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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20261103
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20261104
DTSTAMP:20261031T224118Z
CREATED:20261031T224118Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261031T224118Z
UID:15761-1793664000-1793750399@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org
SUMMARY:Vigils Reading
DESCRIPTION:A reading from “Rule of Life for a Recluse” by \nST AELRED OF RIEVAULX \n◊◊◊ \nImagine now that you are standing before Christ’s judgment-seat \nbetween these two companies and have not yet been assigned to one or the \nother. Turn your eyes to the left of the judge and gaze upon that wretched \nmultitude. What horror is there\, what a stench\, what fear\, what grief? They \nstand there miserable and unhappy\, gnashing their teeth\, their bare flesh \nshaking with fear\, dreadful to look upon\, their faces distorted\, cast down from \nshame\, in confusion because of their body’s degradation and nakedness. They \nwant to hide and they are not allowed\, they try to flee and it is not granted them. \nIf they raise their eyes the Judge’s fury bears down upon them from above. If \nthey lower them they are filled with the horror of hell’s pit. They have no excuse \nto offer for their crimes nor is there any chance of claiming that the judgment is \nunfair\, since whatever is decided their own conscience will recognize as just. \nSee now how you should love him who has set you apart from this doomed \ncompany by his predestination\, separated you by his call\, cleansed you by his \njustification. Now turn your eyes to the right and look at those among whom he \nwill place you by glorifying you. What grace is there\, what honor\, what \nhappiness\, what security. Some take their seat on high to give judgment\, some \nare resplendent in martyrs’ crowns\, some are bearing the white flower of \nvirginity\, some display the fruit of almsgiving\, some are illustrious for their \ndoctrine and their learning\, but they are all united by the bond of charity. Jesus’ \nface shines upon them\, not terrible but lovable\, not bitter but sweet\, not \nfrightening but attractive. \nNow stand in the middle\, not knowing to which company the Judge’s \nsentence will assign you. O what a dreadful waiting. Fear and trembling have \ncome upon me and darkness has covered me.’ If he sends me to join those on the \nleft I cannot complain of injustice; if he sets me among those on the right it is to \nbe attributed to his grace\, not to my merits. Truly\, Lord\, life is at your disposal.” \nYou see then how your spirit should be absorbed in his love. \nAlthough in all justice he could have extended to you the sentence passed \non the wicked\, he preferred to place you among those who are to be saved. \nNow imagine yourself associated with that holy company and hearing his \nvoice utter the decree: “Come\, ye blessed of my Father\, receive the kingdom \nwhich was prepared for you from the beginning of the world\,” while those other \nwretched souls hear the harsh words\, full of anger and fury: “Depart from \nme…into eternal fire.” “Then\,” we read\, “they will go to eternal punishment\, but \nthe just to eternal life.” What a harsh separation\, what a miserable lot.
URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-482/
CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20261104
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20261105
DTSTAMP:20261031T224225Z
CREATED:20261031T224225Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261031T224225Z
UID:15763-1793750400-1793836799@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org
SUMMARY:Vigils Reading - St Charles Borromeo
DESCRIPTION:A reading from \nFR RONALD KNOX \n◊◊◊ \nWhen our Lord’s apostles came to look back upon that terrible night in the \nLake of Galilee\, when they strained every nerve against the tempest while their \nMaster lay sleeping in the boat\, they found in it an allegory of their own \nsituation\, as they launched out the frail bark of his Church upon waves so \ntroubled\, with prospects so uncertain. And in every age the Church has looked \nback to that picture and taken comfort from it in times of adversity. [With great \nconfidence]\, the Church of God\, which is Peter’s boat\, has breasted the waves all \nthrough her troubled history. It is not upon the captain’s judgment or the pilot’s \nexperience\, not human wisdom or human prudence\, that she depends for her \nsafe voyage: she rests secure in the presence of her inviolable passenger. \nYet we should do ill if we grudged recognition and gratitude to those \nservants of his who at various times have steered our course for us through \ndifficult waters\, and especially to the saints of the Counter-Reformation — that \nremarkable group of saints whom God raised up at the time of Europe’s \napostasy\, by whose influence\, humanly speaking\, the faith survived that terrible \nordeal. And not the least\, nor the least prominent\, of these is [St Charles \nBorromeo]\, who ruled the Church of Milan in the latter part of the sixteenth \ncentury… \nWhatever be the rights and wrongs of all the controversies we hear about \nthe medieval Church\, this at least is clear\, that in the days of the Council of Trent \nits organization needed reform. And reform needs more than mere legislation to \ndecree it; it needs administration to execute it. That is St Charles’s characteristic \nlegacy to the Church: it was the influence of his example\, in great measure\, that \nmolded her organization on the new model which Trent had decreed. The \nbishop has got to be the center of everything in his diocese\, and the clergy of the \ndiocese are to be his clergy — a family of which he is to be the father\, a guild of \nwhich he is to be the master. \nSee how fond St Charles was of synods: the whole of his comparatively \nshort episcopate is a long record of the synods he gathered amongst his clergy. \nSee how enthusiastic he is for the seminary idea; the bishop\, henceforth\, is not \nmerely to ordain people\, he is to know whom he is ordaining. And above all what \nwas characteristic of St Charles was the institute which he left behind him — a \nbody of secular priests\, putting themselves at the disposal of the bishop as \nabsolutely as the religious puts himself at the disposal of his superior. \nYes\, there is much about St Charles’s life which is more exciting\, and much \nwhich is more attractive\, than all this; his boundless generosity to the poor\, the \nrelentless mortification that regulated his busy\, competent life. But what makes \nhim stand out among the saints more than either is his intense devotion even to \nthe most uninspiring details of diocesan routine.
URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-st-charles-borromeo-3/
CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20261105
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20261106
DTSTAMP:20261031T224327Z
CREATED:20261031T224327Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261031T224327Z
UID:15765-1793836800-1793923199@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org
SUMMARY:Vigils Reading
DESCRIPTION:A reading from \nJOHN OF FORD \n◊◊◊ \n‘May your will’\, Lord Jesus\, ‘be done on earth as it is in heaven \,̓ \nfor you \nsaid that it was your will that fire be enkindled on this earth\, the fire you came to \nsend upon it. What you desired has happened. The furnace that is in Jerusalem \nhas enkindled a furnace on earth. Here on earth\, just as in heaven\, you have \nmade your ministers flames of fire\, and like a devouring fire\, they devour to the \nright and to the left. \nIndeed\, love is never satisfied. It feels distaste for nothing\, it does not \nthink anything should be rejected. It issues its call equally to the good and to the \nbad\, receiving them indiscriminately and making no distinction in favor of one \nrather than the other. The only distinction\, perhaps\, is that it usually overflows \nmore copiously for those in whom sin has abounded. It is characteristic of love \nthat\, like fire\, it burns more fiercely where it finds sturdier tinder\, and the \nquality and quantity of what instigates it\, makes its flame grow ever stronger. \nJesus makes this crystal clear in his parable of the two debtors; it is the one who \nis forgiven most who loves most). He loves more\, says Jesus\, to whom more is \ngiven; he loves more\, meaning that he is urged by the debt and the material is \nthere to prompt him to greater love. \nIn my opinion\, this is why Zechariah said those words I quoted above\, that \nhe would make ‘the clans of Judah like a blazing pot in the midst of wood\, like a \nflaming torch among the sheaves Obviously\, because wood is harder than hay\, it .̓ \nis better material for fires\, and the more difficult it is to set it burning\, the more it \nblazes up once it has begun. It seems to change into the very substance of fire\, \ntaking on its color as well as its heat. \nThe sheaves\, on the other hand\, are those whose sins are venial\, and the \nflaming torch\, that is\, the opportunity to be forgiven and receive unmerited \ngrace\, consumes them with a spark. Yet it is not a fiery torch that touches the \nwood\, but a furnace\, so that\, in some wonderful way\, the wood itself becomes \nfire by the intensity of the heat. And the wood takes to itself not only the ability \nto burn\, but also to enkindle.
URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-483/
CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20261106
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20261107
DTSTAMP:20261031T224434Z
CREATED:20261031T224434Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261031T224434Z
UID:15767-1793923200-1794009599@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org
SUMMARY:Vigils Reading
DESCRIPTION:A reading from \nHANS URS VON BALTHASAR \n◊◊◊ \nChristians live with their involvement in the involvement of God for the \nfreedom of the world. They know that each one has been chosen by God and \ncalled by name to assist in his work of liberation. In this work human beings are \ncentral\, not the angels nor the subhuman things created for the sake of human \nbeings to rule as God commanded and chose them to do. \nChristians must\, first of all\, learn to see fellow human beings and all \ncreated things through the eyes of God. This does not mean that the human \nbeing seen in this light\, ceases to be a profound mystery. Just the opposite. If it \nis true that God has made the human being in his own image and likeness\, then \nthis ought rather to mean that something of the uniqueness and \nunfathomableness of God shines in the human person\, so much more clearly to \nthe beholder when God\, in choosing him and acting in and for him\, sheds upon \nhim God’s own mysterious light. \nTo look through God’s eyes at the human world means enduring both the \nopenness and contradictions of humans\, not forcing them onto a dogmatic \nprocrustean bed but bringing everything under the unity of God’s plan. \nWhoever can see more truth than someone else when they look\, is in the right. \nThis means first that the human being exists centrally as a person: a person \nintended by God\, loved by God\, and for whom God dies in order to rescue and \ndraw him to God. Hence all that has the status of a thing\, all that is not personal \nin this world\, has value only in so far as it serves the purposes of the person\, and \nis harmful when it betrays the person into the hands of the impersonal\, reducing \nhim to slavery and to the status of a thing. This determines the Christian’s \nattitude towards technology. Our battle with the universe will always remain \nsomething of a struggle and perhaps even a violent war\, but such a war will be \njust and permissible only so long as its normative aim remains the \nhumanization of the human being. \nAs a fellow human being\, the Christian is of course committed to taking \npart in the total effort of humanity towards the humanizing of the world\, the \nperduring problematic and indeed tragic nature of which we have already \nindicated. The Christian\, however\, has no clear-cut recipes or solutions to offer \nto this problem\, and like others must wrestle with the deciphering of the riddles \nof nature and of history. In this pursuit Christians are at one with their fellows. \nBut from their knowledge of God’s involvement for the world\, they have a wider \nhorizon which embraces the problematic and tragic\, without eliminating it\, and \nfrom which there falls on the world the only light that is truly illuminating and \nhelpful. They must bear witness to this light not just abstractly – by professions \nof faith – but concretely in their professional and human involvement.
URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-484/
CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20261107
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20261108
DTSTAMP:20261031T224624Z
CREATED:20261031T224624Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261031T224624Z
UID:15769-1794009600-1794095999@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org
SUMMARY:Vigils Reading - Memorial of BVM
DESCRIPTION:A reading from \nST THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX \n◊◊◊ \nIn speaking of our Lady\, we ought not to make improbable assertions \nabout matters that are beyond our knowledge\, for example\, that when she was a \nsmall child she went up to the Temple to offer herself to God with extraordinary \nfervor and a heart on fire with love. For all we know\, she went simply in \nobedience to her parents. \nIf a sermon on the Blessed Virgin is to bear fruit\, it must describe her \nreal life\, such as the Gospel gives us a glimpse of\, and not her fancied life. And \nwe perceive clearly that her real life at Nazareth and later on must have been \nquite ordinary…”He was subject to them”. How simple it all is! \nSometimes the Blessed Virgin is represented as being quite \nunapproachable. Instead\, we ought to show that she was imitable in her practice \nof hidden virtues; we ought to point out that she lived a life of faith\, just as we \ndo. \nWe know well that the Blessed Virgin is queen of heaven and earth; but \nshe is more of a mother than a queen\, and we ought not to give out the idea\, as I \nhave heard it done more than once\, that because of her prerogatives she eclipses \nthe glory of all the saints\, just as the sun\, rising in brilliance\, makes the stars \ndisappear. My God\, what a strange thing to say! A mother who makes the glory \nof her children disappear! For my part\, I believe just the opposite; I think that \nshe will greatly increase the splendor of the elect. \nWe do well to speak of her prerogatives. But we should not stop there. \nWe should make her loved. If\, when we hear a sermon on the Blessed Virgin\, the \npreacher tries to do nothing from beginning to end but call forth our \nadmiration\, we become bored\, and that does not lead to love and imitation. Who \nknows but what some souls will not experience a certain sense of estrangement \nfrom a creature so lofty? \n  \nThe Theology of the Mystical Body \, Emile Mersch SJ\, B. Herder Book Co.\, St Louis MO 1951\, pp. 169-170\,174ff.15 \n  \n  \n 
URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-memorial-of-bvm-25/
CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings
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