Preview: The 30th Anniversary of "The Gospel of Life"

In 1995, Pope Saint John Paul II issued his 11th (out of 14) Encyclical, titled Evangelium vitae (On Human Life), so this year we celebrate the 30th anniversary of this landmark event--and it will be our next topic on the Son Rise Morning Show, on Monday, May 5. You know that I'll be on the air at my usual time at the top of the second national hour of the Son Rise Morning Show on EWTN, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

In 2020, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the encyclical, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has posted a Compendium offering summaries of its 105 paragraphs via

the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities has developed a condensed version of this landmark pro-life encyclical. This thorough summary makes Pope St. John Paul II’s prophetic writing more concise for those looking to deepen their understanding of the Church’s beautiful teachings on the sacredness of human life. An introductory foreword provides background and context to help readers better understand The Gospel of Life. 

The encyclical begins:

The Gospel of life is at the heart of Jesus' message. Lovingly received day after day by the Church, it is to be preached with dauntless fidelity as "good news" to the people of every age and culture.

At the dawn of salvation, it is the Birth of a Child which is proclaimed as joyful news: "I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord" (Lk 2:10-11). The source of this "great joy" is the Birth of the Saviour; but Christmas also reveals the full meaning of every human birth, and the joy which accompanies the Birth of the Messiah is thus seen to be the foundation and fulfilment of joy at every child born into the world (cf. Jn 16:21).

When he presents the heart of his redemptive mission, Jesus says: "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (Jn 10:10). In truth, he is referring to that "new" and "eternal" life which consists in communion with the Father, to which every person is freely called in the Son by the power of the Sanctifying Spirit. It is precisely in this "life" that all the aspects and stages of human life achieve their full significance.

And it's clear that John Paul bases his teaching statements on the threats to human life (Murder, Abortion, Euthanasia, Contraception and Sterilization, and Capital Punishment) on a heightened, supernatural vision of the dignity of human life:

Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase. Life in time, in fact, is the fundamental condition, the initial stage and an integral part of the entire unified process of human existence. It is a process which, unexpectedly and undeservedly, is enlightened by the promise and renewed by the gift of divine life, which will reach its full realization in eternity (cf. 1 Jn 3:1-2). At the same time, it is precisely this supernatural calling which highlights the relative character of each individual's earthly life. After all, life on earth is not an "ultimate" but a "penultimate" reality; even so, it remains a sacred reality entrusted to us, to be preserved with a sense of responsibility and brought to perfection in love and in the gift of ourselves to God and to our brothers and sisters.

The Church knows that this Gospel of life, which she has received from her Lord, 1 has a profound and persuasive echo in the heart of every person-believer and non-believer alike-because it marvelously fulfils all the heart's expectations while infinitely surpassing them. Even in the midst of difficulties and uncertainties, every person sincerely open to truth and goodness can, by the light of reason and the hidden action of grace, come to recognize in the natural law written in the heart (cf. Rom 2:14-15) the sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end, and can affirm the right of every human being to have this primary good respected to the highest degree. Upon the recognition of this right, every human community and the political community itself are founded.

I've turned to George Weigel's Witness to Hope biography of John Paul for context (pages 756-760 in the 1999 First Edition):

• John Paul II wrote the encyclical at the request of those meeting at the "fourth plenary meeting of the College of Cardinals" in April of 1991 [the month Mark and I were married!!] after they'd gathered to "discuss threats to the dignity of human life."
• Then-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger argued that the case of the moral relativism of the Weimar Republic was a warning example: "If moral relativism was legally absolutized in the name of tolerance, basic rights were also relativized and the door was open to totalitarianism. . . . in a society that no longer knew how to make public arguments for absolute values."
• The Cardinals then asked the Pope to write an authoritative statement on "the dignity of human life."
• Thus, he wrote Evangelium Vitae! He wrote a letter to every bishop in the world to get their suggestions, with four years of consultation before issuing the encyclical on March 25, the feast of the Annunciation.

Weigel states that this work "broke new ground in historical analysis, doctrine, moral teaching, and the practical application of moral norms to the complexities of democratic politics" and that it should be read in conjunction with Centesimus Annus (1991) and Veritatis Splendor (1993) as it "argued that democracies risked self-destruction if moral wrongs were legally defended as rights."

For example in paragraph 18, John Paul wrote:

On the one hand, the various declarations of human rights and the many initiatives inspired by these declarations show that at the global level there is a growing moral sensitivity, more alert to acknowledging the value and dignity of every individual as a human being, without any distinction of race, nationality, religion, political opinion or social class.

On the other hand, these noble proclamations are unfortunately contradicted by a tragic repudiation of them in practice. This denial is still more distressing, indeed more scandalous, precisely because it is occurring in a society which makes the affirmation and protection of human rights its primary objective and its boast. How can these repeated affirmations of principle be reconciled with the continual increase and widespread justification of attacks on human life? How can we reconcile these declarations with the refusal to accept those who are weak and needy, or elderly, or those who have just been conceived? These attacks go directly against respect for life and they represent a direct threat to the entire culture of human rights.

In a long encyclical like this, covering several issues and threats, we can't go into detail during our segment Monday morning, but the context of the inspiration and the method of the encyclical are essential to understanding Pope John Paul's 1995 response to the Cardinals' 1991 request. 

As Weigel also comments, when John Paul warned that denying "the right to life from conception until natural death" makes democracies "tyrant states" this was not a nineteenth-century kind of reaction:

This was a critique from inside. A Church that had identified law-governed democracies as the best available expression of basic social ethics was trying to prevent democracies from self-destructing. John Paul, a longtime critic of utilitarianism, was trying to alert democracies old and new to the danger that reducing human beings to useful (or useless) objects did to the cause of freedom.

Thus, the Church was not interfering or imposing on "law-governed democracies" but trying help them remain true to the standards of their own declarations of human rights, including conscience rights.

There are several resources for more analysis of The Gospel of Life, including this De Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame discussion on March 25 this year, and from the Vatican's Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life document on the Pastoral Care for Human Life.

Pope Saint John Paul II, pray for us!

What I'm Reading Now: Newman Retitled

Os Justi Press has started a new series of Theological Classics, well-prepared works, affordably priced, with introductions and other helpful aids for readers. I purchased the re-titled--The Virgin Mary as New Eve--aka/pka as A Letter Addressed to The Rev. E.B. Pusey on Occasion of His Eirenicon by Saint John Henry Newman. The change in title, as the editor of the series, Peter Kwasniewski, explains, focuses our reading on the "principal theme of the entire letter". I've read this work before, on-line at the Newman Reader and in a cheap reprint, and neither format was conducive to an effective study for me. I prefer real books and want excellent books too.

So far what I've read beyond the Editor's Preface is the introduction by Fr. Thomas Crean, OP--and already learned something new! Pusey had written his Eirenicon in response to a work by Henry Manning, another Anglican convert and Catholic priest. Manning's work was titled The Workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church of England, in which he "deprecated those works." Pusey replied with The Church of England a Portion of Christ's One Holy Catholic Church, and a Means of Restoring Visible Unity: An Eirenicon, which was "far from peaceable."

An eirenicon is "a statement that attempts to harmonize conflicting doctrines" and is a borrowing from Greek and according to the OED, Pusey's unique borrowing at the time: 

The earliest known use of the noun eirenicon is in the 1860s.
OED's earliest evidence for eirenicon is from 1865, in the writing of Edward Pusey, Church of England clergyman and theologian.

Father Crean also notes that Newman had recently met Pusey and Keble again after so many years in September of 1865; Keble spoke about the "Eirenicon" and then Newman was surprised to read it and find out just how un-irenic it was. Newman decided to concentrate on Keble's remarks about Catholic Marian doctrine and devotion and began writing his reply on November 28 and finishing it on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1865.

Crean continues his introduction by highlighting the excellences of Newman's Letter with some "animadversions" to certain of Newman's statements, and concludes with analysis of reaction to the Letter from Pusey and others.

When I've read Newman's own work I might make some other comments on this blog. I'm so happy to have this work available in an attractive, well-prepared, and reasonably priced edition.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Preview: The 100th Anniversary of St. Therese of Lisieux's Canonization

On Monday, April 28, we'll resume our Son Rise Morning Show series on great 2025 anniversaries by looking back at the 100th Anniversary of the Canonization of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. 

I'll be on the air at my usual time at the top of the second national hour of the Son Rise Morning Show on EWTN, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

Since this anniversary occurs during the Jubilee Year of Hope, her shrine in Lisieux has planned many events through the year:

From January 4 to Christmas, the Sanctuary of Lisieux will experience a new great Theresian year in 2025, marked by the 100th anniversary of the canonization of Saint Therese on May 17, rich in spiritual and cultural events. It is the story of Therese's life and posterity that inspired us to create a program on the theme of joy in holiness.

This approach is also at the heart of the jubilee of the Catholic Church, “Pilgrims of Hope”, desired by Pope Francis for 2025.

Saint Therese died on September 30, 1897; she was beatified on April 29, 1923 and canonized on May 17, 1925, both Masses celebrated by Pope Pius XI. Her Cause had been hastened through the years: Pope St. Pius X had opened the process of canonization on June 10,1914. Pope Benedict XV sped up the process, bypassing the required 50 year gap between death and beatification, and declared her Venerable on August 14, 1921.

More details here.

Pope St. Paul VI wrote a letter to the Bishop of Lisieux on the one hundredth anniversary of her birth in 1973. Before his brief pontificate, Pope St. John Paul I published a letter to St. Therese. Pope St. John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church in 1977. Pope Benedict XVI praised her Story of a Soul in a Papal audience in 2011. In 2023, Pope Francis wrote about her in an Apostolic Exhortation on the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of her birthday, C’est la Confiance. 

And we shouldn't forget that she went to Pope Leo XIII to try to get him to allow her to go into the Carmel in 1887, when she was too young! He may be the only pope who didn't cooperate with her "cause" at the time.

I think the historical circumstance of the Papacy in Rome during the time of her beatification and canonization by Pope Pius XI is important to consider when we look at some of the details about how her canonization was celebrated--with a packed St. Peter's, lights on the exterior of the basilica, massive crowds in the square. This blog offers some examples of the crowds and decorations of St. Peter's:

The New York Times reported that at least 25,000 French and fully 15,000 American pilgrims were present for the six-hour ceremony. The basilica held almost 60,000 pilgrims, and 200,000 more waited in the square outside. For the first time, loudspeakers were installed in the Basilica, so that all the pilgrims crowded inside (many of whom could not see the sanctuary) were able to hear the Pope’s every word. This innovation was a big success.

Countless electric lights had been installed in the basilica for the ceremony. The newspapers reported extensively that that night, for the first time since 1870, the outer façade of St. Peter’s was illumined.

The illumination was done entirely with thousands of torches and lanterns, which, flickering in the breeze, gave the impression that the whole basilica was enveloped in a curtain of fire. It is estimated that this beautiful scene was witnessed by about a million people. [The New York Times, May 18, 1925, p. 2.]

The illumination was considered a step toward the reconciliation of the church and the Italian state, for it was the first time the facade [of] the Basilica had been lit up since the Pope became a voluntary “prisoner in the Vatican” after the Italian government declared war on the Papal States in 1870.

You see it, don't you? Through this CLOISTERED Carmelite nun and saint, the Vatican opened up to the world and the world--hundreds of thousands of them--came into the basilica and Vatican City for the canonization and to see the basilica illuminated. Many thousands gathered in Lisieux and it was an international event.

The situation between the city of Rome and the city of the Vatican had been tense and difficult since 1870: Pope Pius IX had titled himself the Prisoner of the Vatican; Pope Leo XIII had even considered moving the papacy out of Rome into Malta, or Spain, or Austria. 

It would not be until 1929 that the Lateran Treaty would restore the sovereignty of the reduced Papal States of the Holy See. 

President Woodrow Wilson and others ignored Pope Benedict XV's peace and reconciliation efforts after World War I. Pope XI negotiated many Concordats with European nations to recognize Church interests before he died in 1939--did you know that the USA does not have an Concordat with the Holy See? The US Federal government did not establish official diplomatic ties with the Holy See until 1984.

Isn't that the wonder of St. Therese of Lisieux? Her canonization is an event of immense impact. A Bourgeois young woman with five years of formal education (and a student of St, John of the Cross) is named a Doctor of the Church (by a student of St. John of the Cross); a Cloistered Carmelite is named co-patron of the Missions with Saint Francis Xavier, the "Apostle of the Indies", "Apostle of the Far East", "Apostle of China" and "Apostle of Japan" in 1927.

Pope Francis described her "missionary soul" thus in 2023:

As with every authentic encounter with Christ, this experience of faith summoned her to mission. Therese could define her mission in these words: “I shall desire in heaven the same thing as I do now on earth: to love Jesus and to make him loved”. [15] She wrote that she entered Carmel “to save souls”. [16] In a word, she did not view her consecration to God apart from the pursuit of the good of her brothers and sisters. She shared the merciful love of the Father for his sinful son and the love of the Good Shepherd for the sheep who were lost, astray and wounded. For this reason, Therese is the Patroness of the missions and a model of evangelization. . . .

His closing prayer to her:

Dear Saint Therese,
the Church needs to radiate the brightness,
the fragrance and the joy of the Gospel.
Send us your roses!
Help us to be, like yourself,
ever confident in God’s immense love for us,
so that we may imitate each day
your “little way” of holiness.
Amen.

Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, pray for us!

Eternal rest grant until to him, O Lord, and let Perpetual Light shine upon him. May Pope Francis's soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace. May Pope Francis rest in peace.

On my Reading Wish List: "The Controversial Thomas More"

I received an email from The Center for Thomas More Studies last Wednesday night and contacted my favorite bookstore, Eighth Day Books, the next morning to ask the proprietor to special order a paperback copy of The Controversial Thomas More: Politics, Polemics, and Prison Writings by Travis Curtright.

Curtright confronts the issue head-on, as the interview posted at the University of Notre Dame Press website notes: More is Controversial:

He is controversial in many ways. More’s trial and execution were part of a prolonged and public dispute over the laws passed by Parliament in 1534. His death, too, was subject to competing narratives about his character and conduct from early modern detractors and hagiographers.

Even today, More himself remains a subject of contention. Some argue for Thomas More, the humanist; others present Chancellor More, the heresy-burner; there is also Saint Thomas More, the martyr. Such multiple Mores are signs of how he remains a controversial figure.

I allude to all the above in the book’s title, but I write of “controversial More” in reference to him as a participant in and one subject to religious and political disputes even while a prisoner and during the last months of his life. He is an author of controversial literature. More wrote his way through the religious and political events in 1534-35, and he wished to convey his thinking on these contested matters to others before his death. Every major Tower Work, in effect, responds to a perceived threat to Church unity presented by the Henrician Reformation.

Please read the rest there.

There's an excerpt from the book here.

I look forward to reading it and posting a review here!

I don't think there should be any surprise that More is controversial (isn't everyone?) but I certainly want to read Curtright's thoughts about him and this crucial period of More's life.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us! On April 17, 1534, More was sent to the Tower of London after refusing to sign the Oath of Succession.

Book Review: "The High Hallow: Tolkien's Liturgical Imagination"

This turned out to be a most appropriate book to read over the Easter Triduum since as Tolkien said, the Resurrection of Jesus after His Passion and Death and Descent among the Dead is the ultimate Eucastrophe, that "sudden joyous turn" (p. 50). Please note that I purchased this book because I'd heard a few segments of the author's discussion of the book on the Son Rise Morning Show. According to the publisher, Emmaus Road in Steubenville, Ohio:

J. R. R. Tolkien famously described The Lord of the Rings as “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.” But while these words have been widely and enthusiastically quoted in Catholic studies of Tolkien’s legendarium, readers have not always paid sufficient attention to what Catholic and religious would have meant to Tolkien himself. To do so is to misunderstand the full import of the phrase.

From his childhood as an altar server and “junior inmate” of the Birmingham Oratory to daily Mass with his children as an adult, Tolkien’s Catholic religion was, at its heart, a liturgical affair. To be religious and Catholic in the Tolkienian sense is to be rooted in the prayer of the Church.

The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination takes this claim seriously: The Lord of the Rings (and Tolkien’s myth as a whole) is the product of an imagination seeped in liturgical prayer. In the course of its argument, the Ben Reinhard examines the liturgical pieties that governed Tolkien’s life from childhood to old age, the ways in which the liturgy colored Tolkien’s theory of myth and fantasy, and the alleged absence of religion in Middle-earth. Most importantly, he shows how the plots, themes, and characters of Tolkien’s beloved works can be traced to the patterns of the Church’s liturgical year.

The Table of Contents:

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

    Loss and Gains

    Ira et Studio: A Cautionary Note

Chapter 1: A Liturgical Life

    Words of Joy

    From Refuge to Trap

    The O Oriens and Magnificat: The Liturgical Imagination at Work

Chapter 2: Faerie and Liturgy

    The Wonder of Things: Faerie and Mythic Meaning

    Eucastrophe and Gloria

Chapter 3: From Daybreak to Evening: Faerie and Liturgical Renewal

Chapter 4: Tolkien's Liturgical Cosmos: The Role of Worship in Middle-Earth

    The Fundamental Mythology

    Tolkien's Valar and the Cosmic Liturgy

        Great Above All Gods: Eru and the Valar

        Tolkien, the Valar and the Oratory

    Worship in Rivendell: The Case of the Elves

    The Holy Mountain: Worship Among Tolkien's Men

    The Hobbits' Religious Restoration

        Bombadil and the Old Forest

        Lothlorien

        Initiation and Transformation

Chapter 5: Eala Earendel: Advent, the Calendar, and Tolkien's World

    Liturgical Imagination: Tolkien's Medieval Models

    The Calendar and Tolkien's Imagination

    Soaked with Exile: Adventist Themes in Tolkien

    The World's Chosen: Tolkien's Adventist Vikings ["Sigurd and Gudrun"]

        Aiya Earendil Elenion Ancalima

    The Bells of Christendom? Christmas in Tolkien's Works

        The Ring Goes South: Christmas in Middle Earth?

            [NB: The Fellowship of the Ring begins its quest on December 25]

Chapter 6: Paschal Patterns in The Lord of the Rings

    Paschal Patterning: What This Chapter is (and Is Not) About

    The Journey Through the Desert: The Lenten Quest

        From Death to Life

    Days of Rejoicing--Eastertide, Ascension, and the Renewed Kingdom

Conclusion

    The Horns of Hope: On Tolkien's Achievement

Appendix

    The Domestic Church: Family Life and Tolkien's Imagination

        "Something of Aeternitas": Tolkien and His Children

        "Companions in Shipwreck": Ronald and Edith

                Conclusion

Bibliography and Index

One thing I always appreciate in a book is when the author introduces me to an author I did not know before. In this case, Reinhard, Professor of English at Franciscan University of Steubenville, highlights Father Conrad Pepler, OP, author of Sacramental Prayer and Riches Despised: A Study of the Roots of Religion, listed in the Bibliography and cited in the text, and other works (including The English Religious Heritage).

Reinhard is careful to state his thesis and explore the complexity of Tolkien's own comments about his works, which are sometimes difficult to parse as they can seem contradictory unless one pays special attention to the philologist's word choices. Reinhard helps the reader navigate the paths of mythology, natural theology, and Catholic doctrine, theology, and liturgy in Tolkien's works from Smith of Wootton Major, to The Silmarillion, Sigurd and Gudrun, and of course The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

One of the main themes throughout the book is the loss of enchantment and the connection to nature in our mechanized, materialistic lives today--and indeed how some aspects of the liturgical life of Catholics have not fostered that enchantment and connection since the last decades of the 20th century. Reflecting Tolkien's own regret and even indignation at the changes in liturgy and the liturgical calendar after the Second Vatican Council, Reinhard highlights the loss of Ember and Rogation Days, reflecting the changing of the seasons with fasting, penance, and processions. He cites Pepler, Newman, Bouyer, Lewis, Hopkins, and others to demonstrate the need for these connections to nature and its mysteries, and how Tolkien's work continue to offer us a link to that necessary enchantment and wonder. 

One particular Parochial and Plain sermon by Newman, "The Powers of Nature" serves as a model for this way of thinking about the world around us:

On today's Festival [The feast of Saint Michael the Archangel], it well becomes us to direct our minds to the thought of those Blessed Servants of God, who have never tasted of sin; who are among us, though unseen, ever serving God joyfully on earth as well as in heaven; who minister, through their Maker's condescending will, to the redeemed in Christ, the heirs of salvation.

There have been ages of the world, in which men have thought too much of Angels, and paid them excessive honour; honoured them so perversely as to forget the supreme worship due to Almighty God. This is the sin of a dark age. But the sin of what is called an educated age, such as our own, is just the reverse: to account slightly of them, or not at all; to ascribe all we see around us, not to their agency, but to certain assumed laws of nature. This, I say, is likely to be our sin, in proportion as we are initiated into the learning of this world;—and this is the danger of many (so called) philosophical pursuits, now in fashion, and recommended zealously to the notice of large portions of the community, hitherto strangers to them,—chemistry, geology, and the like; the danger, that is, of resting in things seen, and forgetting unseen things, and our ignorance about them.

I will attempt to say what I mean more at length. The text informs us that Almighty God makes His Angels spirits or winds, and His Ministers a flame of fire. Let us consider what is implied in this.

1. What a number of beautiful and wonderful objects does Nature present on every side of us! and how little we know concerning them! In some indeed we see symptoms of intelligence, and we get to form some idea of what they are. For instance, about brute animals we know little, but still we see they have sense, and we understand that their bodily form which meets the eye is but the index, the outside token of something we do not see. Much more in the case of men: we see them move, speak, and act, and we know that all we see takes place in consequence of their will, because they have a spirit within them, though we do not see it. But why do rivers flow? Why does rain fall? Why does the sun warm us? And the wind, why does it blow? Here our natural reason is at fault; we know, I say, that it is the spirit in man and in beast that makes man and beast move, but reason tells us of no spirit abiding in what is commonly called the natural world, to make it perform its ordinary duties. Of course, it is God's will which sustains it all; so does God's will enable us to move also, yet this does not hinder, but, in one sense we may be truly said to move ourselves: but how do the wind and water, earth and fire, move? . . .

Since Professor Reinhard gave me a new author to explore, cited Newman and many others I have explored, and brought me some wonderful meditations on Tolkien's liturgical imagination during these three great days--filled with mystery, suffering, glory, and angels!--I am grateful. The High Hallow highlighted many themes in The Lord of the Rings and other Tolkien works I've neglected for several years. My late husband Mark enjoyed that great trilogy so much!

BTW: There is a call for the Cause for Tolkien's canonization to be opened. Here's a prayer to that end (for private devotion, of course):

“O Blessed Trinity, we thank You for having graced the Church with John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and for allowing the poetry of Your Creation, the mystery of the Passion of Your Son, and the symphony of the Holy Spirit, to shine through him and his sub-creative imagination. Trusting fully in Your infinite mercy and in the maternal intercession of Mary, he has given us a living image of Jesus the Wisdom of God Incarnate, and has shown us that holiness is the necessary measure of ordinary Christian life and is the way of achieving eternal communion with You. Grant us, by his intercession, and according to Your will, the graces we implore [….], hoping that he will soon be numbered among Your saints. Amen.”

It Is Consummated: Newman on Jesus in the Tomb for Holy Saturday

The last of Newman's meditations on "The Bodily Sufferings of Our Lord" describes the penitent's feelings at the end of Lent and during the morning and day of Holy Saturday, as the Holy Triduum comes to a close. He acknowledges that some of us may feel dissatisfied with how our Lenten fasting, praying, and almsgiving has gone, but we are ready to celebrate and rejoice!

It is Consummated (April 22)

IT is over now, O Lord, as with Thy sufferings, so with our humiliations. We have followed Thee from Thy fasting in the wilderness till Thy death on the Cross. For forty days we have professed to do penance. The time has been long and it has been short; but whether long or short, it is now over. It is over, and we feel a pleasure that it is over; it is a relief and a release. We thank Thee that it is over. We thank Thee for the time of sorrow, but we thank Thee more as we look forward to the time of festival. Pardon our shortcomings in Lent and reward us in Easter.

We have, indeed, done very little for Thee, O Lord. We recollect well our listlessness and weariness; our indisposition to mortify ourselves when we had no plea of health to stand in the way; our indisposition to pray and to meditate—our disorder of mind—our discontent, our peevishness. Yet some of us, perhaps, have done something for Thee. Look on us as a whole, O Lord, look on us as a community, and let what some have done well plead for us all.

Lord, the end is come. We are conscious of our languor and lukewarmness; we do not deserve to rejoice in Easter, yet we cannot help doing so. We feel more of pleasure, we rejoice in Thee more than our past humiliation warrants us in doing; yet may that very joy be its own warrant. O be indulgent to us, for the merits of Thy own all-powerful Passion, and for the merits of Thy Saints. Accept us as Thy little flock, in the day of small things, in a fallen country, in an age when faith and love are scarce. Pity us and spare us and give us peace.

O my own Saviour, now in the tomb but soon to arise, Thou hast paid the price; it is done—consummatum est—it is secured. O fulfil Thy resurrection in us, and as Thou hast purchased us, claim us, take possession of us, make us Thine.

Amen.

Here's a link to the wonderful second reading in the Office of Readings for Holy Saturday as Jesus brings Adam and Eve out of the Hell of the Dead (not of the Damned of course)! 

The Mantegna painting above (The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, 1490) with the extraordinary foreshortening is in the Public Domain.

Saint John Henry Newman on the Happy Sorrowful Mother

Newman's Meditation on the Thirteenth Station (Jesus is taken from the Cross, and laid in Mary's Bosom):

THE multitude have gone home. Calvary is left solitary and still, except that St. John and the holy women are there. Then come Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, and take down from the Cross the body of Jesus, and place it in the arms of Mary.

O Mary, at last thou hast possession of thy Son. Now, when His enemies can do no more, they leave Him in contempt to thee. As His unexpected friends perform their difficult work, thou lookest on with unspeakable thoughts. Thy heart is pierced with the sword of which Simeon spoke. O Mother most sorrowful; yet in thy sorrow there is a still greater joy. The joy in prospect nerved thee to stand by Him as He hung upon the Cross; much more now, without swooning, without trembling, thou dost receive Him to thy arms and on thy lap. Now thou art supremely happy as having Him, though He comes to thee not as He went from thee. He went from thy home, O Mother of God, in the strength and beauty of His manhood, and He comes back to thee dislocated, torn to pieces, mangled, dead. Yet, O Blessed Mary, thou art happier in this hour of woe than on the day of the marriage feast, for then He was leaving thee, and now in the future, as a Risen Saviour, He will be separated from thee no more.

Anyone who watched Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ will remember the tableau of Mary holding Jesus's body in her arms, looking forward at the viewer, with a look of desolation and emptiness on her face. It was a powerful image.

But Newman sees the scene very differently; indeed, very differently even from some of his commentary on Mary's feelings after the Marriage Feast of Cana in several paragraphs of "Our Lord Refuses Sympathy" we discussed on the Son Rise Morning Show (Monday, March 31). 

But in this mediation on the Thirteenth Station of the Cross Newman has left much of that sorrow behind in the joy of the coming Resurrection and Ascension. As the Crucifixion is one of her Seven Sorrows, the Resurrection and Ascension are two of her Seven Joys.

When Our Lord meets His Sorrowful Mother, Newman also emphasizes that Mary sees the contrast between her Son before and during His Passion: "She had known Him beautiful and glorious, with the freshness of Divine Innocence and peace upon His countenance; now she saw Him so changed and deformed that she could scarce have recognised Him, save for the piercing, thrilling, peace-inspiring look He gave her." 

And he ascribes the aid given to Jesus by Simon of Cyrene and Veronica to the Mother of God in the next two stations:

--"This came of Mary's intercession. He prayed, not for Himself, except that He might drink the full chalice of suffering and do His Father's will; but she showed herself a mother by following Him with her prayers, since she could help Him in no other way. She then sent this stranger to help Him. It was she who led the soldiers to see that they might be too fierce with Him. Sweet Mother, even do the like to us. Pray for us ever, Holy Mother of God, pray for us, whatever be our cross, as we pass along on our way."

--"As Jesus toils along up the hill, covered with the sweat of death, a woman makes her way through the crowd, and wipes His face with a napkin. In reward of her piety the cloth retains the impression of the Sacred Countenance upon it.

"The relief which a Mother's tenderness secured is not yet all she did. Her prayers sent Veronica as well as Simon—Simon to do a man's work, Veronica to do the part of a woman. The devout servant of Jesus did what she could. As Magdalen had poured the ointment at the Feast, so Veronica now offered Him this napkin in His passion."

V. We adore Thee O Christ, and we bless Thee.

R. Because by Thy Holy Cross, Thou hast redeemed the world.

Preview: Newman on the Three Falls of Jesus on the Way of the Cross

On the Monday of Holy Week, we'll look at Saint John Henry Newman's Meditations for the Stations of the Cross on the Son Rise Morning Show, specifically at his reflections on the three times Our Lord fell beneath the cross on His way to Golgotha. I'll be on the air at my usual time at the top of the second national hour of the Son Rise Morning Show on EWTN, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

According to a note by J.H.N. these meditations were written "about 1860; used a second time, 1885."

Newman comments that we should pray An Act of Contrition before we begin to pray the Stations.

As I've read these a couple of times in situ at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, my parish here in Wichita, I've meditated on Newman's "I" in these meditations on the three falls of Jesus--I think it's me, not necessarily Newman himself--and his focus on how I've committed Mortal Sin. Perhaps some of us are so used to thinking how hard it is to commit a mortal sin that we might be shocked by this emphasis in these three meditations:

The Third Station

Jesus falls the first time beneath the Cross

JESUS, bowed down under the weight and the length of the unwieldy Cross, which trailed after Him, slowly sets forth on His way, amid the mockeries and insults of the crowd. His agony in the Garden itself was sufficient to exhaust Him; but it was only the first of a multitude of sufferings. He sets off with His whole heart, but His limbs fail Him, and He falls.

Yes, it is as I feared. Jesus, the strong and mighty Lord, has found for the moment our sins stronger than Himself. He falls—yet He bore the load for a while; He tottered, but He bore up and walked onwards. What, then, made Him give way? I say, I repeat, it is an intimation and a memory to thee, O my soul, of thy falling back into mortal sin. I repented of the sins of my youth, and went on well for a time; but at length a new temptation came, when I was off my guard, and I suddenly fell away. Then all my good habits seemed to go at once; they were like a garment which is stripped off, so quickly and utterly did grace depart from me. And at that moment I looked at my Lord, and lo! He had fallen down, and I covered my face with my hands and remained in a state of great confusion.

The Seventh Station

Jesus falls a second time

THE pain of His wounds and the loss of blood increasing at every step of His way, again His limbs fail Him, and He falls on the ground.

What has He done to deserve all this? This is the reward received by the long-expected Messias from the Chosen People, the Children of Israel. I know what to answer. He falls because I have fallen. I have fallen again. I know well that without Thy grace, O Lord, I could not stand; and I fancied that I had kept closely to Thy Sacraments; yet in spite of my going to Mass and to my duties, I am out of grace again. Why is it but because I have lost my devotional spirit, and have come to Thy holy ordinances in a cold, formal way, without inward affection. I became lukewarm, tepid. I thought the battle of life was over, and became secure. I had no lively faith, no sight of spiritual things. I came to church from habit, and because I thought others would observe it. I ought to be a new creature, I ought to live by faith, hope, and charity; but I thought more of this world than of the world to come—and at last I forgot that I was a servant of God, and followed the broad way that leadeth to destruction, not the narrow way which leadeth to life. And thus I fell from Thee.

Perhaps the meditation on the Third Fall is the most surprising as Newman parallels the three times in the Stations when Jesus falls as He carries the Cross with the three times Satan falls:

The Ninth Station

Again, a third time, Jesus falls

JESUS had now reached almost to the top of Calvary; but, before He had gained the very spot where He was to be crucified, again He fell, and is again dragged up and goaded onwards by the brutal soldiery.

We are told in Holy Scripture of three falls of Satan, the Evil Spirit. The first was in the beginning; the second, when the Gospel and the Kingdom of Heaven were preached to the world; the third will be at the end of all things. The first is told us by St. John the Evangelist. He says: "There was a great battle in heaven. Michael and his Angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought, and his angels. And they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, the old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan." The second fall, at the time of the Gospel, is spoken of by our Lord when He says, "I saw Satan, like lightning, falling from heaven." And the third by the same St. John: "There came down fire from God out of heaven, ... and the devil ... was cast into the pool of fire and brimstone."

These three falls—the past, the present, and the future—the Evil Spirit had in mind when he moved Judas to betray our Lord. This was just his hour. Our Lord, when He was seized, said to His enemies, "This is your hour and the power of darkness." Satan knew his time was short, and thought he might use it to good effect. But little dreaming that he would be acting in behalf of the world's redemption, which our Lord's passion and death were to work out, in revenge, and, as he thought, in triumph, he smote Him once, he smote Him twice, he smote Him thrice, each successive time a heavier blow. The weight of the Cross, the barbarity of the soldiers and the crowd, were but his instruments. O Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God, the Word Incarnate, we praise, adore, and love Thee for Thy ineffable condescension, even to allow Thyself thus for a time to fall into the hands, and under the power of the Enemy of God and man, in order thereby to save us from being his servants and companions for eternity.

But Newman has another meditation on this third fall, one that returns to the theme of how I am complicit in Our Lord's suffering in my struggle to be faithful:

Or this

This is the worst fall of the three. His strength has for a while utterly failed Him, and it is some time before the barbarous soldiers can bring Him to. Ah! it was His anticipation of what was to happen to me. I get worse and worse. He sees the end from the beginning. He was thinking of me all the time He dragged Himself along, up the Hill of Calvary. He saw that I should fall again in spite of all former warnings and former assistance. He saw that I should become secure and self-confident, and that my enemy would then assail me with some new temptation, to which I never thought I should be exposed. I thought my weakness lay all on one particular side which I knew. I had not a dream that I was not strong on the other. And so Satan came down on my unguarded side, and got the better of me from my self-trust and self-satisfaction. I was wanting in humility. I thought no harm would come on me, I thought I had outlived the danger of sinning; I thought it was an easy thing to get to heaven, and I was not watchful. It was my pride, and so I fell a third time.

In these three meditations Newman emphasizes our moral and spiritual difficulties, our temptations, our failings, and our danger of thinking it's "an easy thing to get to heaven." 

They're rather bracing, aren't they?

SOUL of Christ, be my sanctification;
Body of Christ, be my salvation;
Blood of Christ, fill all my veins;
Water of Christ’s side, wash out my stains;
Passion of Christ, my comfort be;
O good Jesu, listen to me;
In thy wounds I fain would hide,
Ne’er to be parted from Thy side;
Guard me, should the foe assail me;
Call me when my life shall fail me;
Bid me come to Thee above,
With Thy saints to sing Thy love,
World without end. Amen. (Newman's translation of the Anima Christi)

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

A Prayer Book Review: "Little Offices of the Passion"

I purchased this Little Offices of the Passion devotional from PrayLatin.com, but it is published by Angelus Press:

The saints of the Church have often produced aids for those desiring to grow in devotion to Our Lord, especially to his Passion; and while the saints have employed many different genres to inform devotion to Christ, there is perhaps none greater than the devotion offered in a liturgical Office.

This little book, which presents two of these Offices by two of the great saints of the Church, is what men and women of the medieval period would have called a Book of Hours. . . .

The two Offices presented here begin the narrative of the Passion in slightly different places: St. Bonaventure’s begins at Matins and Lauds, remembering Christ imprisoned in the early hours of the morning, while St. Francis’s Office begins at Compline the night prior by commemorating the Agony in the Garden.

These Offices invite us to enter more deeply into the memory of the Lord’s Passion, and more deeply into the devotional lives of St. Francis, St. Bonaventure, and even St. Louis IX. In St. Bonaventure’s Office we are taken by a more conventional route into the Passion of Christ. In St. Francis’s Office of the Passion, we find a more unique Office composed of texts that invite us into St. Francis’s own prayers. The Seraphic Father not only presses us to become more devoted to Christ’s suffering; he teaches us to praise God through the created world, to grow in devotion to Our Lady, and to more clearly recognize God as the source of all the goods we have, those of nature gifted to us through creation and those of grace gifted to us by God’s redeeming acts, especially Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. Here is how we can better know these saints and, with them, take on the mind of Christ, their Lord and Master: by taking up their prayers daily. . . .

Since I pray with some form of the liturgy most of the time, I've appreciated these Little Offices of the Liturgy and the meditation and devotion they've added to my prayers this Lent. The volume offers the texts of both Franciscans' versions of the Little Office, plus the Marian Antiphons, the four Gospel accounts of the Passion, and the Seven Penitential Psalms, with an introduction and explanation of the differences between the versions.

I've found Saint Bonaventure's more easy to adapt to so far because he begins in the morning of Good Friday and continues through the events of the Passion, matching them to Matins, Laud, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline; each hour includes the psalm, hymns, and prayers. 

Saint Francis's version of the Little Hours of the Passion begins with Compline and the Agony and the Garden, and one has to select the psalms, as adapted by Saint Francis, to be prayed at each hour according to the season of the year. Saint Francis also includes a meditation on the Our Father with prayers for each intercession, and a series of the praises of God. The psalms also contain interpolations selected by Saint Francis of Assisi.

The book is pocket sized, with texts in both England and Latin, beautiful illustrations from a book of the hours, three ribbons, and 179 pages. The Angelus Press website has several pictures to give you an idea of the size and beauty of this devotional.

It is not just for Lent, of course, as it could become part of anyone's Friday devotions, since each is Good as every Sunday is Easter! I'd recommend it.

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us!

Saint Bonaventure, pray for us!

Picture Credits: (Public Domain): Saint Bonaventure by Claude Francis; Saint Francis of Assisi by Cigoli (Lodovico Cardi)

Preview: Newman's Meditations on the Bodily Sufferings of Our Lord

On Monday, April 7, we'll continue our discussion of Saint John Henry Newman's Lenten meditations on the Son Rise Morning Show. This time we will look at "The Bodily Sufferings of Our Lord", which he prepared for Holy Week on Wednesday and Maundy Thursday. I'll be on the air at my usual time at the top of the second national hour of the Son Rise Morning Show on EWTN, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here. As we've entered Passiontide--with statues and crucifixes veiled in some churches, a tradition that may be observed here in the USA--our thoughts turn more and more to the Passion of Christ and we prepare for the Holy Triduum.

Newman, respecting the mystery of the hypostatic union of the two natures of Our Incarnate Lord, reflects on how His "bodily pains" were intensified by His will in the first meditation for Wednesday in Holy Week:

HIS bodily pains were greater than those of any martyr, because He willed them to be greater. All pain of body depends, as to be felt at all, so to be felt in this or that degree, on the nature of the living mind which dwells in that body. . . . Man feels more than any brute, because he has a soul; Christ's soul felt more than that of any other man, because His soul was exalted by personal union with the Word of God. Christ felt bodily pain more keenly than any other man, as much as man feels pain more keenly than any other animal.

Newman offers some reflections on pain and suffering and how we experience them:

It is a relief to pain to have the thoughts drawn another way. Thus, soldiers in battle often do not know when they are wounded. Again, persons in raging fevers seem to suffer a great deal; then afterwards they can but recollect general discomfort and restlessness. . . . And so again, an instantaneous pain is comparatively bearable; it is the continuance of pain which is so heavy, and if we had no memory of the pain we suffered last minute, and also suffer in the present, we should find pain easy to bear; but what makes the second pang grievous is because there has been a first pang; and what makes the third more grievous is that there has been a first and second; the pain seems to grow because it is prolonged.

Then he notes that Jesus endured His Passion without any of those distractions or ameliorations: 

. . . Now Christ suffered, not as in a delirium or in excitement, or in inadvertency, but He looked pain in the face! He offered His whole mind to it, and received it, as it were, directly into His bosom, and suffered all He suffered with a full consciousness of suffering.

Christ would not drink the drugged cup which was offered to Him to cloud His mind. He willed to have the full sense of pain. His soul was so intently fixed on His suffering as not to be distracted from it; and it was so active, and recollected the past and anticipated the future, and the whole passion was, as it were, concentrated on each moment of it, and all that He had suffered and all that He was to suffer lent its aid to increase what He was suffering. Yet withal His soul was so calm and sober and unexcited as to be passive, and thus to receive the full burden of the pain on it, without the power of throwing it off Him. Moreover, the sense of conscious innocence, and the knowledge that His sufferings would come to an end, might have supported Him; but He repressed the comfort and turned away His thoughts from these alleviations that He might suffer absolutely and perfectly.

His prayer incorporates his desire to be able to suffer as Christ suffered:

O my God and Saviour, who went through such sufferings for me with such lively consciousness, such precision, such recollection, and such fortitude, enable me, by Thy help, if I am brought into the power of this terrible trial, bodily pain, enable me to bear it with some portion of Thy calmness. Obtain for me this grace, O Virgin Mother, who didst see thy Son suffer and didst suffer with Him; that I, when I suffer, may associate my sufferings with His and with thine, and that through His passion, and thy merits and those of all Saints, they may be a satisfaction for my sins and procure for me eternal life.

On Maundy Thursday, as Christ endures the Agony in the Garden, preparing for the Crucifixion, Newman has two main themes: Our Lord's Soul and His Heart, in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the Cross on Golgotha:

Our Lord's sufferings were so great, because His soul was in suffering. What shows this is that His soul began to suffer before His bodily passion, as we see in the agony in the garden. The first anguish which came upon His body was not from without—it was not from the scourges, the thorns, or the nails, but from His soul. His soul was in such agony that He called it death: "My soul is sorrowful even unto death." The anguish was such that it, as it were, burst open His whole body. It was a pang affecting His heart; as in the deluge the floods of the great deep were broken up and the windows of heaven were open. The blood, rushing from his tormented heart, forced its way on every side, formed for itself a thousand new channels, filled all the pores, and at length stood forth upon His skin in thick drops, which fell heavily on the ground.

He remained in this living death from the time of His agony in the garden; and as His first agony was from His soul, so was His last. As the scourge and the cross did not begin His sufferings, so they did not close them. It was the agony of His soul, not of His body, which caused His death. His persecutors were surprised to hear that He was dead. How, then, did He die? That agonised, tormented heart, which at the beginning so awfully relieved itself in the rush of blood and the bursting of His pores, at length broke. It broke and He died. It would have broken at once, had He not kept it from breaking. At length the moment came. He gave the word and His heart broke.

And Newman's closing prayers for this meditation:

O tormented heart, it was love, and sorrow, and fear, which broke Thee. It was the sight of human sin, it was the sense of it, the feeling of it laid on Thee; it was zeal for the glory of God, horror at seeing sin so near Thee, a sickening, stifling feeling at its pollution, the deep shame and disgust and abhorrence and revolt which it inspired, keen pity for the souls whom it has drawn headlong into hell—all these feelings together Thou didst allow to rush upon Thee. Thou didst submit Thyself to their powers, and they were Thy death. That strong heart, that all-noble, all-generous, all-tender, all-pure heart was slain by sin.

O most tender and gentle Lord Jesus, when will my heart have a portion of Thy perfections? When will my hard and stony heart, my proud heart, my unbelieving, my impure heart, my narrow selfish heart, be melted and conformed to Thine? O teach me so to contemplate Thee that I may become like Thee, and to love Thee sincerely and simply as Thou hast loved me.

I know, as usual, that I've given Matt and Anna too much for us to discuss on Monday, but they always find the right questions and/or points of discussion!

On the Monday of Holy Week (April 14), I've selected a few of the meditations Newman wrote for the Stations of the Cross for our final reflection in this series.

Saint John Henry Newman also has a beautiful brief meditation in this section for Holy Saturday. I'll post it here on April 19.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image source (Public Domain): El Greco's Jesus Carrying the Cross, 1580.

Image source (Public Domain): Francesco Trevisani, Agony in the Garden, 1740.