before you call upon my name I shall
say to you: Behold, I am here.

What could be more delightful, dearest brothers, than the voice of our Lords invitation to us? In his loving kindness
he reveals to us the way of life.

And so, girded with faith and the performance of good works, let us follow in his paths by the guidance of the Gospel;
then we shall deserve to see him who has called us into his kingdom. If we wish to attain a dwelling-place in his kingdom
we shall not reach it unless we hasten there by our good deeds.

Just as there exists an evil fervour, a bitter spirit, which divides us from God and leads us to hell, so there is a good
fervour which sets us apart from evil inclinations and leads us toward God and eternal life.

Monks should put this fervour into practice with an overflowing love: that is, they should surpass each other in mutual
esteem, accept their weaknesses, either of body or of behaviour, with the utmost patience; and vie with each other in
acceding to requests.

No one should follow what he considers to be good for himself, but rather what seems good for another. They should display
brotherly love in a chaste manner; fear God in a spirit of love; revere their abbot with a genuine and submissive affection.

Let them put Christ before all else; and may he lead us all to everlasting life.

Rags to Red Cross

by Elizabeth Lev
Zenit News Agency
July 19, 2007

Some saints really stand the test of time. No matter how many centuries may divide us, certain saints lived through struggles and difficulties that we, many centuries later, can still relate to. This is particularly the case of St. Camillus de Lellis, whose feast falls on July 18.

Benedict XVI has already made this observation, citing St. Camillus in his first encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est," among St. Francis of Assisi, St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Calcutta and others as "lasting models of charity for all people of good will."

What makes St. Camillus unique among this holy lineup, is that up until the age of 32, no one would have guessed that the strange-looking, troubled young man had such a glorious destiny.

Camillus de Lellis was born in 1550 the son of a mercenary soldier. His mother died when Camillus was still a child. His father was a poor role model. An inveterate gambler, he was indifferent to which side he fought for; he even took part in the sack of Rome of 1527.

Raised in what modern jargon would dub a "dysfunctional home," young Camillus grew up with little education, chronic foot abscesses and a gambling addiction. To pay his debts, he followed in his father's footsteps, also becoming a soldier of fortune. At one of his lower moments, he lost his sword, gun and powder flasks -- the tools of his trade. Camillus was destitute in body and spirit.

The conversion of Camillus did not come overnight. He tried to join the Franciscans, failed and returned to his old ways. He rose and fell many times before setting his feet firmly on the right path.

Rome played a big part in Camillus' conversion. He came to the hospice of St. James of the Incurable, a few steps from today's shopping mecca of the Spanish Steps, looking for treatment for his feet. In return he offered to help care for the sick and dying in the hospital.

As he gave more of his time, love and attention to the ill, he began to heal both spiritually and physically. He stopped gambling and his infirmities bothered him less.

Providence sent Camillus an extraordinary spiritual director. St. Phillip Neri met the lost young man and took him under his wing.

Camillus found himself wanting to become more, so he could offer more. The 6-foot-6-inch lanky wastrel went to school, learning his grammar lessons along the bright-eyed school boys of the Jesuit Roman College. In this setting, he learned not only letters, but humility.

He was finally ordained a priest in 1584 and founded his order, the Brothers of a Happy Death. Although he treated the sick and poor, he gave special attention to comforting the dying.

His checkered past served him in his work. No case was too far gone for him to take an interest, because he remembered how lost he had been. He could recognize the signs of addictions immediately and thus was able to understand and help people who would be dismissed by others.

In "Deus Caritas Est," the Holy Father reflected that saints demonstrate how "those who draw near to God do not withdraw from men, but rather become truly close to them." St. Camillus' "self-help" -- to put it in contemporary terms -- focused on seeing Jesus in other people rather than brooding over himself; counsel that serves well in our own age.

The Brothers of a Happy Death in plague areas, disaster zones or hospitals were easily distinguished by the red crosses they wore on the front of their uniforms.

Even today, the Red Cross is synonymous with medical aid, although the origin of the modern symbol is apparently different. The founder of the modern Red Cross, Henri Dunant, was Swiss. He witnessed the suffering of the wounded during the battle of Solferino in 1859 and recruited nearby villagers to help tend to the fallen.

The initiative of Dunant was ratified during the Geneva Convention and the red cross on a white field, the inverse of the Swiss flag, was chosen as their symbol in honor of Dunant's origins.

Whether the two symbols are related or not, for half a millennium, the red cross has brought hope to the afflicted and solace to the suffering.

Belated and still provisional post! Sorry!


July 16
OUR LADY OF MOUNT CARMEL




The feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was first instituted in the late 14th century in commemoration
of the approval of the rule of the Carmelite Order a hundred years earlier.

According to legend, a religious community was established even before the time of Christ on Mount Carmel.
This is the mountain overlooking the Mediterranean Sea on which the prophet Elijah successfully challenged
the priests of Baal and won the people to the true God. The feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel entered the
Calendar of the universal Church in the early 18th century.

Although there is no historical evidence for the pre-Christian Carmelite community, references in
the 12th century record a community of monks on the holy mountain. Despite continual difficulties,
the community built a monastery and church dedicated to the Virgin Mary on Mount Carmel in 1263.
Saint Louis, King of France, had visited Mount Carmel in 1254, and brought back six French hermits
for whom he built a convent near Paris. Mount Carmel was taken by the Saracens in 1291, he brothers
were killed and the convent burned.

The spread of the Carmelites in Europe is largely attributable to the work of Saint Simon Stock (1247-65).
The Carmelite Order was formally approved in 1274 at the Council of Lyon.

Among the best known Carmelites today are two women: Saint Theresa of Jesus (Theresa of Avila - 1515-1582)
who despite many difficulties reformed the Carmelite Order (the Discalced Carmelites); and
Saint Edith Stein (Theresa Benedicta of the Cross - 1891-1942), a Jewish convert and philosophy professor,
who was killed at Auschwitz, canonized in 1998, and proclaimed "co-patroness" of Europe in 1999.

====================================================================


I meant to do a post on the feast day last week but failed to do so. I will make up for it soon.
This is a placesaver until then.

By chance, I found a site today with pictures of what has been my favorite statue of the Madonna and Child
of all those that I have seen - NUESTRA SENORA DEL CARMEN, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, as she is venerated
in the Cathedral of Malaga, Spain.

July 31
MEMORIAL OF ST. IGNATIUS LOYOLA, PRIEST



Ignatius, by nationality a Spaniard, was born of a noble family at Loyola, in Cantabria. At first he attended the court of the Catholic king, and later on embraced a military career.

Having been wounded at the siege of Pamplona, he chanced in his illness to read some pious books, which kindled in his soul a wonderful eagerness to follow in the footsteps of Christ and the saints. He went to Montserrat, and hung up his arms before the altar of the Blessed Virgin; he then watched the whole night in prayer, and thus entered upon his knighthood in the army of Christ.

Next he retired to Manresa, dressed as he was in sackcloth, for he had a short time before given his costly garments to a beggar. Here he stayed for a year, and during that time he lived on bread and water, given to him in alms; he fasted every day except Sunday, subdued his flesh with a sharp chain and a hair-shirt, slept on the ground, and scourged himself with iron disciplines.

God favored and refreshed him with such wonderful spiritual lights, that afterwards he was wont to say that even if the sacred Scriptures did not exist, he would be ready to die for the faith, on account of those revelations alone which the Lord had made to him at Manresa. It was at this time that he, a man without education, composed that admirable book of the Spiritual Exercises.

However, in order to make himself more fit for gaining souls, he determined to procure the advantages of education, and began by studying grammar among children.

Meanwhile he relaxed nothing of his zeal for the salvation of others, and it is marvelous what sufferings and insults he patiently endured in every place, undergoing the hardest trials, even imprisonment and beatings almost to death. But he ever desired to suffer far more for the glory of his Lord.

At Paris he was joined by nine companions from that University, men of different nations, who had taken their degrees in Arts and Theology; and there at Montmartre he laid the first foundations of the order, which he was later on to institute at Rome. He added to the three usual vows a fourth concerning missions, thus binding it closely to the Apostolic See.

Paul III first welcomed and approved the Society, as did later other Pontiffs and the Council of Trent. Ignatius sent St. Francis Xavier to preach the Gospel in the Indies, and dispersed others of his children to spread the Christian faith in other parts of the world, thus declaring war against paganism, superstition, and heresy.

This war he carried on with such success that it has always been the universal opinion, confirmed by the word of pontiffs, that God raised up Ignatius and the Society founded by him to oppose Luther and the heretics of his time, as formerly he had raised up other holy men to oppose other heretics.

He made the restoration of piety among Catholics his first care. He increased the beauty of the sacred buildings, the giving of catechetical instructions, the frequency of sermons and of the sacraments.

He everywhere opened schools for the education of youth in piety and letters. He founded at Rome the German College, refuges for women of evil life, and for young girls who were in danger, houses for orphans and catechumens of both sexes, and many other pious works.

He devoted himself unweariedly to gaining souls to God. Once he was heard saying that if he were given his choice he would rather live uncertain of attaining the Beatific Vision, and in the meanwhile devote himself to the service of God and the salvation of his neighbor, than die at once certain of eternal glory.

His power over the demons was wonderful. St. Philip Neri and others saw his countenance shining with heavenly light. At length in the sixty-fifth year of his age he passed to the embrace of his Lord, whose greater glory he had ever preached and ever sought in all things.

He was celebrated for miracles and for his great services to the Church, and Gregory XV enrolled him amongst the saints; while Pius XI, in response to the prayers of the episcopate, declared him heavenly patron of all Spiritual Exercises.

[Excerpted from The Liturgical Year, Abbot Gueranger O.S.B.]

Thanks to Argent by the Tiber for the excerpt. I will add more to this post as I put some material together.

Because this thread is also used to commemorate religious feast days, this is a belated post on yesterday's feast, with Father Z's reflections on it, in his blog wdtprs.com/blog/
which are also part of his ongoing project to discuss the mysteries of the Rosary in terms of what the Fathers of the Church wrote about them.


August 6
Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord


The Transfiguration, Raphael, 1516-1520, oil on wood, 405 × 278 cm
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City


The Fourth Luminous Mystery
By Father John Zuhlsdorf


The Mystery of the Transfiguration was a matter of intense reflection on the part of the Fathers.

Remember that this takes place some eight days after the Lord confers the keys on Peter by the Jordan at Caesarea Philippi. The Fathers thought everything in Scripture was significant and they attached great meaning to numbers. Let us see what the mighty Ambrose of Milan (+397) has to say about the timing of the Transfiguration in relation to the events at Caesarea Philippi:

---

You may know that Peter, James and John did not taste death and were worthy to see the glory of the resurrection. It says, "about eight days after these words, He took those three alone and led them onto the mountain."

Why is it that he says, "eight days after these words"? He that hears the words of Christ and believes will see the glory of Christ at the time of the resurrection. The resurrection happened on the eighht day, and most of the psalms were written "For the eighth". (cf. e.g., Ps 6:1; 12:1 LXX and Vulgate)

It shows us that He said that he who because of the Word of God shall lose his own soul will save it, (Luke 9:24) since he renews his promises at the resurrection (Matthew 16:25-27.) But Matthew and Mark say that they were taken after six days. (Cf. Matthew 17:1; Mark 9:2)

We may say that they were taken after six thousand years, because a thousand years in God’s sight are as one day. (Ps 89:4 LXX) We counted more than six thousand years. We prefer to understand six days as a symbol, because God created the works of the world in six days (Gen 2:1), so that we understand works through the time and the world through the works. [Exposition of the Gospel of Luke 7.6-7]

---

St. Augustine (+430) also gets into this issue of six days, as recounted in Matthew and Mark, and eight days (as in Luke) in a discussion of the resurrection three days after the Passion and death of the Lord. He is trying to make sense of the numbers.In other places I have explained how the ancients numbered their periods of days, that is, inclusively.

St. Cyril of Alexandria (+444) wrote of the Transfiguration in terms of the connection between suffering and glory, between the Law and the Prophets, between the foreshadowings of the past and their fulfillment.

---

"I say to you, there are some of those standing here who shall not taste of death until they have seen the kingdom of God." ... By the "kingdom of God" He means the sight of the glory in which He will appear at His revelation to the inhabitants of earth. He will come in the glory of God the Father and not in a humble condition like ours.

How did He make those who received the promise spectators of a thing so wonderful? He goes up into the mountain taking three chosen disciples with Him. He is transformed to such a surpassing and godlike brightness that His garments even glittered with rays of fire and seemed to flash like lightning.

Besides, Moses and Elijah stood at Jesus’ side and spoke with one another about His departure that He was about, it says, to accomplish at Jerusalem. This meant the mystery of the dispensation in the flesh and of His precious suffering upon the Cross.

It is also true that the law of Moses and the word of the holy prophets foreshadowed the mystery of Christ. The law of Moses foreshadowed it by types and shadows, painting it as in a picture.
The holy prophets in different ways declared before hand that in due time He would appear in our likeness and for the salvation and life of us all, agree to suffer death on the tree. Moses and Elijah standing before Him and talking with one another was a sort of representation.

It excellently displayed our Lord Jesus Christ as having the law and the prophets for His bodyguard. It displayed Christ as being the Lord of the Law and the Prophets, as foretold in them by those things that they proclaimed in mutual agreement beforehand. The words of the prophets are not different from the teachings of the law.

I imagine this was what the most priestly Moses and the most distinguished of the prophets Elijah were talking about with one another. [Commentary on Luke, Homily 51]

---

The last line here is interesting. It makes me call to mind what one finds in studying ancient historiography, such as Herodotus and Thucydides.

When reporting the speeches great figures made, about which they might at the very best have some distant report from someone who heard about the content of the speech, such as Pericles’s great oration, from a generation or more removed, Thucydides would record what the great man ought to have said in that momentous occasion. This sounds much like what Cyril is doing.

Have you ever wondered why some get some graces and others do not? St. Maximus Confessor (+682) gives an interesting insight while he comments on the Transfiguration:

---

The Lord does not always appear in glory to all who stand before Him. To beginners He appears in the form of a servant (Phil 2:7); to those able to follow Him as He climbs the high mountain of His Transfiguration He appears in the form of God, the form in which He existed before the world came to be (John 17:5).

It is therefore possible for the same Lord not to appear in the same way to all who stand before Him, but to appear to some in one way and to others in another way, according to the measure of each person’s faith.

When the Logos of God becomes manifest and radiant in us, and His face shines like the sun, then His clothes will also look white. That is to say, the words of the Gospel will then be clear and distinct, with nothing concealed.

And Moses and Elijah – the more spiritual principles of the Law and the Prophets – will also be present with Him.

---

St. John Chrysostom (+407) takes on this same issue:

---

"Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves;" (Matt. 17:1) ...

Note, I pray you, the severe goodness of Matthew, not concealing those who were preferred to himself. Also, John often does this (in his Gospel), recording the peculiar praises of Peter with great sincerity.

For the choir of these holy men (disciples) was everywhere pure from envy and vainglory. Having taken, therefore, the leaders, "He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him." (Matt. 17:2,3)

Why does Jesus take with Him these three only? Because these were superior to the rest. And, Peter indeed showed his superiority by exceedingly loving Him; John; by being exceedingly loved by Him; and James again by his answer which he gave with his brother, saying "We are able (to drink this cup);" (Matt. 20:22) but not by this answer only, but also by his works …For so earnest was he (James), and so grievous to the Jews, that Herod himself supposed that he found favor with the Jews by slaying him (James)." [St. John Chrysostom, Homily 56]

---

I suppose we ought to be careful what we ask for. Our earthly fate notwithstanding, we are always able to have a moment of Transfiguration in the proper reception of Holy Communion, which is far more than a mere vision of something of Christ’s divine shining through our humanity.

The Eucharist is not only the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ, it is for us a "pledge of future glory, containing in Itself all delight", as St. Thomas Aquinas (+1274) wrote for the feast of Corpus Christi, and which we all sing whenever there is Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

A good reception of Communion is an even greater encounter with the Lord, than a Transfiguration. It opens up the way to a bright future for us. On that note, Gregory of Nazianzus (+389) ties us all into the mystery of the Transfiguration, saying:

---

He was bright as the lightning on the mountain and became more luminous than the sun, initiating us into the mystery of the future. [Oration 3.19, On the Son]

---

August 8
FEAST OF ST. DOMINIC, PRIEST





This post is two days late and I'll come back to it later.
I just found the pictures above on The Roving Medievalist, who
simply captions it as
"Bust of St. Dominic based on the measurements of his skull"
and I have to look up the reference.

Today is the feast of St. Lawrence, martyr, and it's going to be yet another 'feast day' profile that I owe this space. For now, however, this piece by Fr. Z on his blog is just too amusing and unusual to pass up:


St. Augustine on St. Lawrence, deacon
By Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

St. Augustine of Hippo preached various sermons on St. Lawrence. Here is one the bishop preached around A.D. 401. It might not be quite what you expect, however! It sure wasn’t what Augustine himself expected!

Put yourself in the cathedral of Carthage on a bright sunny morning. Dust motes and tendrils of incense are floating in the shafts of light from the alabaster windows above. In the presbyterium are bishops and emissaries who have come to Carthage for a great council to be held in a couple weeks. Maybe you came to see the interesting people from near and far. You are standing in the nave of the basilica. It is August in North Africa. It is blazing hot already in the morning.

You watch as the primate of Carthage Bishop Aurelius and bishops of the North African delegation pressure Augustine, a very junior bishop, into preaching in the presence of the representatives from Rome who are there for the upcoming meeting. It is clear that Augustine, had had no idea he would be speaking today.

It is the feast of the martyr St. Lawrence.

Augustine reluctantly takes his seat in a chair in the center takes the scroll of the Scriptures in his lap and begins (Sermo 305A).

---

Because the audience is getting bored and restless, the sermon was supposed to have been cancelled [subtrahendus fuit]; but out of respect for the martyr, it has to be given. So with the Lord’s help it will be so timed that it is neither burdensome, not yet cut too short to do justice to the subject.

In Rome today has dawned as one of the greatest feasts there, which is celebrated by a great concourse of the people; we are uniting ourselves to our brothers and sisters there in one body, under one head, absent indeed in body, but still present in spirit. After all, it’s not only where the tomb of his body is, that the memory of his merits is celebrated. Devotion is owed to him everywhere; his flesh is laid in one place, but his spirit is triumphant with the one who is everywhere.

The blessed Lawrence was, as we have been informed, a youth in body, but a man gravity in spirit; the greener his age, the more unfading was the victor’s wreath that commended him so much to our devotion. Well, he was a deacon, subordinate to the bishop in rank, equal to an apostle in his crown. [And with that brief comment on Lawrence, Augustine spends the next ten paragraphs talking about everything except Lawrence!]

Now this kind of festival of al the glorious martyrs has been instituted in the Church so that those who didn’t see them suffering may be led by faith to imitate them, and may be reminded of them by the festival. It’s probable, you see, that what wasn’t repeated by an annual commemoration would escape people’s minds altogether.

And we can’t have fervent celebrations of all the martyrs everywhere, because then not day would pass without them; I mean, you could scarcely find a single day in the whole course of the year, on which some martyrs were not somewhere rewarded with the victor’s crown.

But if fervent celebrations were a continuous event, they would induce boredom; while intervals between them renew our loving interest. For our part, let us simply listen to what we have been commanded, attend to what we have been promised. On the festivals of any martyrs you like, let us prepare our hearts to celebrate them in such a way that we do not cut ourselves off from imitating them.

---

At this point Augustine launches himself into to a long and rambling talk about the different ways people celebrate. He never says another word about Lawrence!

He seems to take a few swipes at the Roman delegation there too. Then he talks about home boy St. Cyprian of Carthage, who is far more interesting for the natives. Then Augustine takes some shots at their overdoing the feast of St. Cyprian.

This is one of those sermons that Augustine, who is feeling a little testy and put upon, just doesn’t seem to be able to bring to a close easily. This often happens when people who don’t really want to speak are put in a position of having to say something. It happens even now in our parishes, doesn’t it!

And his swift writing stenographers were there and caught every word for us.

If you are thinking that Father wasn’t on his game for that last Sunday sermon, remember that even Augustine had his off days.
====================================================================

St. Augustine did give another sermon on St. Lawrence, which is the second Reading in the Breviary today:


He administered the sacred chalice of Christ's blood

The Roman Church commends this day to us as the blessed Laurence’s day of triumph, on which he trod down the world as it roared and raged against him; spurned it as it coaxed and wheedled him; and in each case, conquered the devil as he persecuted him.

For in that Church, you see, as you have regularly been told, he performed the office of deacon; it was there that he administered the sacred chalice of Christ’s blood; there that he shed his own blood for the name of Christ.

The blessed apostle John clearly explained the mystery of the Lord’s supper when he said "Just as Christ laid down his life for us, so we too ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."

St Laurence understood this, my brethren, and he did it; and he undoubtedly prepared things similar to what he received at that table. He loved Christ in his life, he imitated him in his death.
And we too, brethren, if we truly love him, let us imitate him.

After all, we shall not be able to give a better proof of love than by imitating his example; for Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, so that we might follow in his footsteps.

In this sentence the apostle Peter appears to have seen that Christ suffered only for those who follow in his footsteps, and that Christ’s passion profits none but those who follow in his footsteps.

The holy martyrs followed him, to the shedding of their blood, to the similarity of their sufferings. The martyrs followed, but they were not the only ones. It is not the case, I mean to say, that after they crossed, the bridge was cut; or that after they had drunk, the fountain dried up.

The garden of the Lord, brethren, includes – yes, it truly includes – includes not only the roses of martyrs, but also the lilies of virgins, and the ivy of married people, and the violets of widows.

There is absolutely no kind of human beings, my dearly beloved, who need to despair of their vocation; Christ suffered for all. It was very truly written about him: who wishes all men to be saved, and to come to the acknowledgement of the truth.

So let us understand how Christians ought to follow Christ, short of the shedding of blood, short of the danger of suffering death. The Apostle says, speaking of the Lord Christ, Who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal to God. What incomparable greatness! But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of men, and found in condition as a man. What unequalled humility!

Christ humbled himself: you have something, Christian, to latch on to. Christ became obedient. Why do you behave proudly? After running the course of these humiliations and laying death low, Christ ascended into heaven: let us follow him there.

Let us listen to the Apostle telling us, If you have risen with Christ, savour the things that are above us, seated at God’s right hand.

====================================================================

But now, on to St. Lawrence himself:

August 10
Memorial of St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr
Born 225 in Huesca, Spain
Died 258 in Rome




Third-century archdeacon of Rome, distributor of alms, and "keeper of the treasures of the church" in a time when Christianity was outlawed, Lawrence was said to be a Spaniard who came to Rome to serve Pope Saint Sixtus II as one of the seven deacons of Rome.

The pope himself and six of his deacons were martyred in August 6, 258 during the Valerian persecution, the year after the first publication of the decrees against the Christians. This left Lawrence as the ranking Church official in Rome.

While one version of the martyrdom of Sixtus has him beheaded at the time of discovery in the catacombs, the another has him taken away for questioning and returned within a few hours to the spot for execution.

In either case, several early Christian writers, among them Saints Ambrose and Prudentius, record that Lawrence was overwhelmed with grief when Sixtus was condemned. The latter one tells us that Lawrence followed the pope and his captors to the place of execution, asking why Sixtus II should be murdered and not his deacon (however, six deacons were martyred with Sixtus). Sixtus replied, "My son, I am not leaving you. In a few days you will follow me."

Lawrence, overjoyed that he was to follow his master to martyrdom, had one task left. As a deacon, Lawrence was a steward of the property and wealth of the church. It was his duty to provide alms to those in need. Lawrence gathered together all the poor, the orphans, and the widows he could find and gave them all he possessed. Lawrence even sold some of the church's gold and silver, handing over this money too to the needy.

The prefect, Cornelius Saecularis, believing that the Church was wealthy, ordered that everything of value be turned over to the emperor for the upkeep of his armies.

The prefect said, "I understand that according to your teaching you must render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Your God didn't bring any money into the world with him, all He brought was words. So give us the money, and you can keep the words."

Lawrence said he would need three days to gather it together. In those three days he sold the rest of the property that he administered and brought together thousands of lepers, the blind, and the sick, the destitute, widows, orphans, and the aged.

These he presented to the prefect, observing, "The church is truly rich, far richer then your emperor."


Titian. The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence. 1548-1559. Oil on canvas. Chiesa dei Gesuiti, Venice, Italy

In his rage the prefect threatened to kill Lawrence slowly. He took a huge gridiron, heated it until it glowed, and binding Lawrence to the metal, roasted him to death.

Ambrose tells us that the fire of Divine love burned so brightly in Lawrence that he bore the agony with unbelievable calm and in the midst of his torment instructed the executioner to turn him over, as he was broiled enough on the one side.

Later he said, "It is cooked enough. You may eat." It is said that as he lay dying, his face seemed to be surrounded by a beautiful light. After praying for the conversion of Rome, he died.

According to Prudentius, his death and example led to the conversion of Rome and signaled the end of paganism in the city. There is no doubt that his death inspired a great devotion in Rome, which quickly spread throughout the entire Church. Both he and Sixtus are named in the canon of the Mass.


Andrea del Sarto. St. Lawrence, 1517.
Galeria Paltina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence.
The existence and martyrdom of Saint Lawrence are attested by the very ancient Deposito Martyrum. However, scholars are not wholly in agreement about how much credence can be given to such particulars about Saint Lawrence because his passio was not written until at least a century after his death.

The fact of his martyrdom was widely accepted by the Fathers, but there is room to doubt the details. For example, it is more likely that he was beheaded, as was Sixtus, because this was the usual manner of execution at that time. The gridiron appears to be derived from a Phrygian source through the acta of Saint Vincent of Saragossa.

He was buried in the cemetery of Cyriaca in the Campo Verano on the Via Tiburtina (on the way to Tivoli), on the site of what is now the Church of Saint Lawrence-outside-the-Walls. His tomb was opened by Pelagius to inter the body of Saint Stephen the Martyr; and his mummified head removed to the Quirinal Chapel.


The shrine in Lncina containing the gridiron said to have been used to grill Saint Lawrence to death.

The gridiron believed to have been his deathbed is in San Lorenzo in Lucina; and his garments in Our Lady's Chapel in the Lateran Palace.

Five ancient churches are dedicated to Lawrence in Rome, 228 were dedicated to him in England prior to the Reformation, as well as the cathedral of Lund and the Escorial in Spain. Pope Vitalian sent some of his relics to King Oswiu of Northumbria in the 7th century.

Lawrence's intercession was reputed to have caused the victories of Christian armies in the battle of Lichfeld against the Magyars in 955, and at Saint-Quentin, in 1557.

Lawrence's care for the poor, the ill, the neglected have led to his patronage of them. His work to save the material wealth of the Church, including its documents, brought librarians and those in related fields to see him as a patron, and to ask for his intercession.

And his incredible strength and courage when being grilled to death led to his patronage of cooks and those who work in or supply things to the kitchen.

The meteor shower that follows the passage of the Swift-Tuttle comet was known in the middle ages as the "burning tears of Saint Lawrence" because they appear at the same time as Lawrence's feast.

Generally, he is pictured as a deacon with a gridiron, or giving money to the poor [Pope Sixtus II or greeted by him on his way to martyrdom; putting a chalice on Saint Michael's scales to save the Emperor's life; leading a soul from purgatory (which he is reputed to do every Friday); baptizing in prison; scourged and roasted on gridiron (Roeder); or carrying a long cross on his shoulder and a Gospel book in his hand as in the Ravenna mosaics.

The most complete cycle of his life was painted by Saint Fra Angelico for the chapel of Nicholas V in the Vatican. These include tHE ordination of Saint Lawrence, the Saint distributing alms to the poor, and the saint brought before the Emperor (see below).


Fra Angelico and Bozzolo Gozzoli, Life of St. Lawrence, 1447-1449. Chapel of Nicholas V, Vatican City.

Bourges and Poitiers has notable stained glass windows depicting Lawrence.

He was one of the most popular and powerful saints of the Middle Ages, which accounts for his many patronages. He is the patron of deacons, schoolboys, students, armorers, brewers, confectioners, cooks, cutlers, glaziers, and launderers.


When Pope Benedict XVI went to Valencia alst year, one of the enduring legends connected with St. Lawrence was recounted.


The Holy Father celebrates Mass in Valencia with the Holy Chalice.


Lawrence and the Holy Chalice

According to lore, among the treasure of the Roman church entrusted to Lawrence for safe-keeping was the Holy Chalice, the cup from which Jesus and the Apostles drank at the Last Supper.

Lawrence was able to spirit this away to Huesca with a letter and a supposed inventory, where it lay hidden and unregarded for centuries.

When Augustine connects Lawrence with a chalice, it is the chalice of the Mass: "For in that Church, you see, as you have regularly been told, he performed the office of deacon; it was there that he administered the sacred chalice of Christ’s blood".

According to Christian mythology, the Holy Grail is a relic that was sent by St. Lawrence to his parents in Spain. He entrusted this sacred chalice to a friend who he knew would travel back to Spain, his home country.

While the Holy Chalice's exact journey through the centuries is disputed, it is generally accepted by Catholics that the Chalice was sent by his family to a monastery for preservation and veneration. Historical records indicate that this chalice has been venerated and preserved by a number of monks and monasteries through the ages.

Today the Holy Grail is venerated in a special chapel in the Catholic Cathedral of Valencia, Spain, in the region of St. Lawrence's birth and early life.



And here is a translation of an article from Avvenire that came out shortly before the Pope's visit to Valencia.:



In Valencia, the Grail
'speaks' Arabic
By Gian Maria Vian

Not many remember it, but on November 18, 1982, in the Cathedral of Valencia, John Paul II presided at the biggest prieshood ordination of his pontificate and celebrated the Eucharist with the Holy Chalice, a very old vessel that is kept in the Cathedral and identified as the Chalice used by Jesus in the Last Supper.

It would be the the object called poterion in the original Greek of the first letter to the Corinthians and by the synoptic Gospels, and which in the Middle Ages, was the center of numerous popular literary, artistic, musical and esoteric cycles as the Grail.

But the Pope’s gesture passed almost unnoticed. Tomorrow, after almost half a century, Benedict XVI will meet with the Spanish bishops and sign a message addressed to them in the 14th-century chapel of the Valencian cathedral where the Chalice is now kept, and where it will be exposed at the altar tomorrow.

Certainly, after the astute commercial promotional campaign around Dan Brown’s novel and the movie made from it, the event will attract attention. Just as last Holy Week, when the Pope recalled with precision Judas’s betrayal of Jesus during a grotesque media frenzy to 're-evaluate’ of Judas on the basis of a gnostic gospel that had just been published.

There have been diverse attributions made about the Cup of the Last Supper. Besides the Holy Chalice in Valencia, among the most ancient is a silver chalice, so-called “of Antioch”, which is now in New York, and which has received different datings, but most probably goes back only to the 6th century.

But in the 7th century, the “Lord’s chalice” was reportedly ‘seen' by Bishop Arnolph in Jerusalem, and a ‘sacred basin’ has been in the Cathedral of Genoa since the 12th century. Around the same time, William of Malmesbury claimed that the Chalice had been brought to Glastonbury (England) by Joseph of Arimathea.

Not to mention the medieval literary cycles and contemporary legends – connected with the Knights Templar and with Masonic lodges – which claim that the Chalice is in France, England or Scotland.

The Chalice in Valencia is formed of three elements: a small cup of black chalcedony (a variety of quartz) 7 cm tall and 9 cm wide, with a slightly wider base, also of chalcedony, decorated with gold, pearls and precious stones, and a double golden ring that unites the base to the cup. This last detail has been dated to between the first and fourth centuries, originating in Antioch or Alexandria, whereas the base was crafted in Cordoba (Spain) in the 9th century with an Arab inscription that has been variously translated (“For him who shines”, or “the merciful”, or even “Glory to Mary”). The handle appears to be Carolingian.

The first record about this Chalice is from December 14, 1134, when a canon from Zaragoza (Spain) attested in a document that he saw it within “a vessel of ivory” in the Pyrenean monastery of San Juan de la Pena (St John of the Rock).

The same text gives an explanation of its presence in Spain - having been sent there reportedly by Lawrence, the sainted deacon martyred in Rome in August 258, after Pope Sixtus II and six other deacons. [As mentioned in oen of th stroeis, above one of Lawrence's duties as deacon was to be 'keeper of the treasures of the Church']. The Chalice was reportedly brought to Rome by Peter and handed down successively to his successors until 258.

In Spain, the chalice first arrived in Huesca, and several centuries later, it was brought to the monastery to save it during the Arab invasions. In 1399, thanks originally to the Spanish anti-Pope Benedict XIII, it was transferred first to Zaragoza then to Barcelona and finally to the cathedral of Valencia in 1437.

It has remained there ever since, except for two brief periods – between 1809-1812, to save it from the Napoleonic invasion, and from 1936-1939 during the Spanish Civil War, when it went from Valencia to Alicante, Ibiza and Palma de Mallorca, where it was hidden in different houses.

It was reported that Heinrich Himmler himself had been interested in the Valencia Chalice in the context of Nazi esotericism. [Remember the Indiana Jones episode about the Grail?]

The story of the Chalice of Valencia is much more authentic than any esoteric speculation, and the object itself has survived various eras of religious persecution, thanks to the faith of Catholics who have paid homage to it, including the last Popes since John XXIII, who granted a plenary indulgence in connection with the 17th centennial anniversary of its arrival in Spain.

More stories about the Holy Chalice in our Valencia thread:
freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=354906&p=3
=====================================================================

PLACEHOLDER FOR ST. CLARE, AUGUST 11

August 14 (?)
BLESSED ANTONIO PRIMALDO AND THE 800 MARTYRS OF OTRANTO


I was a bit puzzled when I first saw the following item today, because I distinctly remembered the Otranto
martyrs as among the list proclaimed by the Pope last month in his last announcement about the conclusive status
of those who are being proposed for sainthood. And I only learned that one of the 'causes' was that of the 800,
because Andrea Tornielli mentioned it incidentally in a subsequent article.

It is only much later, reading the main article which Magister introduces that it becomes clear: Pope Benedict
certified their martyrdom, which had been recognized and venerated for centuries, but although Pope John Paul II
visited Otranto in 1980, apparently the 800 were still not 'officially certified' by the Church.

Here is how the announcement was listed in the Vatican bulletin of July 6 - that in a meeting with Cardinal
Saraiva of the Congregation for the Cause of Sainthood, Pope Benedict XVI had authorized promulgation of
decrees regarding certified miracles attributed to 7 persons in the process of beatification and therefore now
qualified for beatifcation, then -

---

"- the martyrdom of Blessed Antonio Primaldo and lay companions, killed out of hatred for the Faith
on August 13, 1480 in Otranto (Italy)..."

---

followed by "heroic virtues' attributed to 8 persons, which marks a second step in the beatification process,
after which a miracle must be attributed to the person.

The second question raised by Magister's article is the date of the martyrdom. He cites the classic Roma Martyrology
for the August 14 date, but the recent Vatican bulletin clearly says August 13. The Wikipedia entry gives the date
of the beheading as August 12.

A third question is that the main article here says that now a miracle must be certified in order to have
the 800 declared as saints. I thought martyrdom was considered by the Church as a substitute for a miracle,
for purposes of canonization....And a fourth question I never thought of before is: how does the Church
canonize persons whose names are not known?

Additionally, this whole post is not just about the exemplary faith shown by the faithful of Otranto in 1480,
but a series of reflections on Europe's confrontation with Islam in the present.
====================================================================



How the Eight Hundred Men of Otranto Saved Rome

They were martyred five centuries ago in the easternmost region of Italy, the spot most exposed to attack from
the Muslims. The objective of the caliph Mohammed II was to conquer Rome, after having already taken Constantinople.
But he was stopped by Christians who were ready to defend the faith with their blood.

by Sandro Magister


ROME, August 14, 2007 – The Roman Martyrology, the liturgical calendar of saints and blesseds updated according
to the decrees of Vatican Council II and promulgated by John Paul II, shows that today the Church remembers
and venerates...

“... the approximately eight hundred martyrs of Otranto, in Puglia, pressured to renounce the faith after the crushing
assault of the Ottoman soldiers. They were exhorted by blessed Antonio Primaldo, an elderly tailor, to persevere
in Christ, and thus through decapitation they obtained the crown of martyrdom.”

The martyrdom of these eight hundred men took place in 1480, on August 14, the day of their liturgical
commemoration.

It was because of them that five centuries later, in 1980, John Paul II visited Otranto, the Italian city in which
they were martyred.

And this year, on July 6, Benedict XVI definitively authenticated their martyrdom, with a decree promulgated
by the congregation for the causes of the saints.

But who were the eight hundred men of Otranto? And why were they killed? Their story is of extraordinary relevance –
just like the conflict between Islam and Christianity, in the midst of which they sacrificed their lives.

This is presented in the account that follows – it appeared last July 14 in Il Foglio – written by
Alfredo Mantovano, a Catholic jurist, senator, and a son of the same land that produced those martyrs, born in
southern Puglia, the region of Otranto.


“Ready to die a thousand times for Him...”
By Alfredo Mantovano


On July 6, 2007, Benedict XVI received a visit from the prefect of the congregation for the causes of saints,
cardinal José Saraiva Martins, and authorized the publication of the decree of authentication for the martyrdom
of blessed Antonio Primaldo and his lay companions, “killed out of hatred for the faith” in Otranto on August 14, 1480.

Antonio Primaldo’s is the only name that has come down to us. His companions in martyrdom were eight hundred
unknown fishermen, craftsmen, shepherds, and farmers from a small town, whose blood, five centuries ago, was shed
solely because they were Christian.

Eight hundred men, who five centuries ago suffered the treatment reserved in 2004 for the American antenna
repairman Nick Berg, captured by Islamic terrorists in Iraq and killed to the cry of “Allah is great!”
His executioner, after cutting his jugular, drew the blade around his neck until his head was detached,
and then held this up as a trophy. Exactly as the Ottoman executioner did in 1480 to each of the 800
men from Otranto.

There is a prologue to this mass execution. In the early morning hours of July 29, 1480, from the walls of
Otranto there could be seen on the horizon an approaching fleet composed of 90 galleys, 15 galleasses, and
48 galliots, with 18,000 soldiers on board. The armada was led by the pasha Ahmed, under the orders of Mohammed II,
called Fatih, the Conqueror, the sultan who in 1451, at just 21 years of age, had become head of the Ottoman
tribe, which had replaced the mosaic of Islamic emirates a century and a half earlier.

In 1453, at the head of an army of 260,000 Turks, Mohammed II had conquered Byzantium, the “second Rome,”
and from that moment he developed the plan of wiping out the “first Rome,” Rome true and proper, and of turning
Saint Peter’s basilica into a stall for his horses.

In June of 1480, he judged the time was right to go into action: he lifted the siege from Rhodes, which was
defended courageously by its knights, and directed his fleet toward the Adriatic Sea. His intention was to land
at Brindisi, which had an excellent, spacious harbor: from Brindisi, he planned to move northward up Italy until
he reached the see of the papacy. But a strong contrary wind forced the ships to touch ground fifty miles to
the south, and to disembark in a place called Roca, a few kilometers from Otranto.

Otranto was – and is – the easternmost city in Italy. It has a rich history: the immediate vicinity was
probably inhabited in the Paleolithic period, and certainly from the Neolithic age. It was then populated
by the Messapi, a race prior to the Greeks that was conquered by them, migrated to Magna Graecia, and
fell into the hands of the Romans, becoming a Roman town.

The importance of its harbor had given it the role of a bridge between East and West, a role consolidated
on the cultural and political level by the presence of an important monastery of Basilian monks, the monastery
of San Nicola in Casole, of which a couple of columns remain on the road that leads to Leuca.

In 1095, in its splendid cathedral church built between 1080 and 1088, the blessing was imparted to
the twelve thousand crusaders who, under the command of prince Boemondo I d’Altavilla, were leaving
to liberate and protect the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. And on his return from the Holy Land, it was in
Otranto that saint Francis of Assisi landed in 1219, and was received with great honor.

When the Ottomans disembarked, the city’s garrison numbered just 400 men at arms, so the captains of the guard
quickly sent a missive asking for help to the king of Naples, Ferrante d’Aragona.

With the castle under siege and all the city’s inhabitants inside it, the pasha Ahmed, through a messenger,
proposed a surrender with advantageous conditions: if they did not resist, the men and women would be set
free and would not face any sort of punishment. The response came from one of the city’s leading citizens,
Ladislao De Marco: if the assailants wanted Otranto, he let it be understood, they would have to take it
by force.

It was intimated to the messenger that he should not come back, and when a second messenger arrived with
the same proposal for a surrender, he was riddled with arrows. To remove any doubt, the captains took
the keys to the city gates, mounted a tower, and in the sight of the people cast them into the sea. During
the night, many of the soldiers of the guard lowered themselves over the city walls with ropes and fled.
Only the inhabitants remained to defend Otranto.

What followed was a relentless siege: the Turkish bombardment rained down upon the city hundreds of huge
stones (many of these can still be seen along the streets of the city’s historic center). After fourteen
days, at dawn on August 12, the Ottomans focused their fire on one of the weakest points along the walls:
they opened a breach and poured into the streets, massacring anyone in their path, and came to the cathedral,
where many had taken refuge.

They broke down the doors and flooded into the temple, where they found the archbishop, Stefano, who was there
in his pontifical vestments and with the crucifix in his hand. To the order that he no longer speak the name
of Christ, because from that moment Mohammed was in command, the archbishop responded by exhorting the
assailants to conversion, and at this his head was cut off with a scimitar.

On August 13, Ahmed asked for and obtained a list of the captured inhabitants, excluding the women and
the boys under the age of 15.

This is the account by Saverio de Marco in the Compendiosa istoria degli ottocento martiri otrantini
[A brief history of the eight hundred martyrs of Otranto] published in 1905:

“About one hundred men were presented to the pasha, who had at his side a miserable priest named Giovanni
from Calabria, an apostate from the faith. He employed his satanic eloquence for the goal of persuading
the Christians that they should abandon Christ and embrace Mohammedanism, sure of the good graces of Ahmed,
who would grant them their lives, possessions, and all the benefits they enjoyed in their homeland: otherwise
they would all be massacred.

Among those heroes was a man named Antonio Primaldo, a tailor, advanced in age but full of religion
and fervor. In the name of all, he replied: ‘Would that all believed in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and
were ready to die a thousand times for him'."

The first of the chroniclers, Giovanni Michele Laggetto, adds, in the Historia della guerra di Otranto
del 1480 [Story of the war of Otranto in 1480], transcribed from an ancient manuscript and published
in 1924:

“And turning to the Christians, Primaldo spoke these words: ‘My brothers, until today we have fought
in defense of our homeland, to save our lives, and for our earthly governors; now it is time for us to fight
to save our souls for our Lord. And since he died on the cross for us, it is fitting that we should die
for him, remaining firm and constant in the faith, and with this earthly death we will earn eternal life
and the glory of martyrdom.’ At these words, all began to shout with one voice and with great fervor that
they wanted to die a thousand times, by any sort of death, rather than renounce Christ.”

Ahmed condemned all the eight hundred prisoners to death. The following morning, they were led with
ropes tied around their necks and their hands bound behind their backs to the Hill of Minerva, a few
hundred meters outside of the city. De Marco writes:

---

“All of them repeated their profession of the faith and the generous response they had given
at first, so the tyrant commanded that the decapitation should proceed, and, before
the others, the head of the elderly Primaldo should be cut off.

Primaldo was hateful to him, because he never stopped acting as an apostle toward his fellows.
And before placing his head upon the stone, he told his companions that he saw heaven opened
and the comforting angels; that they should be strong in the faith and look to heaven, already
open to receive them.

He bowed his head and it was cut off, but his corpse stood back up on its feet, and despite
the efforts of the butchers, it remained erect and unmoving, until all were decapitated.

The marvelous and astonishing event would have been a lesson of salvation for those infidels,
if they had not been rebels against the light that enlightens every man who lives in the world.
Only one of the butchers, named Berlabei, believed courageously in the miracle and, declaring
himself a Christian in a loud voice, was condemned to be impaled.”

---

During the beatification process for the eight hundred, in 1539, four eyewitnesses spoke of the prodigy
of Antonio Primaldo, who remained standing after being decapitated, and of the conversion and martyrdom
of the executioner.

This is the account of one of the four, Francesco Cerra, who in 1539 was 72 years old: “Antonio Primaldo
was the first to be slaughtered, and without his head he remained upright on his feet, nor could any
of the efforts of the enemy knock him down, until all were killed. The butcher, stunned by the miracle,
confessed that the Catholic faith was the true one, and insisted on becoming a Christian, and for this
the pasha condemned him to death by impaling.”

*******************************************************************

Five hundred years later, on October 5, 1980, John Paul II visited Otranto to remember the sacrifice
of the eight hundred.

It was a splendid, sunny morning on the plain below the Hill of Minerva, which was renamed the Hill
of the Martyrs in 1480. The Polish pope took the occasion to issue an invitation as relevant today as
it was then:

“Let us not forget the martyrs of our times. Let us not behave as if they did not exist.”

The pope exhorted his hearers to look overseas, and expressly recalled the sufferings of the people
of Albania, subjected to one of the most ferocious realizations of communism, although no one was paying
attention to them at the time. He emphasized that “the blessed martyrs of Otranto have left us two
essential gifts: love for one’s earthly homeland and the authenticity of the Christian faith.
The Christian loves his earthly homeland. Love of country is a Christian virtue.”

The sacrifice of the eight hundred men of Otranto was not important solely on the level of faith. The city’s
two-week resistance permitted the army of the king of Naples to organize and to approach that area,
blocking the eighteen thousand Ottomans from invading the entire region of Puglia.

The chroniclers of the time do not exaggerate when they affirm that the safety of southern Italy was
guaranteed by Otranto: and not only that, if it is true that news of the city’s fall initially induced
the reigning pope, Sixtus IV, to plan to move to Avignon, in the fear that the Ottomans might draw
nearer to Rome.

The pope renounced this intention when king Ferrante of Naples charged his son Alfonso, the duke
of Calabria, to move to Puglia, and entrusted to him the task of reconquering Otranto. This took place
on September 13, 1481, after Ahmed had returned to Turkey and Mohammed II had died.

What makes this extraordinary episode so significant, even for today’s European, is that in the
history of Christianity there has never been a lack of witnesses to the faith and to civic values, nor
has there been a lack of men who have courageously confronted extreme trials.

But there has never been an episode of such vast collective proportions: an entire city that
at first battles as it is able and survives for a number of days under siege, and then firmly rejects
the proposal to abjure the faith.

On the Hill of Minerva, apart from the elderly Antonio Primaldo, no other individual personality emerged,
if it is true that the names of the other eight hundred martyrs are unknown: proof of the fact that it was
not individual heroes, but rather an entire population that faced the trial.

All of this also took place because of the indifference of the political leaders of Europe at the time,
in the face of the Ottoman menace.

In 1459, Pope Pius II had convened a congress in Mantua to which he invited the heads of the Christian
states, and in the introductory address had outlined their faults in the face of the Turkish onslaught.
But although it was decided at that meeting that war should be waged to contain the onslaught, nothing
happened afterward, because of the opposition of Venice and the disinterest of Germany and France.

After the Muslims conquered the island of Negroponte, which belonged to Venice, a new alliance proposed
by Pope Paul II was undermined by the lords of Milan and Florence, who were eager to gain from the critical
situation in which Venice found itself.

During the next decade, with Sixtus IV who became pontiff in 1471, there was the assassination of Galeazzo
Sforza, the duke of Milan; the anti-Roman alliance in 1474 among Milan, Venice, and Florence;
the Florentine Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478 and the war that followed between the pope and the king of Naples
on one side, and Florence, Milan, Venice, and France on the other... All of this brought great advantage
to the Ottomans, as Ludwig von Pastor writes in his History of the Popes:

---

“Lorenzo the Magnificent, who had warned Ferrante not join in the games and ambitions of
the foreigners, was the very one who appealed to Venice to strike an agreement with the Turks
and spur them on to assault the Adriatic coast of the kingdom of Naples, for the purpose
of upsetting the plans of Ferdinando and his son. [...] Venice, which signed a truce with
the Turks in 1479, adhered to the plan of Lorenzo the Magnificent in the hope of turning
toward Puglia the Muslim tide that at any moment could attack Dalmatia, where the Venetian
flag of Saint Mark was raised. [...] And the men of Lorenzo the Magnificent did not even hesitate
[...] to solicit Mohammed II to invade the territory of the king of Naples, reminding him of
the various injuries he had received from him. But the sultan had no need of this advice:
he had been waiting for 21 years for the right moment to land in Italy, and until then
it had been Venice, his direct adversary on the sea, that had been preventing this.”

---

***
Even if history never exactly repeats itself, it is nevertheless not arbitrary to gather analogies and
comparisons from its developments: exactly one thousand years after 480, the year of the birth of Saint
Benedict of Norcia – a humble monk to whose work Europe owes so much of its identity – other lowly men
understood Europe better than their leaders did, men who were more ready to fight each other than to
confront the common enemy.

When the inhabitants of Otranto found themselves facing the Ottoman scimitars, they did not find in
the disinterest of their kings a reason to quit themselves; strong in the culture in which they had
been raised, although many of them had never learned the alphabet, they were convinced that resisting
and not abjuring the faith was the most natural choice.

Try talking today with a Western soldier who has returned from a mission in Iraq or Afghanistan:
what one hears most frequently is their amazement at the discussions and the endless disagreements over
our presence in those regions. For these soldiers, it is natural that they should go to help those
in need of support, and guarantee the security of reconstruction against terrorist attacks.

In Otranto in 1480, no one displayed rainbow pacifist flags, nor invoked international resolutions,
nor asked for a meeting of the municipal council so that the zone might be declared as demilitarized;
no one chained himself beneath the city walls to “construct peace.”

For two weeks, the fifteen thousand inhabitants of the city boiled oil and water, until they had none
left, and poured it over the walls onto the assailants.

And when the eight hundred adult men still alive were captured, they went willingly to meet the same
fate that the Iraqis, Afghans, Americans, English, Italians, and others meet in Iraq and Afghanistan
when they are kidnapped by terrorists.

Eight hundred heads were cut off one after another, with no politically correct newsmen to censor
the account. If today we have thorough knowledge of this extraordinary event, it is because
those who described it were objective and rigorous.

Today Europe is under attack not – as in the preceding historical episode – by an institutionally
organized Islamic phalanx, but by a patchwork of non-governmental organizations of ultra-fundamentalist
Muslims.

Keeping in mind this structural difference, it is not out of place to ask how much there is today
in the West, in Europe, in Italy, of that “naturalness” that led an entire community to “defend the peace
of their land” to the point of making the ultimate sacrifice.

The question is not out of place, if one considers that a truly decisive element in the struggle
against terrorism is the solidity of the social body, or in any case of a large part of it, in the face
of the threat and of its most bloodthirsty manifestations. The memory of Otranto does not merely
emphasize that there are times when resistance is a duty, but even before this it reminds us of who
we are and from what community we come.

It is important to recall that in 1571, ninety years after the martyrdom of Otranto, a fleet of
ships supplied by Christian states arrested the Turko-Islamic advance into the Mediterranean,
in the sea battle of Lepanto.

The scenario had not improved in Europe: France was in league with the German Protestant princes in
opposition to the Hapsburgs, and took satisfaction in the pressure that the Turks were applying against
the Hapsburg Empire in the Mediterranean. Paris and Venice had not moved a finger to defend the Knights
of Malta from the naval siege conducted against them by Suleiman the Magnificent.

This means that the victory of Lepanto was not the fruit of the convergence of political interests;
on the contrary, it was accomplished in spite of the divergences. The extraordinary thing about Lepanto
is that in spite of everything, for once the princes, politicians, and military commanders were able to
set aside their divisions and unite to defend Europe.

This union was realized above all because the European politics of the sixteenth century preserved what
was essentially a shared vision of the world, founded upon Christianity and the natural law.
And if today so many agnostic minds inhabit Europe in complete freedom, this is in part because
there were those who in their day gave their time, energy, and even their lives for the good cause, when
the victory of the enemy would have put Italy – and possibly Spain – into Muslim hands.

Otranto teaches us that a culturally homogeneous civilization – or even one predominantly animated by
realistic principles – is capable of reacting in a substantially unified manner in defense of its own
peace, and can do this without trampling upon its own identity and dignity.

Today, Roman-Germanic Christendom no longer exists as a homogeneous civilization. Nor is the thesis valid
according to which Christendom, as long as it existed, was a mirror image of the Islamic community.

Three structural differences prevent any sort of overlapping or analogy with respect to the Islamic
“umma”: in Christendom, there was a distinction between the political and religious spheres, there was
a foundation of natural law, and there was respect for the
conscience of the human person.

Reflection on what happened in 1480 nevertheless permits us to identify three pillars around which
unity can be restored: the reference to natural law, the rediscovery of the Christian roots of Europe,
and love of country, which was explicitly evoked by John Paul II as an inheritance from the martyrs
of Otranto.

In Sacred Scripture, when God informed Abraham of his intention to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis
18:16 ff.), Abraham tried to intercede, and asked him: “Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty?
Suppose there were fifty innocent people in the city; would you wipe out the place, rather than spare it
for the sake of the fifty innocent people within it?” Having received God’s assurance that he would
pardon the entire city for the sake of those fifty just men, Abraham continues, in a sort of gutsy
negotiation: and if there were only 45, 40, 30, 20, or only 10? God’s reply is the same: “For the sake
of those ten, I will not destroy it.” But there were not 50, or 45, or 30, or 20, or even 10; and the two
cities were destroyed.

This page of Scripture is terrifying because of the fate of annihilation that it projects for civilizations
that reject the values that are inscribed in human nature.

It is a page that has been sorrowfully reread over and over, especially in the twentieth century,
in the face of the ravages of Nazism and communist socialism. But it just as comforting to those who
maintain that the centrality of man and adherence to principles is not only the point of departure,
but also the strategy for anyone who wants to practice politics.

In 1480, that passage from Genesis found a unique application: Europe, and in particular its most
important city, Rome, were spared from destruction not “for the sake,” but rather “through the sacrifice”
of eight hundred unknown fishermen, craftsmen, shepherds, and farmers of a marginal city.

It is striking that what happened in Otranto did not receive, and has still not received, the widespread
recognition that it deserves. The Church itself waited for five centuries, and for an extraordinary
pontiff like Karol Wojtyla, to beatify those eight hundred men. Benedict XVI’s July 6, 2007 decree
authorizes the view that their “martyrdom” really took place, historically and theologically.

This is the premise for their canonization, which will follow when a miracle has been certified. The Church,
including that of Otranto, maintains a necessary caution on this point, but everyone knows that the
intercession of the eight hundred has already procured many miracles; all that is lacking is official
recognition.

The martyrs of Otranto are in no hurry: their bones, arranged in a number of reliquaries, are waiting
to greet those who visit the cathedral, in the chapel located to the right of the main altar.

They remind us that it is not only faith that has a price, but civilization does, too: a price that
cannot be measured, and is paradoxically compatible with having received faith and civilization as
inestimable gifts.

This price is asked of everyone in a different way, but there is no place for sales or liquidations.

For now, I will take the easy way and crib the blog entry today of ARGENT BY THE TIBER who also has the picture
of Fr. Kolbe. I will add to the post when I have gathered other material.



August 14
MEMORIAL OF ST. MAXIMILIAN MARY KOLBE, Priest and Martyr



St. Maximilian was born Raymond Kolbe in Poland, January 8, 1894. In 1910, he entered the Conventual Franciscan Order.
He was sent to study in Rome where he was ordained a priest in 1918.

Father Maximilian returned to Poland in 1919 and began spreading his Militia of the Immaculata movement of Marian
consecration (whose members are also called MIs), which he founded on October 16, 1917. In 1927, he established
an evangelization center near Warsaw called Niepokalanow, the "City of the Immaculata."

By 1939, the City had expanded from eighteen friars to an incredible 650, making it the largest Catholic religious
house in the world.

To better "win the world for the Immaculata," the friars utilized the most modern printing and administrative
techniques. This enabled them to publish countless catechetical and devotional tracts, a daily newspaper with
a circulation of 230,000 and a monthly magazine with a circulation of over one million.

Maximilian started a shortwave radio station and planned to build a motion picture studio - he was a true
"apostle of the mass media." He established a City of the Immaculata in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1930, and
envisioned missionary centers worldwide.

Maximilian was a ground-breaking theologian. His insights into the Immaculate Conception anticipated the Marian
theology of the Second Vatican Council and further developed the Church's understanding of Mary as "Mediatrix"
of all the graces of the Trinity, and as "Advocate" for God's people.

In 1941, the Nazis imprisoned Father Maximilian in the Auschwitz death camp. There he offered his life for
another prisoner and was condemned to slow death in a starvation bunker. On August 14, 1941, his impatient
captors ended his life with a fatal injection.

Pope John Paul II canonized Maximilian as a "martyr of charity" in 1982. St. Maximilian Kolbe is considered
a patron of journalists, families, prisoners, the pro-life movement and the chemically addicted.

=====================================================================

Fr. Tadeusz Rydxyk would do well to meditate on the life of St. Maximilian today and learn a much-needed lesson.

Benefan posted an item on this thread a few months back about Mother Teresa's 'crisis of faith'. Now, it's all in the news
because of a new book that has come out about her which gives details about the 'dark night of the soul' that she underwent.

The problem is that the MSM are treating it as though it were a fault, a reproach against the Church, a validation of claims
made by atHEists like Christopher Hitchens that religion is a sham.

The Time magazine article on it - although it starts out with statements that appear to pander to such a view by non-
believers - does place the nun's crisis in the proper context and shows the many ways that God tests his creatures, even
the holiest. And that the most demanding of these tests is certainly what caused Jesus himself to cry out in the moments before
he died on the Cross, "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?"



====================================================================


Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith
By DAVID VAN BIEMA
TIME Magazine
Thursday, Aug. 23, 2007





Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen
and do not hear.
— Mother Teresa to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, September 1979


On Dec. 11, 1979, Mother Teresa, the "Saint of the Gutters," went to Oslo. Dressed in her signature blue-bordered sari
and shod in sandals despite below-zero temperatures, the former Agnes Bojaxhiu received that ultimate worldly accolade,
the Nobel Peace Prize.

In her acceptance lecture, Teresa, whose Missionaries of Charity had grown from a one-woman folly in Calcutta in 1948 into
a global beacon of self-abnegating care, delivered the kind of message the world had come to expect from her.

"It is not enough for us to say, 'I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,'" she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had
"[made] himself the hungry one — the naked one — the homeless one." Jesus' hunger, she said, is what "you and I must find"
and alleviate. She condemned abortion and bemoaned youthful drug addiction in the West.

Finally, she suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world "that radiating joy is real" because Christ
is everywhere — "Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive."

Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now
being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one.

"Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is
so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I want
you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand."

The two statements, 11 weeks apart, are extravagantly dissonant. The first is typical of the woman the world thought it knew.
The second sounds as though it had wandered in from some 1950s existentialist drama.

Together they suggest a startling portrait in self-contradiction — that one of the great human icons of the past 100 years,
whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent
and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual
reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared.

And in fact, that appears to be the case. A new, innocuously titled book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday),
consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides
the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through
its works.

The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by
her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as
the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, "neither in her heart or in the eucharist."

That absence seems to have started at almost precisely the time she began tending the poor and dying in Calcutta, and —
except for a five-week break in 1959 — never abated. Although perpetually cheery in public, the Teresa of the letters
lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain.

In more than 40 communications, many of which have never before been published, she bemoans the "dryness," "darkness,"
"loneliness" and "torture" she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven
her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God. She is acutely aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and
her public demeanor.

"The smile," she writes, is "a mask" or "a cloak that covers everything." Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged
in verbal deception. "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God — tender, personal love," she remarks to an adviser.
"If you were [there], you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'"

Says the Rev. James Martin, an editor at the Jesuit magazine America and the author of My Life with the
Saints, a book that dealt with far briefer reports in 2003 of Teresa's doubts: "I've never read a saint's life where
the saint has such an intense spiritual darkness. No one knew she was that tormented."

Recalls Kolodiejchuk, editor of Come Be My Light: "I read one letter to the Sisters [of Teresa's Missionaries of
Charity], and their mouths just dropped open. It will give a whole new dimension to the way people understand her."

The book is hardly the work of some antireligious investigative reporter who Dumpster-dived for Teresa's correspondence.
Kolodiejchuk, a senior Missionaries of Charity member, is her postulator, responsible for petitioning for her sainthood
and collecting the supporting materials. (Thus far she has been beatified; the next step is canonization.) The letters
in the book were gathered as part of that process.

The church anticipates spiritually fallow periods. Indeed, the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross in the 16th century
coined the term the "dark night" of the soul to describe a characteristic stage in the growth of some spiritual
masters.

Teresa's may be the most extensive such case on record. (The "dark night" of the 18th century mystic St. Paul of the Cross
lasted 45 years; he ultimately recovered.) Yet Kolodiejchuk sees it in St. John's context, as darkness within faith.
Teresa found ways, starting in the early 1960s, to live with it and abandoned neither her belief nor her work. Kolodiejchuk
produced the book as proof of the faith-filled perseverance that he sees as her most spiritually heroic act.

Two very different Catholics predict that the book will be a landmark. The Rev. Matthew Lamb, chairman of the theology
department at the conservative Ave Maria University in Florida, thinks Come Be My Light will eventually rank
with St. Augustine's Confessions and Thomas Merton's The Seven-Storey Mountain as an autobiography of
spiritual ascent.

Martin of America, a much more liberal institution, calls the book "a new ministry for Mother Teresa, a written
ministry of her interior life," and says, "It may be remembered as just as important as her ministry to the poor.
It would be a ministry to people who had experienced some doubt, some absence of God in their lives. And you know
who that is? Everybody. Atheists, doubters, seekers, believers, everyone."

Not all atheists and doubters will agree. Both Kolodiejchuk and Martin assume that Teresa's inability to perceive
Christ in her life did not mean he wasn't there. In fact, they see his absence as part of the divine gift that enabled
her to do great work.

But to the U.S.'s increasingly assertive cadre of atheists, that argument will seem absurd. They will see the book's
Teresa more like the woman in the archetypal country-and-western song who holds a torch for her husband 30 years after
he left to buy a pack of cigarettes and never returned.

Says Christopher Hitchens, author of The Missionary Position, a scathing polemic on Teresa, and more recently of
the atheist manifesto God Is Not Great: "She was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human
fabrication than any other person, and that her attempted cure was more and more professions of faith could only have
deepened the pit that she had dug for herself."

Meanwhile, some familiar with the smiling mother's extraordinary drive may diagnose her condition less as a gift of God
than as a subconscious attempt at the most radical kind of humility: she punished herself with a crippling failure to
counterbalance her great successes.

Come Be My Light is that rare thing, a posthumous autobiography that could cause a wholesale [???I think not!
It simply adds an extraordinary dimension to her spiritual life] reconsideration of a major public figure — one way
or another. It raises questions about God and faith, the engine behind great achievement, and the persistence of love,
divine and human.

That it does so not in any organized, intentional form but as a hodgepodge of desperate notes not intended for daylight
should leave readers only more convinced that it is authentic — and that they are, somewhat shockingly, touching the true
inner life of a modern saint.

Prequel: Near Ecstatic Communion

[Jesus:] Wilt thou refuse to do this for me? ... You have become my Spouse for my love — you have come to India for Me.
The thirst you had for souls brought you so far — Are you afraid to take one more step for Your Spouse — for me —
for souls? Is your generosity grown cold? Am I a second to you?

[Teresa:] Jesus, my own Jesus — I am only Thine — I am so stupid — I do not know what to say but do with me whatever
You wish — as You wish — as long as you wish. [But] why can't I be a perfect Loreto Nun — here — why can't I be like
everybody else.

[Jesus:] I want Indian Nuns, Missionaries of Charity, who would be my fire of love amongst the poor, the sick,
the dying and the little children ... You are I know the most incapable person — weak and sinful but just because
you are that — I want to use You for My glory. Wilt thou refuse?

— in a prayer dialogue recounted to Archbishop Ferdinand Perier, January 1947


On Sept. 10, 1946, after 17 years as a teacher in Calcutta with the Loreto Sisters (an uncloistered, education-oriented
community based in Ireland), Mother Mary Teresa, 36, took the 400-mile (645-km) train trip to Darjeeling. She had been
working herself sick, and her superiors ordered her to relax during her annual retreat in the Himalayan foothills.

On the ride out, she reported, Christ spoke to her. He called her to abandon teaching and work instead in "the slums"
of the city, dealing directly with "the poorest of the poor" — the sick, the dying, beggars and street children.

"Come, Come, carry Me into the holes of the poor," he told her. "Come be My light."

The goal was to be both material and evangelistic — as Kolodiejchuk puts it, "to help them live their lives with dignity
[and so] encounter God's infinite love, and having come to know Him, to love and serve Him in return."

It was wildly audacious — an unfunded, single-handed crusade (Teresa stipulated that she and her nuns would share
their beneficiaries' poverty and started out alone) to provide individualized service to the poorest in a poor city
made desperate by riots.

The local Archbishop, Ferdinand Périer, was initially skeptical. But her letters to him, preserved, illustrate two linked
characteristics — extreme tenacity and a profound personal bond to Christ.

When Périer hesitated, Teresa, while calling herself a "little nothing," bombarded him with notes suggesting that
he refer the question to an escalating list of authorities — the local apostolic delegation, her Mother General,
the Pope. And when she felt all else had failed, she revealed the spiritual topper: a dramatic (melodramatic, really)
dialogue with a "Voice" she eventually revealed to be Christ's.

It ended with Jesus' emphatic reiteration of his call to her: "You are I know the most incapable person — weak and
sinful but just because you are that — I want to use You for My glory. Wilt thou refuse?"

Mother Teresa had visions, including one of herself conversing with Christ on the Cross. Her confessor, Father Celeste
Van Exem, was convinced that her mystical experiences were genuine. "[Her] union with Our Lord has been continual
and so deep and violent that rapture does not seem very far," he commented. Teresa later wrote simply, "Jesus gave
Himself to me."

Then on Jan. 6, 1948, Périer, after consulting the Vatican, finally gave permission for Teresa to embark on her second
calling. And Jesus took himself away again.

The Onset

Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love — and now become as the most hated one —
the one — You have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want — and there is no One to answer —
no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One. — Alone ... Where is my Faith — even deep down right in there is nothing,
but emptiness & darkness — My God — how painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words
& thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me suffer untold agony.

So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God —
please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those
very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness
& coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call
of the Sacred Heart?
— Addressed to Jesus, at the suggestion of a confessor, undated


In the first half of 1948, Teresa took a basic medical course before launching herself alone onto the streets of Calcutta.
She wrote, "My soul at present is in perfect peace and joy."

Kolodiejchuk includes her moving description of her first day on the job: "The old man lying on the street — not wanted —
all alone just sick and dying — I gave him carborsone and water to drink and the old Man — was so strangely grateful ...
Then we went to Taltala Bazaar, and there was a very poor woman dying I think of starvation more than TB ... I gave her
something which will help her to sleep. — I wonder how long she will last."

But two months later, shortly after her major triumph of locating a space for her headquarters, Kolodiejchuk's files
find her troubled. "What tortures of loneliness," she wrote. "I wonder how long will my heart suffer this?"
This complaint could be understood as an initial response to solitude and hardship were it not for subsequent
letters. The more success Teresa had — and half a year later so many young women had joined her society that she needed
to move again — the worse she felt.

In March 1953, she wrote Périer, "Please pray specially for me that I may not spoil His work and that Our Lord may
show Himself — for there is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead. It has been like this more
or less from the time I started 'the work.'"

Périer may have missed the note of desperation. "God guides you, dear Mother," he answered avuncularly. "You are not
so much in the dark as you think ... You have exterior facts enough to see that God blesses your work ... Feelings are
not required and often may be misleading."

And yet feelings — or rather, their lack — became her life's secret torment. How can you assume the lover's ardor when
he no longer grants you his voice, his touch, his very presence? The problem was exacerbated by an inhibition to
even describe it. Teresa reported on several occasions inviting a confessor to visit and then being unable to speak.

Eventually, one thought to ask her to write the problem down, and she complied. "The more I want him — the less
I am wanted," she wrote Périer in 1955. A year later she sounded desolate: "Such deep longing for God — and ...
repulsed — empty — no faith — no love — no zeal. — [The saving of] Souls holds no attraction — Heaven means nothing —
pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything."

At the suggestion of a confessor, she wrote the agonized plea that begins this section, in which she explored the
theological worst- possible-case implications of her dilemma. That letter and another one from 1959 ("What do I
labour for? If there be no God — there can be no soul — if there is no Soul then Jesus — You also are not true")
are the only two that sound any note of doubt of God's existence.

But she frequently bemoaned an inability to pray: "I utter words of Community prayers — and try my utmost to get out
of every word the sweetness it has to give — But my prayer of union is not there any longer — I no longer pray."

As the Missionaries of Charity flourished and gradually gained the attention of her church and the world at large,
Teresa progressed from confessor to confessor the way some patients move through their psychoanalysts. Van Exem gave
way to Périer, who gave way in 1959 to the Rev. (later Cardinal) Lawrence Picachy, who was succeeded by the Rev.
Joseph Neuner in 1961.

By the 1980s the chain included figures such as Bishop William Curlin of Charlotte, N.C. For these confessors,
she developed a kind of shorthand of pain, referring almost casually to "my darkness" and to Jesus as "the Absent One."
There was one respite.

In October 1958, Pope Pius XII died, and requiem Masses were celebrated around the Catholic world. Teresa prayed
to the deceased Pope for a "proof that God is pleased with the Society." And "then and there," she rejoiced,
"disappeared the long darkness ... that strange suffering of 10 years."

Unfortunately, five weeks later she reported being "in the tunnel" once more. And although, as we shall see, she found
a way to accept the absence, it never lifted again. Five years after her Nobel, a Jesuit priest in the Calcutta
province noted that "Mother came... to speak about the excruciating night in her soul. It was not a passing phase but
had gone on for years." A 1995 letter discussed her "spiritual dryness." She died in 1997.

Explanations

Tell me, Father, why is there so much pain and darkness in my soul?
— to the Rev. Lawrence Picachy, August 1959

Why did Teresa's communication with Jesus, so vivid and nourishing in the months before the founding of the
Missionaries, evaporate so suddenly? Interestingly, secular and religious explanations travel for a while on
parallel tracks. Both understand (although only one celebrates) that identification with Christ's extended suffering
on the Cross, undertaken to redeem humanity, is a key aspect of Catholic spirituality.

Teresa told her nuns that physical poverty ensured empathy in "giving themselves" to the suffering poor and
established a stronger bond with Christ's redemptive agony. She wrote in 1951 that the Passion was the only aspect
of Jesus' life that she was interested in sharing: "I want to ... drink ONLY [her emphasis] from His chalice of pain."
And so she did, although by all indications not in a way she had expected.

Kolodiejchuk finds divine purpose in the fact that Teresa's spiritual spigot went dry just as she prevailed over
her church's perceived hesitations and saw a successful way to realize Jesus' call for her.

"She was a very strong personality," he suggests. "And a strong personality needs stronger purification" as an antidote
to pride. As proof that it worked, he cites her written comment after receiving an important prize in the Philippines
in the 1960s: "This means nothing to me, because I don't have Him."

And yet "the question is, Who determined the abandonment she experienced?" says Dr. Richard Gottlieb, a teacher
at the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute who has written about the church and who was provided a copy of
the book by TIME. "Could she have imposed it on herself?"

Psychologists have long recognized that people of a certain personality type are conflicted about their high
achievement and find ways to punish themselves. Gottlieb notes that Teresa's ambitions for her ministry were tremendous.
Both he and Kolodiejchuk are fascinated by her statement, "I want to love Jesus as he has never been loved before."
Remarks the priest: "That's a kind of daring thing to say."

Yet her letters are full of inner conflict about her accomplishments. Rather than simply giving all credit to God,
Gottlieb observes, she agonizes incessantly that "any taking credit for her accomplishments — if only internally —
is sinful" and hence, perhaps, requires a price to be paid. A mild secular analog, he says, might be an executive
who commits a horrific social gaffe at the instant of a crucial promotion.

For Teresa, "an occasion for a modicum of joy initiated a significant quantity of misery," and her subsequent
successes led her to perpetuate it.

Gottlieb also suggests that starting her ministry "may have marked a turning point in her relationship with Jesus,"
whose urgent claims she was finally in a position to fulfill. Being the active party, he speculates, might have scared
her, and in the end, the only way to accomplish great things might have been in the permanent and less risky role of
the spurned yet faithful lover.

The atheist position is simpler. In 1948, Hitchens ventures, Teresa finally woke up, although she could not admit it.
He likens her to die-hard Western communists late in the cold war: "There was a huge amount of cognitive dissonance,"
he says. "They thought, 'Jesus, the Soviet Union is a failure, [but] I'm not supposed to think that. It means
my life is meaningless.' They carried on somehow, but the mainspring was gone. And I think once the mainspring is gone,
it cannot be repaired." That, he says, was Teresa.

Most religious readers will reject that explanation, along with any that makes her the author of her own misery — or
even defines it as true misery.

Martin, responding to the torch-song image of Teresa, counterproposes her as the heroically constant spouse.
"Let's say you're married and you fall in love and you believe with all your heart that marriage is a sacrament.
And your wife, God forbid, gets a stroke and she's comatose. And you will never experience her love again. It's like
loving and caring for a person for 50 years and once in a while you complain to your spiritual director, but you know
on the deepest level that she loves you even though she's silent and that what you're doing makes sense. Mother Teresa
knew that what she was doing made sense."

Integration

I can't express in words — the gratitude I owe you for your kindness to me — for the first time in ... years —
I have come to love the darkness — for I believe now that it is part of a very, very small part of Jesus' darkness
& pain on earth. You have taught me to accept it [as] a 'spiritual side of your work' as you wrote — Today really
I felt a deep joy — that Jesus can't go anymore through the agony — but that He wants to go through it in me.
— to Neuner, Circa 1961

There are two responses to trauma: to hold onto it in all its vividness and remain its captive, or without
necessarily "conquering" it, to gradually integrate it into the day-by-day.

After more than a decade of open-wound agony, Teresa seems to have begun regaining her spiritual equilibrium with
the help of a particularly perceptive adviser.

The Rev. Joseph Neuner, whom she met in the late 1950s and confided in somewhat later, was already a well-known
theologian, and when she turned to him with her "darkness," he seems to have told her the three things she needed
to hear: that there was no human remedy for it (that is, she should not feel responsible for affecting it); that
feeling Jesus is not the only proof of his s being there, and her very craving for God was a "sure sign" of his
"hidden presence" in her life; and that the absence was in fact part of the "spiritual side" of her work for Jesus.

This counsel clearly granted Teresa a tremendous sense of release. For all that she had expected and even craved
to share in Christ's Passion, she had not anticipated that she might recapitulate the particular moment on the Cross
when he asks, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"

The idea that rather than a nihilistic vacuum, his felt absence might be the ordeal she had prayed for, that
her perseverance in its face might echo his faith unto death on the Cross, that it might indeed be a grace,
enhancing the efficacy of her calling, made sense of her pain.

Neuner would later write, "It was the redeeming experience of her life when she realized that the night of her heart
was the special share she had in Jesus' passion." And she thanked Neuner profusely: "I can't express in words —
the gratitude I owe you for your kindness to me — for the first time in ... years — I have come to love the darkness."

Not that it didn't continue to torment her. Years later, describing the joy in Jesus experienced by some of her nuns,
she observed dryly to Neuner, "I just have the joy of having nothing — not even the reality of the Presence of God
[in the Eucharist]." She described her soul as like an "ice block."

Yet she recognized Neuner's key distinction, writing, "I accept not in my feelings — but with my will, the Will of God —
I accept His will."

Although she still occasionally worried that she might "turn a Judas to Jesus in this painful darkness," with the passage
of years the absence morphed from a potential wrecking ball into a kind of ragged cornerstone.

Says Gottlieb, the psychoanalyst: "What is remarkable is that she integrated it in a way that enabled her to make it
the organizing center of her personality, the beacon for her ongoing spiritual life." Certainly, she understood it
as essential enough to project it into her afterlife.

"If I ever become a Saint — I will surely be one of 'darkness.' I will continually be absent from Heaven — to [light]
the light of those in darkness on earth," she wrote in 1962.

Theologically, this is a bit odd since most orthodox Christianity defines heaven as God's eternal presence and
doesn't really provide for regular no-shows at the heavenly feast. But it is, Kolodiejchuk suggests, her most moving
statement, since the sacrifice involved is infinite. "When she wrote, 'I am willing to suffer ... for all eternity,
if this [is] possible,'" he says, "I said, Wow."

He contends that the letters reveal her as holier than anyone knew. However formidable her efforts on Christ's behalf,
it is even more astounding to realize that she achieved them when he was not available to her — a bit like a person
who believes she can't walk winning the Olympic 100 meters.

Kolodiejchuk goes even further. Catholic theologians recognize two types of "dark night": the first is purgative,
cleansing the contemplative for a "final union" with Christ; the second is "reparative," and continues after
such a union, so that he or she may participate in a state of purity even closer to that of Jesus and Mary, who
suffered for human salvation despite being without sin.

By the end, writes Kolodiejchuk, "by all indications this was the case with Mother Teresa." That puts her in
rarefied company.

A New Ministry

If this brings You glory — if souls are brought to you — with joy I accept all to the end of my life.
— to Jesus, undated

But for most people, Teresa's ranking among Catholic saints may be less important than a more general implication
of Come Be My Light: that if she could carry on for a half-century without God in her head or heart,
then perhaps people not quite as saintly can cope with less extreme versions of the same problem.

One powerful instance of this may have occurred very early on. In 1968, British writer-turned-filmmaker Malcolm
Muggeridge visited Teresa. Muggeridge had been an outspoken agnostic, but by the time he arrived with a film
crew in Calcutta he was in full spiritual- search mode.

Beyond impressing him with her work and her holiness, she wrote a letter to him in 1970 that addressed his doubts
full-bore. "Your longing for God is so deep and yet He keeps Himself away from you," she wrote. "He must be forcing
Himself to do so — because he loves you so much — the personal love Christ has for you is infinite — The Small
difficulty you have re His Church is finite — Overcome the finite with the infinite."

Muggeridge apparently did. He became an outspoken Christian apologist and converted to Catholicism in 1982.
His 1969 film, Something Beautiful for God, supported by a 1971 book of the same title, made Teresa an
international sensation.

At the time, Muggeridge was something of a unique case. A child of privilege who became a minor celebrity, he was
hardly Teresa's target audience. Now, with the publication of Come Be My Light, we can all play Muggeridge.

Kolodiejchuk thinks the book may act as an antidote to a cultural problem. "The tendency in our spiritual life but
also in our more general attitude toward love is that our feelings are all that is going on," he says. "And so
to us the totality of love is what we feel. But to really love someone requires commitment, fidelity and
vulnerability. Mother Teresa wasn't 'feeling' Christ's love,
and she could have shut down. But she was up
at 4:30 every morning for Jesus, and still writing to him, 'Your happiness is all I want.' That's a powerful
example even if you are not talking in exclusively religious terms."

America's Martin wants to talk precisely in religious terms. "Everything she's experiencing," he says, "is what
average believers experience in their spiritual lives writ large. I have known scores of people who have felt
abandoned by God and had doubts about God's existence. And this book expresses that in such a stunning way but
shows her full of complete trust at the same time."

He takes a breath. "Who would have thought that the person who was considered the most faithful woman in the world
struggled like that with her faith?" he asks. "And who would have thought that the one thought to be the most
ardent of believers could be a saint to the skeptics?" Martin has long used Teresa as an example to parishioners
of self-emptying love. Now, he says, he will use her extraordinary faith in the face of overwhelming silence to
illustrate how doubt is a natural part of everyone's life, be it an average believer's or a world-famous saint's.

Into the Light of Day

Please destroy any letters or anything I have written.
— to Picachy, April 1959

Consistent with her ongoing fight against pride, Teresa's rationale for suppressing her personal correspondence was
"I want the work to remain only His." If the letters became public, she explained to Picachy, "people will think
more of me — less of Jesus."

The particularly holy are no less prone than the rest of us to misjudge the workings of history — or, if you
will, of God's. Teresa considered the perceived absence of God in her life as her most shameful secret but
eventually learned that it could be seen as a gift abetting her calling.

If her worries about publicizing it also turn out to be misplaced — if a book of hasty, troubled notes turns out
to ease the spiritual road of thousands of fellow believers, there would be no shame in having been wrong — but
happily, even wonderfully wrong — twice.