Lay Cistercians of Gethsemani Abbey

Skema
2025-03-23
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
3rd Week of Lent

Mass Readings: Sunday (C), Weekdays (I)
March 23 – 29, 2025

Sun
23
Mon
24
Tue
25
Wed
26
Thu
27
Fri
28
Sat
29

Office
3rd Sunday of Lent
Lenten Weekday
Annunciation of the Lord
Lenten Weekday
Lenten Weekday
Lenten Weekday
Lenten Weekday

Vigils
Heb 13:1-25
Lev 1:1-17
1 Chron 17:1-15
Lev 3:1-17
Lev 5:14-26
Lev 8:1-21
Lev 8:22-36; 9:22-24

Lauds
Exod 10:7-11
Exod 10:21-29
Wis 9:1-12
Exod 12:21-28
Exod 12:29-36
Exod 13:11-16
Exod 13:17-22

Mass
30
236
545
239
240
241
242

1st
Exod 3:1-8a, 13-15
Exod 17:1-7
Isa 7:10-14; 8:10
Deut 4:1, 5-9
Jer 7:23-28
Hos 14:2-10
Hos 6:1-6

2nd
1 Cor 10:1-6,
10-12

Heb 10:4-10

Gospel
Luke 13:1-9
John 4:5-42
Luke 1:26-38
Matt 5:17-19
Luke 11:14-23
Mark 12:28b-34
Luke 18:9-14

Vespers
Deut 8:7-14
1 Jn 1:1-4
Heb 2:5-10
Deut 9:15-21
Deut 9:22-29
Deut 10:12-22
Deut 11:1-7

Vigils Reading - 3rd Sunday of Lent
2025-03-23
ABIDE IN GOD’S LOVE
From a commentary by St Augustine of Hippo
◊◊◊
It is My Father’s glory, Christ said, that you should bear abundant fruit
and become my disciples. But even when we have glorified the Father by
bearing much fruit and becoming Christ’s disciples, we still have no right to
claim credit for it as though the work were ours alone. The grace to carry out the
work had first to come to us from God, and so the glory is his, not ours. That is
why Christ is recorded in another place as saying: Let your light so shine before
others that they may see your good works – and here, lest they be tempted to
attribute these good works to themselves, he immediately added: and may give
the glory for them to your heavenly Father.
This, then, is the Father’s glory, that we should bear abundant fruit and
become Christ’s disciples, since it is only through God’s mercy in the first place
that we can become the disciples of Christ. We are God’s handiwork, created in
Christ Jesus for the performance of good works.
As the Father has loved me, Jesus says, so I have loved you. Abide in my
love. There we have the source of every good work of ours. How did they come to
be ours? Only because faith is alive in love. And how could we ever love, unless
we ourselves were loved first? In his first letter, John the evangelist made this
quite clear. Let us love God, he wrote, because he first loved us. The Father does
indeed love us, but he does so in his Son; we glorify the Father by bearing fruit as
branches of the vine which is His Son and becoming his disciples.
Abide in my love, he says to us. How may we do that? In the words that
follow you have your answer. If you observe what I command you. then you
will truly abide in my love. But is it love that makes us keep the Lord’s
commandments, or is it the keeping of them that makes us love him? There can
be no doubt that love comes first. Anyone devoid of love will lack all motive to
keep the commandments.
When, therefore, Christ says to us: If you keep my commandments, you
will abide in my love, he is telling us that the observance of the commandments
is not the source but rather the gauge and touchstone of our love. It is as though
he said to us: Do not suppose that you are abiding in my love if you are not
keeping my commandments, for it is by observing them that you will abide in
my love. That is to say, your observance of my commandments is the proof, the
outward manifestation, of the fact that you abide in my love.
Let no one, then, who neglects to keep the commandments deceive
himself by protesting his love for God. It is only to the extent that we keep the
Lord’s commandments that we abide in his love; insofar as we fail to keep them
we fail in love. Yet even when we do keep God’s commandments, it is not
something we do in order to make God love us, for unless he loved us first we
should not be able to keep them. It is the gift of his grace, a grace which is
accessible to the humble of heart, but beyond the reach of the proud.

Vigils Reading
2025-03-24
A SEASON OF HEALING
By Thomas Merton2
◊◊◊
The Paschal Mystery is above all the mystery of life, in which the Church,
by celebrating the death and resurrection of Christ, enters into the Kingdom of
Life which He has established once for all by His definitive victory over sin and
death… Lent is then not a season of punishment so much as one of healing.
There is joy in the salutary fasting and abstinence of the Christian who
eats and drinks less in order that his mind may be more clear and receptive to
receive the sacred nourishment of God’s word, which the whole Church
announces and meditates upon in each day’s liturgy throughout Lent. The
whole life and teaching of Christ pass before us, and Lent is a season of special
reflection and prayer, a forty-day retreat in which each Christian, to the extent
he is able, tries to follow Christ into the desert by prayer and fasting…
In this way, for the whole Church, Lent will not be merely a season simply
of a few formalized penitential practices, half understood and undertaken
without interest, but a time of metanoia, the turning of all minds and hearts to
God in preparation for the celebration of the Paschal Mystery…
It is a time in which joy and grief go together hand in hand: for that is the
meaning of compunction – a sorrow which pierces, which liberates, which gives
hope and therefore joy. Such sorrow brings joy because it is at once a mature
acknowledgment of guilt and the acceptance of its full consequences: hence it
implies a religious and moral adjustment to reality, the acceptance of one’s
actual condition, and the acceptance of reality is always a liberation from the
burden of illusion which we strive to justify by our errors and sins. Compunction
is a necessary sorrow, but it is followed by joy and relief because it wins for us
one of the greatest blessings: the light of truth and the grace of humility.
Only the inner rending, the tearing of the heart, brings this joy. It lets out
our sins, and lets in the clean air of God’s spring, the sunlight of the days that
advance toward Easter. Rending of the garments lets in nothing but the cold.
The rending of the heart which is spoken of in Joel is that “tearing away” from
ourselves and our <oldness> – the “oldness” of the old man, wearied with the
boredom and drudgery of an indifferent existence, that we may turn to God and
taste His mercy, in the liberty of His sons and daughters.
When we turn to Him, what do we find? That “He is gracious and
merciful, patient and rich of mercy”…The purpose of Lent is…above all a
preparation to rejoice in His love. And this preparation consists in receiving the
gift of His mercy – a gift which we receive in so far as we open our hearts to it,
casting out what cannot remain in the same room with mercy.
Now one of the things we must cast out first of all is fear. Fear narrows the
little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our
power to give ourselves. If we were terrified of God as an inexorable judge, we
would not confidently await His mercy, or approach Him trustfully in prayer.
Our peace, our joy in Lent are a guarantee of grace.
2 Seasons of Celebration – Farrar, Straus & Giroux – NY – 1965 – pg. 113f.5

Vigils Reading - Annunciation of the Lord
2025-03-25
A KIND WORD
From a sermon by Blessed Guerric of Igny
◊◊◊
The solemnity of the Lord’s Annunciation providentially interrupts the
days of our Lenten observance, so that we are able to refresh ourselves with
spiritual joy in the midst of the physical austerities which weigh so heavily on us.
Having been humbled by penitential sorrow, we are now encouraged by the
announcement of the one who takes away the sins of the world. This is just what
Scripture says: Grief makes the heart heavy, but a kind word makes it glad.
It is indeed a kind word, a reliable word in which you can believe, this
gospel of our salvation which the angel sent by God announced to Mary on this
day. It is a joyful word which day utters unto day, the angel to the virgin,
concerning the incarnation of the Word. It promises a son to the Virgin, and at
the same time pardon to sinners, redemption to captives, release to the
imprisoned, life to those in the grave. In foretelling the Son’s kingdom and
announcing the glory of the righteous, it makes hell fearful and gives joy to
heaven. By the revelation of these mysteries and by the new joys it brings them,
it seems to have increased the perfection of the angels.
Is there an afflicted person who would not be cheered by this kind word,
or anyone whose lowliness it would not console? Remember your word to your
servant by which you gave me hope, sang David. It was this which consoled me
when I was brought low. He received only a promise, a word which did not
show any sign of coming true. The delay in the fulfillment of his desire
distressed him, but he took comfort by hoping firmly in the good faith of the one
who had made the promise. If David could sustain his spirit with just the hope of
3 A Word in Season – vol/ IV – Augustinian Press p 1991 – pg 52.7
the salvation which was being kept for us, with what joy and delight ought we
not to greet its realization?
Blessed are the mourners because they will be comforted, blessed those
whose hearts are afflicted by a holy grief because they shall be gladdened by a
kind word. Clearly the kind word which consoles is your all-powerful Word, O
Lord, which came today from the heavenly throne into the womb of a virgin.
There, too, he made a royal throne, and from there he consoles those who
mourn on earth even while he sits as king surrounded by the hosts of angels in
heaven.

Vigils Reading
2025-03-26
MORALITY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
From “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis
◊◊◊
Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them
by their moral choices… When a man who has been perverted from his youth and
taught that cruelty is the right thing, does some tiny little kindness, or refrains from
some cruelty he might have committed, and thereby, perhaps, risks being sneered
at by his companions, he may, in God’s eyes, be doing more than you and I would
do if we gave up life itself for a friend…
Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of
a good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom
we regard as fiends. Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had
been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and
then with the power, say, of Himmler? That is why Christians are told not to judge.
We see only the results which a man’s choices make out of his raw material. But
God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it.
Most of the man’s psychological make-up is probably due to his body: when his
body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose,
that made the best or the worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of
nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to a good
digestion, will fall off some of us: all sorts of nasty things which were due to
complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see
every one as he really was. There will be surprises…
People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God
says, “If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other
thing.”… I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are
turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little
different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your
innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing
either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that
is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one
that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with
itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is it is joy and peace and
knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage,
impotence, and eternal loneliness…
One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and
another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at. But the
little mark on the soul may be much the same in both. Each has done something to
himself which, unless he repents, will make it harder for him to keep out of the rage
next time he is tempted, and will make the rage worse when he does fall into it.
Each of them, if he seriously turns to God, can have that twist in the central man
straightened out again: each is, in the long run, doomed if he will not. The bigness
or smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters…
When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil
that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own
badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a
thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right… Good people know about both good and
evil: bad people do not know about either.

Vigils Reading
2025-03-27
THE SPIRIT OF LENT
From a meditation by Dom Alban Boultwood
◊◊◊
In Chapter 49 of the Holy Rule, “On the Observance of Lent,” St Benedict
begins by saying that the spiritual man ought really to be living at all times in the
spirit of Lent, that is, in wholehearted conversion to God. Our frailty causes us
to fail often in this, but if we do not try to live in this spirit during the holy season
of Lent, when shall we ever do so?
St Benedict sees the spirit of Lent not as one of unhappiness, but rather as
a spirit of free and joyful oblation: “so that everyone of his own will may offer to
God, with joy and the Holy Spirit, something beyond the measure appointed to
him”. The Church herself has been preparing us for this, first by drawing us and
inspiring us by the sublime glimpse of divine love unveiled at Christmas, and
then by summoning us to hear the Savior’s call as he manifests his divine
mission and power after the Epiphany. And now we are called to follow him, in
the work of his oblation and redemptive sacrifice which he now so lovingly takes
up. Our Lord calls us to unite ourselves with him in his oblation to his Father’s
will, for this is his mission.
Our response to this divine invitation has led us to the “oblation” by which
as [monks] we offer ourselves wholly to God, and it seems specially fitting for us
during Lent, to renew, solemnly, sincerely, reflectively, our formal [offering] of
ourselves to God through the Rule of St Benedict. It is true that our [offering] is
really made once and for all but the point lies in the renewal of the spirit of our
[offering]. It is not enough to set up a religious program in our life, Even in the
monastery itself, where the vows and the whole rule of life establish a wonderful
religious machinery to guide and speed us towards God, yet these things still
5 Alive to God [Benedictine Studies VII], Baltimore-Dublin, 1964, pp. 72-75.11
remain in themselves just the machinery of our life; and we soon find, here too,
precisely that tendency for things to become mechanical in the bad sense. And
so we are always having to renew our spirit, deepening, clarifying, purifying,
reaffirming, our interior [offering], as the years bring us the daily opportunities
of fulfillment.
We must go forward in faith and in hope and in love, one step at a time,
trying to be ready to recognize God’s will as it comes to us day by day, and trying
to give ourselves to it with all our heart. As occasion arises, the “instruments of
good works” [which St Benedict mentions] will be offered to us; so many
spiritual tools, yet all but a part of the first great one to love the Lord with your
whole heart.

Vigils Reading
2025-03-28
ROOTED AND GROUNDED
IN LOVE
From “Meditations and Prayers” by Evelyn Underhill
◊◊◊
Adoration, as it more deeply possesses us, inevitably leads on to self-
offering: for every advance in prayer is really an advance in love. “I ask not for
thy gifts but for thyself,” says the Divine Voice to Thomas à Kempis… That, of
course, is real intercession; which is gravely misunderstood by us, if we think of
it mainly in terms of asking God to grant particular needs and desires. Such
secret intercessory prayer ought to penetrate and accompany all our active
work, if it is really to be turned to the purpose of God. It is the supreme
expression of the spiritual life on earth: moving from God to man, through us,
because we have ceased to be self-centered units, but are woven into the great
fabric of praying souls, the “mystical body” through which the work of Christ on
earth goes on being done.
Those who deal much with souls soon come to know something about the
strange spiritual currents which are at work under the surface of life, and the
extent in which charity can work on supernatural levels for supernatural ends.
But if you are to do that, the one thing that matters is that you should care
supremely about it; care in fact, so much that you do not mind how much you
suffer for it. We cannot help anyone until we do care, for it is only by love that
spirit penetrates spirit.
Real saints do feel and bear the weight of the sins and pains of the world.
It is the human soul’s greatest privilege that we can thus accept redemptive
suffering for one another – and they do. St Theresa says that if anyone claiming
to be united to God is always in a state of peaceful beatitude, she simply does not
believe in their union with God. Such a union, to her mind, involves great
sorrow for the sin and pain of the world; a sense of identity not only with God
but also with all other souls, and a great longing to redeem and heal. That is real
supernatural charity.
It is a call to love and save not the nice but the nasty; not the lovable but
the unlovely, the hard, the narrow, and the embittered, and the tiresome, who
are so much worse. To love irrespective of merit or opinion or personal
preference; to love even those who offend our taste. If you are to love your
people thus, translating your love, as you must, into unremitting intercessory
work, and avoid being swamped by the great ocean of suffering, sin and need to
which you are sent, once again this will only be done by maintaining and feeding
the temper of adoration and trustful adherence. This is the heart of the life of
prayer; and only in so far as we work from this center can we safely dare to touch
other souls and seek to affect them. For such intercession is a sacrificial job; and
sacrificial jobs need the support of a stronger inner life if they are to be carried
through. They are rooted and grounded in love.

Vigils Reading
2025-03-29
THE DIVINE REMEDIES
A sermon by St Leo the Great
◊◊◊
Apostolic teaching, beloved, exhorts us that we “put off the old man with
his deeds” and renew ourselves from day to day by a holy manner of life. For if
we are the temple of God, and if the Holy Spirit is a Dweller in our souls, as the
Apostle says: “You are the temple of the living God”, we must then strive with all
vigilance that the dwelling of our heart be not unworthy of so great a Guest. And
just as in houses made with hands, we see to it with praiseworthy diligence that
whatever may be damaged, either through the rain coming in, or by the wind in
storms, or by age itself, is promptly and carefully repaired, so must we with
unceasing concern take care that nothing disordered be found in our souls, that
nothing unclean be found there.
For though this dwelling of ours does not endure without the support of
its Maker, nor would the structure be safe without the watchful care of the
Builder, nevertheless since we are rational stones, and living material, the Hand
of our Maker has so fashioned us that even he who is being repaired may
cooperate with His Maker.
Let human obedience then not withdraw itself from the grace of God, nor
turn away from that Good without which it cannot be good. And should it find in
the fulfillment of His commands something that is difficult to accomplish or
beyond its powers, let it not remain apart, but rather turn to Him who
commands us, and who has laid on us this precept that He may both help us and
awaken in us the desire of Him, as the prophet tells us: “Cast your care upon the
Lord, and he shall sustain you”.
Or perhaps there is someone who prides himself beyond due measure,
and who imagines himself to be so untouched, so unblemished, that he has now
no need to renew himself. Such a belief is wholly deceiving, and he will grow old
in unceasing folly who believes that amid the temptations of this life he is safe
from all injury to his soul. All things are filled with dangers, filled with snares.
Desires inflame us, allurements lie in wait for us, the love of gain beguiles us,
losses frighten us, bitter are the tongues of detractors, and not always true the
lips of those who praise us. There hate rages against us; here the false friend
cheats us; so that it is easier to avoid discord than to shun deceit.
And since there are few so steadfast that no trial disturbs them, and since
not merely bad fortune but good also, corrupts many among the faithful, we
must use earnest care in treating the wounds by which our human mortality has
been injured… Since the Scripture says: “Who can say: my heart is clean, I am
pure from sin?”…let each one think within himself of the forgiveness he has
need of for his sins, and of the medicine he needs for the restoration of his soul.
When…should we more fittingly have recourse to the divine remedies
than when we are once again reminded of the mysteries of our redemption? And
that we may more worthily commemorate them, let us earnestly prepare
ourselves by these forty days of abstinence.

Skema
2025-03-30
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
4th Week of Lent

Mass Readings: Sunday (C), Weekdays (I)
March 30 – April 5, 2025

Sun
30
Mon
31
Tue
1
Wed
2
Thu
3
Fri
4
Sat
5

Office
4th Sunday
Lenten Weekday
Lenten Weekday
Lenten Weekday
Lenten Weekday
Lenten Weekday
Lenten Weekday

Vigils
Lev 16:1-19
Lev 16:20-34
Lev 17:1-16
Lev 19:1-18, 31-37
Lev 20:1-8, 22-26
Lev 23:1-14, 26-32
Lev 25:1-22

Lauds
Exod 14:10-14
Exod 14:19-22
Exod 14-26-31
Exod 15:19-21
Exod 16:1-3
Exod 16:9-15
Exod 19:1-8

Mass
33
243
245
246
247
248
249

1st
Josh 5:9a, 10-12
Mic 7:7-9
Ezek 47:1-9, 12
Isa 49:8-15
Exod 32:7-14
Wis 2:1a, 12-22
Jer 11:18-20

2nd
2 Cor 5:17-21

Gospel
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
John 9:1-41
John 5:1-3a, 5-16
John 5:17-30
John 5:31-47
John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30
John 7:40-53

Vespers
Deut 11:8-12
Deut 11:13-17
Deut 11:18-25
Deut 11:26-32
Deut 26:16-19
Deut 27:1-10
Deut 29:1-8

Vigils Reading - 4th Sunday of Lent
2025-03-30
A FATHER
AND NOT A JUDGE
From a commentary by St John Chrysostom
◊◊◊
All that God looks for from us is the slightest opening, and he forgives a
multitude of sins. Let me tell you a parable that will confirm this.
There were two brothers: they divided their father’s goods between them,
and one stayed home, while the other went away to a foreign country, wasted all
he had been given, and then could not bear the shame of his poverty. Now the
reason I have told you this parable is so that you will understand that even sins
committed after baptism can be forgiven if we face up to them. I do not say this
to encourage indolence but to save you from despair, which harms us worse
than indolence.
The son who went away represents those who fall after baptism. This is
clear from the fact that he is called a son, since no one is called a son unless he is
baptized. Also, he lived in his father’s house and took a share of all his father’s
goods. Before baptism no one receives the father’s goods or enters upon the
inheritance. We can therefore take all this as signifying the state of believers.
Furthermore, the wastrel was a brother of the good man, and no one is a brother
unless he has been born again through the Spirit.
What does he say after falling into the depths of evil? I will return to my
father. The reason the father let him go and did not prevent his departure for a
foreign land was so that he might learn well by experience what good things are
enjoyed by the one who remains at home. But when words would not convince
us God often leaves us to learn from the things that happen to us.
When the profligate returned after going to a foreign country and finding
out by experience what a great sin it is to leave the father’s house, the father did
not remember past injuries but welcomed him with open arms. Why? Because
he was a father and not a judge. And there were dances and festivities and
banquets and the whole house was full of joy and gladness.
Are you asking: “Is this what he gets for his wickedness?” Not for his
wickedness, but for his return home; not for his sin but for repentance’ not for
evil, but for being converted. What is more, when the elder son was angry at this,
the father gently won him over, saying You were always with me, but he was
lost and has been found; he was dead and has come back to life. When someone
who was lost has to be saved”, says the father, “it is not the time for passing
judgment or making minute inquiries, but only for mercy and forgiveness.”

Vigils Reading
2025-03-31
EVERYWHERE MERCY PRECEDES
From a sermon by Blessed Guerric of Igny
◊◊◊
O happy the humility of those who repent; O blessed the hope of those
who confess. How mighty you are with the Almighty; how easily you conquer the
unconquerable; how quickly you turn the dreadful judge into a devoted father.
We have heard to our great edification of the prodigal son’s sorrowful journey,
tearful repentance and glorious reception. He was so gravely guilty and had not
yet confessed but only planned to; had not yet made satisfaction but only bent
his mind to it. Yet by merely intending to humble himself he immediately
obtained a pardon, which others seek for so long a time with such great desire,
beg for with such tears, strive for with such diligence. The thief on the cross was
absolved by a simple confession, the prodigal by only the will to confess.
“I said,” Scripture says, “I will confess my transgression to the Lord; and
you did forgive the guilt of my sin.” Everywhere mercy precedes. It had preceded
the will to confess by inspiring it; it preceded also the words of confession by
forgiving what was to be confessed. “When he was still far off,” we read, “his
father saw him and was moved with compassion, and running to meet him fell
upon his neck and kissed him.” These words seem to suggest that the father was
even more anxious o pardon his son than the son was to be pardoned. He
hastened to absolve the guilty one from what was tormenting his conscience, as
if the merciful father suffered more in his compassion for his miserable son than
the son did in his own miseries. We do not mean to attribute human feelings to
the unchangeable nature of God; we intend rather that our affection should be
softened and moved to love that supreme goodness by learning from
comparison with human feelings that he loves us more than we love him.
See how where sin abounded grace abounds still more. The guilty one
could scarcely hope for pardon; the judge, or rather not now the judge but the
advocate, heaps us grace… What a wealth of graciousness and sweetness, what
an abundance of most blessed joy, what torrents of most holy delight do they not
contain? “He fell upon his neck and kissed him.” When he thus showed his
affection for him, what did he do by his embrace and his kiss but take him to his
bosom and cast himself into his son’s bosom, breathe himself into him, in order
that by clinging to his father he might become one spirit with him, just as by
clinging to harlots he had been made one body with them? It was not enough for
that supreme mercy not to close the bowels of his compassion to the wretched.
He draws them into his very bowels and makes them his members. He could not
bind us to himself more closely, could not make us more intimate to himself
than by incorporating us into himself.
Both by charity and by ineffable power he unites us not only with the body
he has assumed but also with his very spirit. If such is the grace accorded to the
repentant what will be the glory of those who reign? If such are the consolations
of the wretched, what will be the joys of the blessed? And since he gives us so
much in advance while we are still on the way, what treasures is he not keeping
stored up for us when we arrive in our fatherland? Indeed, what has not entered
into the heart of man: that we should be like him and that God should be all in
all.

Vigils Reading
2025-04-01
A TOUGH MIND
AND A TENDER HEART
From a sermon by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.3
◊◊◊
Toughmindedness without tenderheartedness is cold and detached, leaving
one’s life in a perpetual winter devoid of the warmth of spring and the gentle heat of
summer. What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined
heights of toughmindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless
depths of hardheartedness?
The hardhearted person never truly loves. He engages in a crass
utilitarianism which values other people mainly according to their usefulness to
him. He never experiences the beauty of friendship, because he is too cold to feel
affection for another and is too self-centered to share another’s joy and sorrow. He
is an isolated island. No outpouring of love links him with the mainland of
humanity. The hardhearted person lacks the capacity for genuine compassion… He
passes unfortunate men every day, but never really sees them. He gives dollars to a
worthwhile charity, but he gives not of his spirit…
Jesus reminds us that the good life combines the toughness of the serpent
and the tenderness of the dove. To have serpentlike qualities devoid of dovelike
qualities is to be passionless, mean, and selfish. To have dovelike qualities without
serpentlike qualities is to be sentimental, anemic, and aimless. We must combine
strongly marked antitheses…
The greatness of our God lies in the fact that he is both toughminded and
tenderhearted. He has qualities both of austerity and of gentleness. The Bible,
always clear in stressing both attributes of God, expresses his toughmindedness in
his justice and wrath and his tenderheartedness in his love and grace. God has two
outstretched arms. One is strong enough to surround us with justice, and one is
gentle enough to embrace us with grace. On the one hand, God is a God of justice
who punished Israel for her wayward deeds, and on the other hand, he is a
forgiving father whose heart was filled with unutterable joy when the prodigal
returned home.
I am thankful that we worship a God who is both toughminded and
tenderhearted… At times we need to know that the Lord is a God of justice. When
slumbering giants of injustice emerge in the earth, we need to know that there is a
God of power who can cut them down like the grass and leave them withering like
the green herb. When our most tireless efforts fail to stop the surging sweep of
oppression, we need to know that in this universe is a God whose matchless
strength is a fit contrast to the sordid weakness of man.
But there is also times when we need to know that God possesses love and
mercy. When we are staggered by the chilly winds of adversity and battered by the
raging storms of disappointment and when through our folly and sin we stray into
some destructive far country and are frustrated because of a strange feeling of
homesickness, we need to know that there is Someone who loves us, cares for us,
understands us, and will give us another chance. When days grow dark and nights
grow dreary, we can be thankful that our God combines in his nature a creative
synthesis of love and justice which will lead us through life’s dark valleys and into
sunlit pathways of hope and fulfillment.

3 Martin Luther King Jr. Strength to Love. New York: Harper & Row, 1964. 5-9.7

Vigils Reading
2025-04-02
A DELUGE OF MERCY
From a sermon by St Maximus the Confessor
◊◊◊
We must accept with all reverence, brethren, the sacred days of Lent, and
not recoil because of the length of the season; for the longer the days of our
fasting, the greater the grounds of our forgiveness; the longer the time of our
self-denial, the grater the price paid for our soul’s salvation; the severer the
treatment of our wounds, the more sure the healing of our offenses. For God
who is the Physician of our souls has instituted an appropriate time; sufficient
for the just to make reparation and for sinners to ask for mercy; the one praying
for peace, the other imploring pardon.
For the days of Lent are suited to our purposes; not short, so that we may
plead in prayer; not long, for our need to gain merit. For in this fast of forty days
any offense may be wiped out, and the severity of any judge softened. The time
may be long and tedious for the one who neither pleads for his sins, nor hopes
for forgiveness. For he who despairs will neither confess his sins, nor hope in the
mercy of the Judge.
Holy and salutary therefore is the time of Lent, in which the Judge is
moved to mercy, the sinner to repentance, and the just to peace. For in these
days the Divinity is inclined to be more merciful, the sinner to repent, and grace
to be obtained. All things are now prepared: the heavens to pardon, the sinner to
confess, the tongue to plead.
Mystical and salutary is this number forty. For when in the beginning the
iniquity of mortals covered the earth, God, dissolving the clouds of heaven for
the space of this number of days, covered the whole earth with a flood. You see
then already that in this time the Mystery is put before us in Figure. For as it
then rained for forty days, to cleanse the world, so now it also happens. Yet the
deluge of those days must be called a mercy; in that through it iniquity was
crushed, and justice upheld. For it took place out of mercy, to deliver the just,
and that the wicked might no longer sin. We see clearly it was through mercy it
came, as a sort of baptism, in which the face of the earth was renewed; that is, so
that mortals who wallowed in the dreadful sin of those abandoned might come
to grace in the dwelling of Noah, and so that he who was then an abode of
iniquity, might become a dwelling of holiness.
Holy and dedicated is this time of forty days, which immediately from the
beginning began to divide the just from the unjust; and by a kind of judgment
separate the good from the bad. And this takes place even in our time of forty
days. For in these forty days the good are divided from the bad, that is, the
chaste from the unchaste, the temperate from the intemperate, the Christian
from the heathen. The wicked…are separated from the good, that is, the sinner
from the just, the devil from the saint, the heretic from the faithful. For those
others are lost, as in the Flood, in the disaster of this world, while the Church
alone, with all its virtues, is like the Ark sustained above the deep.

Vigils Reading
2025-04-03
THE EXPERIENCE OF ETERNITY
From “Christian at the Crossroads” by Fr Karl Rahner
◊◊◊
In every human life not confined to the visible and tangible or totally
absorbed in the needs of the moment, but lived in the Spirit, there are moments
and events in which our whole existence comes into play, in which we are
brought up against our life in its entirety, in which the meaning and fulfillment
or failure of that life is weighed in the balance: perhaps when we make a
commitment to selfless love, or reach out in yearning and hope for the fulfill-
ment of our life, or are threatened in the depths of our existence. At those
moments attitudes are formed and decisions taken not wholly or rationally
explicable in purely inner-worldly terms and without an ultimate grounding in
the solely here and now; the presence and efficacy of the Spirit is sought – and
perhaps also discovered – in a more reflexive way.
Have we ever been silent although we wished to defend ourselves,
although we were treated with less than justice? Did we ever forgive although we
got no thanks for it and our silent pardon was taken for granted? Did we once
obey not because we had to or would otherwise have suffered unpleasant
consequences, but merely because of that mysterious, speechless,
incomprehensible force we call God and God’s will? Have we ever made a
sacrifice without thanks, acknowledgment or even sentiments of inner peace?
Have we ever been thoroughly lonely? Have we had to take a decision purely on
the verdict of our conscience, when we cannot tell anybody or explain to
anybody, when we are quite alone and know we are making a decision no one
can make for us and for which we shall be responsible to eternity? Have we ever
tried to love God when no wave of heartfelt enthusiasm sustains us, when we
cannot exchange ourselves and life’s pressures with God, when we think we are
dying of such love, when it feels like death and absolute negation, when we seem
to be summoned into the void and wholly unheard-of, when everything is
apparently becoming incomprehensible and seemingly meaningless?… And so
on.
We can all perhaps see ourselves in such life experiences, or think of our
own similar ones. If we can, then we have had the spiritual experience referred
to here: the experience of eternity, the experience that spirit is more than a piece
of this temporal world, the experience that the meaning of being human is not
exhausted in the meaning and happiness of this world, the experience of risk
and venturesome trust which has no provable justification deducible from mere
worldly success, in short and finally: the experience of God, the experience of
the descent of the Holy Spirit which became a reality in Christ through his
incarnation and his sacrifice on the cross.

Vigils Reading
2025-04-04
THE SOJOURN
OF OUR PEACE
From the writing of Dom Columba Marmion
◊◊◊
When we thus submit ourselves entirely to Christ Jesus, when we abandon
ourselves to Him, when our soul only responds, like His own, with a perpetual
Amen to all that He asks of us in the name of His Father…then Christ Jesus
establishes His peace in us: His peace, not that which the world promises, but the
true peace which can only come from Himself…
Doubtless, here below, peace is not always sensible; upon earth we are in a
condition of trial and, most often, peace is won by conflict… We may be slighted,
opposed, persecuted, be unjustly treated, our intentions and deeds may be
misunderstood; temptation may shake us, suffering may come suddenly upon us;
but there is an inner sanctuary which none can reach; here is the sojourn of our
peace, because in this innermost secret of the soul dwell adoration, submission and
abandonment to God. “I love my God,” said St. Augustine, “no one takes Him from
me: no one takes from me what I ought to give Him, for that is enclosed within my
heart…
Death cannot trouble the soul that has sought only God. Has it not confided
itself to the One Who says: “He that believes in Me, although he be dead, shall
live”…
In one of her “Exercises,” St Gertrude allows her assurance, which the
infinite merits of Jesus give her, to overflow. “Woe, woe unto me, if, when I come
before You, I had no advocate to plead my cause!… Come with me to judgment…
there let us stand together. Judge me, for the right is Yours; but remember You are
also my Advocate. In order that I be fully acquitted, You have but to recount what
You did become for love of me, the price with which You have purchased me…”
For souls moved by such sentiments, death is but a transition; Christ comes
Himself to open to them the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem… There will be no
more darkness, trouble, tears, or sighs; but peace, infinite and perfect peace.
“Peace first becomes ours with the longing and seeking for the Creator; it is in the
full vision and eternal possession of Him that peace is made perfect.”

Vigils Reading
2025-04-05
FORGIVE US,
AS WE FORGIVE
From a sermon by Caesarius of Arles
◊◊◊
If any one of us is in conflict with another, let us end the quarrel lest we
ourselves end badly. Do not consider this unimportant, my beloved. Let us call
to mind that our life here is mortal and frail, that it is endangered by many and
great temptations, and this makes us pray that we may not be overcome. And so,
we realize that even the just are not without some sins. But there is one remedy
which enables us to keep alive. For God, our Master, told us to say in our
prayers: “Forgive us the wrong we have done as we forgive those who wrong us.”
We have made a contract with God and taken a resolution that the wrong must
be forgiven. This makes us ask with complete confidence to be forgiven
provided we too forgive.
If, on the contrary, we do not forgive, how can we in good conscience hope
that our sins will be forgiven? Let us not deceive ourselves: God deceived no
one. It is human to be angry, but I wish it were impossible. It is human to
become angry but let us not water the small plant born of anger with various
suspicions. Let us not permit it to develop into a tree of hatred. It happens also
frequently that a father is angry with his son, but he does not hate the son. He is
angry because he wishes to correct the son. If this is his purpose, his anger is
animated by love.
We read in Scripture: “Why look at the speck in your brother’s eye when
you miss the plank in your own?” You find fault with another person for being
angry, and you keep hatred in yourself. Anger in comparison with hatred is only
a speck, but if the speck is fostered, it becomes a plank. If, on the contrary, you
pluck out the speck and cast it away, it will amount to nothing.
Our Master says in another place: “Anyone who hates his brother is a
murderer.” Those who hate their brother, walk around, go out, come in, march
on, are not burdened by any chains and are not shut up in any prison, but they
are bound by their guilt. Do not think of them as not being imprisoned. Their
heart is in prison. When you hear: “He who hates his brother is in darkness all
the while,” lest you might despise that darkness, the evangelist adds: “Anyone
who hates his brother is a murderer.”
You hate your brothers and sisters and walk safely around and refuse to
be reconciled with them, and God has given you time and opportunity. Yet you
are a murderer and are still alive. If you felt God’s wrath you would be suddenly
snatched away with your hatred toward others. God spares you; spare others
likewise; make up and seek reconciliation with them. But suppose you want
reconciliation and another does not want it. That is enough for you; you have
something to grieve for, you have freed yourself. If you want agreement and the
other refuses, say confidently: “Forgive us the wrong we have done as we forgive
those who wrong us.”

Skema
2025-04-06
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
5th Week of Lent

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

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

Office
5th Sunday
Lenten Weekday
Lenten Weekday
Lenten Weekday
Lenten Weekday
Lenten Weekday
Lenten Weekday

Vigils
Lev 26:1-17, 40-46
Num 9:15-23; 10:33-36
Num 11:1-6, 10-30
Num 12:1-15
Num 13:1-3, 17-33
Num 14:1-25
Num 20:1-13; 21:4-9

Lauds
Exod 19:16-19
Exod 20:1-7
Exod 20:8-17
Exod 20:18-21
Exod 24:12-18
Exod 32:7-14
Exod 32:30-35

Mass
36
250
252
253
254
255
256

1st
Isa 43:16-21
2 Kgs 4:18b-21, 32-37
Num 21:4-9
Dan 3:14-20, 91-92, 95
Gen 17:3-9
Jer 20:10-13
Ezek 37:21-28

2nd
Phil 3:8-14

Gospel
John 8:1-11
John 11:1-45
John 8:21-30
John 8:31-42
John 8:51-59
John 10:31-42
John 11:45-56

Vespers
Deut 30:1-6
Deut 30:9-14
Deut 30:15-20
Deut 31:1-6
Deut 31:9-13
Deut 32:45-47
1 Tim 6:11-16

Vigils Reading - 5th Sunday of Lent
2025-04-06
IT IS SIN HE CONDEMNS,
NOT PEOPLE
From a commentary by St Augustine
◊◊◊
The scribes and Pharisees brought to him a woman who had been
caught committing adultery. Now the penalty of the law for adultery was
stoning. It was, of course, unthinkable that any of the prescriptions of the law
could be unjust, so it followed that anyone whose teachings contravened what
the law required would lay himself open to the charge of advocating injustice.
The Lord’s enemies accordingly said to themselves: “He has a reputation
for truth and is regarded as a man of great kindness and forbearance, so we
must find a pretext for accusing him on the grounds of injustice. Let us confront
him with a woman caught committing adultery, and quote the ruling of the law
in her regard. If he orders her to be stoned, he will lose his name for clemency; if
he tells us to release her, he will not be upholding justice. There is little doubt
that he will sway she must be freed, in order not to lose the reputation which has
made him so popular. That will be our chance to incriminate him and find him
guilty of an offense against the law. We shall be able to say: ‘You are an enemy
of the law! Your answer is not merely an attack on Moses but on God who gave
the law to Moses. You have made yourself liable to the death penalty. You and
the woman should both be stoned.’” By voicing such opinions the Lord’s
enemies might be able to enflame popular feelings against him; they might
incite the crowds to denounce him and demand his condemnation.
But look at the way our Lord’s answer upheld justice without forgoing
clemency. He was not caught in the snare his enemies had laid for him; it was
they themselves who were caught in it. He did not say the woman should not be
stoned, for then it would look as though he were opposing the law. But he had no
intention of saying: “Let her be stoned,” because he came not to destroy those he
found but to seek those who were lost. Mark his reply. It contains justice,
clemency and truth in full measure. Let the one among you who has never
sinned be the first to throw a stone at her. Let the sinner be punished, yes – but
not be sinners. Let the law be carried out, but not by lawbreakers.
This, unquestionably, is the voice of justice, justice that pierced those men
like a javelin. Looking into themselves, they realized their guilt, and one by one
they all went out. Two remained behind: the miserable woman, and Mercy. The
Lord raised his eyes, and with a gentle look he asked her: Has no one
condemned you? She replied: No one, sir. And he said: Neither will I condemn
you. What is this, Lord? Are you giving approval to immorality? Not at all. Take
note of what follows: Go and sin no more.
You see then that the Lord does indeed pass sentence, but it is sin he
condemns, not people. One who approved of immorality would have said:
“Neither will I condemn you. Go and live as you please; you can be sure that I
will acquit you. However much you sin, I will release you from all penalty, and
from the tortures of hell and the underworld.” He did not say that. He said:
“Neither will I condemn you; you need have no fear of the past, but beware of
what you do in the future. Neither will I condemn you: I have blotted out what
you have done; now observe what I have commanded, in order to obtain what I
have promised.”

Vigils Reading
2025-04-07
THE LIFE THAT RISES
THROUGH DEATH
From “The Eternal Year” by Fr Karl Rahner2
◊◊◊
There is a distance of God that permeates the pious and the impious, that
perplexes the mind and unspeakably terrifies the heart. The pious do not like to
admit it, because they suppose that such a thing should not happen to them
(although the Lord himself cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?”); and the others, the impious, draw false consequences from the admitted
facts… For when the bitter God-distance becomes a divine service, the fasting
season of the world changes into the fasting season of the Church.
The first thing we have to do is this: stand up and face this God-distance of
a choked-up heart. We have to resist the desire to run away from it either in
pious or in worldly business. We have to endure it without the narcotic of the
world, without the narcotic of sin or of obstinate despair. What God is really far
away from you in this emptiness of heart? Not the true and living God; for he is
precisely the intangible God, the nameless God; and that is why he can really be
the God of your measureless heart. Distant from you is only a God who does not
exist: a tangible God, a God of our small thoughts and our cheap, timid feelings,
a God of earthly security, a God whose concern is that the children don’t cry and
that philanthropy doesn’t fall into disillusion, a very venerable – idol! That is
what has become distant…
Do not be frightened over the loneliness and abandonment of your
interior dungeon, which seems to be so dead – like a grave. For if you stand firm
– this is already a wonder of grace – then you will suddenly perceive that your
grave-dungeon only blocks the futile finiteness; you will become aware that
your deadly void is only the breadth of God’s intimacy, that the silence is filled
up by a word without words, by the one who is above all name and is all in all.
That silence is God’s silence. It tells you that God is there.
That is the second thing you should do in your despair: notice that God is
there. Know with faith that he is with you. Perceive that for a long time now he
has been waiting for you in the deepest dungeon of your blocked-up heart, and
that for a long time he has been quietly listening to you, even though you, after
all the busy noise that we call our life, do not even let him get a word in edgewise,
and his words to the person-you-were-until-now seem only deadly silence. You
shall see that you by no means make a mistake if you give up your anxiety over
yourself and your life, that you by no means make a mistake if you relax your
hold on self, that you are by no means crushed with despair if once and for all
you despair of yourself, of your wisdom and strength, and of the false image of
God that is snatched away from you…
If we do this, then peace comes all by itself. Peace is the most genuine
activity: the silence that is filled with God’s word, the trust that is no longer
afraid, the sureness that no longer needs to be assured, and the strength that is
powerful in weakness – it is, then, the life that rises through death.

2 The Eternal Year, K. Rahner, Helicon: Baltimore MD 1964. pp 68ff.5

Vigils Reading
2025-04-08
NOW IS THE TIME
OF SALVATION
From a sermon by St Aelred of Rievaulx
◊◊◊
Shake yourself from the dust, rouse yourself, sit up, O Jerusalem. Break
the chains off your neck captive daughter of Zion. Behold how sweetly, how
affectionately the heavenly spouse desires to reconcile the church to himself.
The loving father exhorts his daughter to salvation, her who was prostrate in the
dust for a long time. Therefore she is admonished by the prophet to rise from the
dust, break her chains, go out from captivity.
Dust is human frailty when no virtue has been strengthened, Dust is also
temporary wealth which lightly passes away and flies as though from the face of
the wind. Wretched human beings seek and do not find blessedness in this dust.
It takes away our eyesight, because the cupidity of temporary wealth blinds our
minds… We cannot rise while we are heavy with dust. Sins weigh down a soul;
temporary desires also weigh us down. Those who are weighed down are
overwhelmed. Those who are burdened try in vain to rise up… Therefore, Shake
yourself from the dust, Jerusalem; rouse yourself and sit up. We must sit, not
upright through pride, not prostrating through ruin, according to the saying of
David: Beside the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept. Certainly beside the
transitory and temporary things of this world, not mixed up with them but
trampling them under foot, we must sit repenting and weeping for all our sins.
In the first creation, the human was made free, but afterwards he sold
himself to the devil. The devil’s money with which he buys humans is sin… The
devil deceived humankind by promising what he did not pay, saying, You shall
be as gods, knowing good and evil. The human obeyed; he ate the forbidden
fruit, and he received no other recompense except sin. And so he was sold for
nothing. After the human surrendered, the devil…put chains on his neck.
Chains are sins, and the unfortunate sinner adds sin to sin… That is why Isaiah
says, Woe to you who drag iniquity with ropes of vanity, and drag sin like the
chain of a cart. These are the ropes with which sinners shall be bound in the
end…
Break the chains off your neck, captive daughter of Zion. Break them by
repentance, destroy them by making satisfaction. Shake your neck from the
devil’s yoke and submit yourself to the yoke of Christ, whose yoke is light and
burden sweet. Escape from the prison. The price has been given for you. The
enemy cannot hold you back any longer, if you are willing to escape. Destroy the
rope that trails behind you, lest the devil have the means to draw you…
As the Lord would say, “You had not merited that I should redeem you,
because you have sold yourself to the devil gratis and for nothing, and yet I shall
redeem you, not with money, because the money of the whole world cannot
redeem you, but rather with the price of my blood…” You are that bride
redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. You are those lying in the dust, to whom it
is said, Rise up! You are those captives who are ordered to escape. Behold now is
the time of salvation.
Therefore so that we might quickly and easily obtain pardon and find
mercy, let us seek God more attentively and carefully in this sacred fasting
through true contrition and through pure confession and worthy satisfaction.

Vigils Reading
2025-04-09
YOUR VERDICT ON OTHERS,
WILL BE THE VERDICT
PASSED ON YOU
From a homily by St Asterius of Amasea
◊◊◊
If you desire to resemble God, for you have been created in God’s own
image, imitate your model. You, Christians, whose very name calls to mind love,
imitate Christ’s love. Consider and wonder at the wealth of Christ’s love for us.
When he was about to show himself to us in our own nature, he sent John to
preach repentance by word and example. Before John he sent all the prophets.
They too were to teach people to amend their lives. Then he came himself and
with his own voice cried out: Come to me, all you who labour and are
overburdened, and I will give you rest. And how did he receive those who
listened to his call and followed him? He readily forgave them their sins,
instantly relieving them of all their cause for grief. The Word has sanctified
them and the Spirit has confirmed them. Their old self was buried in the waters
of baptism and a new self born; their youth was renewed by grace. And the
result? Enemies of God became his friends, strangers to him became his
children, idolaters became worshipers of the true God.
You, therefore, who are harsh and unable to show gentleness, learn
goodness from your Creator. Do not act as bitter judges and severe arbiters
toward those who are your companions in service, as you wait for the coming of
One who will reveal the secret recesses of the heart and, as the Almighty Lord,
will assign to each person their proper place in the life beyond.
Do not pass severe judgments that you may avoid being judged with the
same severity, being pierced yourselves by the words of your own mouth as by
sharp-pointed teeth. For it is against this kind of fault that the words of the
gospel seem indeed to warn us where it is said: If you want to avoid judgment,
stop passing judgment, your verdict on others will be the verdict passed on
you.
Christ does not thereby mean that he wants to banish discernment and
wisdom. What he condemns is a condemnation that is too severe. So, lighten as
much as possible the weight of your measurement of others, if you want your
own actions not to be considered excessively heavy when our lives are weighed
at the divine judgment… Do not refuse to act mercifully that you yourselves may
not be sent away unpardoned at the time when you will need forgiveness.

Vigils Reading
2025-04-10
THE GREATEST
OF ALL VIRTUES
From a sermon by Blessed Guerric of Igny
◊◊◊
Keep…O happy sinner, keep carefully and watchfully this spirit of yours,
this most fitting affection of humility and devotion by which you may always so
think of yourself in humility and of the Lord in goodness. There is nothing
greater than it among the gifts of the Holy Spirit, nothing more precious in the
treasures of God, nothing more holy among all the charisms, nothing more
health-giving in all the sacraments… This humility not only justifies sinners but
also perfects the just and brings their justice to fullness if they confess
themselves humble servants even when they have done all they were bidden.
Let your sin be present to you always and, according to the Wise Man’s
advice, do not be without fear even for sin that has been forgiven. God’s
judgments are uncertain and hidden; they are not rashly to be presumed upon,
for we hold nothing more certain in that regard than that in God’s sight no man
or woman alive shall be justified, except insofar as they justify themselves to be
sinners…
Mercy has welcomed you kindly, received you with loving-kindness. Fear
the judgment, lest the grace given you in your humility be taken away from you
in your pride. You have chosen to be of little account… Remain in that frame of
mind, so that even if you are promoted you may be advanced to greater things
still. Always take the last place, or at least desire it… Never let humility become
displeasing to you; through it you began to please and without it you will begin
to displease however great the virtues by which you are distinguished…
Humility is the greatest of all virtues, although it does not know itself to
be a virtue. It is the root and seedbed, the tinder and incentive, it is the
summit and peak, the custody and discipline of almost all the virtues. From it
they begin, through it they make progress, in it they are perfected, by it they
are preserved. It is humility that makes all the virtues what they are, and if
any one of them be lacking or less perfect it is humility that compensates for
the loss since it profits by the other’s absence.

Vigils Reading
2025-04-11
A LIFE WITH CHRIST
by Fr Louis Bouyer
◊◊◊
Our death with Christ and this resurrection with Him, giving us the life
hidden with Christ in God, who will appear when Christ Himself will appear, is
the whole mystery that St Paul tells us God had reserved for these later times.
Writers have often stressed the extraordinary frequency of grammatical
compounds containing the word “with” in the writings of St Paul, and have
rightly observed that it is a characteristic feature of his whole conception of the
Christian life. Indeed, for him, the Christian life, the life of the Church or that of
each Christian, is a life with Christ. It is important to grasp all that that implies.
Jesus of Nazareth, who died and rose under Pontius Pilate and is now
seated at the right hand of the Father until the day He will come to judge the
living and the dead, has never been for St Paul, nor for any Catholic theologian,
a hero whose epic must leave the impression that His achievements are too
wonderful ever to be duplicated in ourselves. Surely no poet has dreamed of a
hero more sublime than the One of whom the Apostle wrote: Despoiling the
principalities and the powers, he made a public spectacle of them, leading
them away in triumph. But it is for us that He triumphed thus, and we must
know that by Him and with Him, dead as we were, God has raised us up with
him and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus.
Yes, Christ accomplished all that in us, for, if the sense of our own
weakness is what faith, in cutting at the very root of our pride, first thrusts upon
us, it does so only to make clear to us that strength is made perfect in weakness
and that we can do all things in Him who strengthens us – that is, Jesus Christ.
That the Church celebrates Easter, that today she suffers and weeps with
her Head, then rises and exults with Him, is the sign that the relation between
Christ and the Church, between Christ and us, is quite different from that
existing between any historic personages of different epochs, even between a
master and his disciples. For the authors of the New Testament, even for the
evangelists whose immediate end is to recount the earthly life of Jesus of
Nazareth, this Christ can never be considered simply as a man whose life and
death might inspire sentiments analogous to those awakened by, say, the life
and death of a Socrates, even though those sentiments were incomparably
deepened and purified. He is truly the Son of God made flesh for our sake.

Vigils Reading
2025-04-12
OUR STRUGGLE
IN SEARCH OF TRUTH
By Thomas Merton7
◊◊◊
Life is, or should be, nothing but a struggle to seek truth: yet what we seek
is really the truth that we already possess. Truth is mine in the reality of life as it
is given to me to live: yet to take life thoughtlessly, passively as it comes, is to
renounce the struggle and purification which are necessary. One cannot simply
open his eyes and see. The work of understanding involves not only dialectic,
but a long labor of acceptance, obedience, liberty, and love. The temptation of
monastic life is to evade this austere responsibility by falling back into passive
indifference, thinly veiled resentment disguised as obedience and
abandonment. Since in fact one need not positively accept what happens, one
can be merely resigned and negative.
Others make all the important decisions: but the most important decision
always falls to me, and if I am in the habit of never deciding, I will evade it. The
root decision to accept my own life and to obey its demands may challenge my
understanding of those demands, my honesty in their regard. The worst
temptation, and that to which many monks succumb early in their lives, and by
which they remain defeated, is simply to give up asking and seeking. To leave
everything to the superiors in this life and to God in the next – a hope which may
in fact be nothing but a veiled despair, a refusal to live. And it is not Christian to
despair of the present, merely putting off hope into the future. There is also a
very essential hope that belongs in the present, and is based on the nearness of
the hidden God, and of His Spirit, in the present. What future can make sense
without this present hope?
Evil and falsity are unavoidable: but one does not bow down to them
passively and without response. Resignation is not enough. God demands of us
a creative consent, in our deepest and most hidden self, the self we do not
experience, though it is always there. This creative consent is the obedience of
my whole being to the will of God, here and now. The inner “word” of consent is
the coincidence, in the Spirit, the identity of my own obedience and will with the
obedience and will of Christ. Such is the depth of our Sonship and of the life of
grace.
Gradually, by accepting our place in the world and our tasks as they are,
we come to be liberated from the limitations of the world and of a restricted,
halfhearted milieu: yet one is content with one’s moment of history and one’s
obscure task in it. One must be detached from systems and collective plans,
without rancor toward them, but with insight and compassion. To be truly
Catholic is not merely to be correct according to an abstractly universal
standard of truth, but also and above all to be able to enter into the problems
and the joys of all, to understand all, to be all things to all persons. This
cannot be done if we do not first completely and honestly accept ourselves,
our own problems, our own defeats, with the creative consent and
responsibility that unite us to God’s will and thus to the dynamism of history
in its very source.

7 Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, by Thomas Merton, Doubleday & Co. 1966, pp.166-167.15

LCG Chicago April 12, 2025, Meeting 9:00 am CDT
2025-04-12 09:00 - 12:00 (America/Chicago)
All in LCG are invited to join our Chicago Zoom meeting. 9:00 am CDT on April 12, 2025.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86028356465
Meeting ID: 860 2835 6465
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9:00 Gather for Opening prayer.
We also pray for all our lay Cistercian sisters and brothers in the US and around the world. Specially we pray for our Gethsemani monks. Finally, we pray this month specially for:
Br. Luke Armour
Fr. Andrew McAughan
9:10 Lectio. Our lectio piece will be led by Robert Johnson.
9:50 Reading. Our reading this month is the first 50 pages (through Part III) of The Impact of God by Fr. Iain Matthew.Does St. John of the Cross sharpen your Lenten journey?
10:45 Housekeeping. Volunteer to lead lectio next month? Chicago Report on LCG Advisory Council activity. Plans for international meeting in 2025 and Anglophone lead-ins thereto.
11:00 Update. Share how the Holy Spirt has entered our lives as lay Cistercians since our last meeting.
11:45 Closing worship and prayer. We will pray the liturgical hour of None as with our Gethsemani monks (identical Psalms as done today at Gethsemani Abbey.)
Our next meeting: May 10, 2025.

Skema
2025-04-13
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
Holy Week

Mass Readings: Sunday (C), Weekdays (I)
April 13 – 19, 2025

Sun
13
Mon
14
Tue
15
Wed
16
Thu
17
Fri
18
Sat
19

Office
Palm Sunday
Monday of Holy Week
Tuesday of Holy Week
Wednesday of Holy Week
Holy Thursday
Good Friday
Holy Saturday

Vigils
Zech 9:9-17
Lam 1:1-16
Lam 2:1-10
Lam 2:18-22
Lam 3:19-54
Lam 4:1-6
Lam 5:1-22

Lauds
Zeph 3:14-20
Lam 1:17-22
Lam 2:11-17
Lam 3:1-18
Lam 3:55-66
Wis 2:10-22
Isa 63:1-6

Mass
38
257
258
259
39
40

1st
Isa 50:4-7
Isa 42:1-7
Isa 49:1-6
Isa 50:4-9a
Exod 12:1-8, 11-14
Isa 52:13-53:12

2nd
Phil 2:6-11

1 Cor 11:23-26
Heb 4:14-16; 5:7-9

Gospel
Luke 22:14-23:56
John 12:1-11
John 13:21-33, 36-38
Matt 26:14-25
John 13:1-15
John 18:1-19:42

Vespers
Gal 3:7-14
Rom 5:6-11
1 Cor 1:18-25
1 Pet 2:20-25

1 Pet 4:1-8

Vigils Reading - Palm Sunday
2025-04-13
THE WAY OF CHRIST
IS STRAIGHT
From a commentary by St Cyril of Alexandria
◊◊◊
“Behold a righteous king will reign, and princes will rule with justice.”
The only-begotten Word of God, together with God the Father, has always been
king of the universe, and to him all creatures, visible and invisible, are subject.
People on earth, having been caught in the snares of sin, were persuaded by the
devil to reject his sovereignty and despise his royal power, but the judge and
dispenser of all justice brought them back under his own dominion.
All his ways are straight, says Scripture, and by the ways of Christ we
mean the divine precepts laid down by the gospel. By observing them we make
progress in every virtue, do honor to ourselves by the moral beauty of our lives,
and attain the heavenly reward to which we have been called. These are straight,
not winding ways; they are direct and easily followed. As it is written: “The way
of the upright is straight; the road of the just is made smooth.” Its many decrees
make the law a rugged way and its difficulty intolerable, but the way of the
gospel commands is smooth, without any roughness or steep ascents.
The ways of Christ are straight, then, and as for the holy city. Which is the
Church, he himself was its builder and he makes it his own dwelling. In other
words, he makes the saints his dwelling, sharing as we do in the Holy Spirit, we
have Christ within us and have become temples of the living God. Christ is both
the founder of the Church and its foundation, and upon this foundation we, like
precious stones, are built into a holy temple to become, through the Spirit, a
dwelling place for God…
When he founded the Church, Christ delivered his people from bondage.
He saved us from the power of Satan and of sin, freed us and subjected us to his
own rule, but not by paying a ransom or by bribes. As one of the disciples wrote:
“we have been freed from the futile ways handed down to us by our ancestors,
not by anything perishable like silver and gold, but by the precious blood of
Christ, like that of a lamb without mark or blemish.” He gave his own blood for
us, so that we no longer belong to ourselves, but to him who bought us and saved
us. Those therefore who turn aside from the noble rule of the true faith are justly
accused by all the saints of denying the Lord who redeemed them.

Vigils Reading
2025-04-14
WHEN ALL WAS TO BE
PUT TO THE TEST
By Henri Daniel-Rops
◊◊◊
The day which followed the astonishing Sunday of the triumphal entry
was not so striking, but was nonetheless full of significance. Jesus entered
Jerusalem every day, went up to the Temple, and spoke to audiences which
listened to him with enthusiasm, while the chief priests and scribes sought
means to destroying him. To Jesus, the slightest incident was an occasion for a
lesson, which often took the form of a warning.
So it was all through the Monday. What precisely was the meaning of the
curious episode, uncharacteristic of Christ’s normally merciful manner, in
which he condemned a fig tree on which he found no figs to wither? And who is
the bad son who pretends to be submissive to his father’s will, but in reality
disobeys him? Or the rebellious wine dressers who kill their master’s servants
in order to seize the harvest? What is the name of the stone rejected by the
builders which will be the cornerstone of the new building? And do we not know
these guests invited to the royal feast who refuse to attend? One is almost afraid
to understand at whom these gestures, these parables are aimed. At this
moment, Israel’s refusal seems to haunt Jesus’ mind and to fill it with anguish.
We are hardly surprised to find that the leaders of the community sent
emissaries to ask Jesus with what right he was behaving as he was. He avoided
the question by himself asking them an embarrassing one concerning what kind
of a man was John, and they could not give him any answer. But we can hardly
be surprised that their anger grew, and that they were on the point of laying
hands on him. Jesus cast a real challenge at his adversaries at this moment
when he knew that all was to be put to the test.

Vigils Reading
2025-04-15
TODAY YOU WILL BE
WITH ME IN PARADISE
By St John Chrysostom
◊◊◊
Today the cross has opened Paradise which had been closed to us for
thousands of years. For today God has brought a robber there. Thus he effects
two marvels: he opens Paradise, and he brings in a thief. Today God has given
us our ancient fatherland, today he has brought us to the paternal city, today he
has opened his house to the whole of humanity. ‘Today,’ he said, ‘you will be
with me in Paradise’.
What did you say, Lord? You are crucified, nailed there, and you
promise Paradise?
Yes, so that you may learn how great is my power on the cross.
It is indeed a cruel sight. And to deflect your attention from this aspect of
the cross and make you realize the power of the Crucified, Jesus works this
miracle from the cross, the miracle which more than any other bears witness to
his power. For it was not when raising the dead, commanding the wind and the
waves, expelling demons, but when crucified, fixed with nails, covered with
insults, spittle, mockery and abuse, that he had power to change the evil state of
the thief; and in this you can see two aspects of his power.
He shook the whole of creation, he split the rocks, and he drew the soul of
the thief, which was harder than rock; for the thief believed in him and Jesus
said in return, ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise.” Doubtless the
cherubim guarded paradise, but he was master of the cherubim. A flaming
sword twirled at the entrance, but he had all power over fire and sword, over life
and death.
Truly, no king ever allowed a thief or any other subject to sit with him
while he made an entrance into a town. But Christ has done this: when he
entered into his fatherland he brought a thief with him. In doing this he did not
slight Paradise, did not dishonor it by the thief’s presence there; on the contrary,
he honored Paradise, because it is glorious for Paradise to have a master who
can make a thief worthy of the joys to be found there. Likewise when he brings
publicans and prostitutes into the kingdom of heaven he is not insulting the
kingdom but honoring it, for he shows that the master of the kingdom of heaven
is strong enough to make prostitutes and publicans worthy enough to receive
such an honor and such a gift.

Vigils Reading
2025-04-16
THE CROSS OF CHRIST
From a sermon by St Aelred of Rievaulx
◊◊◊
Our Lord Jesus Christ worked for our salvation not in one way only but in
many. Because his mercy provided for our redemption, he accomplished it in
such a way that he might be an example for us. Behold, my brothers, how at this
time you call to mind our redemption; therefore pay diligent attention not only
to the redemption itself but also to both the manner by which redemption was
accomplished and the place in which it was done. The manner of the
redemption is the passion of Christ; the place outside the city. You must know
then that from this redemption and the manner of accomplishing it, we receive
both a way of living and the right location that we must choose in order to live in
this way.
Let us accept now the way of living that comes from this cross of Jesus. Do
I say a way of living or of dying? Certainly both of living and of dying: of of dying
to the world, of living for God; of dying to vices, and of living in virtues; of dying
to the flesh, of living however in the Spirit. Therefore in the cross of Christ there
is death and in the cross of Christ there is life. There the death of death and the
life of life. There the death of sins and the life of virtues. There the death of the
flesh and the life of the Spirit. Why, however did God choose this kind of death?
Because of both the divine mystery itself and the example to be given. Then, too,
because our illness was such that the remedy should fit in this way.
It was certainly fitting that we who had fallen through the wood would rise
up through the wood. Fitting that he who conquered through the wood would
himself be conquered through it. Fitting that we who chose the fruit of death
from the wood would be given the fruit of life from the wood. And because we
fell from the stability of this most beautiful earth into the great and spacious sea,
it is fitting that wood be prepared for us by which we would cross over that sea.
For no one can cross the sea without wood, nor this world without the cross…
Therefore do you see how Christ chose this kind of death as full of some
divine meaning…? The Apostle explains it openly, saying, He humbled himself,
being made obedient even to death, death on the cross. He then proclaims the
meaning: Because of this, God exalted him and gave him the name which is
above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven,
on earth, and in the depths. Because he was about to take possession of heaven
and earth through the cross, he was placed on the cross as if he embraced
heaven and earth. Since in truth his death has already taken place not on the
earth nut above the earth, what can it mean except that, raised up as we are
from the earth through his blessed passion, we taste what is above, not those
things on earth. The fact that he died with arms outstretched is a sign of his
great loving kindness. Just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wing and
defends them from a persistent raptor, so he, clasping us with maternal
affection under the wings of his grace, makes us completely secure against the
attack of heinous spirits.
