BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Lay Cistercians of Gethsemani Abbey - ECPv6.15.18//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-WR-CALNAME:Lay Cistercians of Gethsemani Abbey X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Lay Cistercians of Gethsemani Abbey REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-Robots-Tag:noindex X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20230312T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20231105T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20240310T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20241103T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20250309T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20251102T060000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240417 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240418 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240413T200652Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240413T200652Z UID:11807-1713312000-1713398399@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading DESCRIPTION:IN CHRIST SHALL ALL BE MADE ALIVE \nBy St John Henry Newman4 \n◊◊◊ \nJesus Christ says\, “As the Father has life in Himself\, so has He given also \nto the Son to have life in Himself;” and afterwards He says\, “Because I live\, you \nalso shall live.” It would seem then\, that as Adam is the author of death to the \nwhole human race\, so is Christ the origin of immortality. When Adam ate the \nforbidden fruit\, it was as a poison spreading through his whole nature\, soul and \nbody\, and from there through every one of his descendants. We are told \nexpressly “in Adam all die.” We are born heirs to that infection of nature which \nfollowed upon his fall. \nBut we are also told\, “As in Adam all die\, even so in Christ shall all be \nmade alive;” and the same law of God’s providence is maintained in both cases. \nAdam spreads poison; Christ diffuses life eternal. Christ communicates life to \nus\, one by one\, by means of that holy and incorrupt nature which He assumed \nfor our redemption. Therefore St. Paul says that “the last Adam was made” not \nmerely “a living soul\,” but “a quickening” or life-giving “Spirit”\, as being “the \nLord from heaven.” Let us not doubt\, though we do not sensibly approach Him\, \nthat He can still give us the virtue of His purity and incorruption\, as He has \npromised\, and in a more heavenly and spiritual manner than “in the days of His \nflesh;” in a way which does not remove merely the ailments of the body\, but \nsows the seed of eternal life in body and soul. \nLet us not deny Him the glory of His life-giving holiness\, that quickening \ngrace which is the renovation of our whole race\, a spirit quick and powerful and \npiercing\, so as to leaven the whole mass of human corruption and make it live. \nHe is the first-fruits of the Resurrection: we follow Him each in our own order\, \nas we are hallowed by His inward presence. And in this sense\, among others\, \nChrist\, in the Scripture phrase\, is “formed in us;” that is\, communication is \nmade to us of His new nature\, which sanctifies the soul\, and makes the body \nimmortal. \nSuch then is our risen Savior in Himself and towards us: — conceived by \nthe Holy Spirit; holy from the womb; dying\, but abhorring corruption; rising \nagain the third day by His own inherent life; exalted as the Son of God and Son \nof man\, to raise us after Him; and filling us incomprehensibly with His \nimmortal nature\, till we become like Him; filling us with a spiritual life which \nmay expel the poison of the tree of knowledge and restore us to God. How \nwonderful a work of grace! Strange it was that Adam should be our death\, but \nstranger still and very gracious\, that God Himself should be our life\, by means \nof that human tabernacle which He has taken on Himself. \n  \n4 Parochial and Plain Sermons. John Henry Newman. Ignatius Press. San Francisco. 1987. p.316.8 \n  \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-181/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240418 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240419 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240413T200902Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240413T200902Z UID:11809-1713398400-1713484799@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading DESCRIPTION:OUR CORRUPTIBLE AND MORTAL BODY \nby Pope St Leo the Great5 \n◊◊◊ \nThough we once knew Christ according to the flesh\, we now do so no \nlonger. The resurrection of the Lord did not mean the end of his flesh\, but its \ntransformation\, and his bodily substance was not consumed by its increase in \npower. The quality changed\, but the nature did not pass away. What could die \nbecame immortal\, what could be harmed became incorruptible. And so he says \ncorrectly that he no longer knows the body of Christ in its former state\, because \nthere remains nothing in it subject to suffering or to weakness. It remains \nessentially human\, but surpasses itself through the glory of the resurrection. It \nis not surprising that Paul says this of the body of Christ\, when he says about \nChristians who live according to the Spirit\, From now on\, we know no one \naccording to the flesh. From now on\, he says\, resurrection in Christ has begun \nin us; from Christ who died for all comes the shape of all our hope. We do not \nhold back through diffidence\, nor are we held in suspense through uncertainty: \nwe have received the beginnings of what we are promised\, and see already with \nthe eyes of faith the things that will be ours. Rejoicing in the lifting up of our \nnature\, we possess already all that we believe. \nTherefore\, let us not be taken up by the appearances of things that pass\, \nnor let things which are merely of this earth turn our thoughts from the things \nof heaven. Let us take as passing those things which have even now scarcely \nany reality; and with our minds intent on those that endure\, let us fix our desire \nthere where what is offered is eternal. For though we are saved only in hope\, \nand carry with us still our corruptible and mortal body\, yet we rightly claim to \nbe no longer in the flesh if carnal passions do not rule us: rightly do we disclaim \nallegiance to something which no longer holds us in its power. And so when the \nApostle says: “Make no provision for the flesh\, to follow its desires\, we \nunderstand that he has not forbidden those things consistent with our bodily \nhealth\, or those demanded by human weakness. But in that we are not to cater \nto all our desires\, or fulfill all that the flesh covets\, we recognize that he has \nwarned us to observe a certain measure of temperance\, that the flesh\, which is \ncreated subject to the soul\, is not given too much\, nor is denied what is \nnecessary. \n  \n5 Sermo de Resurrectione Domini I. –nn 4-5; SC\, Vol 74\, pp 125-126.10 \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-182/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240419 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240420 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240413T201117Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240413T201117Z UID:11811-1713484800-1713571199@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading DESCRIPTION:THE CRUCIAL CHALLENGE \nOF OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH \nBy Thomas Merton \n◊◊◊ \nThe season of Lent summoned us to change our hearts\, to effect in \nourselves the Christian metanoia. But at the same time Lent has reminded us \nperhaps all too clearly of our own powerlessness to change our lives in any way. \nLent in the liturgical year plays the role of the Law\, the pedagogue\, who \nconvinces us of sin and inflicts upon us the crushing evidence of our own \nnothingness. Hence it disquiets and sobers us\, awakening in us perhaps some \nsense of that existential “dread” of the creature whose freedom suspends him \nover an abyss which may be an infinite meaninglessness\, and unbounded \ndespair. This is the fruit of that Law which judges our freedom together with its \npowerlessness to impose full meaning on our lives merely by conforming to a \nmoral code. Is there nothing more than this? \nBut now the power of Easter has burst upon us with the resurrection of \nChrist. Now we find in ourselves a strength which is not our own\, and which is \nfreely given to us whenever we need it\, raising us above the Law\, giving us a new \nlaw which is hidden in Christ: the law of his merciful love for us. Now we no \nlonger strive to be good because we have to\, because it is a duty\, but because our \njoy is to please him who has given all his love to us! Now our life is full of \nmeaning. \nEaster is the hour of our own deliverance–from what? Precisely from \nLent and from its hard Law which accuses and judges our infirmity. We are no \nlonger under the Law. We are delivered from the harsh judgment! Here is all \nthe greatness and all the unimaginable splendor of the Easter mystery. Here is \nthe “grace” of Easter which we fail to lay hands on because we are afraid to \nunderstand its full meaning. To understand Easter and live it\, we must \nrenounce our dread of newness and of freedom! \nDeath exercises a twofold power in our lives: it holds us by sin\, and it \nholds us by the Law. To die to death and live a new life in Christ we must die \nnot only to sin but also to the Law. \nEvery Christian knows that he must die to sin. But the great truth that St \nPaul exhausted himself to preach in season and out is a truth that we Christians \nhave barely grasped\, a truth that has got away from us\, that constantly eludes \nus and has continued to do so for twenty centuries. We cannot get it into our \nheads what it means to be no longer slaves of the Law. And the reason is that \nwe do not have the courage to face this truth which contains in itself the crucial \nchallenge of our Christian faith\, the great reality that makes Christianity \ndifferent from every other religion. \n  \n6 New York: Farrar\, Straus & Giroux\, 1965\, pp. 145-146.12 \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-183/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240420 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240421 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240413T201333Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240413T201333Z UID:11813-1713571200-1713657599@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading DESCRIPTION:THE REALITY OF THE RESURRECTION \nBy Bruce Vawter \n◊◊◊ \nIn biblical faith the resurrection is something; something did occur to \naccount for the appearances of Jesus after his death. It is not to retreat into \nobscurity or equivocation to confess that we have no better way of defining that \nsomething than to call it resurrection. We cannot define what is indefinable in \nterms of human experience; we can only describe it in some fashion by the use \nof the pictures we call analogies. The picture we use following the New \nTestament precedent to describe both what God effected in Christ and\, with it \nas the proleptic example\, what its faith promises to all who share in God’s \nkingdom\, is mythical to the extent that\, taken in all literalness\, it might equally \nwell serve to describe the resuscitation of a corpse\, which the New Testament \ndoes not intend to do… \nPaul…for all his insistence on the resurrection as a reality\, did not think \nof it as a resurrection of dead flesh: “Perhaps someone will say\, ‘How are the \ndead to be raised up? What kind of body will they have?’ A nonsensical question! \nThe seed you sow does not germinate unless it dies. When you sow\, you do not \nsow the full-blown plant but a kernel of wheat or some other grain. God gives \nbody to it as he pleases — to each seed its own fruition… So is it with the \nresurrection of the dead. \nPaul admittedly tells us more about what\, in his view\, the resurrection is \nnot than what it is\, but at the same time he tells us enough to dissuade us from \ndismissing lightly the testimony of his senses\, which he joined to the witness of \nhis tradition. Here was a man quite conscious of the validity of what are \nsometimes thought to be modern and scientific objections to the idea of \nresurrection; a man convinced that something had occurred that he could only \ncall resurrection while regretting the inadequacy of the concept. Paul was as \nprepared as anyone today for demythologizing\, but he was not prepared to \ndisallow any fact out of his inability to explain it. Rather than deny the fact\, he \npreferred to retain the myth with all its attendant ambiguities. \n  \n7 This Man Jesus\, Bruce Vawter. Doubleday & Co. 1973. p.48-9.14. \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-184/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240421 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240422 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240421T003851Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240421T003851Z UID:11817-1713657600-1713743999@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Skema: Fourth Week in Easter DESCRIPTION:Biblical Readings for Office and Mass\n4th Week of Easter\n\n\nMass Readings: Sunday (B)\, Weekdays (II)\nApril 21 – 27\, 2024\n\n\n\nSun\n21\nMon\n22\nTue\n23\nWed\n24\nThu\n25\nFri\n26\nSat\n27\n\n\nOffice\n4th Sunday of Easter\nBl Maria Gabriella\nEaster Weekday\nEaster Weekday\nSt Mark\nEaster Weekday\nSt Rafael Arnaiz Baron\n\n\nVigils\nActs 12:1-23\nActs 12:24-13:14a\nActs 13:14b-43\nActs13:44-14:7\n1 Thess 2:1-13\nActs 15:5-35\nActs 15:36-16:15\n\n\nLauds\nRev 19:19-21\nRev 20:11-15\nRev 21:5-8\nRev 21:15-21\nSir 51:13-22\nRev 22:14-21\nEph 1:11-14\n\n\nMass\n50\n279\n280\n281\n555\n283\n284\n\n\n1st\nActs 4:8-12\nActs 11:1-18\nActs 11:19-26\nActs 12:24-13:5a\n1 Pet 5:5b-14\nActs 13:26-33\nActs 13:44-52\n\n\n2nd\n1 John 3:1-2\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGospel\nJohn 10:11-18\nJohn 10:1-10\nJohn 10:22-30\nJohn 12:44-50\nMark 16:15-20\nJohn 14:1-6\nJohn 14:7-14\n\n\nVespers\nRev 20:4-6\nRev 21:1-4\nRev 21:9-14\nRev 21:22-27\n2 Tim 4:1-11\nEph 1:1-10\nEph 1:15-23 URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/skema-fourth-week-in-easter/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240421 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240422 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240421T004555Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240421T004555Z UID:11819-1713657600-1713743999@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:4th Sunday in Easter DESCRIPTION:THE SHEPHERD OF OUR SOULS\nFrom a sermon by St John Henry Newman1\n◊◊◊\nOur Lord here appropriates to Himself the title under which He had been\nforetold by the Prophets. “David My servant shall be king over them” says\nAlmighty God by the mouth of Ezekiel: “and they all shall have one Shepherd.”\nAnd in the book of Zechariah\, “Awake\, O sword\, against My shepherd\, and\nagainst the man that is My fellow\, says the Lord of Hosts; smite the Shepherd\,\nand the sheep shall be scattered.” And in like manner St. Peter speaks of our\nreturning “to the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls.” \n“The good Shepherd gives His life for the sheep.” In those countries of\nthe East where our Lord appeared\, the office of a shepherd is not only a lowly\nand simple office\, and an office of trust\, as it is with us\, but\, moreover\, an office\nof great hardship and of peril. Our flocks are exposed to no enemies\, such as\nour fidelity to the sheep by encounters with fierce beasts of prey. The hireling\nshepherd is not tried. But where our Lord dwelt in the days of His flesh it was\notherwise. There it was true that the good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep\n– “but he that is a hireling\, and whose own the sheep are not\, sees the wolf\ncoming\, and leaves the sheep\, and flees\, and the wolf catches them and scatters\nthe sheep. The hireling flees\, because he is a hireling\, and cares not for the\nsheep.” \nOur Lord found the sheep scattered; or\, as He had said shortly before\, “All\nthat ever came before Me are thieves and robbers;” and in consequence the\nsheep had no guide. “When Christ came and saw the multitudes He was moved\nwith compassion on them because they fainted\, and were scattered abroad as\nsheep having no shepherd.” \nSo was it all over the world when Christ came in His infinite mercy “to\ngather in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.” And though for\na moment\, when in the conflict with the enemy the good Shepherd had to lay\ndown His life for the sheep\, they were left without a guide\, yet He soon rose\nfrom death to live for ever\, and said\, “He that scattered Israel will gather him\,\nas a shepherd does his flock.” And as He says Himself in the parable before us\,\n“He called His own sheep and they follow Him for they know His voice.” So\,\non His resurrection\, while Mary wept\, He did call her by her name\, and she\nturned herself and knew Him by the ear whom she had not known by the eye.\nSo\, too\, He said\, “Simon\, son of Jonas\, do you love me?” And He added\, “Follow\nMe.” And so again He and His Angel told the women\, “Behold He goes before\nyou into Galilee… go tell My brethren\, that they go into Galilee\, and there shall\nthey see me.” \n1 Plain and Parochial Sermons. John Cardinal Henry Newman\, Ignatius Press\, 1987\, 00. 1686-87. URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/4th-sunday-in-easter/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240422 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240423 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240421T005041Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240421T005041Z UID:11821-1713744000-1713830399@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Bl Maria Gabriella DESCRIPTION:MY ONLY DESIRE IS TO LOVE\nFrom the final letter of Blessed Maria Gabriella to her mother 2\n◊◊◊\nI do not want you to get ideas and begin to pray for my recovery. Pray\ninstead that the Lord will do with me whatever is to his greater glory… I am\nalways content to do the will of God\, whatever it might be\, for that is my joy\, my\nhappiness\, my peace… Remain firm in your dispositions of abandonment to the\nwill of God and bless him always for whatever he chooses to do with me. Forget\nthat I am sick and think only about the Lord: thank him and bless him for the\ngraces and the gifts he has given me. \nI feel that I love my Spouse with all my heart\, but I would like to love him\neven more. I would like to love him for those who do not love him\, for those who\nscorn him\, for those who offend him. In short\, my only desire is to love. \nMy happiness is great and no one can take it from me. It is greater than\nthat enjoyed by rich people in their mansions who\, while they enjoy themselves\,\nperhaps have death in their hearts. There is no happiness greater than being\nable to suffer something for Jesus and for the salvation of souls… You must be\nhappy as well\, mother\, and thank the Lord for this grace which he has given to\nyou and to me… I want you all to be as happy as I am… Resign yourselves and\nrejoice\, all of you\, in the Lord. \nDo not think that I am not well cared for—on the contrary\, I am taken\ncare of hand and foot. The Reverend Mother is so good that she does not spare\nherself anything in order to give me every possible assistance… No mother’s\nheart could outdo her in the love and attention she demonstrates towards me.\nI thank the Lord\, and will thank and bless him always for all he has done for me\nand for you\, but I feel that I will never be able to thank him enough. \n2\nfrom Martha Driscoll\, OCSO\, The Silent Herald of Unity\, Kalamazoo\, MI: Cistercian Publications\, 1990\, pp. 99-\n100. URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/bl-maria-gabriella/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240423 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240424 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240421T005311Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240421T005311Z UID:11823-1713830400-1713916799@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Easter Weekday DESCRIPTION:JESUS IN THE HOLY EUCHARIST\nFrom the Spiritual Autobiography of St Charles de Foucauld 3\n◊◊◊\nLord Jesus\, you are in the Holy Eucharist. You are there\, a yard away in the\ntabernacle. Your body\, your soul\, your human nature\, your divinity\, your whole\nbeing is there\, in its twofold nature. How close you are\, my God\, my Saviour\, my\nJesus\, my Brother\, my Spouse\, my Beloved! \nYou were not nearer to the Blessed Virgin during the nine months she\ncarried you in her womb than you are to me when you rest on my tongue at Holy\nCommunion. You were no closer to the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph in the caves\nat Bethlehem or the house at Nazareth or during the flight into Egypt\, or at any\nmoment of that divine family life than you are to me at this moment – and so many\nothers – in the tabernacle. St. Mary Magdalene was no closer to you when she sat\nat your feet at Bethany than I am here at the foot of this altar. You were no nearer\nto your apostles when you were sitting in the midst of them than you are to me\nnow\, my God. How blessed I am! \nIt is wonderful\, my Lord\, to be alone in my cell and converse there with you\nin the silence of the night – and you are there as God\, and by your grace. But to\nstay in my cell when I could be before the Blessed Sacrament – why\, it would be as\nthough St. Mary Magdalene had left you on your own when you were at Bethany\nto go and think about you alone in her room! It is a precious and devout thing\, O\nGod\, to go and kiss the places you made holy during your life on earth – the stones\nof Gethsemane and Calvary\, the ground along the Way of Sorrows\, the waves of\nthe sea of Galilee – but to prefer it to your tabernacle would be to desert the Jesus\nliving beside me\, to leave him alone\, going away alone to venerate the dead stones\nin places where he is no longer. It would be to leave… the Jesus living at my side\nto go into another room to greet his portrait… \nWherever the sacred Host is to be found\, there is the living God\, there is your\nSaviour\, as really as when he was living and talking in Galilee and Judea\, as really\nas he now is in heaven. Never deliberately miss Holy Communion. Communion is\nmore than life\, more than all the good things of this world\, more than the whole\nuniverse: it is God himself… \n3 St Charles de Foucauld. Spiritual Autobiography of Charles de Foucauld. Ed. JeanFranҫois Six. Trans. J. Holland Smith. New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons\, 1964. 98-99. URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/easter-weekday-6/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240424 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240425 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240421T005841Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240421T005841Z UID:11825-1713916800-1714003199@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Easter Weekday DESCRIPTION:THE NEW AGE OF THE RESURRECTION\nBy Thomas Merton 4\n◊◊◊\nThe “new life\,” the life of the Spirit\, life “in Christ\,” is communicated to\nthe human spirit by the invisible Mission of the Holy Spirit — a direct\nconsequence of the Resurrection of Jesus. Therefore the “new creation”\ninstituted by the second Adam is in fact a prolongation of his Resurrection.\nThe new world which is called the Kingdom of God\, the world in which God\nreigns in us by his divine Spirit\, the world of the Second Adam is\, in fact\, the\nEon of the Resurrection — the new age that begins to dawn with the rising of\nChrist from the dead\, which reaches out to touch\, with the pure spiritual light\nof that dawning\, each soul newly incorporated into the Risen Christ\, until all\nthe elect are gathered together in him and the Kingdom is openly and\ndefinitively established without question and without opposition in the\ngeneral resurrection of all the dead.\n“If\,” says St Paul\, “by reason of the one man’s offense death reigned\nthrough the one man\, much more will they who receive the abundance of\ngrace …reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.” That is exactly the Pauline\nconcept of the Kingdom of God — a Kingdom of superabundant spiritual life\,\nin which the saints “reign in life through the one Christ.” \nTo reign in life is to have domination and autonomy by union with God\nas the source of life. It is to have and enjoy the sublime liberty of the children\nof God\, the freedom of the Spirit by which Christ has come to make us free.\nThe early Church was entirely penetrated with this doctrine of liberation\,\nplenitude and life. Wherever the authentic Christian spirit has prevailed\, it\nhas always been marked by this same perfect liberty and vitality in the Spirit.\nFor always and everywhere the Spirit of Christ teaches this message to those\nwho are his own: “For whoever are led by the Spirit of God\, they are the\nchildren of God. Now you have not received a spirit of bondage so as to be\nagain in fear\, but you have received a spirit of adoption\, by virtue of which\nwe cry\, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself gives testimony to our spirit that\nwe are the children of God.” \nIn this view of Christ’s role as second Adam\, establishing the final\nvictory of life over death\, we are still confronted with the ideas of death and\nlife together. The liberation from sin and death is effected by the death of\nChrist. The communication of life to our souls is effected by the resurrection\nof Christ. “Jesus… was delivered up for our sins\, and rose again for our\njustification.” We shall see that in order to enter fully into communion with\nthe life brought to us by Christ we must in some sense — sacramentally\,\nascetically\, mystically — die with Christ and rise with him from the dead. The\nwhole life of the Kingdom of God consists then in the gradual extension of\nthe spiritual effects of the death and resurrection of Jesus to one soul after\nanother until Christ lives perfectly in all whom he has called to himself. \n4  THE NEW MAN\, Thomas Merton (Farrar\, Straus & Cudahy\, NY 1961) pp. 152-154. URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/easter-weekday-7/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240425 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240426 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240421T010348Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240421T010348Z UID:11827-1714003200-1714089599@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:St. Mark DESCRIPTION:ST MARK’S GOSPEL\nBy Dom Damasus Winzen 5\n◊◊◊\nIn contrast to St Matthew\, who starts his gospel with the human\ngenealogy of Christ\, “the son of David\, the son of Abraham\,” and to Luke\, who\nexplains in his short preface that he intends to “write in order” the facts which\nhe has most diligently obtained\, St Mark’s gospel keeps most faithfully the\noriginal character of the glad tidings of Christ as the Son of God and the\nMessiah. He writes not as a historian but as a preacher\, recording faithfully\nwhat he had heard from St Peter. In fact\, St Peter’s address to the Roman\ncolonel Cornelius contains the outlines of St Mark’s gospel. This begins with\n“the baptism which John preached” and how “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth\nwith the Holy Spirit\, and with power”; The first main section describes Christ’s\nministry in Galilee\, the “word which began in Galilee\, about Jesus of Nazareth\,\nwho went about doing good\, and healing all that were oppressed by the devil\,\nfor God was with him”. A brief survey deals with “the things that he did in the\nland of the Jews (Judea) and in Jerusalem”\, and leads up to the second main\nsection of the gospel which tells us how “they killed him\, hanging him upon a\ntree\,” and how “God raised him up on the third day\, and gave him to be made\nmanifest”. \nThe fact that St Mark’s narrative of the Lord’s passion and resurrection is\non a scale out of all proportion with the rest of the book indicates clearly that in\nthe intention of the evangelist the person of the suffering and glorified Lord is\nthe core and center of the glad tidings. Here is the key to the “mystery of the\nKingdom of God” which his gospel proclaims. One has only to read the first\nchapter of St Mark’s gospel to realize that the mystery of the kingdom is the \ncross of the king. This first chapter contains the “beginnings” of the entire\ngospel. The activity of the precursor is the “beginning” of Christ’s work of\nsalvation. As Christ reveals the mystery of the kingdom in his word and in his\nwork\, so does John preach repentance and administer baptism. Because the\nkingdom of God will not come in power and glory but in the self-sacrificing\ncharity of the Son of God\, only those can enter into it who “repent” or\, better\,\n“change their hearts” from the selfishness of the flesh to the selflessness of the\nSpirit. \nThe rite of baptism\, through which the whole person is immersed in water\nand then rises\, as it were\, to a new life\, foreshadows the work of salvation of the\nMessiah Jesus who will be swallowed up in the waters of death to rise in the\nfullness of the Spirit. Rightly\, therefore\, does Christ begin his public life as\nMessiah by having himself baptized by John. He who never knew sin and did\nnot need repentance has himself made into sin for us\, so that in him we might\nbe turned into the holiness of God. His death is like another flood which drowns\nall that is earthly in us. \nWhen he “comes up out of the water” foreshadowing his resurrection\, he\nis like another Noah\, the favorite son of God. Like Noah he receives the dove\,\nthe likeness of the Holy Spirit who descends upon this new Son of David\, to\ndrive him like a captive into the desert. There he is “with the wild beasts.”\nExposed to the attack of the enemy\, he remains victorious so that after forty\ndays and forty nights\, which are symbolic of the “old age\,” the angels come and\nminister to him as the Lord of the new age. Through humiliation to exaltation\,\nthat is the way of the Messiah Jesus\, who in his life repeats and fulfills the march\nof the chosen people from Egypt\, through the Red Sea into the desert\, and\nultimately to the promised land. \n5 Damasus Winzen\, Pathways in Scripture\, Ann Arbor\, MI: Word of Life\, 1976\, pp. 243-245. URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/st-mark/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240426 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240427 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240421T010808Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240421T010808Z UID:11829-1714089600-1714175999@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Easter Weekday DESCRIPTION:GOD CAME TO TEACH HUMILITY\nFrom a sermon by St Augustine 6\n◊◊◊\nPride is the source of all diseases\, because pride is the source of all sins.\nWhen a physician removes a disorder from the body\, if he merely cures the\nmalady produced by some particular cause but not the cause itself\, he seems to\nheal the patient for a time; but while the cause remains\, the disease will repeat\nitself.\nFor example\, to speak of this more expressly\, some humor in the body\nproduces sores; a high fever follows and considerable pain. Certain remedies\nare prescribed to repress the sores; the remedies are applied and they work. You\nsee the one who was full of sores now healed; but because that humor was not\nexpelled\, it returns again to ulcers. Perceiving this\, the physician purges away\nthe humor and removes the cause\, and there will be no more sores.\nWhat is the source of iniquity? From pride. Cure pride and there will be\nno more iniquity. Hence\, to cure the cause of all diseases\, namely pride\, the Son\nof God came down and humbled himself. Why are you proud\, O mortal\, when\nGod humbled Himself for you? You might perhaps be ashamed to imitate a\nhumble mortal\, but in any case imitate the humble God. \nThe Son of God came in the nature of humans and humbled himself. You\nare commanded to become humble; you are not commanded to go from a\nhuman to a brute. He\, who was God\, became human; you who are human\nrecognize that you are such; all your humility consists in knowing what you are\nyourself. Therefore\, because God teaches humility he said: “It is not to do my\nown will that I have come down from heaven\, but to do the will of Him who\nsent me.” For this is the commendation of humility. Pride does its own will\, but\nhumility does the will of God. Therefore\, “No one who comes to me will I ever\nreject.” Why? “Because it is not to do my own will that I have come down from\nheaven\, but to do the will of him who sent me.” \nI came humble\, I came to teach humility. I came as a master of humility.\nWhoever comes to me is made one body with me; whoever adheres to me will\nbe humble\, because they do not their own will but the will of God. Therefore\nthey will not be cast out\, for when they were proud\, they were cast out…\nThus the Teacher of humility came not to do his own will but the will of\nthe One who sent him. Let us come to him\, enter into him\, be engrafted onto\nhim\, that we may not be doing our own will but the will of God. And he will not\ncast us out\, because we are his members\, because he willed to be our head by\nteaching us humility. \n6 Christian Readings. Vol. IV. Catholic Publishing Company. New York\, 1970. p. 39. URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/easter-weekday-8/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240427 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240428 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240421T011330Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240421T011330Z UID:11831-1714176000-1714262399@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Bl Raphael Arnaiz Baron DESCRIPTION:SIMPLICITY OF HEART\nFrom the writings of St Rafael Arnaiz Baron 7\n◊◊◊\nI see\, Brother\, that the path you follow is the simple life. God does not\nrequire more of us than simplicity without and love within. The truth is that the\nreal pathways of God are very easy and very simple when we walk along them\nfull of the spirit of trust and with free hearts fixed on God. Happy\, indeed\, is\nthe Trappist who is not merely a Trappist externally\, but whose interior life is\nmarked by the simplicity that makes the real Trappist. People of the world could\nthink us somewhat complicated. I do not know how to explain myself\, but I\nhave come to realize what Jesus means when he says: “Unless you become as\nlittle children…” \nThe ways of the Lord are simplicity; his yoke is easy and his burden is\nlight. We die to the world in order to be born to God. The self-denial of a life of\nsilence and solitude blossoms into the exuberant joy of a heart which counts its\nblessings in terms of simplicity and integrity. Those who follow Christ\, do so\nalong the way of the Cross. I think that when we love the Cross all is gained. \nGod always lets his light shine on anyone who loves and seeks him in\nsimplicity. We have to find our way along many winding paths before we arrive\nat the simple straight one. What causes us more distress than complicating\nthings! How we human beings love to complicate everything for ourselves!\nUnless we keep ourselves under control by the practice of virtue\, repeatedly\,\nwith our complicated way of existing we drive far from us everything that is\nsimple. \nTime and again\, we fail to grasp the greatness hidden deep down in an\nact of simplicity. We want to seek greatness in complexity and think that only\nwhen things are difficult have they anything worthwhile to offer… Virtue\, God\,\nInterior Life – difficult values to live out! It is not that I have attained virtue\,\nnor that my knowledge of God and my life in the spirit are totally clear\, but that \nI have seen that to achieve something in these matters I need to be free from\ncomplexity and contortion\, from clever speculation and technicalities.\nI have seen that we reach God by just the opposite. True knowledge of\nHim comes through simplicity of heart and integrity. An act of love is not\ndifficult at all. What is really hard is the effort to attain knowledge of God by\npenetrating his mysteries. The act of love brings us to God; the other way leads\nus nowhere… Because we are not simple; because we complicate our objectives\,\nbecause the weakness of our will makes everything we desire seem difficult. We\npander to this weakness when we let our will satisfy itself with what is pleasant\,\nconsoling\, distracting and\, oftentimes\, plain passion… \nWith Jesus at my side nothing seems difficult to me\, and the path to\nholiness seems simpler every time I look at it. Better it seems to consist in going\nforward and leaving things behind rather than in acquiring anything new\,\nstripping back to simplicity rather than adding things on. In so far as we go\nforward turning our back on so much inordinate love of creatures and of\nourselves\, it seems to me that we are drawing closer to that one real love\, that\nsole desire\, that unique aspiration of this life: the true holiness which is God. \n7 Liturgical text\, Generalizia Cistercensi S.O.\, Rome\, 1993. URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/bl-raphael-arnaiz-baron/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240428 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240429 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240427T190447Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240427T190447Z UID:11849-1714262400-1714348799@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Skema - 5th Wk of Easter DESCRIPTION:Biblical Readings for Office and Mass\n5th Week of Easter\n\n\nMass Readings: Sunday (B)\, Weekdays (II)\nApril 28 – May 4\, 2024\n\n\n\nSun\n28\nMon\n29\nTue\n30\nWed\n1\nThu\n2\nFri\n3\nSat\n4\n\n\nOffice\n5th Sunday of Easter\nSt Catherine of Siena\nEaster Weekday\nSt Joseph the Worker\nSt Athanasius\nSS Philip & James\nEaster Weekday\n\n\nVigils\nActs 16:16-40\nActs 17:1-18\nActs 17:19-34\nActs 18:1-28\nActs 19:1-20\n1 Cor 12:1-13\nActs 20:1-16\n\n\nLauds\nEph 2:1-10\nEph 2:19-22\nEph 3:7-13\nEph 4:1-6\nEph 4:25-32\nProv 4:10-19\nEph 6:10-17\n\n\nMass\n53\n285\n286\n287\, 559\n288\n561\n290\n\n\n1st\nActs 9:26-31\nActs 14:5-18\nActs 14:19-28\nActs 15:1-6\nActs 15:7-21\n1 Cor 15:1-8\nActs 16:1-10\n\n\n2nd\n1 John 3:18-24\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGospel\nJohn 15:1-8\nJohn 14:21-26\nJohn 14:27-31a\nMatt 13:54-58\nJohn 15:9-11\nJohn 14:6-14\nJohn 15:18-21\n\n\nVespers\nEph 2:11-18\nEph 3:1-6\nEph 3:14-21\nEph 4:17-24\nEph 5:1-5\n2 Cor 4:1-6\nCol 1:1-8 URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/skema-5th-wk-of-easter/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240428 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240429 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240427T190810Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240427T190810Z UID:11851-1714262400-1714348799@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading - 5th Sunday of Easter DESCRIPTION:WITHOUT GOD\, NOTHING CAN BE DONE \nFrom a commentary by St Augustine1 \n◊◊◊ \nThe passage from the gospel in which the Lord calls himself the vine and \nhis disciples the branches affirms in its own way that\, as mediator between God \nand the human race\, the man Christ Jesus is head of the Church and we are his \nmembers. It is beyond dispute that a vine and its branches are of one and the \nsame stock. Since Christ\, therefore\, possessed a divine nature not shared by \nourselves\, he became man precisely in order that in his own person there might \nbe a vine of human stock whose branches we could become. \nDwell in me\, said Jesus\, and I will dwell in you. His disciples\, however\, \ndo not dwell in Christ in the same way as Christ dwells in them. In either case\, \nthe benefit is theirs\, not his. If branches are attached to a vine\, it is not to confer \nany advantage on the vine; it is rather that the branches themselves may draw \ntheir sustenance from the vine. The vine is attached to the branches to provide \nthem with their vital nourishment\, not to receive anything from them. In the \nsame way Christ’s presence in his disciples and their presence in him both profit \nthe disciples rather than Christ. If a branch is cut off\, another can grow from the \nlife-giving root; but once severed from the root\, no branch can remain alive. \nThe incarnate Truth goes on to say: I am the vine\, you are the branches. \nWhoever dwells in me and I in him yields fruit in plenty\, because without me \nyou can do nothing. These words are to be weighed and pondered continually. \nSomeone hearing Jesus say\, he yields fruit in plenty\, might perhaps think that \na branch can bear at least a certain amount of fruit on its own. Our Lord’s words\, \nhowever\, were not: You can do little without me\, but: you can do nothing. Little \nfruit or plenty\, there can be neither without him\, because without him nothing \ncan be done. Even if a branch does produce a little fruit\, the vinedresser prunes \nit away so that it may produce more. But if the branch does not remain attached \nto the vine and draw its life from the root\, it can bear no fruit at all. \nNow\, although Christ could not be the vine if he were not human\, he could \nnot offer such a grace to his branches if he were not at the same time divine. \nSince without this grace it is impossible to have life and consequently death is \nthe result of one’s free choice\, he said: Whoever does not dwell in me will be \nthrown away like a branch and will wither\, to be gathered in and cast on the \nfire to burn. And so the shame incurred by those branches that refuse to dwell \nin the vine is in direct proportion to the glory they will have if they do remain in \nhim. \nIf you dwell in me\, said Jesus\, and my words dwell in you\, you will ask \nfor whatever you desire and it will be yours. Can a person dwelling in Christ \ndesire anything out of harmony with Christ? The very fact that people dwell in \ntheir Savior must mean that they have no desire that is opposed to their \nsalvation. And yet we do indeed desire one thing insofar as we are in Christ\, and \nanother insofar as we are still in this world. Because of our sojourn here below\, \na thought sometimes steals into our ignorant minds to ask for something which \ncannot be good for us. But this may not be\, if we are dwelling in Christ. He does \nwhat we ask only if it is for our good. To dwell in him\, therefore\, is to have his \nwords dwelling in us; whatever we desire we shall then ask for\, and it will be \ngiven us. \n  \n1 Journey with the Fathers – Year B – New City Press – 1999 – pg 56.3 \n  \n  \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-5th-sunday-of-easter/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240429 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240430 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240427T190935Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240427T190935Z UID:11853-1714348800-1714435199@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading - St Catherine of Siena DESCRIPTION:THE TRUE WORKERS \nFrom “The Dialogues” of St Catherine of Siena2 \n◊◊◊ \nDo you know what course I follow\, once my servants have completely \ngiven themselves to the teaching of the Gentle loving Word? I prune them\, so \nthat they will bear much fruit – cultivated fruit\, not wild. Just as the gardener \nprunes the branch that is joined to the vine so that it yield more and better wine\, \nbut cuts off and throws into the fire the branch that is barren\, so do I the true \ngardener act. When my servants remain united to me I prune them with great \nsuffering so that they will bear more and better fruit\, and virtue will be proved \nin them. But those who bear no fruit are cut off and thrown into the fire. \nThese are the true workers. They till their souls well\, uprooting every \nselfish love\, cultivating the soil of their love in me. They feed and tend the \ngrowth of the seed of grace that they have received in holy baptism. And as they \ntill their own vineyards\, so they till their neighbor’s as well\, for they cannot do \nthe one without the other. You already know that every evil as well as every good \nis done by means of your neighbors. \nYou\, then\, are my workers. You have come from me\, the supreme eternal \ngardener\, and I have engrafted you onto the vine by making myself one with \nyou. Keep in mind that each of you has your own vineyard. But everyone is \njoined to your neighbor’s vineyards without any dividing lines. They are so \njoined together\, in fact\, that you cannot do good or evil for yourself without \ndoing the same for your neighbors. \nAll of you together make up one common vineyard\, the whole Christian \nassembly\, and you are all united in the vineyard of the mystic body of holy \nChurch from which you draw your life. In this vineyard is planted the vine\, \nwhich is my only-begotten Son\, into whom you must be engrafted. Unless you \nare engrafted into him you are rebels against holy Church\, like members that \nare cut off from the body and rot. \nIt is true that while you have time you can get yourselves out of the stench \nof sin through true repentance and recourse to my ministers. They are the \nworkers who have the keys to the wine cellar\, that is\, the blood poured forth \nfrom this vine. (And this blood is so perfect in itself that it cannot be deprived \nof its benefits through any fault in the minister.) \nIt is charity that binds you to true humility – the humility that is found in \nknowing yourself and me. See\, then\, that it is as workers that I have sent you \nall. And now I am calling you again\, because the world is failing fast. The thorns \nhave so multiplied and choked the seed so badly that it will produce no fruit of \ngrace at all. I want you\, therefore\, to be true workers. With deep concern help \nto till the souls in the mystic body of holy Church. I am calling you to do this \nbecause I want to be merciful to the world as you have so earnestly begged me. \n  \n2 Catherine of Siena – The Dialogue – The Classics of Western Spirituality – Paulist Press – New York – 1980 – pg \n24.5 \n  \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-st-catherine-of-siena-2/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240430 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240501 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240427T191103Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240427T191103Z UID:11855-1714435200-1714521599@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading DESCRIPTION:THE MIRACULOUS SPREAD \nOF THE GOSPEL MESSAGE \nA reading from “Against the Pagans” by St John Chrysostom3 \n◊◊◊ \nIt was…marvelous that these few ignorant\, poor\, undistinguished\, \nunlettered\, worthless men of foreign tongue were entrusted with setting straight \nthe whole world. They were commissioned to lead the world to live a far more \ndifficult life and they did not accomplish this mission at a time of peace but \nwhile countless wars were being stirred up against them from every side. And \nthis was the case in every nation and every city. \nDid I say every nation and every city? In every home a war was fanned to \nflame against them. For when their teaching entered a home\, many a time it \nsplit a son from his father\, a bride from her mother-in-law\, a brother from his \nbrother\, a servant from his master\, a subject from his ruler\, a man from his wife\, \na woman from her husband\, and a father from his children. For everybody did \nnot all at once accept the faith. Their teaching was harassed by hatred every day \nthat passed; it stirred up one war after the other and brought death to more \npeople than you could count; it had people avoiding one another as if they were \ncommon enemies and foes. \nFor everybody drove the apostles out. Emperors avoided them\, as did \nlesser rulers\, common people\, free and slave; whole peoples\, entire cities \nshunned them. Not only did they drive out the apostles but\, what is worse\, they \ndrove out those who were but newly fixed in their faith\, those whom the apostles \nhad instructed. It was one and the same war which was waged against the \napostles and their disciples\, because people saw that their teaching was opposed \nto the edicts of their emperors and their ancestral ways and customs. \nEven though the apostles told so harsh a story\, they still won people over \nto believe. This is how they built up the Church. How did they do it and by what \nmeans? They did it through the power of Him who had commanded them to do \nit. He made ready the way; he made all the hard things easy. If it were not the \npower of God which accomplished this\, the Church would not have had a \npreface\, much less a beginning. \nHow could all this be done? It was God who said: “Let there be heaven\,” \nand showed forth his work; it was God who said: “Let the earth be founded\,” \nand he produced its substance; it was God who said: “Let the sun shine\,” and he \nshowed forth the star; it was God who caused all things to be. And it was the \nsame God who planted the Church. And that word: “I will build my Church” is \nwhat produced all this. For this is the power of the words of God. They create \nworks which are wondrous beyond our expectation. God said: “Let the earth \nproduce the grassy plant\,” and suddenly everything was a garden\, everything \nbecame a meadow; the earth heard God’s command and plumed itself with \nplants beyond number. In the same way God later said: “I will build my \nChurch\,” and this was done with the greatest of ease. \n  \n3 St. John Chrysostom\, Apologist. Catholic University of America Press\, 1983\, pp. 242-243.7 \n  \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-185/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240501 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240502 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240427T191230Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240427T191230Z UID:11857-1714521600-1714607999@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading - St Joseph the Worker DESCRIPTION:ST JOSEPH THE WORKER \nA reflection by Pope Francis4 \n◊◊◊ \nSt Joseph concretely expressed his fatherhood by making an offering of \nhimself in love\, placed at the service of the Messiah who was growing to \nmaturity in his home. And because of his role at the crossroads between the Old \nand New Testament\, St Joseph has always been venerated as a father of the \nChristian people. In him\, Jesus saw the tender love of God\, the one that helps \nus accept our weakness\, because it is through and despite our fears\, our frailties\, \nand our weakness that most divine designs are realized. Only tender love will \nsave us from the snares of the accuser\, and it is by encountering God’s mercy in \nthe Sacrament of Reconciliation that we experience His truth and tenderness\, \nbecause we know that God’s truth does not condemn us\, but instead welcomes\, \nembraces\, sustains and forgives us. \nJoseph is also a father in obedience to God with his “fiat”. He protects \nMary and Jesus and teaches his son to do the Will of the Father… At the same \ntime\, Joseph is an accepting Father because he accepted Mary unconditionally \n– an important gesture even today in our world where psychological\, verbal and \nphysical violence towards women is so evident. But the Bridegroom of Mary is \nalso the one who\, trusting in the Lord\, accepts in his life even the events that he \ndoes not understand\, setting aside his own ideas and reconciling himself with \nhis own history. \nJoseph’s spiritual path is not one that explains but accepts – which does \nnot mean that he is “resigned”. Instead he is courageously and firmly proactive. \nBecause with the Holy Spirit’s Gift of fortitude\, and full of hope\, he is able to \naccept life as it is\, with all its contradictions\, frustrations and disappointments. \nIn practice\, through St Joseph\, it is as if God were to repeat to us: “Do not be \nafraid” because faith gives meaning to every event\, however happy or sad\, and \nmakes us aware that God can make flowers spring up from stony ground. \nJoseph did not look for shortcuts but confronted reality with open eyes and \naccepted personal responsibility for it. For this reason\, he encourages us to \naccept and welcome others as they are\, without exception and to show special \nconcern for the weak… Consequently every poor\, needy\, suffering or dying \nperson\, every stranger\, every prisoner\, every infirm person is “the child” whom \nJoseph continues to protect. From St Joseph\, we must learn to love the Church \nand the poor. \nAs a carpenter who earned an honest living to provide for his family\, St. \nJoseph also teaches us the value\, the dignity and the joy of what it means to eat \nbread that is the fruit of one’s own labor. This aspect of Joseph’s character \nprovides the opportunity to appeal in favor of work… There is a renewed need \nto appreciate the importance of dignified work\, of which St. Joseph is an \nexemplary patron. Work is a means of participating in the work of salvation\, an \nopportunity to hasten the coming of the Kingdom\, to develop our talents and \nabilities\, and to put them at the service of society and fraternal communion. \nThose who work are cooperating with God Himself\, and in some way become \ncreators of the world around us. \n  \n4 Osservatore Romano – December 8\, 2021.9 \n  \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-st-joseph-the-worker-2/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240502 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240503 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240427T191350Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240427T191350Z UID:11859-1714608000-1714694399@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading - St Athanasius DESCRIPTION:AS BRIGHTNESS FROM LIGHT \nFrom the Expositio Fidei by St Athanasius5 \n◊◊◊ \nWe believe in one Unbegotten God\, Father Almighty\, maker of all things \nboth visible and invisible\, that has His being from Himself. And in one Only- \nbegotten Word\, Wisdom\, Son\, begotten of the Father without beginning and \neternally; word not pronounced… nor an effluence of the Perfect\, nor a dividing \nof the impassible Essence\, nor an issue; but absolutely perfect Son\, living and \npowerful\, the true Image of the Father\, equal in honour and glory. For this\, he \nsays\, ‘is the will of the Father\, that as they honour the Father\, so they may \nhonour the Son also’: very God of very God… For all things which the Father \nrules and sways\, the Son rules and sways likewise: wholly from the Whole\, being \nlike the Father as the Lord says\, ‘he that has seen Me has seen the Father’. \nBut He was begotten ineffably and incomprehensibly\, for ‘who shall \ndeclare his generation?’… no one can. Who\, when at the consummation of the \nages\, He had descended from the bosom of the Father\, took from the undefiled \nVirgin Mary our humanity… delivered of His own will to suffer for us\, as the \nLord said: ‘No man takes My life from Me. I have power to lay it down\, and have \npower to take it again’… He was crucified and died for us\, and rose from the \ndead\, and was taken up into the heavens\, having been created as the beginning \nof ways for us\, when on earth He showed us light from out of darkness\, salvation \nfrom error\, life from the dead\, an entrance to paradise\, from which Adam was \ncast out\, and into which he again entered by means of the thief\, as the Lord said\, \n‘This day shall you be with Me in paradise’… \nWe believe\, likewise\, also in the Holy Spirit that searches all things\, even \nthe deep things of God… But the Holy Spirit\, being that which proceeds from \nthe Father\, is ever in the hands of the Father Who sends and of the Son Who \nconveys Him\, by Whose means He filled all things. The Father\, possessing His \nexistence from Himself\, begot the Son… and did not create Him\, as a river from \na well and as a branch from a root\, and as brightness from a light\, things which \nnature knows to be indivisible; through whom to the Father be glory and power \nand greatness before all ages\, and unto all the ages of the ages. \n  \n5 Translated by Archibald Robertson. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers\, Second Series\, Vol. \n4. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo\, NY: Christian Literature Publishing \nCo.\, 1892.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. \n.11 \n  \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-st-athanasius-2/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240503 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240504 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240427T191524Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240427T191524Z UID:11861-1714694400-1714780799@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading - SS Philip & James DESCRIPTION:THE APOSTOLIC WITNESS \nBy Jean Frisque6 \n◊◊◊ \nThey were still talking about all this when he himself stood among them \nand said to them\, “Peace be with you!” \nThe preeminent witnesses to the resurrection of Christ were the apostles. \nFrom the time of Jesus’ baptism to his death\, they accompanied him in his \npublic ministry. His death on the cross at the first threw them into a panic\, but \nsoon afterwards it clarified everything for them\, once it had been placed in its \nScriptural context\, through the aid of the resurrected Christ himself. \nBut was the testimony of the apostles limited to this single well-founded \nassertion: He whom you crucified has risen from the dead through the power of \nGod? In reality\, there was much more: the apostles did not only offer an \neyewitness account of an event but the testimony of their faith. Only their faith \nenabled them to discover why the death on the cross was the key-event of \nsalvation-history and in what way it led to the life of the resurrection. And theirs \nwas not simply any faith\, but faith in the paschal experience itself\, the faith \nwhich had perceived that in Jesus Christ all people were called to share in the \ndivine filiation and to contribute on their own behalf to the construction of the \nKingdom. \nNor was this all. The witness which the apostles rendered to the \nresurrection of Christ was above all an authorized witness. The apostles had \nreceived from the resurrected Christ himself their power to testify validly to \nhim. They had received the Holy Spirit\, the Spirit of the resurrected Christ. Thus \nthe very life of the resurrected Christ was given to the apostolic group\, and the \nChurch which they would construct in his name would be animated by this same \nlife. The Church was to be the temple of the Holy Spirit\, and the life which \ncirculated in her would testify until the end of time to the resurrection of her \nHead! \nThus we can see why the apostolic witness rendered to the resurrected \nChrist was inseparable from the life which animated the first Christian \ncommunity. This witness was necessarily communal. The preaching in which \nthis witness took shape was absolutely inseparable from the grace of \ncommunion given to the primitive community and its efforts to be entirely \nfaithful to the law of universal charity. \nToday’s Christians are not wrong\, therefore\, when they insist upon the \nimportance of the testimony of their life. But the life to which they must witness \nin order to testify to the resurrected Christ is the life of Christ himself. This life \nis displayed here on earth by the way of total obedience unto death for the love \nof all people\, for such an obedience leads us constantly from death to life. Such \na sign can only be displayed by the Church herself. \n  \n6 London\, 1965\, vol. 3\, pp 77-78.13 \n  \n  \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-ss-philip-james/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240504 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240505 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240427T191633Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240427T191633Z UID:11863-1714780800-1714867199@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading DESCRIPTION:THE EXPERIENCE OF FAITH \nBy Hans Urs von Balthasar7 \n◊◊◊ \nThe analogy between the pre-Easter and the post Easter testimony \n(comparable to the analogy between testimony in the Old and the New \nTestament) signifies the decisive step forward: the leaving behind of the old\, \nwhich had served as basis\, in order to become established in the new. Paul is \nthe eyewitness of this step forward\, since he not only had to defend his \neyewitness arduously in itself\, but his eyewitness in this matter against the \nprivileges of the original Apostles. Whoever disregards the element of analogy \nin the Apostles’ witness\, will hold unswervingly to the testimony of the other \nApostles and will with them consider Paul’s credentials as an eyewitness to be \nsecondary\, if not altogether doubtful. But his legitimacy stands under the \nprotection of Scriptural inspiration and thus remains unassailable. \nThis is of the highest theological interest. Paul’s witness to the \nResurrection dispenses with the ‘analogy’ between witness to Christ’s earthly \nexistence and witness to the Resurrection; he is a witness only to Jesus’ \nResurrection. For Paul\, the identity of the risen Christ with the Jesus who \nsuffered and died lies in the vitality exhibited by the Kyrios. Because he is the \nnew man\, he was also the old. If this holds for Paul and if it is to this that he \nwitnesses\, the same does not necessarily apply to the others. For Paul there is \nno other legitimation than that of his own turning from the Old to the New \nCovenant and to the new man\, his conversio morum\, the fact that in all things \nhe shows himself to be a servant of God\, the fact that his existence has been so \ntransformed that it has become an incontestable mirroring of the image of \nChrist. Paul proves himself to be one who has seen essentially by letting himself \nbe seen and by being\, in fact\, seen. He gives himself wholly over to seeing\, \nhearing\, and touching: by the grace of God\, in him a Christian has been formed \nwho is not a ghost\, but who has flesh and bones. Paul cuts right through the \nanalogy that runs across the testimony of Peter and others\, and this cannot be \nhis work\, since he himself is the work of the grace of the Risen One. \nPaul straddles the boundary between the apostolic and the ecclesial era. \nHe fights for his inclusion in the apostolic era\, and the Lord himself gives the \nwarrant for this inclusion; and yet his experience of Christ bears essential \nfeatures of the ecclesial era\, namely\, that of private revelation and its \nconfirmation by personal sanctity. He shares this transitional character with \nthe whole period of the Acts of the Apostles: this is the period of archetypal \nChurch history. This is certainly so\, on the one hand\, because this is the span \nof time in which Christ’s original eyewitnesses lived. And yet Paul falls outside \nthese limits\, while still dominating in a central way the events in the Acts of the \nApostles. For\, on the other hand\, this period of history is more than just the \ntimespan in which the original eyewitnesses lived; it is the privileged space in \nwhich the Holy Spirit became visible\, audible\, and palpable: it is the expansion \nof the explosion that occurred on Pentecost. \n  \n7 The Glory of the Lord. Vol. I Seeing the Form. Hans Urs von Balthasar\, Ignatius Press\, 1982\, pp. 347-348.15 \n  \n  \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-186/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240505 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240506 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240504T185534Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240504T185534Z UID:11867-1714867200-1714953599@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Skema DESCRIPTION:Biblical Readings for Office and Mass\n6th Week of Easter\n\n\nMass Readings: Sunday (B)\, Weekdays (II)\nMay 5 – 11\, 2024\n\n\n\nSun\n5\nMon\n6\nTue\n7\nWed\n8\nThu\n9\nFri\n10\nSat\n11\n\n\nOffice\n6th Sunday of Easter\nEaster Weekday\nEaster Weekday\nBl Christian de Cherge\nEaster Weekday\nEaster Weekday\nHoly Abbots of Cluny\n\n\nVigils\nActs 20:17-38\nActs 21:1-26\nActs 21:27-39\nActs 21:40-22:21\nActs 22:22-23:11\nActs 23:12-35\nActs 24:1-27\n\n\nLauds\nCol 1:9-14\nCol 1:24-29\nCol 2:9-15\nCol 3:12-17\n1 Jn 1:5-10\n1 Jn 2:7-11\n1 Jn 2:18-23\n\n\nMass\n56\n291\n292\n293\n294\n295\n296\n\n\n1st\nActs 10:25-26\, 34-35\, 44-48\nActs 16:11-15\nActs 16:22-34\nActs 17:15\, 22-18:1\nActs 18:1-8\nActs 18:9-18\nActs 18:23-28\n\n\n2nd\n1 John 4:7-10\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGospel\nJohn 15:9-17\nJohn 15:26-16:4a\nJohn 16:5-11\nJohn 16:12-15\nJohn 16:16-20\nJohn 16:20-23\nJohn 16:23b-28\n\n\nVespers\nCol 1:15-23\nCol 2:1-8\nCol 3:12-17\n1 Jn 1:1-4\n1 Jn 2:1-6\n1 Jn 2:12-17\nCol 3:1-11 URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/skema-68/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240505 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240506 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240504T185727Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240504T185727Z UID:11869-1714867200-1714953599@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading -6th Sunday of Easter DESCRIPTION:A GREATER LOVE \nBy St Thomas More1 \n◊◊◊ \nLet us deeply consider the love of our Savior Christ who so loved his own \nunto the end that for their sakes he willingly suffered that painful end\, and \ntherein declared the highest degree of love that can be. For\, as he himself says: \nA greater love no one has than to give his life for his friends. This is indeed the \ngreatest love that ever anyone had. But yet had our Savior a greater love\, for he \ngave his life for both friend and foe. \nBut what a difference is there now\, between this faithful love of his and \nother kinds of false and fickle love found in this wretched world. The flatterer \npretends to love you because he dines well with you. But now if adversity so \ndiminishes your possessions that you find your table not laid\, then – farewell\, \nadieu – your brother flatterer is gone and gets himself to some other table. And \nhe might even turn into your enemy and cruelly speak evil of you. \nWho can in adversity be sure of many of his many friends when our Savior \nhimself was\, at his capture\, left alone and forsaken by his? When you go forth\, \nwho will go with you? If you were a king would not all your realm send you on \nyour way alone and then forget you? Will not your own family let you depart a \nnaked\, feeble soul\, you know not whither? \nLet us all in time\, then\, learn to love as we should\, God above all things\, \nand all other things for him. And whatsoever love be not referred to that end\, \nnamely\, to the good pleasure of God\, is a very vain and unfaithful love. And \nwhatsoever love we bear to any creature whereby we love God the less\, that love \nis a loathsome love and hinders us from heaven. Love no child of yours so \ntenderly but that you could be content to sacrifice it to God\, as Abraham was \nready with Isaac\, if God so commanded you. And since God will not do so\, offer \nyour child in another way to God’s service. For whatever we love that makes us \nbreak God’s commandment\, we love better than God\, and that is a love deadly \nand damnable. Now\, since our Lord has so loved us\, for our salvation\, let us \ndiligently call for his grace that in return for his great love we be found not \nungrateful. \n  \n1 Journey with the Fathers – Year B – New City Press – 1999 – pg 58.3 \n  \n  \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-6th-sunday-of-easter/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240506 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240507 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240504T185859Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240504T185859Z UID:11871-1714953600-1715039999@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading DESCRIPTION:THE RESURRECTION OF ALL FLESH \nFrom “The Eternal Year” by Fr Karl Rahner2 \n◊◊◊ \nWe children of the earth may love the earth; we must love her\, even when \nshe terrifies us and makes us tremble with her misery and her destiny of death. \nFor ever since Christ\, through his death and resurrection\, penetrated the earth \nfor all time\, her misery has become provisional and a mere test of our faith in \nher innermost mystery\, which is the risen One himself. Our experience does not \ntell us that he is the mysterious meaning of her misery; by no means! It is our \nfaith that tells us this. The faith that offers blessed consolation to all that we \nexperience in life\, the faith that can love the earth because she is\, or is in the \nprocess of becoming\, the “body” of the risen One. \nWe do not need to leave her\, for the life of God dwells in her. When we \nwant both the God of infinity (how can we help wanting him?) and the familiar \nearth\, as it is and as it shall become\, when we want both for our eternally free \nhomeland\, there is one path to both! For in the resurrection of the Lord\, God \nhas shown that he has accepted the earth for all time… The flesh is the hinge of \nsalvation. \nThe hereafter to every exigency of sin and death is not somewhere in the \nlife hereafter; it has come down to us and lives in the innermost reality of our \nflesh. The most sublime religiosity of seclusion from the world would not fetch \nthe God of our life and the salvation of this earth from the distance of his \neternity; and it would not even reach him in his world. But he himself has come \nto us. And he has transformed what we are and what we still want to consider \nas the gloomy\, earthly dwelling place of our “spiritual nature”: he has \ntransformed the flesh. Ever since that event\, mother earth bears nothing but \ntransformed children. For his resurrection is the beginning of the resurrection \nof all flesh. \nOne thing\, of course\, is necessary for this event – which we can never undo \n– to become the blessedness of our existence: he must burst forth from the grave \nof our hearts. He must rise from the core of our being\, where he is as power and \npromise. He is there\, and yet something remains to be done. He is there\, yet it \nis still Holy Saturday\, and it will continue to be Holy Saturday until the last day\, \nuntil that day that will be the cosmic Easter. And this rising takes place beneath \nthe freedom of our faith. It is taking place as an event of living faith that draws \nus into the colossal eruption of all earthly reality into its own glorification\, the \nsplendid transfiguration that has already begun with the resurrection of Christ. \n  \n2 The Eternal Year\, Helicon Press: Baltimore MD 1964. pp.93-95.5 \n  \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-187/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240507 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240508 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240504T190021Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240504T190021Z UID:11873-1715040000-1715126399@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading DESCRIPTION:THE SECRET OF THE LORD \nFrom a sermon by St John Henry Newman3 \n◊◊◊ \nOur Lord expressly promises all Christians a certain gracious \nmanifestation of himself\, which it is natural\, at first sight\, to suppose a sensible \none: and many persons understand it to be such\, as if it were not more blessed \nto believe than to see. Our Lord says; “He that has my commandments and \nkeeps them\, he it is that loves me; and he that loves me\, shall be loved of my \nFather\, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him.” When Jude asked \nhim\, “Lord\, how is it that you will manifest yourself unto us\, and not unto the \nworld?” Our Lord answered\, “If one loves me\, he will keep my words; and my \nFather will love him\, and we will come unto him\, and make our abode with \nhim. \n” In accordance with this promise\, St Paul says\, “The Spirit itself bears \nwitness with our spirit\, that we are the children of God”; and St John\, “He that \nbelieves in the Son of God has the witness in himself.” \nNow\, that this great gift\, whatever it be\, is of a nature to impart \nillumination\, sanctity\, and peace\, to the soul to which it comes\, far from \ndisputing\, I would earnestly maintain. And\, in this indirect way\, doubtless\, it is \nin a certain sense apprehended and perceived; perceived in its effects\, with a \nconsciousness that those effects cannot come of themselves\, but imply a gift \nfrom which they come\, and a presence of which they are\, as it were\, the shadow\, \na voice of which they are the echo. \nBut there are persons who desire the inward manifestation of Christ to be \nmuch more sensible than this. They will not be contented without some sensible \nsign and direct evidence that God loves them; some assurance\, in which faith \nhas no part\, that God has chosen them; and which may answer to their \nanticipations of what Scripture calls “the secret of the Lord\, \n” and “the hidden \nmanna” which Christ invites us to partake. Some\, for instance\, hold that their \nconscience would have no peace\, unless they recollected the time when they \nwere converted from darkness to light\, from a state of wrath to the kingdom of \nGod. Others consider that\, in order to possess the seal of election\, they must be \nable to discern in themselves certain feelings or frames of mind\, a renunciation \nof their own merit\, and an apprehension of gospel salvation; as if it were not \nenough to renounce ourselves and follow Christ\, without the lively \nconsciousness that we are doing so; and that in this lies “the secret of the Lord. \n” \nOthers go further; and think that without a distinct inward assurance of his \nsalvation\, one is not in a saving state. \nThis is what men and women often conceive; not considering that \nwhatever be the manifestation promised to Christians by our Lord\, it is not \nlikely to be more sensible and more intelligible than the great sign of his own \nResurrection. Yet even that\, like the miracle wrought upon Jonah\, was in secret\, \nand they who believed without seeing it were more blessed than those who saw. \n  \n3 Parochial and Plain Sermons\, San Francisco: Ignatius Press\, 1987\, pp. 1244-1245.7 \n  \n  \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-188/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240508 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240509 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240504T190227Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240504T190227Z UID:11875-1715126400-1715212799@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading - Bl. Christian de Cherge DESCRIPTION:CHRISTIAN DE CHERGÉ \nMONK\, MARTYR\, AND MYSTIC \nBy Dom Bernardo Olivera \n◊◊◊ \nIn its early stages\, monastic life was interpreted in various ways. Not a \nfew understood monasticism as an authentic martyrdom. The martyr\, the monk \nand the mystic are people who have oriented their lives toward mystery and \nentered deeply therein. They long for one thing only: to enter into communion \nwith their Lord in death in order to be joined with him in the Resurrection. \nChristian de Chergé was born on January 18\, 1937 at Colmar into a \ndistinguished family of eight children. His father was a military man\, as would \nbe his older brother later on. During his childhood he spent three years in \nAlgeria during the Second World War. From the time of his childhood he always \nremained impressed by the Muslim’s way of approaching God. \nOn October 6\, 1956\, at the age of nineteen he entered the seminary of the \nCarmelites in Paris. His studies were interrupted in 1959 when he had to report \nfor military service. Set on becoming an officer\, he took the required courses \nand in July of the following year he was made second lieutenant. That same \nmonth\, at the time of the war of independence\, he arrived in Algeria at the age \nof twenty-three. \nAn event occurred during this time that left its mark on him for the rest \nof his life. He had made friends with an Algerian who worked as a warden under \nthe French authorities\, a position that made him susceptible to the violence of \nthe National Liberation Army. Mohamed tried to be faithful at one and the same \ntime to his Christian friend\, to his Islamic faith\, and to his own people. It so \nhappened one day that they were involved in a scuffle in the street. Mohamed9 \nprotected his friend and tried to pacify his aggressors. The following day\, he was \nfound dead. This painful episode was never to be forgotten. Christian came back \nto it in later years\, writing: “I know at least one beloved brother\, a convinced \nMuslim\, who gave his life for love of another\, in a concrete way\, by spilling his \nown blood. Indeed\, since then\, in my hope for communion of all the elect in \nChrist\, I can fix my eyes on this friend who lived\, even in his death\, the one \ncommandment.” \nFor Christian de Chergé all of this was a foundational experience and the \nseed of a vocation. In the blood of his friend\, assassinated for not having wanted \nto bargain with hatred\, Christian said in 1982: “I knew my calling to follow \nChrist would end up living itself out sooner or later in the same country where \nI had been given the pledge of the greater love\, “shed for you and for many”. On \nMarch 21\, 1964\, he was ordained a priest and shortly thereafter was sent to \nAlgeria and to the monastic life. On September 14\, 1976\, he made his perpetual \nvows. In it he expressed his desire to “live in Prayer in the service of the Church \nof Algeria\, listening to the Muslim soul\, God willing\, until the final gift of my \ndeath.” \nChristian was elected Titular Prior of Atlas monastery in 1984. He was \nalready deeply involved in the interreligious dialogue. On May 21\, 1996\, united \nwith his six brothers of the community\, he sealed with his blood the witness of \nhis life. URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-bl-christian-de-cherge-2/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240509 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240510 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240504T190420Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240504T190420Z UID:11877-1715212800-1715299199@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading DESCRIPTION:WE ARE ALL WITNESSES \nBy Fr Paul Evodokimov4 \n◊◊◊ \nThere are no half measures\, no intermediary formulas. We are in the \npresence of the fundamental evidence of Jesus risen from the dead. A God who \ndoes not present his charter as lover of \, a God who is not love \ncrucified in order to radiate “life\, death of death“\, as St. Augustine says\, is not \nreally God. In following St. Paul’s thought to its conclusion\, we could say that \nall religion exists only by the resurrection and mystically leans on this event. If \nChrist is risen\, this is of interest for all… If the Christian testimony to the risen \nLord is suppressed\, no religion will survive on the level of the modern world\, \nfor outside the Gospel every religious message stops halfway. \nThe Gospel’s transcendent end is God become a risen . \nThis fact does not concern just a few witnesses only; the risen Christ in \nbecoming the contemporary of all means that every is \ncontemporary with the eternal Christ. This makes all the events of history \nessentially Christological. Christ is risen as head of the human body\, and now \nall religions and all can and ought to seek their life in him. This \ntestimony alone determines the ecumenical mission of the Church in the midst \nof all religions and in the great meeting between East and West. History places \nthe Christian faith in the risen Christ as the crossing point of all ideologies that \nnow reformulate the only important question — that asked by Pilate –– ” What \nis truth?” It obliges faith to say its yes\, going if need be as far as the confession \nof martyrdom\, that unique answer that resounds universally. Christ is in agony\, \nand eternity is impatient to hear this answer. \nThe apostolic kerygma announces the event of Easter\, the intervention of \nGod raising up Jesus; this alone gives a definitive meaning to the existence of \n in history. The resurrection of Jesus is God’s “Amen” to his \npromise\, an “Amen” full of the Holy Spirit who manifests it. “Amen” comes from \nthe Hebrew heemin and it means an unshakable base of operations. Those who \nproclaim it—the apostles and martyrs—claim the right to proclaim the event \nbefore the magistrates of the earthly city. \nLikewise the Apologies of Justin\, Athenagoras\, and Aristides present to \nemperors the same decisive message and warn them of the imminent judgment. \nTheir kerygma is of interest to all . It is preached in the presence of \nangels and concerns all of creation: the kingdom of God has already arrived; we \nare contemporaries of the one who sits at the right hand of the Father. Here is \nthe lamb immolated and risen and here is his kingdom. He is here and it is the \nfullness of time. All religions are ways by which seek God. They are \nnumerous. However\, the Christian revelation is unique for it is God who finds \n. The preaching of St. Paul is of capital importance for the theology \nof religion. In deciphering the monument to the unknown God and in giving it \nthe name Jesus Christ\, the apostle integrated with Christ the religious \naspiration of all times and gave it value in Christ. \n  \n4 Paul Evdokimov\, The Struggle with God\, New Jersey: Glen Rock\, 1966\, pp.66-68.11 \n  \n  \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-189/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240510 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240511 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240504T190539Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240504T190539Z UID:11879-1715299200-1715385599@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading DESCRIPTION:WE SCARCELY KNOW OURSELVES \nFrom the writing of Servant of God Dorothy Day5 \n◊◊◊ \nMuch as we want to\, we do not really know ourselves. Do we really want \nto see ourselves as God sees us\, or even as our fellow human beings see us? Could \nwe bear it\, weak as we are?… We do not want to be given that clear inward vision \nwhich discloses to us our most secret faults. In the Psalms there is that prayer \n“Deliver me from my secret sins.”… They were what I read most when I was in jail… \nI read with a sense of coming back to something that I had lost. There was an \nechoing in my heart. And how can anyone who has known human sorrow and \nhuman joy fail to respond to these words? \nOut of the depths I have cried to thee\, O Lord: Lord\, hear my voice. Let thy ears \nbe attentive to the voice of my supplication. If thou\, O Lord\, wilt mark iniquities: Lord \nwho shall stand it. For with thee there is merciful forgiveness… \nAll through those weary first days in jail when I was in solitary confinement\, \nthe only thoughts that brought comfort to my soul were those lines in the Psalms \nthat expressed the terror and misery of suddenly stricken and abandoned. \nSolitude and hunger and weariness of spirit – these sharpened my perceptions so \nthat I suffered not only my own sorrow but the sorrows of those about me. I was \nno longer myself. I was … The sorrows of the world encompassed \nme. I was like one gone down into the pit. Hope had forsaken me… And yet if it \nwere not the Holy Spirit that comforted me\, how could I have been comforted\, how \ncould I have endured\, how could I have lived in hope?… \n“What glorious hope!” Mauriac writes. “There are all those who will \ndiscover that their neighbor is Jesus himself\, although they belong to the mass of \nthose who do not know Christ or who have forgotten Him… Even some of those \nwho think they hate Him have consecrated their lives to Him; for Jesus is disguised \nand masked in the midst of \, hidden among the poor\, among the sick\, \namong prisoners\, among strangers. Many who serve Him officially have never \nknown who He was\, and many who do not even know His name will hear on the \nlast day the words that open to them the gates of joy. ‘Those children were I\, and \nI those working men. I wept on the hospital bed. I was that murderer in his cell \nwhom you consoled.’” \nBut always the glimpses of God came most when I was alone. Objectors \ncannot say that it was fear of loneliness and solitude and pain that made me turn \nto Him. It was in those few years when I was alone and most happy that I found \nHim. I found Him at last through joy and thanksgiving\, not through sorrow. Yet \nhow can I say that either? Better let it be said that I found Him through His poor\, \nand in a moment of joy I turned to Him… If Christ established His Church on earth \nwith Peter as its rock\, that faulty one who denied Him three times\, who fled from \nHim when he was in trouble\, then I\, too\, wanted a share in that tender \ncompassionate love that is so great… \nThe experiences that I have had are more or less universal. Suffering\, \nsadness\, repentance\, love\, we all have known these. They are easiest to bear when \none remembers their universality\, when we remember that we are all members or \npotential members of the Mystical Body of Christ. A conversion is a lonely \nexperience. We do not know what is going on in the depths of the heart and soul \nof another. We scarcely know ourselves. \n  \n5 Day\, Dorothy. By Little and By Little – The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day. Ed. \nRobert Ellsberg. New York: Alfred A. Knopf\, 1983. 4-7\, 9.13 \n  \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-190/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240511 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240512 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240504T190707Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240504T190707Z UID:11881-1715385600-1715471999@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Vigils Reading - Holy Abbots of Cluny DESCRIPTION:FROM A LETTER OF \nST BERNARD TO POPE EUGENIUS\, \nOn behalf of Peter the Venerable\, Abbot of Cluny6 \n◊◊◊ \nIt would be silly for me to write you on behalf of the Lord Abbot of Cluny\, \nto act as if I wanted to befriend a man whom the entire world befriends. But \nalthough he does not need me to write on his behalf\, I am nevertheless doing so \nin order to satisfy my affection for him\, for this purpose alone and no other. \nAlthough I cannot accompany him in body I shall be with him in spirit on his \npilgrimage to Rome. Nothing can separate us\, not the height of the Alps\, nor the \ncold of the snows\, nor the long distance of the journey. And I am present to him \nnow\, stretching out my hand to him in this letter. He cannot go anywhere \nwithout me because I am so much in his debt for the favor of his friendship. But \nhis favor itself acquits me of the debt\, for what was a duty has become a \npleasure. \nHonor this man as an honorable member of Christ’s body. He is a vessel \nfit for all honorable employment\, a vessel full of grace and truth\, full of all \nmanner of good things. Send him back with joy to rejoice the hearts of many by \nhis return. Show him great favor\, so that when he returns we may all receive of \nhis fullness. He should\, of course\, find no difficulty in obtaining from you \nanything he asks for in the name of the Lord Jesus. For\, if you do not know it\, \nhe it is that holds out his hands to the poor of our Order; he it is that freely and \nfrequently\, as far as he may without offending his own people\, supports our \nbrethren from the possessions of his monastery. \nBut let me explain why I say “in the name of the Lord Jesus. \n” It is because \nI fear and suspect he may ask to be released from the rule of his monastery; and \nno one who knows him would consider this a petition made in the name of \nJesus. I am very much mistaken if he is not more self-effacing than usual\, if he \nhas not become more perfect since he last saw you\, although it is well known \nthat almost from the first instant of assuming office he reformed his Order in \nmany ways\, in the matter\, for instance\, of fasting\, silence\, and costly and curious \nclothing. \n  \n6 Letter 349\, The Letters of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux\, edited by Bruno Scott James\, Chicago: Henry Regnery Company\, 1953\, \npp. 427-428.15 \n  \n  \n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-holy-abbots-of-cluny-2/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240512 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240513 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240511T193524Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240511T193524Z UID:11890-1715472000-1715558399@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Skema: 7th Week of Easter DESCRIPTION:  \n\n\n\nBiblical Readings for Office and Mass\n7th Week of Easter\n\n\nMass Readings: Sunday (B)\, Weekdays (II)\nMay 12 – 18\, 2024\n\n\n\nSun\n12\nMon\n13\nTue\n14\nWed\n15\nThu\n16\nFri\n17\nSat\n18\n\n\nOffice\nAscension of the Lord\nOur Lady of Fatima\nSt Matthias\nSt Pachomius\nEaster Weekday\nEaster Weekday\nEaster Weekday\n\n\nVigils\nEph 4:1-24\nActs 25:1-27\nPhil 3:13-4:1\nActs 27:1-20\nActs 27:21-44\nActs 28: 1-14\nActs 28:15-31\n\n\nLauds\nDan 7:9-14\n1 Jn 2:24-27\n1 Jn 2:18-25\n1 Jn 3:19-24\n1 Jn 4:7-12\n1 Jn 5:1-5\n1 Jn 5:13-21\n\n\nMass\n58\n297\n564\n299\n300\n301\n302\n\n\n1st\nActs 1:1-11\nActs 19:1-8\nActs 1:15-17\, 20-26\nActs 20:28-38\nActs 22:30; 23:6-11\nActs 25:13b-21\nActs 28:16-20\, 30-31\n\n\n2nd\nEph 4:1-13\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGospel\nMark 16:15-20\nJohn 16:29-33\nJohn 15:9-17\nJohn 17:11b-19\nJohn 17:20-26\nJohn 21:15-19\nJohn 21:20-25\n\n\nVespers\nEph 1:15-23\n1 Jn 2:28-3:3\n1 Cor 4:1-7\n1 Jn 4:1-6\n1 Jn 4:13-21\n1 Jn 5:6-12\nRom 8:9:17\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n  URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/skema-7th-week-of-easter/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20240512 DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20240513 DTSTAMP:20260404T053940 CREATED:20240511T193840Z LAST-MODIFIED:20240511T193840Z UID:11892-1715472000-1715558399@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org SUMMARY:Resurrection of the Lord DESCRIPTION:HIS ASCENSION INTO HEAVEN\nBy St Leo the Great 1\n◊◊◊\nThe sacred work of our salvation was of such great value in the sight of\nthe Creator of the universe that he counted it worth the shedding of his own\nblood. From the day of his birth until his passion and death this work was\ncarried out in conditions of self-abasement; and although he showed many\nsigns of his divinity even when he bore the form of a slave\, yet strictly speaking\,\nthe events of that time were concerned with proving the reality of the humanity\nhe had assumed. But he was innocent of any sin\, and so when death launched\nits attack upon him he burst its bonds and robbed it of its power. After his\npassion weakness was turned into strength\, mortality into eternal life\, and\ndisgrace into glory. Of all this Lord Jesus Christ gave ample proof in the sight of\nmany\, until at last he entered heaven in triumph. bearing with him the trophy\nof his victory over death. \nAnd so while at Easter it was the Lord’s resurrection which was the cause\nof our joy\, our present rejoicing is on account of his ascension into heaven. With\nall due solemnity we are commemorating that day on which our poor human\nnature was carried up in Christ above all the hosts of heaven\, above all the ranks\nof angels\, beyond the highest heavenly powers to the very throne of God the\nFather. It is upon this ordered structure of divine acts that we have been firmly\nestablished\, so that the grace of God may show itself still more marvelous when\,\nin spite of the withdrawal from our sight of everything that is rightly felt to\ncommand our reverence\, faith does not fail\, hope is not shaken\, charity does not\ngrow cold. \nFor such is the power of great minds\, such is the light of truly believing\nsouls\, that they put unhesitating faith in what is not seen with the bodily eye;\nthey fix their desires on what is beyond sight. Such fidelity could never be borne\nin our hearts\, nor could anyone be justified by faith if our salvation lay only in\nwhat is visible. That is why Christ said to the man who seemed doubtful about\nhis resurrection unless he could see and touch the marks of his passion in his\nvery flesh: you believe because you see me; blessed are those who have not seen\nand yet believe. \nIt was in order that we might be capable of such blessedness that on the\nfortieth day after his resurrection\, after he had made careful provision for\neverything concerning the preaching of the gospel and the mysteries of the new\ncovenant\, our Lord Jesus Christ was taken up to heaven before the eyes of his\ndisciples\, and so his bodily presence among them came to an end. From that\ntime onward he was to remain at the Father’s right hand until the completion\nof the period ordained by God for the Church’s children to increase and\nmultiply\, after which\, in the same body with which he ascended\, he will come\nagain to judge the living and the dead. \nAnd so our Redeemer’s visible presence has passed into the sacraments.\nOur faith is nobler and stronger because sight has been replaced by a doctrine\nwhose authority is accepted by believing hearts\, enlightened from on high. \n1\nJourney with the Fathers – Year B – New City Press – 1999 = pg 60. URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/resurrection-of-the-lord/ CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR