Lay Cistercians of Gethsemani Abbey

St. Anthony of Padua
2025-06-13
ST ANTHONY OF PADUA
From the Little Flowers of St Francis of Assisi 6
◊◊◊
At one time that wonderful vessel of the Holy Spirit, St Anthony of Padua, one of the chosen followers and companions of St Francis, whom St Francis used to call his vicar, was preaching before the Pope and Cardinals in a consistory where there were people from different countries–Greeks and Latins, French and Germans, Slavs and English–and others of many different languages and idioms. And being inflamed by the Holy Spirit and inspired with apostolic eloquence, he preached and explained the word of God so effectively, devoutly, subtly, clearly, and understandably that all who were assembled at that consistory, although they spoke different languages, clearly and distinctly heard and understood every one of his words as if he had spoken in each of their languages. Therefore they were all astounded and filled with devotion, for it seemed to them that the former miracle of the Apostles at the time of Pentecost had been renewed, when by the power of the Holy Spirit they spoke in different languages.
And in amazement they said to one another: “Is he not a Spaniard? How then are we all hearing him in the language of the country where we were born–we Greeks and Latins, French and Germans, Slavs and English, Lombards and foreigners?” The Pope also was astonished at St Anthony’s profound knowledge of Holy Scripture and said: “He is truly the Ark of the Covenant and the Treasury of Holy Scripture!”
Such then are the soldiers whom our leader St Francis had – companions who could nourish with the marrow of the Holy Spirit and arm with heavenly weapons against the snares of the enemy not only the flock of Christ but also the Vicar of Christ with his venerable College of Cardinals. To the glory of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed forever and ever.
6
Trans., Raphael Brown “Omnibus of Sources”, Chicago, 1973, pp. 1390-91.

Blessed Gerard
2025-06-14
LAMENT FOR THE DEATH OF GERARD
By St Bernard of Clairvaux 7
◊◊◊
How much better for me, O Gerard, if I had lost my life rather than your company, since through your tireless inspiration, your unfailing help and under your provident scrutiny I persevered with my studies of things divine. Why, I ask, have we loved, why have we lost each other? O cruel circumstance! But pity pertains to my lot only, not to his.
And the reason, dear brother, is that though you have lost your loved ones, you have found others more lovable still. As for me, already so miserable, what consolation remains to me, and you, my only comfort, gone? Our bodily companionship was equally enjoyable to both, because our dispositions were so alike; but only I am wounded by the parting. All that was pleasant we rejoiced to share; now sadness and mourning are mine alone: anger has swept over me, rage is fastened on me. Both of us were so happy in each other’s company, sharing the same experiences, talking together about them; now my share of these delights has ceased and you have passed on, you have traded them for an immense reward.
What harvest of joys, what a profusion of blessings is yours. In place of my insignificant person you have the abiding presence of Christ, and mingling with the angelic choirs you feel our absence no loss. You have no cause to complain that we have been cut off from you, favored as you are by the constant presence of the Lord of Majesty and of his heavenly friends. But what do I have in your stead? How I long to know what you now think about me, once so uniquely yours, as I sink beneath the weight of cares and afflictions, deprived of the support you lent to my feebleness! Perhaps you still give thought to our miseries, now that you have plunged into the abyss of light, become engulfed in that sea of endless happiness. It is possible that though you once knew us according to the flesh, you now no longer know us and because you have entered into the power of the Lord you will be mindful of his righteousness alone, forgetful of ours.
Furthermore, “he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him,” his whole being somehow changed into a movement of divine love. He no longer has the power to experience or relish anything but God, and what God himself experiences and relishes, because he is filled with God. But God is love, and the deeper one’s union with God, the more full one is of love. And though God cannot endure pain, he is not without compassion for those who do; it is his nature to show mercy and pardon.
Therefore you too must of necessity be merciful, clasped as you are to him who is Mercy; and though you no longer feel the need of mercy, though you no longer suffer, you cans still be compassionate. Your love has not diminished but only changed; when you were clothed with God you did not divest yourself of concern for us, for God is certainly concerned about us. All that smacks of weakness you have cast away, but not what pertains to love. And since love never comes to an end, you will not forget me for ever.
It seems to me that I can almost hear my brother saying: “Can a woman forget the son of her womb? And if she should forget, yet I will not forget you.” This is how it must be.
7 On The Song Of Songs II Sermon 26.III. Trans. Kilian Walsh. Cistercian Publications 1976. 62-64.

Skema - 11th Week ORD
2025-06-15
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
11th Week in Ordinary Time

Mass Readings: Sunday (C), Weekdays (I)
June 15 – 21, 2025

Sun
15
Mon
16
Tue
17
Wed
18
Thu
19
Fri
20
Sat
21

Office
Holy Trinity
Office for the Dead
Bl M-Joseph Cassant
Weekday
Weekday
Weekday
St Aloysius Gonzaga

Vigils
Sir 36:1-22
Gen 5:1-32
Gen 6:1-22
Gen 7:1-24
Gen 8:1-22
Gen 9:1-29
Gen 11:1-9, 27-32

Lauds
Sir 42:15-25
Eccles 2:18-23
Eccles 2:24-3:8
Eccles 3:9-15
Eccles 3:16-22
Eccles 4:1-6
Eccles 4:7-12

Mass
166
365
366
367
368
369
370

1st
Prov 8:22-31
2 Cor 6:1-10
2 Cor 8:1-9
2 Cor 9:6-11
2 Cor 11:1-11
2 Cor 11:18, 21-30
2 Cor 12:1-10

2nd
Rom 5:1-5

Gospel
John 16:12-15
Matt 5:38-42
Matt 5:43-48
Matt 6:1-6, 16-18
Matt 6:7-15
Matt 6:19-23
Matt 6:24-34

Vespers
1 Cor 2:11-16
Gal 2:15-21
Gal 3:1-9
Gal 3:10-14
Gal 3:15-22
Gal 3:23-29
Heb 9:18-22

Vigils Reading - Holy Trinity Sunday
2025-06-15
THE GIFT OF THE TRINITY
From a commentary by St Athanasius
◊◊◊
It will not be out of place to consider the ancient tradition, teaching and
faith of the Catholic Church, which was revealed by the Lord, proclaimed by the
apostles, and guarded by the fathers. For upon this faith the Church is built, and
if anyone were to lapse from it, that person would no longer be a Christian either
in fact or in name.
We acknowledge the Trinity, holy and perfect, to consist of the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit. In this Trinity there is no intrusion of any alien
element or of anything from outside, nor is the Trinity a blend of creative and
created being. It is a wholly creative and energizing reality, self-consistent and
undivided in its active power, for the father makes all things through the Word
and in the Holy Spirit, and in this way the unity of the Holy Trinity is preserved.
Accordingly in the Church, one God is preached, one God who is above all
things and through all things and in all things. God is above all things as
Father, for he is the principle and source; he is through all things through the
Word; and he is in all things in the Holy Spirit.
Writing to the Corinthians about spiritual matters, Paul traces all reality
back to the one God, the Father, saying: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the
same Spirit; and varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are
varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in everyone.
Even the gifts that the Spirit dispenses to individuals are given by the
Father through the Word. For all that belongs to the Father belongs also to the
Son, and so the graces given by the Son in the Spirit are true gifts of the Father.
Similarly, when the Spirit dwells in us, the Word who bestows the Spirit is in us
too, and the Father is present in the Word. This is the meaning of the text: My
Father and I will come to him and make our home with him. For where the light
is, there also is the radiance; and where the radiance is, there too are its power
and resplendent grace.
This is also Paul’s teaching in his Second Letter to the Corinthians: The
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the
Holy Spirit be with you all. For grace and the gift of the Trinity are given by the
Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Just as grace is given from the Father
through the Son, so there could be no communication of the gift to us except in
the Holy Spirit. But when we share in the Spirit, we possess the love of the
Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Spirit himself.

Vigils Reading - Office for the Dead
2025-06-16
THE DEGREES OF LOVE
By St John of the Cross
◊◊◊
The soul is right in daring to say: “may the vision of Your beauty be my
death“, since she knows that at the instant she sees this beauty she will be
carried away by it, and absorbed in this very beauty, and transformed in this
same beauty, and made beautiful like this beauty itself, and enriched and
provided for like this very beauty.
David declares, consequently, that the death of the saints is precious in
the sight of the Lord. This would not be true if they did not participate in His
very grandeurs, for in the sight of God nothing is precious but what God in
Himself is.
Accordingly, the soul does not fear death when she loves, rather she
desires it. Yet sinners are always fearful of death. They foresee that death will
take everything away and bring them all evils. As David says, the death of
sinners is very evil. And hence, as the Wise Man says, the remembrance of it is
bitter. Since sinners love the life of this world intensely and have little love for
that of the other, they have an immense fear of death.
The soul that loves God lives more in the next life than in this, for the soul
lives where it loves more than where it gives life, and thus has but little esteem
for this temporal life. She says then, “may the vision of Your beauty be my
death. For the sickness of love is not cured except by your presence and image.”
The reason love sickness has no other remedy than the presence and the
image of the Beloved is that, since this sickness differs from others, its medicine
also differs. In other sicknesses, following sound philosophy, contraries are
cured by contraries, but love is incurable except by what is in accord with love.
The reason for this is that love of God is the soul’s health, and the soul
does not have full health until loves is complete. Sickness is nothing but a want
of health, and when the soul has not even a single degree of love, she is dead.
but when she possesses some degrees of love of God, no matter how few, she is
then alive, yet very weak and infirm because of her little love. In the measure
that love increases she will be healthier, and when love is perfect she will have
full health.
The soul does well to call imperfect love “sickness.” for just as the sick is
too weak for work, so is the soul, feeble in love, too weak to practice heroic
virtue. It is also noteworthy that the soul who feels the sickness of love, a lack of
love, shows that she has some love, because she is aware of what she lacks
through what she has. The soul who does not feel this sickness shows that she
either has no love or is perfect in love.

Vigils Reading - Blessed Joseph Cassant
2025-06-17
BLESSED MARIE JOSEPH CASSANT
From an article by Fr Bernardo Bonowitz3
◊◊◊
Joseph Cassant was born on March 6, 1878 in the southern French town
of Casseneuil, the younger son of Pierre and Marie Cassant… Whereas Joseph’s
elder brother, Emile, was clearly marked out to continue his father’s agricultural
work, Joseph’s single ambition was to be a priest.
Joseph’s devotion to the Eucharist drew the attention of the pastor, who
took him in and began to direct his studies toward seminary. However it soon
became apparent that Joseph’s talent did not lay in academic studies. The
pastor then directed his interests toward the Trappist life, thinking that
academics would not be of such importance there. The pastor took Joseph into
the rectory and established a Trappist way of life there for the two of them.
Priest and teenager arose every night at two a.m. They celebrated the whole
Trappist horarium including the whole Divine Office, manual labor, a rigorous
silence and kept to a vegetarian diet.
Joseph entered the Trappist Abbey of Sainte Marie du Desert, near
Toulouse at the age of sixteen. The novice was captivated by the Novice Master,
Fr. Andre Malet. He was well equipped to help the novice overcome his natural
tendencies to scrupulosity and discouragement. Instead of putting the emphasis
on Trappist asceticism and penance… he led Joseph to an emphasis on love,
thus bringing him to a spirit of peace rather than turbulence. He fought to give
himself in complete confidence in Jesus, rather than succumbing to paralyzing
anxiety… With the help of his director, Fr Andre, he sought to live as much as
possible within the Sacred Heart of Jesus, seeking to make Christ’s inner
attitudes his own.
His greatest challenge was the studies, as his pastor had originally
expected. It was during his time of studies that Joseph first showed ill health.
He suffered from migraine headaches and other difficulties… As he prepared for
the priesthood, he started to show the classic symptoms of tuberculosis. But his
firm conviction was that God’s will was that he not complain. He was ordained a
priest on October 12, 1902. By this time, everyone was aware that Joseph’s
ordination was a participation in the death of Jesus… But suffering was an art
that Cassant knew well because of his love of Jesus… In the early morning of
June 17, 1903, as Fr. Andre was celebrating Mass for his friend’s intentions,
Joseph went to the Lord.
We might ask: what does Joseph Cassant have to offer us today? First of
all, he instructs us. A man of little intellectual capacity and a very ordinary
experience of prayer, Cassant is nonetheless a theologian of the monastic life.
He saw, and makes us see, that the personal relation with Jesus is the heart of
Christian monasticism. He understood that the central monastic practices –
obedience, silence and humility – are Christological realities, expressions of
Christ’s Sonship and means of our conformity to Christ…
Trappist vocation is a lifelong process of healing. Joseph Cassant is a
monk who was healed, and Fr Malet by betting on and developing the
essentially healthy aspect of Joseph was the instrument of the cure. Finally,
Cassant challenges us. The tools that he brought to the monastery were few but
indispensable: a good and upright will, with a consistent practice of fidelity and
generosity, an interior and exterior obedience to the formation offered by his
superiors. He staked his spiritual destiny on the sanctifying power of the
conversatio and was sanctified by it.
3 Cist. Studies Quarterly = vol. 39.1 2004 – pg 67.7

Vigils Reading
2025-06-18
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS
From a sermon by St John Henry Newman
◊◊◊
When we commemorate the quickening or vivifying of the Church, the
birth of the spiritual and new creature out of an old world “as good as dead,” it
will be seasonable to consider the nature and attributes of this Church, as
manifested in the elect, as invisible, one, living and spiritual; or what is
otherwise called the Doctrine of the Communion of Saints with each other, and
in the Holy Trinity, in whom their communion with each other consists.
Viewed so far as it merely consists of persons now living in this world, it is
of course a visible company; but in its nobler and truer character it is a body
invisible, or nearly so, as being made up, not merely of the few who happen still
to be on their trial, but of the many who sleep in the Lord. At first, indeed, in the
lifetime of the Apostles, a great proportion of the whole body was in this world;
that is, not taking into account those Saints, who had lived in Jewish times, and
who Christ, on His departure, made partakers of the privileges then purchased
by His death for all believers.
St Stephen and St James the Greater were the first distinguished Saints of
the New Covenant, who were gathered in to enrich the elder company of Moses,
Elias, and their brethren. But from that time they have flowed in space; and as
years passed away, greater and greater has become the proportion which the
assembly of spirits made perfect bears to that body militant which is its
complement in God’s new creation. At present, we who live are but one
generation out of fifty, which since its formation have been new born into it, and
endowed with spiritual life and the hope of glory.
Now these thoughts are so very foreign from the world’s ordinary view of
things, which walks by sight, not by faith, and never allows any thing to exist in
what comes before it, but what it can touch and handle, that it is necessary to
insist and enlarge upon them. The world then makes itself the standard of
perfection and the center of all good; and when the souls of Christians pass from
it into the place of spirits, it fancies that this is their loss, not its own.

Vigils Reading
2025-06-19
THE ANGEL
AND THE MACHINE
From an article by Thomas Merton5
◊◊◊
The angels are our brothers and fellow servants in a world of freedom and
of grace. Like us, they are saved by Christ the Lord and King of Angels. With
Christ their King and sent by his command, they come to us as invisible
messengers of his divine will, as mysterious protectors and friends in the
spiritual order. Their presence around us—unimaginable, tender, solicitous and
mighty, terrible as it is gentle—is more and more forgotten while the personal
horizon of our spiritual vision shrinks and closes in upon ourselves. [The
angels] are sent to inform us that we are rooted in the very light by whom they
were sent! Yet if they were not sent our eyes would never open, our hearts would
never leap out of their own little constraint into the large freedom of a perfect
and total response…
We meet the angels, the messengers of divine help, on the frontiers of our
own freedom and our own capacity. They touch us when we reach our natural
limits…We do not usually meet them except when we ourselves are at the end of
our strength, or of our endurance, or of our understanding, or of our capacity to
hope and to believe. The angel appears when we ourselves are reduced to the
center of our deepest need.
If the angel comes as the comforter who says “fear not” and “Thy prayer
is heard“, that is precisely why man prefers more and more not to be reduced to
the extremity where he needs the angelic answer. Rather than fearing and then
being told to fear no more, he would prefer to avoid fear. Our weak faith would
rather get along without such powerful help, coming as it does from the invisible
world that is entirely beyond observation and control: in other words, we would
prefer to get along with fewer demands upon our faith. We would prefer not to
be reminded of our poverty…
Technological civilization is, as we have it now, a civilization without
angels. It is a civilization in which we have chosen the machine instead of the
angel: that is to say that we have placed the machine where the angel used to be:
at the limit of our own strength, at the frontier of our natural capacity…
The machine is fully visible… Yet the machines are “our” angels. We made
them, not they themselves. They are, we think, entirely in our own power. They
become, then, extensions of our own intelligence, our own strength. We do not
have to walk to the edge of an infinite void in order to feel the brush of their
unpredictable wings upon us in the starlight. They form part of our own
enclosed and comfortable world, they stand between us and nature… There still
remain limits where we face the void from which no mechanical rescue is
imaginable. At these frontiers, as always, the angels await us.
If technological society may seem to exclude the angels, it is because it
seeks to make us forget these other frontiers (especially death!): and this again
is no fault of the innocent machine. It is our own choice… It is our anxiety to
make our machine world completely self-sufficient and autonomous that we
render it spiritually unlivable for ourselves. More than ever we need the angels,
not to replace our machines but to teach us to live with them. For the angels
come to us to teach us how to rest, to forget useless care, to relax, in silence, to
“let go,” to abandon ourselves not to self-conscious fun but in self-forgetful
faith.
5 The Angel and the Machine”, first published in Season, vol. 5, Summer 1967, reprinted in The Merton Seasonal, vol. 22
no. 1, Spring 1997, pp. 3-6.11

Vigils Reading
2025-06-20
THE NECESSITY
OF COMMUNITY
From an address by St Oscar Romero6
◊◊◊
A Christian must be concerned to form community and see that the
community keeps growing in depth of faith and missionary extension.
Christians must be dissatisfied as long as they see so many baptized persons
who have not perceived the richness of their baptism. What the apostles used to
do was to take that treasure and make it greater by forming communities and
community life.
This community sense is something we urgently need today… At times
there is confusion between the Christian community and the political group.
Some are unable to tell the difference because the members of a community
don’t deepen their faith…
I say that often our people, especially the young people, have reached
political maturity earlier than Christian maturity, and they see life more in
political terms, as though the political dimension of life were the only one, and
they have no time left for what is Christian. But it should be the other way
around: what is Christian comes first, and it is thence that each one should
discover his or her proper place in the country, in whatever vocation God gives
one.
If God gives a political vocation, one should live it, but as a Christian. That
way we’ll have the sort of people needed nowadays, people who will become
mature in a Christian community, will mature in the gospel, in their faith, in
their commitment to Christ, in their following of the Lord, who will not let them
betray him in the laws or customs of the land, that is, in political life. And they
will then become the leaders of the transformations that the nation needs today
more than ever, Christians thoroughly committed to Christ, in a community
that is God’s people and, as the Bible says, is like a light on a mountaintop.
Today, with so much confusion, so many groups, so many claims, the
Christian community should consider itself a bright light, providing light and
orientation to everything that happens around us.

6 from The Violence of Love, translated by James R. Brockman, S.J., San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 208.13

Vigils Reading - St Aloysius Gonzaga
2025-06-21
A LETTER FROM
ST ALOYSIUS GONZAGA
TO HIS MOTHER
◊◊◊
Your letter found me lingering still in this region of the dead, but now I
must rouse myself to make my way to heaven at last and to praise God for ever in
the land of the living; indeed I had hoped that before this time my journey there
would have been over. If charity, as St Paul says, means to weep with those who
weep and rejoice with those who are glad, then, dearest mother, you shall
rejoice exceedingly that God in His grace and His love for you is showing me the
path to true happiness, and assuring me that I shall never lose Him.
The divine goodness…is a fathomless and shoreless ocean, and I confess
that when I plunge my mind into thought of this it is carried away by the
immensity and feels quite lost and bewildered there. In return for my short and
feeble labors, God is calling me to eternal rest; His voice from heaven invites me
to the infinite bliss I have sought so languidly, and promises me this reward for
the tears I have so seldom shed.
Take care above all things…not to insult God’s boundless loving kindness;
you should certainly do this if you mourned as dead one living face to face with
God, one whose prayers can bring you in your troubles more powerful aid than
they ever could on earth.
And our parting will not be for long; we shall see each other again in
heaven; we shall be united with our Savior; there we shall praise him with heart
and soul, sing his mercies forever, and enjoy eternal happiness.
When He takes away what He has once lent us, His purpose is to store our
treasure elsewhere more safely and bestow on us those very blessings that we
ourselves would most choose to have.
I write all this with the one desire that you and all <the> family may
consider my departure a joy and favor and that you especially may speed with a
mother’s blessing my passage across the waters till I reach the shore to which all
blessings belong. I write the more willingly because I have no clearer way of
expressing the love and respect I owe you as your son.

Skema - 12th week Ordinary time
2025-06-22
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
12th Week in Ordinary Time

Mass Readings: Sunday (C), Weekdays (I)
June 22 – 28, 2025

Sun
22
Mon
23
Tue
24
Wed
25
Thu
26
Fri
27
Sat
28

Office
Corpus Christi
Office for Vocations
Nativity of St John the Baptist
Weekday
Weekday
Sacred Heart of Jesus
Immaculate Heart of Mary

Vigils
Exod 16:2-15
Gen 12:1-20
Malachi 3:1-7b, 19-24
Gen 13:1-18
Gen 14:1-24
Jerm 30:18-31:5, 18-20
Gen 15:1-21

Lauds
Wis 16:20-28
Eccles 4:13-17
Jerm 1:4-10
Eccles 5:1-6
Eccles 5:7-11
Isa 57:14-19
Eccles 5:12-19

Mass
169
371
587
373
374
172
376, 573

1st
Gen 14:18-20
Gen 12:1-9
Isa 49:1-6
Gen 15:1-12, 17-18
Gen 16:1-12, 15-16
Ezek 34:11-16
Gen 18:1-15

2nd
1 Cor 11:23-26

Acts 13:22-26

Rom 5:5b-11

Gospel
Luke 9:11b-17
Matt 7:1-5
Luke 1:57-66, 80
Matt 7:15-20
Matt 7:21-29
Luke 15:3-7
Luke 2:41-51

Vespers
Acts 2:42-47
Acts 13:15-26
1 Jn 4:1-6
Gal 4:1-11
1 Jn 3:14-18
Eph 2:1-8
Acts 3:1-10

Vigils Reading - Corpus Christi
2025-06-22
THE BODY OF CHRIST
From a commentary by St Augustine
◊◊◊
You see on God’s altar bread and a cup. That is what the evidence of your
eyes tells you, but your faith requires you to believe that the bread is the body of
Christ, the cup the blood of Christ. In these few words we can say perhaps all
that faith demands.
Faith, however, seeks understanding; so you may now say to me: “You
have told us what we have to believe, but explain it so that we can understand
it”… We know from whom our Lord Jesus Christ took his flesh – it was from the
Virgin Mary. As a baby, he was suckled, he was fed, he developed, he came to
young man’s estate. He was slain on the cross, he was taken down from it, he
was buried, he rose again on the third day. On the day of his own choosing, he
ascended to heaven, taking his body with him; and it is from heaven that he will
come to judge the living and the dead. But now that he is there, seated at the
right hand of the Father, how can bread be his body? And the cup, or rather
what is in the cup, how can that be his blood?
These things, my friends, are called sacraments, because our eyes see in
them one thing, our understanding another. Our eyes see the material form;
our understanding, its spiritual effect. If, then, you want to know what the body
of Christ is, you must listen to what the Apostle tells the faithful: Now you are
the body of Christ, and individually you are members of it.
If that is so, it is the sacrament of yourselves that is placed on the Lord’s a
ltar, and it is the sacrament of yourselves that you receive. You reply “Amen” to
what you are, and thereby agree that such you are. You hear the words “The
body of Christ” and you reply “Amen“. Be, then, a member of Christ’s body, so
that your “Amen” may accord with the truth.
Yes, but why all this in bread? Here let us not advance any ideas of our
own, but listen to what the Apostle says over and over again when speaking of
this sacrament: Because there is one loaf, we, though we are many, form one
body. Let your mind assimilate that and be glad, for there you will find unity,
truth, piety, and love. He says, one loaf. And who is this one loaf? We, though
we are many, form one body. Now bear in mind that bread is not made of a
single grain, but of many. Be, then, what you see, and receive what you are…
Just as the unity of the faithful, which holy Scripture describes in the
words: They were of one mind and heart in God, should be like the kneading
together of many grains into one visible loaf, so with the wine. Think how wine
is made. Many grapes hang in a cluster, but their juice flows together into an
indivisible liquid.
It was thus that Christ our Lord signified us, and his will that we should
belong to him, when he hallowed the sacrament of our peace and unity on his
altar.

Vigils Reading - Office for Vocations
2025-06-23
AN UNDIVIDED
LOVE FOR CHRIST
From the documents of the Second Vatican Council
◊◊◊
From the beginning, the tradition of the Church presents us with this
privileged witness of a constant seeking for God, of an undivided love for Christ
alone, and of an absolute dedication to the growth of his kingdom. Without this
concrete sign there would be a danger that the charity which animates the entire
Church would grow cold, that the salvific paradox of the Gospel would be
blunted, and that the “salt” of faith would lose its savor in a world undergoing
secularization.
From the first centuries, the Holy Spirit has stirred up, side by side with
the heroic confession of the martyrs, the wonderful strength of disciples and
virgins, of hermits and anchorites. Religious life already existed in germ, and
progressively it felt the growing need of developing and of taking on different
forms of community or solitary life, in order to respond to the pressing
invitation of Christ: “There is no one who has left house, wife, brothers,
parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not be given
repayment many times over in this present time, and in the world to come,
eternal life.“
Who would venture to hold that such a calling today no longer has the
same value and vigor? That the Church could do without these exceptional
witnesses of the transcendence of the love of Christ? Or that the world without
damage to itself could allow these lights to go out? They are lights which
announce the kingdom of God with a liberty which knows no obstacles and is
daily lived by thousands of sons and daughters of the Church.
Certainly many exterior elements, recommended by founders of orders or
religious congregations, are seen today to be outmoded. Various encumbrances
or rigid forms accumulated over the centuries need to be curtailed. Adaptations
must be made. New forms can even be sought and instituted with the approval
of the Church. For some years now the greater part of religious institutes have
been generously dedicating themselves to the attainment of this goal,
experimenting – sometimes too hardily – with new types of constitutions and
rules. We know well and we are following with attention this effort at renewal
which was desired by the Council.
We would like to encourage you to proceed with greater sureness and with
more joyful confidence along the way that you have chose. In the “pursuit of
perfect charity” which guides your existence, what attitude could you have
other than a total surrender to the Holy Spirit who, working in the Church, calls
you to the freedom of the children of God.

Vigils Reading - Nativity of St John the Baptist
2025-06-24
HE MUST INCREASE
AND I MUST DECREASE
By Msgr. Ronald Knox3
◊◊◊
In St John the Baptist you could almost say that the hatred of prominence
was born in him. Always we see St John is pointing, always away from himself.
“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” – there, don’t
look at me, look at him; don’t ask who I am, ask who he is. There comes one
after me, who is greater than I, the latches of whose shoe I am not worthy to
loose.
Everyone is crowded round St John, everyone wanting to know who he is,
and he will let them see nothing but the finger that points to a greater than
himself, let them hear nothing but the voice of the forerunner who preaches a
gospel not his own.
And gradually, as our Lord more and more allowed this attention to be
directed towards himself, he, instead of his forerunner, became the center of
interest. “The pupil is outstripping the master“, people will have said; for I
think it’s fairly certain that our Lord, at the opening of his ministry, was
regarded as the disciple of St John, the man who had baptized him. And one by
one the little groups that listened to the Baptist on the rocky hills by Jordan
melted away, and he knew that they had gone off to follow the new Teacher,
who, traveling from village to village, was more easy of access. Perhaps they
even thought that in so transferring their allegiance from the stern prophet of
the desert with his wild clothes and rough manner to the Friend of publicans
and sinners, they were taking an easier yoke upon themselves…
The followers of John became fewer, the audiences of the Galilean
Prophet more numerous. And I want you to see that if St John had been a
smaller man, if he had looked upon his winning popularity in the way in which
you and I would look upon such a thing if it were to happen to ourselves, it
would have been impossible for him not to feel a pang of jealousy at having been
obeyed so well, at having been so successful in diverting attention from himself
to his Master. “He might have left me just a little work to do, just a few souls to
deal with; he might have given me some part to play in his mission“; it’s not
difficult to imagine St John feeling like that.
But that was not St John’s way. “He must increase, and I must decrease“
, so he assures the little band that still remain faithful to him, as if it were the
most natural thing in the world. And again, “The friend of the bridegroom, who
stands and hears him, rejoices with joy because of the bridegroom’s voice“.
Our Lord has come to claim his affianced Bride, the Church, and St John is
content with the humble, the almost undignified role of what we call the “best
man“. It is for him to sink his own claims, his own personality, and rejoice in the
triumph of the Lamb of God. No one has ever stood in the background more
loyally.

3 University Sermons by Msgr. Ronald A. Knox, Palm Publishers, 1963, pp. 346-347.7

Vigils Reading
2025-06-25
THE PILGRIM CHURCH
From the documents of the Second Vatican Council
◊◊◊
In full consciousness of this communion of the whole Mystical Body of
Jesus Christ, the Church in its pilgrim members, from the very earliest days of
the Christian religion, has honored with great respect the memory of the dead;
and, “because it is a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that
they may be loosed from their sins“, she offers her suffrages for them.
The Church has always believed that the apostles and Christ’s martyrs,
who gave the supreme witness of faith and charity by the shedding of their
blood, are closely united with us in Christ; she has always venerated them,
together with the Blessed Virgin Mary and the holy angels, with a special love,
and has asked piously for the help of their intercession. Soon there were added
to these others who had chosen to imitate more closely the virginity and poverty
of Christ, and still others whom the outstanding practice of the Christian virtues
and the wonderful graces of God recommended to the pious devotion and
imitation of the faithful.
To look on the life of those who have faithfully followed Christ is to be
inspired with a new reason for seeking the city which is to come, while at the
same time we are taught to know a most safe path by which, despite the
vicissitudes of the world, and in keeping with the state of life and condition
proper to each of us, we will be able to arrive at perfect union with Christ, that is,
holiness. God shows to us, in a vivid way, his presence and his face in the lives of
those companions of ours in the human condition who are more perfectly
transformed into the image of Christ. He speaks to us in them and offers us a
sign of this kingdom, to which we are powerfully attracted, so great a cloud of
witnesses is there given and such a witness to the truth of the Gospel.
It is not merely by the title of example that we cherish the memory of
those in heaven; we seek, rather, that by this devotion to the exercise of fraternal
charity the union of the whole Church in the Spirit may be strengthened.
Exactly as Christian communion between peoples on their earthly pilgrimage
brings us closer to Christ, so our community with the saints joins us to Christ,
from whom as from its fountain and head issues all grace and the life of the
People of God itself. It is most fitting, therefore, that we love those friends and
co-heirs of Jesus Christ who are also our brethren and outstanding benefactors,
and that we give due thanks to God for them, humbly invoking them, and having
recourse to their prayers, their aid and help in obtaining from God through the
Son, Jesus Christ… the benefits we need.

Vigils Reading
2025-06-26
THAT THEY MAY BE ONE
From the encyclical “Ut Unum Sint” by St John Paul II
◊◊◊
At the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church committed herself
irrevocably to following the path of the ecumenical venture, thus heeding the
spirit of the Lord, who teaches people to interpret carefully the “signs of the
times”. The experiences of these years have made the Church even more
profoundly aware of her identity and mission in history. The Catholic Church
acknowledges and confesses the weaknesses of her members, conscious that
their sins are so many betrayals of and obstacles to the accomplishment of the
Savior’s plan.
Because she feels herself constantly called to be renewed in the spirit of
the Gospel, she does not cease to do penance. At the same time, she
acknowledges and exalts still more the power of the Lord, who fills her with the
gift of holiness, leads her forward, and conforms her to his Passion and
Resurrection.
Taught by the events of her history, the Church is committed to freeing
herself from every purely human support, in order to live in depth the Gospel
law of the Beatitudes. Conscious that the truth does not impose itself except “by
virtue of its own truth, as it makes its entrance into the mind at once quietly
and with power”, she seeks nothing for herself but the freedom to proclaim the
Gospel. Indeed her authority is exercised in the service of truth and charity.
Together with all Christ’s disciples, the Catholic Church bases upon God’s
plan her ecumenical commitment to gather all Christians into unity. Indeed,
“the Church is not a reality closed in on herself. Rather, she is permanently
open to missionary and ecumenical endeavor, for she is sent to the world to
announce and witness, to make present and spread the mystery of
communion which is essential to her, and to gather all people and all things
into Christ, so as to be for all an “inseparable sacrament of unity”.
The unity of all divided humanity is the will of God. For this reason He
sent His son, so that by dying and rising for us he might bestow on us the Spirit
of love. On the eve of his sacrifice on the Cross, Jesus himself prayed to the
Father for his disciples and for all those who believe in him, that they might be
one, a living communion. This is the basis not only of the duty, but also of the
responsibility before God and his plan, which falls to those who through
Baptism become members of the Body of Christ, a Body in which the fullness of
reconciliation and communion must be made present.
How is it possible to remain divided, if we have been “buried” through
Baptism in the Lord’s death, in the very act by which God, through the death of
His Son, has broken down the walls of division? Division openly contradicts the
will of Christ, provides a stumbling block to the world, and inflicts damage on
the most holy cause of proclaiming the Good News to every creatures.

Vigils Reading - Sacred Heart of Jesus
2025-06-27
A BAPTISM OF BLOOD AND WATER
From “The Dialogues” of St Catherine of Siena
◊◊◊
“Why, gentle spotless lamb, since you were dead when your side was
opened, did you want your heart to be pierced and parted?” He answered,
“there were plenty of reasons, but I shall tell you one of the chief. My longing for
humanity was infinite, but the actual deed of bearing pain and torment was
finite and could never show all the love I had. This is why I wanted you to see my
inmost heart, so that you would see that I loved you more than finite suffering
could show.”
“By shedding both blood and water I showed you the holy baptism of
water that you receive through the power of my blood. But I was also showing
you the baptism of blood, and this in two ways. The first touches those who are
baptized in their own blood poured out for me. Though they could not have the
other baptism, their own blood has power because of mine. Others are baptized
in fire when they lovingly desire baptism but cannot have it. Nor is there any
baptism of fire without blood, for blood has been fused with the fire of divine
charity, because it was shed for love.
There is a second way the soul receives this baptism of blood, figuratively
speaking. This my divine charity provided because I know how people sin
because of weakness. Not that weakness or anything else can force them to sin if
they do not want to, but being weak they do fall into deadly sin and lose the
grace they had drawn from the power of the blood in holy baptism. So my divine
charity had to leave them an ongoing baptism of blood accessible by heartfelt
contrition and a holy confession as soon as they can confess to my ministers who
hold the key to the blood. absolution.
This blood the priest pours over the soul in
So you see, this baptism is ongoing, and the soul ought to be baptized in it
right up to the end, in the way I have told you. In this baptism you experience
that though my act of suffering on the cross was finite, the fruit of that suffering
which you have received through me is infinite. This is because of the infinite
divine nature joined with finite human nature. It was this human nature in
which I was clothed that suffered in me, the Word. But because the two natures
are fused with each other, the eternal Divinity took to itself the suffering I bore
with such burning love.
For this reason what I did can be called infinite. Not that either the actual
bodily suffering or the pain of my longing to accomplish your redemption was
infinite… But the fruit was infinite that came from my suffering and from my
desire for your salvation, and therefore you receive it without limit. Had it not
been infinite, the whole of humankind, past, present and to come, would not
have been restored. Nor could those who sin get up again if this baptism of
blood…had not been given to you without limit.
I showed you this in the opening up of my side. There you find my heart’s
secret and it shows you, more than any finite suffering could, how I love you.”

Vigils Reading - Immaculate Heart of Mary
2025-06-28
MARY’S VIRTUES
From a treatise by St Paschasius Radbertus
◊◊◊
The nature and the greatness of the blessed and glorious ever-virgin Mary
is divinely declared by the Angel, when he says, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is
with you. Blessed are you among women”. For surely it was fitting that the
Virgin should be enriched by gifts so great as to make her full of grace, who in
her turn was to give such gifts! For Mary has given glory to heaven, and to the
earth she has given the Lord. She has poured out peace upon the world, brought
faith to nations, put an end to vice, given law to life, and discipline to conduct.
Truly she is “full of grace”, because grace comes to others by measure, but
on Mary it poured itself out all at once in all its fullness. Truly, “full of grace”, for
even though, as we believe, grace was in the holy patriarchs and prophets, it was
not yet in its fullness. But, in Mary? – hers was the whole fullness of that grace
which is in Christ, though in a different manner than it was in him. And this is
why the angel says, “Blessed are you among women”, that is to say, more
blessed than all other women. Thus, whatever curse had been incurred through
Eve was wholly taken away through the blessing given to Mary.
It was in praise of Mary, as it were, that Solomon says in the Song of
Songs, “Come, my dove, my immaculate one! For see, the winter is past, the
rains are over and gone”. And then he says, “Come from Lebanon, come and be
crowned!”. Not without reason is Mary bidden to come from Lebanon, for
“Lebanon” means “shining whiteness”. Mary was dazzling white with her many
virtues and merits, and, by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, she became whiter than
snow itself, showing in all things the simplicity of the dove. For everything about
Mary is wholly the work of purity and simplicity, wholly grace and truth, wholly
mercy and that justice which has looked down from heaven. She is, then,
immaculate, because corruption has had no part in her. She has encompassed a
man in her womb, as the holy Jeremiah testifies, and received him from no
other person. “The Lord”, he says, “has made a new thing upon the earth, and a
woman shall encompass a man”
.
Truly this was a new thing, an act of power new in a surpassing degree,
when God, whom the world cannot contain nor man see and live, entered the
guest chamber of Mary’s womb in such a way as not to know confinement within
her body, was so borne that the whole God was within her, came forth in such a
way that, as Ezekiel prophesied, the door remained closed.
This is why the same Song of Songs sings of her, “An enclosed garden, a
fountain sealed, your plants are a paradise”. Truly a garden of delights,
planted with all kinds of flowers and filled with the perfumes of all virtues; so
enclosed as to have known no violation, no corruption by deceit or wile; a
fountain sealed, therefore, with the seal of the whole Trinity.

Skema - 13th week ORD
2025-06-29
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
13th Week in Ordinary Time

Mass Readings: Sunday (C), Weekdays (I)
June 29 – July 5, 2025

Sun
29
Mon
30
Tue
1
Wed
2
Thu
3
Fri
4
Sat
5

Office
SS Peter & Paul
Weekday
Weekday
Weekday
St Thomas
Weekday
Memorial of the BVM

Vigils
Gal 1:11-2:10
Gen 16:1-16
Gen 17:1-27
Gen 18:1-15
Acts 5:12-32
Gen 18:16-33
Gen 19:1-14

Lauds
Isa 49:1-6
Eccles 6:1-6
Eccles 6:7-12
Eccles 7:1-9
Isa 43:8-13
Eccles 7:10-14
Eccles 7:15-22

Mass
591
377
378
379
593
381
382

1st
Acts 12:1-11
Gen 18:16-33
Gen 19:15-29
Gen 21:5, 8-20a
Eph 2:19-22
Gen 23:1-4, 19; 24:1-8, 62-67
Gen 27:1-5, 15-29

2nd
2 Tim 4:6-8, 17-18

Gospel
Matt 16:13-19
Matt 8:18-22
Matt 8:23-27
Matt 8:28-34
John 20:24-29
Matt 9:9-13
Matt 9:14-17

Vespers
1 Peter 4:12-19
Gal 4:12-20
Gal 4:21-31
Gal 5:1-6
1 Pet 1:3-9
Gal 5:7-15
Gal 5:16-26

Vigils Reading - SS Peter & Paul
2025-06-29
THE FISHERMAN
AND THE TENTMAKER
From a treatise by St John Chrysostom
◊◊◊
Before the crucifixion, <Peter>, the prince of the apostles did not
endure the threat of a doorkeeper. After such an initiation as he had
received, he said that he did not know the man. But after the crucifixion, he
traveled all over the world; as a result of his travels and preaching, countless
people died the death of martyrs because they chose to be slain rather than
say what the prince of the apostles said when he was frightened by the threat
of one doorkeeper who was a mere maid-servant.
The result of his travels and preaching was that every land and city,
every desert and area where men dwell has joined us in preaching Christ
crucified. Now we find on our side emperors and generals, princes and
consuls, free men and slaves, private persons, the wise, the unlearned, and
the barbarian; among every race of men and in every land over which the sun
passes and shines, we hear his name and find him worshiped. From this you
may understand what Isaiah meant when he said: “His resting place shall be
glorious.”
Although the place which received his slain body was very small and
narrow, it is more venerable than royal palaces, and the emperors themselves
hold his tomb in higher honor. “His resting place shall be glorious.” And
this is true not only of his tomb but also of the tombs of his apostles. Those
men who were dragged from one court of justice to another, who were bound
in chains and treated with contempt, those who endured ten thousand
torments in their lifetime, now that they have died, are held in higher honor
than the emperors themselves.
At Rome, the most imperial of cities, emperors, consuls, and generals
put all else aside and hurried to the tombs of the fisherman and tentmaker.
And in Constantinople, those who were crowned with royal diadems did not
wish their bodies buried close to the apostles but outside the church,
alongside the entrance. In this way, emperors became door-keepers for the
fishermen. Even in death, both the emperors themselves and their children
feel no disgrace in this but even consider it an honor.
As Isaiah said: “His resting place shall be glorious.” You will see how
great this glory is when you have considered the symbol of his death, a death
which was the most cursed and ignominious of all deaths. This kind of death
was the only one subject to a curse. Let me give you an example. In ancient
times. Some malefactors were burned, others were stoned to death, and
others ended their lives by some other kind of punishment. But the man who
was nailed to a cross and was left hanging on its wood not only endured the
harsh punishment to which he had been sentenced but he was also subject to
a curse. “Everyone who is hanged on a gibbet is accursed.” But that
accursed, abominable symbol of the worst of punishments has now become
an object of man’s desire and love.

Vigils Reading
2025-06-30
THE HOLY APOSTLES
From a homily by Origen
◊◊◊
All of us who believe in Christ Jesus are called “living stones” in the words
of Scripture: “You, too, are living stones, built as an edifice of spirit, into a holy
priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus
Christ.“
You know that in the case of earthly stones the builder takes care to lay
first the strongest and most massive stones as the foundation, so that the whole
weight of the building can then rest upon them. The next stones, of not quite
such good quality, are laid upon the foundation stones; and so on according to
the strength of the stones: the weakest are laid at the top, near the roof. The
same is true of living stones, some of which are the foundation of our spiritual
building. Who are these stones that are laid at the foundation? “The apostles
and prophets.” This is Paul’s teaching: “You form a building which rises on the
foundations of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the
capstone.“
To prepare yourself more zealously to construct this building, to be one of
the stones near the foundation, you must realize that Christ himself is the
foundation of the building which we are describing. Paul the apostle declares
this to be so: “No one can lay a foundation other than the one that has been
laid, namely Jesus Christ.” Happy are they who have built holy, religious
buildings, on such a noble foundation!…
Moreover, I believe that there are among you those who as “living stones
” are able to become an altar – those of you who have resolved to dedicate
yourselves to prayer, to offer God supplications day and night, and to immolate
your sacrifices – and that it is with you that Jesus builds his altar.
Think of the worth to be discerned in altar stones. “Joshua built an altar
to the Lord,” says Scripture, “of unhewn stones on which no iron tool had been
used, in keeping with the command of Moses.” What do you think these
unhewn (whole, perfect) stones represent? It is for each one’s conscience to say
whether we have integrity, whether we are without impurity or spot…
To my mind these whole, spotless stones must be the holy apostles who
together form but one stone because of their unity of heart and soul. Indeed, it is
said that “all with one accord devoted themselves to constant prayer,” and that
they said: “O Lord, you read the hearts of men.” For those who can pray with
one accord, with one voice and one spirit, are indeed worthy to have been built
together into a single altar on which Jesus offers sacrifices to his Father. But we,
for our part, must strive to “agree” in what we say, “united in spirit and ideals;
never acting out of rivalry or conceit,” but “be united in mind and judgment,“
so that we too may try to become altar stones.

Vigils Reading
2025-07-01
OUR FIRST PARENTS
From a sermon by Isaac of Stella
◊◊◊
The common wounds of Adam and his posterity, are disorders that come
to our nature from its origins, born at our beginning and burgeoning as we grow.
Such is our condition thanks to “the Amorite that begot” us and “the Hittite that
bore us” and forsook us. Truly we are “the seed of Canaan, and not of Judah.”
Born of such stock there was “no water to wash us, no salt to harden us, none
would wrap us in swaddling-clothes, our navel-string was left uncut.”
None showed us the pity such cases are in need of. No, not even those
First Parents of ours, so truly “of the earth”, “earthly” did they prove. Parents at
once of our nature and our guilt, they gave us death at the very time that they
gave us life. They sowed what was indeed theirs to bestow; they freely donated
what they had themselves sadly discovered. They begot us into their own
confused condition, children in every way like their fathers. Just as our First
Parents reaped variously from different sources, so did they sow in different
ways, implanting in us nature from God and guilt from the devil. No wonder our
origins condition us so that we are children of God and children of the devil. We
are good, well-endowed creatures of God, and also wickedly and woefully ruined
by the devil. On the one hand, we have a nature that makes us something; on the
other, we bear the guilt that brings us to nothing.
This last, this nothingness of ours, is all the devil’s doing and is precisely
that from which the Son of God at his coming, would loose and free us, and so
rescue that something that we really are. He came to restore what is his in us to
destroy what another has done to us… He would separate the good from the evil
in us, the evil from the good, the precious from the vile…
We have but to listen to Isaiah would we learn how resolutely and how
ready Christ came to the task of our redemption. “From the root of Jesse,” he
says, “a rod shall burgeon”—it could not do so from the branches— “and out of
its root a flower shall spring.” This should kindle hope in me: flowers are sure
harbingers of fruit. “On him the spirit of the Lord will rest.” No wonder the Fruit
is so Good. Where else could Christ be conceived if not in Nazareth, where born
save in Bethlehem? On him had rested “a spirit wise and discerning.” His soul
was indeed rich in virtue, abounding in divine gifts; and not for nothing. Having
to measure up to and vanquish seven forms of concupiscence, the Gifts of the
Spirit are seven; Adam’s cravings are countered by seven Gifts in Christ. Seven
wounds call for seven medicines, one against the other. Though nature in Adam
is one thing and guilt is another, yet both are in him together.
Were a single fountain to supply, even if by different pipes, wine and
water together, the result would mean drawing watered wine or wine-filled
water. This is our case, “sons of Adam!” Our “wine has grown watery;” our
native guilt and our guilty nature, both, come [into existence] simultaneously.
Your nature is no sooner a good gift of the Good God than it is guilt infected by
the Wicked One. Child begotten to man is by that very fact sinner begotten to
sinner. Our nature, for all its goodness, is never without evil or guilt; this very
evil guilt has no foothold except in a nature that is good.

Vigils Reading
2025-07-02
THE SALVATION
OF THE WORLD
From a sermon by the Venerable Bede
◊◊◊
Jesus said to the Apostles: “Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ
to suffer, and to rise again from the dead, the third day: and that penance and
remission of sin should be preached in his name, unto all nations.”
So it was necessary that Christ suffer, and rise again; because it was
impossible for the world to be saved unless God came as one of us, Who,
appearing in our own nature, would teach us how to serve God, and Who,
submitting to death in his humanity, would triumph over it by divine power;
and thus awaken in those who believed in Him a contempt for death, and kindle
in them a certain hope of resurrection and of life everlasting.
For in what way could we be more truly encouraged to believe in the glory
to come, and to strive for eternal life, than by knowing that God Himself had
become a Sharer of our humanity and our mortality? In what other way could
we be more efficaciously appealed to, to suffer evils of every kind for the sake of
salvation, than by learning that our own Creator had undergone at the hands of
the impious infamy of every kind; and, even the sentence of death itself?
For what reason could we more fittingly accept the hope of resurrection,
than through remembering that we have been cleansed and sanctified by His
sacraments, and made one in His Body Who, tasting death on our behalf,
speedily offered us an example of rising from the dead?
It was then necessary that Christ should suffer, and rise again from the
dead the third day, and that, as He says, penance and the forgiveness of sin be
preached in His Name to all nations. For this it was necessary that first the
blood of Christ should be shed for the salvation of the world, and that afterwards
by His Resurrection and Ascension he should open to us the gates of heaven.

Vigils Reading
2025-07-03
WHY DID THOMAS DEMAND PROOF?
From a commentary by St Peter Chrysologus
◊◊◊
When Thomas heard from his fellow disciples that they had seen the
Lord, he answered: Unless I see the wounds made by the nails and put my
hand into his side, I will not believe. Why did Thomas thus demand proof before
believing? Why was he so devout toward the suffering Christ, but so resistant to
the risen Christ? Why did a pious hand open again the wounds made by a
wicked hand? Why did the hand of a follower strive to plunge anew into the side
opened by the spear of a wicked soldier?…
When the Lord died, the devil’s power collapsed, the prison of hell was
thrown open, the fetters of the dead were broken, tombs were destroyed; when
the Lord rose again death’s nature was completely changed. The stone before
the Lord’s most holy sepulcher was rolled away, and the linen cloths were
loosened; at his rising in glory death took to flight and life returned; his body
arose never to die again. Why then, Thomas, were you the only one to make such
a shrewd inquiry, demanding that the Lord’s wounds be shown as the only way
to convince you? Suppose those wounds had vanished with all the other marks
of suffering – what danger to your faith would not your curiosity have
engendered?
My brothers and sisters, piety made this search and devotion these
demands to ensure that impiety should not thereafter raise doubts about the
Lord’s resurrection. It was not only the doubts in his own heart that Thomas was
healing, but everyone else’s as well; and as he was to proclaim these things to the
nations, this energetic advocate was diligently trying to discover how he could
support the profession of so great a faith. Beyond question his spirit of prophecy
was greater than his doubt. For why should he have made such a request unless
he had learned from the Lord by prophetic inspiration that these wounds alone
were to be retained as proof of the resurrection?
Furthermore, the Lord of his own accord had shown the others what this
man subsequently demanded. The text says: Jesus came and stood in their
midst and showed them his hands and his side. For he who had entered through
closed doors and was with good reason thought by the disciples to be a ghost
could not prove himself to their doubting minds except by the wounds that told
of his passion. Then he came and said to Thomas: Put your finger here, and see
my hands, and put out your hand and put it into my side, and be not faithless
but believing. Do this so that when you reopen these wounds which have
already poured forth water and blood to cleanse and ransom all humankind,
faith may pour out over the whole world. Thomas answered: My Lord and my
God!
See how scripture shows not only a human body but also, through the
suffering this body endured, that Christ is, as Thomas acclaims him, God and
Lord. Truly he is God who lives again after being dead, who rose after suffering a
mortal wound; for although he endured so much suffering and received such
great wounds, he lives and reigns as God for countless ages.

Vigils Reading
2025-07-04
THE LAW OF THE GOSPEL
From “Faith and Theology” by Fr Marie-Dominique Chenu
◊◊◊
For Christians, peace is a decisive sign of the kingdom of God; hence, as
students of the history of civilization, they find war a religious enigma which no
casuistry can fit into a vision of the plan of salvation. Since the Gospel is the
substantial datum of theology, this sacred science knows war only by negation
— just as it knows sin in terms of the negation of love.
Some, such as Joseph de Maistre, have tried to integrate war positively
into theology by making it an expression of the divine will, but this attempt is
doomed to failure. The so-called “holy wars” of the Church can only bring a
blush of shame, and no sociology of the kingdom of God can justify them. For
that matter there is an intrinsic paradox in suggesting a “theology of war”, for
how can war be fitted into the word of God (theo-logos), into the Gospel law of
love? Is it ever possible that the disciple of Christ should believe it his duty to
fight? For how could collective, murderous violence, stemming from hate and
avarice, become a meritorious act of fraternal love?
Since theology is a rational and sacred exposition of the word of God
addressed to the world, and incarnate in the world, it is easy to see that the
world at war is an object of theological study only in the sense that the Christian
conscience is faced with a conflict between the absolute law of the Gospel and
the harsh reality of human history. Unless it descend to pure casuistry, theology
will find it more difficult there than anywhere else to invent “reasons” — reasons
which could justify war within the law of the Gospel.
We must start with the Gospel, and always insist on it, for it is the one
constant of Christian life. Before all else, before any doctrinal elaboration,
theology is the word of God – the word of God in the sacred text, the word of God
today and always, in the world of history and the world of nature; that is why the
spontaneous reaction to the expression “theology of war” is one of rejection.
For war is the opposite of peace and in the language of the Gospel, peace is the
consequence of love, which in turn is the one and absolute evangelical rule of
human conduct.
Love is the primary and uncompromising message of the Gospel, not just
something that appeals to a subjective religious sentimentality, but a stern
demand based on the very object of our faith. Here we are faced with the
unequivocal alternative of yes or no: this is the very substance of the Gospel
because it is the substance of the mystery of God communicated to us in Christ.
He who renounces peace renounces the kingdom of God.

Vigils Reading - Memorial of BVM
2025-07-05
MARY’S VIRGINITY
From the writing of Lucien Legrand
◊◊◊
The significance of Mary’s virginity is entirely different from both cultic
virginity and philosophical continence. Mary knows that her virginity has no
value of its own and no power but that of the Spirit. She does not speak of the
greatness of her virginity. For her, it is not virginity that makes her great: it is
the Lord. As far as she is concerned, she is nothing and her virginity seals her
nothingness. Because she is a virgin, she is ‘poor’, a contemptible thing,
considered worthless by the world.
Of course, in the case of Mary as in that of the ‘Poor of Yahweh’ in the Old
Testament, poverty should be taken in the biblical sense. It is not merely
negative. It does not mean only destitution. As we find it in the life of the great
biblical figures such as Jeremiah, Job the anawim in the Psalms and the
Suffering Servant in Isaiah, poverty is a religious attitude which underlies the
spiritual development of the Old Testament and prepares the way for the
abasement of the cross, the imprint of which it bears by anticipation.
Biblical poverty does indeed mean life deprived of any human hope but
also and mostly at its deepest, radical detachment, total humility and
consequently utter confidence in God. Mary’s virginity belongs to this type of
poverty. It is a form of that religious attitude made up of faith and abandon, joy
and confidence; it is akin to humility and can be summarized as an attitude of
religious expectation. It is silence, readiness, emptiness. And her greatness
comes from the faith and confidence in god which spring in the heart on that
emptiness, and from the answer God gave to that faith and confidence.
Virginity of this kind differs entirely from its pagan counterparts. It does
not represent an attempt to substitute our influence for God’s power: on the
contrary, Mary has no other ambition than to be the handmaid of the Lord.
Neither does Mary’s virginity correspond to a merely human longing for purity
and moral greatness. Her virginity does not belong so much to the moral as to
the theological virtues. It manifests an attitude before god rather than an effort
of moral perfection and of self-achievement. Luke’s Gospel of the Infancy does
not describe in Mary a heroic form of the virtue of chastity. What it sees in her is
sheer faith and hope which has no reliance in creatures but is entirely turned
toward God.

Skema
2025-07-06
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
14th Week in Ordinary Time

Mass Readings: Sunday (C), Weekdays (I)
July 6 – 12, 2025

Sun
6
Mon
7
Tue
8
Wed
9
Thu
10
Fri
11
Sat
12

Office
14th Sunday
Weekday
Bl Eugene III
Weekday
Office for the Dead
St Benedict
Memorial of the BVM

Vigils
Gen 19:15-38
Gen 20:1-18
Gen 21:1-21
Gen 21:22-34
Gen 22:1-24
Exod 34:27-35; 35:20-29
Gen 23:1-20

Lauds
Eccles 7:23-29
Eccles 8:1-9
Eccles 8:10-13
Eccles 8:14-17
Eccles 9:1-10
Sir 2:1-9
Eccles 9:11-18

Mass
102
383
384
385
386
597, 477, 810
388

1st
Isa 66:10-14c
Gen 28:10-22a
Gen 32:23-33
Gen 41:55-57; 42:5-7a, 17-24a
Gen 44:18-21, 23b-29; 45:1-5
Prov 2:1-9
Gen 49:29-32; 50:15-26a

2nd
Gal 6:14-18

Eph 4:1-6

Gospel
Luke 10:1-12, 17-20
Matt 9:18-26
Matt 9:32-38
Matt 10:1-7
Matt 10:7-15
Luke 22:24-27
Matt 10:24-33

Vespers
Gal 6:1-10
Gal 6:11-18
Eph 1:1-10
Eph 1:11-14
1 Cor 3:5-17
Gal 5:22-6:2
Eph 1:15-23

Vigils Reading - 14th Sunday ORD
2025-07-06
THE LORD OF THE HARVEST
From a commentary by St Augustine
◊◊◊
The gospel for today raises a question. When the Lord told his disciples
that the harvest was indeed abundant but laborers were scarce and urged them
to ask the Lord of the harvest to send laborers out to harvest his crop, which
crop did he have in mind? That was the point at which he increased the group of
twelve disciples whom he had named his apostles by the addition of another
seventy-two, and his words make it clear that he sent all these out to gather in
the ripe grain.
But which crop did he mean? Evidently not a crop of Gentiles, from whom
there was nothing to be reaped because there had as yet been no sowing among
them. The conclusion must be that the crop in question consisted of Jews. The
Jewish people were the harvest to which the Lord of the harvest came, and to
which he dispatched his reapers. To the Gentiles he could send no reapers at
that time, only sowers. We may understand, then, that harvest time among the
Jews coincided with sowing time among the Gentiles, for out of the Jewish crop,
sown by the prophets and now ripe for harvesting, the apostles were chosen…
For the seed to sprout it was sufficient for the prophets to sow, but the ripe grain
had to wait for the apostles’ sickle…
Then the reapers were sent out, wielding the gospel as their sickle. They
were to greet no one on the road, which meant they were to have no aim or
activity apart from proclaiming the Good News in a spirit of brotherly love.
When they arrived at a house they were to say: Peace be to this house. This
greeting was no mere formula; being filled with peace themselves, the apostles
spread it abroad, proclaiming peace and at the same time possessing it.
Consequently when one of them, fully at peace with himself, pronounced the
blessing: Peace be to this house, then if a lover of peace were in that house, the
apostle’s peace would rest upon him.

Vigils Reading
2025-07-07
A THRONE
FOR THE MOST HIGH
From a sermon by Blessed Guerric of Igny
◊◊◊
[Christ the Lord] is to be not merely invited but drawn into the guest
chamber of our heart by the violence of our prayers and the vehemence of our
fervor. [But] sometimes he makes as though he would go farther on; he does so
for no other reason than that he may prove the zeal of your love.
But what does it mean, you say, that Jesus makes as though he would go
further? What else than what Ecclesiastes tells us of himself: “I have said, I will
be wise, and [wisdom] departed farther from me.” The Spouse speaks more
explicitly when, giving voice to our daily complaint, she says: “I rose up to open
to my beloved, but he had turned aside and was gone. I sought him, and found
him not, I called, and he did not answer me,” just as he did not answer the
Canaanite woman either. You too are wont to call on the Spirit of wisdom, you
are accustomed to seek the Spirit of grace in prayer. If it seems that he draws
farther away from you, do not despair but be more importunate in your pleading
until you hear him answer you: “Great is your faith, be it done to you as you
will.”
But when you invite Jesus take care that you do not invite the God of
majesty into an unclean and unworthy dwelling where a wrangling [spouse] or
clouds of smoke or a dripping roof would not allow even yourself to dwell in
peace. For his place is in peace and nowhere else. Right and justice are the
pillars of his throne.
“Now they seek me,” he says, “from day to day, and desire to know my
ways as a nation that has done justice and has not forsaken the will of their
God.” “Right,” he says, “and justice are the pillars of his throne.” Do not plead
that it is a lavish dwelling you have to prepare for so great and so powerful a
guest and that it is beyond the limits of your poverty. You have the means at
hand. I speak in human terms because of the infirmity of your flesh, or rather
because of the narrowness of your mind. Make a perfect confession of your past
life, have a good will in respect to all else (for there is peace to men of good will),
and in this way you will have prepared with right and justice a throne for the
Most High.

Vigils Reading - Bl Eugene III
2025-07-08
FROM THE TREATISE “ON
CONSIDERATION”
By St Bernard of Clairvaux for Pope Eugenius III
◊◊◊
It has occurred to me to write something which might edify, delight or
console you, Blessed Father Eugene. But I do not know the rules for writing a
formal yet intimate treatise. Two opposites, your majesty and my love, vie to
dictate my style. Love draws me on; majesty holds me back. But you graciously
intervene and request rather than command this treatise, although it would be
more fitting for you to command it. Since your majesty so admirably
condescends, why does my hesitancy persist? What if you have ascended the
throne? Even if you were to walk on the wings of the wind, you would not escape
my affection. Love knows no master. It recognizes a son even though he wear
the tiara. It is the nature of a lover to be suitably humble, willingly submissive,
freely compliant, respectful without duress.
This is not the way with others however; they are driven either by fear or
by greed. Such men bless openly, but harbor evil in their hearts. They flatter you
when you are present, yet fail you in time of need. But charity never fails. It is
true that I have been freed of maternal obligation toward you, but I am not
stripped of affection for you. You were once in my womb; you will not be drawn
from my heart so easily. Ascend to the heavens, descend to the depths, you will
not escape me. I will follow you wherever you go.
I loved you when you were poor in spirit; I shall love you still as
father of the poor and the rich. If I know you, you did not cease being poor in
spirit when you became the father of the poor. I am confident that this change
has been thrust on you and was not of your doing, that this promotion has not
replaced your former state, but rather has enhanced it. Therefore I will instruct
you not as a teacher, but as a mother, indeed as a lover. I may seem more the
fool, but only to one who does not love, to one who does not feel the force of love.
