Lay Cistercians of Gethsemani Abbey

Compline
2023-02-19 19:25 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
February 19, 2023 at 7:25 pm on zoom at the link below:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85468277442?pwd=[REDACTED]

7th Sunday in Ordinary Time
2023-02-19
Love Your Enemies1
A Commentary by Walter Hilton
When love acts in the soul it does so wisely and gently, for it has great power
to kill anger and envy, and all the passions of wrath and melancholy, and it brings
into the soul the virtues of patience, gentleness, peaceableness, and friendliness to
one’s neighbor. People guided only by their own reason find it very hard to be
patient, peaceful, sweet-tempered and charitable to their neighbors when they treat
them badly and wrong them. But true lovers of Jesus have no great difficulty in
enduring all this, because love fights for them and kills such movements of wrath
and melancholy with amazing ease. Through the spiritual sight of Jesus it makes
the souls of such people so much at ease and so peaceful, so ready to endure and so
conformed to God, that if they are despised and disregarded by others, or suffer
injustice or injury, shame or ill-treatment, they pay no attention. They are not
greatly disturbed by these things and will not allow themselves to be, for then they
would lose the comfort they feel in their souls, and that they are unwilling to do.
They can more easily forget all the wrong that is done them than others can forgive
it even when asked for forgiveness. They would rather forget than forgive, for that
seems easier to them.
And it is love that does all this, for love opens the eye of the soul to the sight
of Jesus, and confirms it in the pleasure and contentment of the love that comes
from that sight. It comforts the soul so much that it is quite indifferent to what
others do against it. The greatest harm that could befall such people would be to
lose the spiritual sight of Jesus, and they would therefore suffer all other injuries
than that one alone.
When true lovers of Jesus suffer harm from their neighbors, they are so
strengthened by the grace of the Holy Spirit and are made so truly humble, so
patient, and so peaceable, that they retain their humility no matter what harm or
injury is inflicted on them. They do not despise their neighbors or judge them, but
they pray for them in their hearts, and feel more pity and compassion for them than
for others who never harmed them, and in fact they love them better, and more
fervently desire their salvation, because they see that they will have so much
spiritual profit from their neighbors’ deeds, though this was never their intention.
But this love and this humility, which are beyond human nature, come only from
the Holy Spirit to those whom he makes true lovers of Jesus.
1 Journey with the Fathers: Commentaries on the Sunday Gospels – Year A. Ed. Edith Barnecut, O.S.B. New
York: New City Press, 1992. 90-91

Skema
2023-02-19
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
7th Week in Ordinary Time

Mass Readings: Sunday (A), Weekdays (I)
February 19 – 25, 2023

Sun
19
Mon
20
Tue
21
Wed
22
Thu
23
Fri
24
Sat
25

Office
7th Sunday
Weekday
St Peter Damien
Ash Wednesday
Thursday after Ash Wednesday
Friday after Ash Wednesday
Saturday after Ash Wednesday

Vigils
Song 6:4-7:6
Song 7:7-8:4
Song 8:5-14
Isa 58:1-14
Exod 1:1-22
Exod 2:1-22
Exod 2:23-3:22

Lauds
Hag 2:10-14
Hag 2:15-19
Hag 2:20-23
Sir 17:20-32
Deut 1:3-8
Deut 4:1-8
Deut 4:9-14

Mass
79
341
342
219
220
221
222

1st
Lev 19:1-2, 17-18
Sir 1:1-10
Sir 2:1-11
Joel 2:12-18
Deut 30:15-20
Isa 58:1-9a
Isa 58:9b-14

2nd
1 Cor 3:16-23

2 Cor 5:20-6:2

Gospel
Matt 5:38-48
Mark 9:14-29
Mark 9:30-37
Matt 6:1-6, 16-18
Luke 9:22-25
Matt 9:14-15
Luke 5:27-32

Vespers
2 Tim 3:10-17
2 Tim 4:1-8
2 Tim 4:9-22
2 Cor 5:14-21
Heb 1:1-9
Heb 1:13-2:4
Heb 2:5-9

Cleveland LCG Monthly Meeting
2023-02-18 15:00 - 16:30
Content is protected.

Vigils Reading - Memorial of B.V.M.
2023-02-18
The Lost Child
A Reading from Caryll Houselander’s “The Reed of God”
Surely there can be no one with a spark of imagination who has not, at some time or other, felt baffled and even hurt by the Gospel record of the loss of the Child Jesus. The striking thing about it is that it was not really loss. Our Lady did not lose Christ; He deliberately went away. He allowed her to imagine Him safe in the company of travellers; and without a word He slipped away and went back to Jerusalem… When she had found Him, after three days of utter bereavement, He returned with her to Nazareth; but after what must have seemed a very short time to her, He left her again, and from that time forward her life was a continual seeking for Him. We hear of her standing outside in the crowd during His public life; of her following Him to the Cross, where the very life she had given Him was taken away from her. For a brief moment He was put into her arms again, and then taken up quickly… and put into the tomb.
Why did Christ treat Our Lady in this way? It was not only to show His absolute trust in her or her trust in Him (although she was the one human being in whom God’s Will was completely unhindered). It was because Our Lady lived the life of all humanity. Concentrated into her tiny history is the life story of the whole human race, the whole relationship of the redeemed human race with God…
Everyone experiences this sense of the loss of the Divine Child. Everyone knows it in different ways and in different degrees. Converts, and others who have received some great revivifying grace, find the springtime of their souls suddenly chill. The uprush and thrust of spring fails, and they are left empty. It does indeed seem to them that the Child was born into their lives; filled the little house of their souls with His laughter: and now, without warning, He is gone. There is no emptiness like the emptiness of the house from which a child has gone away…

…When we were young, or when Faith was young in us, we were aware of the call within us, of the Holy Spirit inspiring us to lead the austere life of sacrifice and uncompromising charity which is the only really free and fetterless life on earth. Then, indeed, there was space, light, and air in us. But we have gradually frittered away the vocation to be free… gradually we have frittered our freedom away: alwaysincreasing our wants, little by little making more and more necessities for ourselves; forming habit after habit of petty indulgence; until one day (if we are given the grace of realizing it), we discover that we too have lost the Divine Child… We started with the one idea of serving God, but gradually the formalities, the necessary social life, the business side, has overcome us.
But whether it be for a long or a short time, a searing grief or one that wears the mind and heart gradually, the experience itself is universal; and if one things stands out particularly in the case of very devout people, it is that in them you can see that it is not a loss but His deliberate going away. They pray, they meditate, they deny themselves; they perform all the works of mercy; nevertheless, Christ seems to leave them…
In every man the impulse to desire and pursue his happiness, his own good, is deeply rooted… This equality of desire makes every man search, makes everyone (whether he knows it or not) seek, seek, seek all his life, for the lost Child, whether he knows Him directly as Christ or as the goodness of his human love; as the peace of his home, the joy in his work, or just as the indefinable lightness of heart which descends upon him like Pentecost

7 Houselander, Caryll. The Reed of God. 1944. 95-107.

Reading: Thursday After Ash Wednesday
2023-02-17 08:00 - 17:00
Jesus Christ Deserves Our Love in Return 5
From the writings of St Alphonsus de Liguori
A person will become perfectly holy by loving Jesus Christ, our God, our chief
good, and our Savior. He himself says that anyone who loves him will be loved by
the eternal Father: “For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me”.
“Some people,” says St. Francis de Sales, “think that perfection can be found by an
austere life; others make it a matter of much prayer, or of frequenting the
sacraments, or of acts of charity. They are all mistaken. Perfection consists in
loving God with our whole heart…
…He has loved us from the very beginning of eternity: “With age-old love I
have loved you”. God was the first to love you. Before you existed, indeed, even
before the world itself existed, God was already loving you. For as long as he has
been God, he has been loving you.
When God saw how human beings were attracted by good things, he set out
to win them over by his gifts: “I drew them with human cords, / with bands of love”.
Every gift of his was created for human beings. First, he endowed the soul made in
his image with its powers of memory, intellect, and will, and gave it a body with all
its senses, created heaven and earth and all that is in them… everything was an act
of his love. All these created things were for the use of human beings, so that they
love him in return for so many gifts. “The heavens and the earth and everything in
them,” says St. Augustine, “cry out to me that I must love you.”
…There was once a holy hermit. On his walks through the countryside, it
seemed to him as if the wild flowers and plants along the way reminded him of his
ingratitude to God, and he would strike them with his staff, saying, “Be silent, be
silent! You call me ungrateful. You tell me that God has created you out of love for
me, yet I do not love him. I understand you now. Be silent! Be silent! Do not
reproach me anymore.”
God was not content simply to give us a beautiful creation. In order to win us
totally, the Eternal Father has gone so far as to give us his one and only Son: “For
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son”. Seeing us dead and deprived of
grace through sin, in his overwhelming love for us, he sent his Son to make
satisfaction for us, and to restore to us the life which sin had destroyed…
What is even more astonishing is that he could have saved us without dying
and without suffering. Yet he chose a life of affliction and contempt, and a bitter
and ignominious death. He went so far as to die on the shameful scaffold of the
Cross: “He humbled himself, / becoming obedient to death, / even death on a
cross”. If he could have redeemed us without suffering, why then did he choose to
die, and to die on a cross? It was for no other reason than to show his love for us…
That is why St. Paul, the great lover of Jesus Christ, could say “the love of
Christ impels us”. He meant that it was not so much what Jesus Christ has suffered
for us as the love he has shown in suffering for us which obliges us, and indeed
forces us, to love him. Commenting on this text, St. Francis de Sales asks…
“Why, then, do we not throw ourselves on Jesus crucified to die on the cross
along with him who was willed to die there for love of us? I will cling to him, and
will never more abandon him. I will die with him, and be consumed by the fire of
his love. Let the same fire consume the creature as consumes the creator. My Jesus
gives himself totally to me, and I give myself totally to him. I will live and die on his
breast… Savior of our souls, grant that we might sing for ever “May Jesus live whom
I love, I love Jesus who lives for ever and ever.
5 Alphonsus de Liguori. Selected Writings. New York: Paulist Press, 1999. 112-115.

Vigils Reading
2023-02-17
The Altar of the Poor
An excerpt from “The Wellspring of Worship” by Jean Corbon
Poverty is a mystery. It is not to be gauged from outside, in the person of others; it is known in silence by those whom it burdens. And even if we experience its wounds, we are hardly able to give it a life-giving meaning, because it is an absence. Poverty cannot be objectified. Only he who incarnates it can reveal its mystery to us by giving us a share in it. Jesus is the Poor Man. He is more than a model of poverty; he is in his person the mystery of poverty…
When the Word espouses our flesh, he becomes poor in our humanity: poor with the poverty native to man who is made in the image of God and poor with the poverty of sinners who lack the glory of God…
In the final analysis, poverty does not exist; only poor persons exist. If we serve the poor impersonally, we still connive with those who depersonalize them. The evil rich man of the parable is anonymous, like the death that disfigures man; the poor man of the parable is a person with a name: Lazarus, because when all is said and done this poor man is Jesus. He is Jesus not by a juridical pretense or by a pious shift of focus that unites us to Christ without real reference to the poor, but because of the shattering realism of the Incarnation of the poor Son: in him God becomes poor, so that henceforth the poor are God. “What you did to the least of these little ones…”: the final judgment on all of our human behavior is based on the identity of Jesus and this poor person. The suffering of each man is the suffering of Jesus, who makes it his own. It is because of this mystical realism that each man is saved by Christ. Our death is no longer ours but his who died and rose for us…
…In his kenosis the Son of God made his own the suffering of every poor person; conversely, through love he suffers mysteriously in every man – for is there

any man who is not poor… This is what Jesus means when he says, “You have the poor with you always”, just as “I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.” Because Christ in his body really passed through death and destroyed it, he can now incorporate into himself those who are still enslaved to death. The kingdom of God is in our midst because the body of Christ is still with us in this way. Love can spread abroad because the kenosis from which it streams forth is the death in which he was buried with us and for us.
When Saint John Chrysostom was trying to help the faithful of Antioch understand the mysterious unity between the liturgy they were celebrating and the liturgy they were to live out after leaving the church, he told them they were leaving the altar of the Eucharist only to go to the altar of the poor… We must now serve, in the persons of the poor, the same body of Christ that we served in the memorial of his Passion and Resurrection. At the celebration the altar was the sign of the tomb, the nonplace of death, and the origin of the new space of the Resurrection; in daily life the poor are the sign of the risen Christ from whom life-giving love can come.
The altar is also the symbol of the banquet table and the divine hospitality, which all men are invited to share. In the Eucharist we receive everything by sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ; at the altar of the poor we must respond by sharing the Gift we have received and by giving ourselves… It is on the altar of the poor that the passion of God becomes the compassion of his Church for man

6 Corbon, Jean. The Wellspring of Worship. Trans. Matthew J. O’Connell. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005. 241-245.

Vigils Readings - Office for Vocations
2023-02-16
Pray Without Ceasing
A Reading from The Way of a Pilgrim
I went to church to say my prayers there during the Liturgy. The first Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians was being read, and among other words I heard these – “Pray without ceasing.” It was this text, more than any other, which forced itself upon my mind, and I began to think how it was possible to pray without ceasing… I looked at my Bible, and with my own eyes read the words which I had heard…that we ought always, at all times and in all places, to pray with uplifted hands. I thought and thought, but knew not what to make of it. “What ought I to do?” I thought. “Where shall I find someone to explain it to me?… I heard a number of very fine sermons on prayer; what prayer is, how much we need it, and what its fruits are; but no one said how one could succeed in prayer… how it wasdone was not pointed out…
One day I was told that in a certain village a gentleman had long been living and seeking the salvation of his soul… I got there and found him… “What do you want of me?” he asked… “In God’s name please explain to me the meaning of the Apostle’s words, ‘Pray without ceasing.’
He was silent for a while and looked at me closely. Then he said: “Ceaseless interior prayer is a continual yearning of the human spirit towards God. To succeed in this consoling exercise we must pray more often to God to teach us to pray without ceasing. Pray more, and pray more fervently. It is prayer itself which will reveal to you how it can be achieved unceasingly; but it will take some time.”…Again I set off.
I thought and thought, I read and read, I dwelt over and over again upon what this man had said to me, but I could not get to the bottom of it…

At last towards evening I was overtaken by an old man who looked like a cleric of some sort… “What sort of spiritual teaching are you wanting to get?” he asked me… “Well, it’s like this, Father…About a year ago, while I was at the Liturgy, I heard a passage from the Epistles which bade men pray without ceasing…This surprised me very much, and I was at a loss to understand how it could be carried out…
…the old man crossed himself and spoke. “Thank God, my dear brother, for having revealed to you this unappeasable desire for unceasing interior prayer. Recognise in it the call of God, and calm yourself. Rest assured that what has hitherto been accomplished in you is the testing of the harmony of your own will with the voice of God…Many people reason quite the wrong way round about prayer, thinking that good actions and all sorts of preliminary measures render us capable of prayer. But quite the reverse is the case, it is prayer which bears fruit in good works and all the virtues…for the Apostle Paul says, ‘I exhort therefore that first of all supplication be made’. The first thing laid down in the Apostle’s words about prayer is that the work of prayer comes before everything else… The Christian is bound to perform many good works, but before all else what he ought to do is to pray, for without prayer no other good work whatever can be accomplished. Without prayer he cannot find the way to the Lord, he cannot understand the truth, he cannot crucify the flesh with its passions and lusts, his heart cannot be enlightened with the light of Christ, he cannot be savingly united to God…
Consequently it is just to pray often, to pray always, which falls within our power as the means of attaining purity of prayer, which is the mother of all spiritual blessings. ‘Capture the Mother, and she will bring you the children,’ said St. Isaac the Syrian. Learn first to acquire the power of prayer and you will easily practise all the other virtues

5 The Way of a Pilgrim. Trans. R. M. French. London: S.P.C.K., 1965. 1-8.

Vigils Reading
2023-02-15
From Words to Silence
by Father Kallistos Ware
The more a man comes to contemplate God in nature, the more he realizes that God is also above and beyond nature. Finding traces of the divine in all things, he says: ‘This also is thou; neither is this thou.’… In Scripture, in the liturgical texts, and in nature, we are presented with innumerable words, images and symbols of God; and we are taught to give full value to these words, images and symbols, dwelling upon them in our prayer. But, since these things can never express the entire truth about the living God, we are encouraged also to balance this affirmative or cataphatic prayer by apophatic prayer… as Evagrius puts it… ‘a laying aside of thoughts.’
…Reaching out towards the eternal Truth that lies beyond all human words and thoughts, the seeker begins to wait upon God in quietness and silence, no longer talking about or to God but simply listening. ‘Be still, and know that I am God’.
This stillness or inward silence is known in Greek as hesychia… concentration combined with inward tranquility. It is not merely to be understood in a negative sense as the absence of speech and outward activity, but it denotes in a positive way the openness of the human heart towards God’s love… The way of negation and the way of affirmation are not alternatives; they are complementary.
But how are we to stop talking and to start listening? Of all the lessons in prayer, this is the hardest to learn. There is little profit in saying to ourselves, ‘Do not think’, for suspension of discursive thought is not something that we can achieve merely through an exertion of will-power. The ever-restless mind demands from us some task, so as to satisfy its constant need to be active… The mind needs some task which will keep it busy, and yet enable it to reach out beyond itself into stillness. In the Orthodox hesychast tradition, the work which is usually assigned to it is the frequent repetition of some short ‘arrow prayer’, most commonly the Jesus Prayer… an invocation addressed to another Person.

Its object is not relaxation but alertness, not waking slumber but living prayer… the rhythmic repetition of the same short phrase enables…by virtue of the very simplicity of the words…to advance beyond all language and images into the mystery of God…where the soul rests in God without a constantly varying succession of images, ideas and feelings…
The way of negation resembles not so much the peeling of an onion as the carving of a statue. When we peel an onion, we remove one skin after another, until finally there is no more onion left: we end up with nothing at all. But the sculptor, when chipping away at a block of marble, negates to a positive effect. He does not reduce the block to a heap of random fragments but, through the apparently destructive action of breaking the stone in pieces, he ends up by unveiling an intelligible shape…
In some writers the ideas of light and darkness are combined… St Dionysius says, ‘The divine darkness is the inaccessible light in which God is said to dwell.’ There is no self-contradiction about such language, for to God ‘the darkness and the light are both alike’… If God is said to dwell in darkness, that does not mean that there is in God any lack or privation, but that he is a fullness of glory and love beyond our comprehension

4 Ware, Fr. Kallistos. The Orthodox Way. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1979. 162-172.

Vigils Reading - Saints Cyril and Methodius
2023-02-14
Saints Cyril and Methodius
Apostles of the Slavic People
Constantine (later Cyril) and Michael (later Methodius) were born early in the 9th century in Thessalonika… At a young age the brothers lost their father and they were raised under the protection of their uncle Theoctistos…a powerful official in the Byzantine government… In 843, he invited Constantine to Constantinople to continue his studies at the university there. He was ordained a deacon in Constantinople.

Theoctistos also arranged a position as an official in the Slavic empire for Michael. He soon went to the monastery at Mount Olympus where he was tonsured with the name Methodius.

…In 862 the two brothers were invited by Prince Rastislav of Great Moravia to preach Christianity in his domains… Rastislav was looking for Christian missionaries to replace those from the Germans… The brothers were dedicated to the idea that Christianity should be presented to the people in their native languages as was the practice in the East. To accomplish their work they developed the Glagolitic alphabet, the precursor of the Cyrillic alphabet, and began the translation of the Scriptures and Christian literature into the Slavic language.
The German clergy had used their liturgical language, Latin, as a measure to maintain their influence in Moravia and therefore were unhappy with the work of Constantine and Methodius, and they used this difference to attack the brothers. After laboring for about four years, the brothers were called by Nicholas I to appear

in Rome to defend their work… However, before their arrival, in 869 Nicholas died and was succeeded by Adrian II. After Adrian was convinced of the orthodoxy of the brothers, he approved their use of Slavonic in their church services and commended their work. He then consecrated Methodius bishop. Constantine took monastic vows in a Greek monastery in Rome. He was given the name Cyril, the

name by which he is now commonly known. Cyril was not to return to Moravia as he died shortly thereafter. The date of Cyril’s death is uncertain, but appears to have been shortly after his consecration, both perhaps in February 869, with his death most probably on February 14.
Adrian II reestablished the old diocese of Panonia, as the first Slavonic diocese of Moravia and Pannonia, independent of the Germans, at the request of the Slavic princes… Here Methodius was appointed to the new diocese as archbishop.

However, on returning to Moravia in 870, King Louis and the German bishops summoned Methodius to a synod at Radisbon, where they deposed him and sent him to prison. After the Germans suffered military defeats in Moravia, John
VIII freed him three years later and restored Methodius as Archbishop of Moravia. Soon his orthodoxy was again under question by the Germans, particularly over the use of Slavonic. Once again John VIII sanctioned the use of Slavonic in
the liturgy but with the stipulation that the Gospel must first be read in Latin before the reading in Slavonic… With his health damaged during his long struggle with his opponents, Methodius died on April 6, 885, after having recommended as his successor his disciple, the Moravian Slav, Gorazd.
…The work of the brothers in translating the Holy Scriptures, the services, Nomocanon, and other Christian literature into Slavonic has been the greatest example of Orthodox missionaries bringing Christianity to the peoples of the world…their work became the foundation of Slavic civilization in eastern and south- eastern Europe and provided the language footings for the missionary efforts in the

coming centuries. It is for this continuation of the practice of the Holy Apostles of speaking of Christianity in the languages of all the nations that Ss Cyril and Methodius are remembered as equal to the apostles

3 Orthodox Wiki. https://orthodoxwiki.org/Cyril_and_Methodius. Accessed February 9, 2023.

Jim Finley
2023-02-13 12:00 - 13:00, 2023-02-06 12:00 - 13:00, 2023-01-30 12:00 - 13:00

Vigils Reading
2023-02-13
Serve Nobly
From the Letters of the 13th Century Beguine nun, Hadewijch
Consider now all the things you have failed in, either by self-will or by unnecessary sadness. It is true, as I well know: A person often grows sad when he is without his Beloved and cannot tell whether he is approaching him or withdrawing from him; and this is sincere. But anyone who is truly faithful will know that the goodness of his Beloved is greater than his own failures. One must not be sorrowful because of suffering or sigh after repose, but give all for all and entirely renounce repose. Rejoice continually in the hope of winning love; for if you desire perfect love for God, you must not desire in return any repose whatever except Love.
Be on your guard, therefore, and let nothing disturb your peace. Do good under all circumstances, but with no care for any profit, or any blessedness, or any damnation, or any salvation, or any martyrdom; but all you do or omit should be for the honor of Love. If you behave like this, you will soon rise up again. And let people take you for a fool; there is much truth in that. Be docile and prompt toward all who have need of you, and satisfy everyone as far as you can manage it without debasing yourself. Be joyful with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Be good toward those who have need of you, devoted toward the sick, generous with the poor, and recollected in spirit beyond the reach of all creatures.
And even if you do the best you can in all things, your human nature must often fall short; so entrust yourself to God’s goodness, for his goodness is greater than your failures. And always practice true virtues, with confidence, and be diligent and constant in always following unconditionally our Lord’s guiding and his dearest will wherever you can discern it, taking trouble and doing your utmost to examine your thoughts strictly, in order to know yourself in all things.

And live for God in such a way, this I implore you, that you be not wanting in the great works to which he has called you. Never neglect them for any less important work, this I implore and counsel you. For you have great motives impelling you to take trouble in God’s service. He has protected you from alltrouble, if you yourself will but take heed; so that your way is smoothed by grace, if you will but recognize it…
Although, too, you sometimes feel such affliction in your heart that it seems to you you are forsaken by God, do not be discouraged by it. For verily I say to you: Whatever misery we endure with good will and for God is pleasing to God in every respect… For if a man knew God’s will – that misery is dear to him – he would gladly be, by his will, in the depths of hell; but he could never make progress or grow in a place where he could taste no pains. If a person knew that God took pleasure in his deeds, he would not be grieved at anything that happened to him.
…Have no care, therefore, for honor or shame; fear neither the torments of earth nor those of hell, if by them you could prevail on Love, in order to serve this Love worthily. Her noble service consists in the care you take to recite your Hours and to keep your Rule, without wishing or receiving pleasure in any of your service…
Serve nobly, wish for nothing else, and fear nothing else: and let Love freely take care of herself! For Love rewards to the full, even though she often comes late… To this end you must remain humble, and unexalted by all the works you can accomplish, but wise with generous and perfect charity to sustain all things in heaven and on earth, as befits true charity, according to their order. Thus you may become perfect and possess what is yours! – if you wish

2 Hadewijch. The Complete Works. Trans. Mother Columba Hart, O.S.B. New York: Paulist Press, 1980. 48- 52.

Vigils Reading - 6th Sun ORD
2023-02-12
Go First to be Reconciled to Your Brother
A Sermon by Aelred of Rievaulx
Let us prepare ourselves to take up the Lord…let us offer a pigeon and turtledove with his parents…The pigeon, which lacks gall, indicates a simplicity that we ought to have. The turtledove is a devotee of chastity… These two small birds express the model of our life. God’s creatures have been given to us not only for food, but also for example… In these birds the just find out what they should imitate, and sinners are shown what they do…
We ought to have no gall, so that every bitterness of hatred and rancor may be absent from our hearts. So the evil of vice is hatred; if it is held in the heart, then it deprives even martyrdom of its reward. For that reason the Apostle says, If I should give my body to be burned but I do not have charity, then it profits me nothing.
No offering is accepted by God if hatred is held in the heart. So the Lord says, If you present your offering at the altar, and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go first to be reconciled to your brother. No forgiveness of sins is given if hatred is not expelled from the heart. As the gospel says, If you will not forgive the sins of other people, then neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive you your sins… Therefore let us imitate the pigeon in this so that we not be corrupted by any gall of hatred.
As the pigeon feeds on seed and chooses the better grains, so the just person should be nourished with the Lord’s word. As there are two substances in a person, that is, body and soul, so two foods are necessary: corporeal food, which nourishes the body, and the seed of God’s word, which restores the soul. We are on pilgrimage, and therefore we need provisions. So we ask for daily bread in the Lord’s Prayer, crying out to the Father, Give us this day our daily bread, that is, in the present life. The Lord grants this abundance of bread to whom he wills lest his

servants grow weak on the way… We ought to choose the better grains, as does the pigeon, so the spirit might always be attentive to the more important precepts of the Lord.
The pigeon stays beside streams so that when he sees the shadow of an approaching hawk, he avoids it. We have a spiritual enemy, flying through the air, who always goes about seeking whom he might devour. He does not dwell among us but is not very far from us either… He dwells in the air. That is why demons are called powers of the air… We see their shadow on the water because we are acquainted with the simile of their cunning in Scripture. Therefore let us flee to Scripture as often as we perceive a temptation suggested by our foe… If he suggests theft, then Scripture objects, You shall not steal. If he serves up anger, then Scripture says, Whoever is angry with his brother shall be subject to judgment. If he urges us to deceive, then Scripture proclaims the punishment: You will destroy all who speak lies. Let the faithful soul sit beside streams of this sort in order to foresee the arrival of our treacherous enemy.
The pigeon has a lament for a song. We who are sinners must imitate the pigeon…For blessed, as the Lord says, are you who weep, because you will laugh… Peter wept bitterly after his sin, and he merited a pardon. Tears, in the second place after baptism, wash away sins. Tears must be shed not only for ourselves, but also for our neighbors…
If we imitate the pigeon in all these, as was done figuratively in ancient time, then we spiritually fulfill it in the present

1 Aelred of Rievaulx. The Liturgical Sermons: The Reading-Cluny Collection, 1 of 2 Sermons 85-133. CF 81. Trans. Daniel Griggs. Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2021. 92-97.

Skema
2023-02-12
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
6th Week in Ordinary Time

Mass Readings: Sunday (A), Weekdays (I)
February 12 – 18, 2023

Sun
12
Mon
13
Tue
14
Wed
15
Thu
16
Fri
17
Sat
18

Office
6th Sunday
Weekday
SS Cyril & Methodius
Weekday
Office for Vocations
Weekday
Memorial of the BVM

Vigils
Judg 20:20-48
Judg 21:1-25
Song 1:1-17
Song 2:1-17
Song 3:1-11
Song 4:1-5:1
Song 5:2-6:3

Lauds
Zech 14:1-5
Zech 14:6-11
Zech 14:12-15
Zech 14:16-21
Hag 1:1-8
Hag 1:9-15
Hag 2:1-9

Mass
76
335
336
337
338
339
340

1st
Sir 15:16-21
Gen 4:1-15, 25
Gen 6:5-8; 7:1-5, 10
Gen 8:6-13, 20-22
Gen 9:1-13
Gen 11:1-9
Heb 11:1-7

2nd
1 Cor 2:6-10

Gospel
Matt 5:17-37
Mark 8:11-13
Mark 8:14-21
Mark 8:22-26
Mark 8:27-33
Mark 8:34-9:1
Mark 9:2-13

Vespers
2 Tim 1:1-8
2 Tim 1:9-14
2 Tim 2:1-7
2 Tim 2:8-13
2 Tim 2:14-19
2 Tim 2:20-26
2 Tim 3:1-9

Chicago Monthly Meeting 9 am CST
2023-02-11 09:00 - 12:00
Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 852 2059 5622
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welcome:
9:00 Gather for Opening prayer and lighting of the candles illuminating the Theotokos icon of Blessed Mother Mary and the baby Jesus.
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 these Gethsemani monks:
Fr. Michael Casagram
Br. Giuseppe Nazionale
Br. William Leone
9:10 Lectio. Our lectio piece will be led by .
9:50 Reading. Our reading this month continues Story of a Soul by Therese of Lisieux (Books 2 & 3).
10:45 Housekeeping. Volunteer to lead lectio next month? Report on LCG Advisory Council activity; report of 1/28/23 IALCC Anglophone Zoom meeting; host October LCG retreat. Select reading for March.
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.)
We look forward to our continuing LCG Chicago journey at our next meeting: March 11, 2023.

Vigils Reading - Our Lady of Lourdes
2023-02-11
Of the Uncured, None Despair
A Reading on the Pilgrimage Experience at Lourdes
Of the…sick and afflicted who make the pilgrimage to Lourdes every year, only a small per cent are favored by a cure. The others leave the shrine in the same physical condition in which they arrived. Many of these unfortunate people have traveled great distances, and their trips have caused them immense discomfort and, in some cases, intense physical pain. Frequently, they have made a considerable financial sacrifice in order to visit the shrine.
…Do they feel that the trip has been made in vain? Are they bitter and disillusioned? Do they feel that the Blessed Virgin has neglected them? These questions occurred to J.B. McAllister, an American writer…as he saw the rows and rows of sick people in front of the grotto…At the desk of the Hospitalité, he found a man who spoke English. To this man he put the questions that had been troubling him… “True,” said the man, “only a few are cured, but many are helped. Of the uncured, none despair…They go away filled with hope. They do not say ‘adieu’ but ‘au revoir.’”
…Such a thing seemed incredible. The man repeated the words. “None despair!…A lady had come to Lourdes several summers without being cured. Last summer during Benediction, the lady beside her was cured. That evening, a friend complained that she should have been the favored one since she came oftener. ‘No,’ she said, ‘the lady beside me was worse than I. It was quite natural that she should be cured and not I!’ The words you usually hear are ‘God’s will be done.’”
As they were talking, McAllister noticed that the man was wearing armpads and that two crutches leaned against the wall behind him…He ventured to ask the man’s story… M.H. Lemarchand, for this was the man’s name… had been crippled from birth. He longed to go to Lourdes where he hoped he might be cured, but he and his sister were orphans and could not afford to make the trip. The years flew by. World War I came along, and the pilgrimage was out of the question. Finally in 1920, he and his sister were able to go to Lourdes. The longing of a lifetime was fulfilled.

“The first thing we did on arriving…was to go to the grotto. My first impression was very deep and made up of hope and sadness. Sadness at the sight of the sufferers we passed; sadness at having kept away so long. Of hope for my cure. During twenty-four years, I had thought of Lourdes and of going there – and I was here…
“I still prayed for my cure. But on the second day at Lourdes, while I was sitting among the sick during Benediction, I began to be ashamed of myself. On my right, a blind woman sat rigid in her chair; on my left lay a consumptive. I looked around at all those sufferers, and then up to the green mountains and higher to the sky. I could see and I could move about, having the free use of my ears and tongue and arms. I had not known sickness or disease – and I was praying for my cure! I started praying for the blind woman and the consumptive. Since that moment, I have felt that I ought to think of others and not myself.”
…“Perhaps it sounds foolish,” he said, “to speak of the happiness I have found at Lourdes, I who went to Lourdes to be cured and am still a cripple. But I have found contentment, and my soul has been cured. And for more persons than anyone knows, Lourdes has done the same thing.”…At Lourdes they gain a new peace. They become resigned to their afflictions and see them as crosses which God has asked them to bear.
“Of the uncured, none despair.” All go away filled with hope, with a new feeling of strength. The trip to Lourdes is never made in vain

7 Sharkey, Don. After Bernadette: The Story of Modern Lourdes. Milwaukee, The Bruce Publishing Company, 1945. 150-155.

Vigils Reading - St Scholastica
2023-02-10
Scholastica’s Miracle
from Saint Gregory the Great’s Dialogues
…Will there ever be a holier man in this world than St. Paul? Yet he prayed three times to the Lord about the sting in his flesh and could not obtain his wish. In this connection I must tell you how the saintly Benedict once had a wish he was unable to fulfill. His sister Scholastica, who had been consecrated to God in early childhood, used to visit with him once a year. On these occasions he would go down to meet her in a house belonging to the monastery, a short distance from the entrance.
For this particular visit he joined her there with a few of his disciples and they spent the whole day singing God’s praises and conversing about the spiritual life. When darkness was setting in, they took their meal together and continued their conversation at table until it was quite late. Then the holy nun said to him, ‘Please do not leave me tonight, brother. Let us keep on talking about the joys of heaven till morning.’ ‘What are you saying, sister?’ he replied. ‘You know I cannot stay away from the monastery.’
The sky was so clear at the time that there was not a cloud in sight. At her brother’s refusal Scholastica folded her hands on the table and rested her head upon them in earnest prayer. When she looked up again, there was a sudden burst of lightning and thunder, accompanied by such a downpour that Benedict and his companions were unable to set a foot outside the door. By shedding a flood of tears while she prayed, this holy nun had darkened the cloudless sky with a heavy rain. The storm began as soon as her prayer was over. In fact, the two coincided so closely that the thunder was already resounding as she raised her head from the table. The very instant she ended her prayer the rain poured down.

Realizing that he could not return to the monastery in this terrible storm, Benedict complained bitterly. ‘God forgive you, sister!’ he said. ‘What have you done?’ Scholastica simply answered, ‘When I appealed to you, you would not listen to me. So I turned to my God and He heard my prayer. Leave now if you can. Leave me here and go back to your monastery.’ This, of course, he could not do. He had no choice now but to stay, in spite of his unwillingness. They spent the entire night together and both of them derived great profit from the holy thoughts they exchanged about the interior life.
Here you have my reason for saying that this holy man was once unable to obtain what he desired. If we consider his point of view, we can readily see that he wanted the sky to remain as clear as it was when he came down from the monastery. But this wish of his was thwarted by a miracle almighty God performed in answer to a woman’s prayer. We need not be surprised that in this instance she proved mightier than her brother; she had been looking forward so long to this visit. Do we not read in St. John that God is love? Surely it is no more than right that her influence was greater than his, since hers was the greater love…
The next morning Scholastica returned to her convent and Benedict to his monastery. Three days later as he stood in his room looking up toward the sky, he beheld his sister’s soul leaving her body and entering the court of heaven in the form of a dove. Overjoyed at her eternal glory, he gave thanks to God in hymns of praise. Then, after informing his brethren of her death, he sent some of them to bring her body to the monastery and bury it in the tomb he had prepared for himself. The bodies of these two were now to share a common resting place, just as in life their souls had always been one in God

6 Saint Gregory the Great. Dialogues. Trans. Odo John Zimmerman, O.S.B. New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1959. 102-104.

Vigils Reading
2023-02-09
Here and Now5
From the Selected Writings of Servant of God Dorothy Day
Sometimes the only thing that keeps a woman going is the necessity of taking care of her young. She cannot sink into lethargy and despair because the young ones are dragging at her skirts, clamoring for something – food, clothing, shelter, occupation. She is carried outside herself. She is saved by childbearing, as it says in the Old Testament; she has a rule of life which involves others and she will be saved in spite of herself…The desire to nourish, to bring forth, is strong in…women.
…We want to be happy, we want others to be happy, we want to see some of this joy of life which children have, we want to see people intoxicated with God, or just filled with the good steady joy of knowing that Christ is King and that God loves us as a father loves his children, as a bridegroom loves his bride, and that eye has not seen nor ear heard what God hath prepared for us!…
We are called to be saints… and we might as well get over our bourgeois fear of the name. We might also get used to recognizing the fact that there is some of the saint in all of us. Inasmuch as we are growing, putting off the old man and putting on Christ, there is some of the saint, the holy, the divine right there.
…we believe that spiritual action is the hardest of all – to praise and worship God, to thank Him, to petition Him for our brothers, to repent our sins and those of others. This is action, just as the taking of cities is action, as revolution is action, as the Corporal Works of Mercy are action. And just to lie in the sun and let God work on you is to be sitting in the light of the Sun of Justice, and the growth will be there, and joy will grow and spread to others. That is why I like to use so often that saying of St. Catherine of Siena: “All the Way to heaven is Heaven, because He said I am the Way

5 Dorothy Day. By Little and By Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day. Ed. Robert Ellsberg. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1983. 100-104.

Vigils Reading - Office of the Dead
2023-02-08
Trampling Down Death by Death4 A reflection by Alexander Schmemann
To be Christian, to believe in Christ, means and has always meant this: to know in a transrational and yet absolutely certain way called faith, that Christ is the Life of all life, that he is Life itself and, therefore, my life. “In him was life; and the life was the light of men”. All Christian doctrines – those of the incarnation, redemption, atonement – are explanations, consequences, but not the “cause” of that faith. Only when we believe in Christ do all these affirmations become “valid” and “consistent”. But faith itself is the acceptance not of this or that “proposition” about Christ, but of Christ himself as the Life and the light of life. For “the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us”. In this sense Christian faith is radically different from “religious belief.” Its starting point is not “belief” but love. In itself and by itself all belief is partial, fragmentary, fragile. “For our knowledge is imperfect, and our prophecy is imperfect… as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.” Only “love never ends”. And if to love someone means that I have my life in him, or rather that he has become the “content” of my life, to love Christ is to know and to possess him as the Life of my life.
Only this possession of Christ as Life, the “joy and peace” of communion with him, the certitude of his presence, makes meaningful the proclamation of Christ’s death and the confession of his resurrection. In this world Christ’s resurrection can never be made an “objective fact.” The risen Lord appeared to Mary and “she saw him standing and knew not it was Jesus.” He stood on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias “but the disciples knew not it was Jesus.” And on the way to Emmaus the eyes of the disciples “were kept from recognizing him.” The preaching of the resurrection remains foolishness to this world, and no wonder even Christians themselves somehow “explain it away” by virtually reducing it to the old pre- Christian doctrines of immortality and survival…

Whether it is the immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the body – I know nothing of them and all discussion here is mere “speculation.” Death remains the same mysterious passage into a mysterious future. The great joy that the disciples felt when they saw the risen Lord, that “burning of heart” that they experienced on the way to Emmaus were not because the mysteries of an “other world” were revealed to them, but because they saw the Lord. And he sent them to preach and to proclaim not the resurrection of the dead – not a doctrine of death – but repentance and remission of sins, the new life, the kingdom. They announced what they knew, that in Christ the new life has already begun, that he is Life Eternal, the Fulfillment, the Resurrection and the Joy of the world.
The Church is the entrance into the risen life of Christ; it is communion in life eternal, “joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.” And it is the expectation of the “day without evening” of the kingdom; not of any “other world,” but of the fulfillment of all things and all life in Christ. In him death itself has become an act of life, for he has filled it with himself, with his love and light. In him “all things are yours; whether…the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours; and you are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s. And if I make this new life mine, mine this hunger and thirst for the kingdom, mine this expectation of Christ, mine the certitude that Christ is Life, then my very death will be an act of communion with Life

4 Schmemann, Alexander. O Death, Where is thy Sting?. Trans. Alexis Vinogradov. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003. 110-114.

Vigils Reading
2023-02-07
On the Love of God3 From a sermon by Alan of Lille
…John says: ‘God is love, and he who dwells in love lives in God, and God in him’. Peter, as well: ‘Above all, have mutual love for one another, for love outweighs a multitude of sins’. And Paul: ‘Love is patient and kind’. Augustine, too: ‘Everything we do without love benefits us nothing, and in vain do we dissipate our energy if we do not have love, that is, God’. Gregory says: ‘The more the heart of the sinner is consumed with the fire of love, the more it is purged of the rust of sins’. From these texts, we must continue thus: Who, even armed with the eloquence of Cicero and filled with all wisdom, can adequately sing the praise of love and expound its virtues? It is love which teaches us to flee enticements, to tread pleasures under foot, to subdue the lusts of the flesh, to despise marks of deference, to crush illicit desires and, finally, to renounce all the blandishments of this life.
On this subject, the Bridegroom declares in the Song of Songs: ‘Set me as a seal upon your heart; set me as a seal upon your arm, for love is as strong as death, and jealousy as cruel as hell’. For death snuffs out the living, and hell does not spare the dead. Love, then, is like death, for just as the one subdues the senses of the flesh, so the other subdues the movements of carnal desire. Envy is cruel as hell, for it obliges those whom a longing for eternity draws inward not only to spit out smooth things, but also to put up with harsh and bitter things in attaining what they love. Love braces the other virtues with the fortifications of its perfection.
Whoever roots himself in love will fail neither to flourish nor to bear fruit, for hi lives so as to be productive. On this matter Isidore says: ‘No reward is of value without the love of charity, and no matter how strongly one believes aright, he cannot come to blessedness without charity’. For such is the power of love that even prophecy and martyrdom are of no avail without it. Of all the virtues, love holds first place. For this reason, the Apostle calls it the chain of perfection, for all the virtues are linked together by the chain of love.

Love God, then, that you may be loved by him, and conduct your life so that you may the more swiftly come to him, for through love you will grasp, possess, and enjoy him. This is the most excellent way, the highway, which straightens winding ways, and clearly indicates the direct ways. This is love which so moved God that it led him from the seat of highest majesty to the lowliness of our mortal nature. It wounded him who could not suffer, it moved him who could not be changed, it bound him who could not be conquered, it made mortal him who is eternal.
If love was able to do so much in God, how much, O man, should it be able to do in you? If God bore so much for man, what shall man refuse to bear for God?
Let it shame a man not to be subject to love, which subjected the Creator of the world to itself. Love does not envy, it does no wrong, but it tears out the root of vice from him in whom it dwells. Love is the source of all virtue; it illuminates the mind, purifies the conscience, rejoices the soul, shows forth God. Pride does not puff up the soul in which love dwells, nor does envy rack it; anger does not destroy it; evil and sadness do not trouble it; lust does not pollute it; gluttony does not inflame it.
Love is always chaste, always pure, always quiet, always kind; strong in adversity, steady in times of prosperity. This is the spiritual cross, and anyone who lays hand on it to take it up and carry it, follows in the footsteps of Christ

3 Alan of Lille. The Art of Preaching. CF 23. Trans. Gillian R. Evans. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, Inc., 1981. 86-89.

Vigils Reading - St Paul Miki and Companions
2023-02-06
St. Paul Miki and the Martyrs of Japan2
Christianity spread like wildfire in sixteenth-century Japan. By the 1580s, less than forty years after Francis Xavier introduced the faith, the church counted two hundred thousand converts. The growth had proceeded despite the opposition of Buddhist priests and many petty rulers. However, in 1587, Emperor Hideyoshi ordered the banishment of all Catholics, forcing the Jesuit missionaries to operate from hiding. But outright persecution did not break out until late 1596, when Hideyoshi rounded up twenty-six Jesuits, Franciscans, and laypeople and prepared to martyr them.

Among the victims was St. Paul Miki, a Jesuit novice who had just completed eleven years of training. Paul’s noble family was converted when he was a child and at age five he was baptized. Educated by Jesuits, the gifted youth joined their novitiate at age twenty-two. He had studied intensively the teachings of the Buddhists so as to be able to debate their priests. He welcomed his chance at martyrdom, but may have wished just a little that it would be delayed long enough for him to be ordained a priest.
Hideyoshi had the left ears of the twenty-six martyrs severed as a sign of disrespect and paraded them through Kyoto. Dressed in his simple black cassock, Paul stood out among them. Most onlookers realized that this noble young man could have worn the samurai’s costume with two swords on his belt. The whole display had the unexpected effect of evoking compassion from the crowd, some of whom later became converts.

The martyrs were then taken to Nagasaki. They were tied to crosses with their necks held in place by iron rings. Beside each was an executioner with his spear ready to strike. An eyewitness gave this account:
“When the crosses were set up it was a wonderful thing to see the constancy of all of them. Our brother Paul Miki, seeing himself raised to the most honorable position that he had ever occupied, openly proclaimed that he was a Japanese and a member of the Society of Jesus. And that he was being put to death for having

preached the gospel. He gave thanks to God for such a precious favor.
He then added these words: “Having arrived at this moment of my existence, I believe that no one of you thinks I want to hide the truth. That is why I declare to you that there is no other way of salvation than the one followed by Christians. Since this way teaches me to forgive my enemies and all who have offended me, I willingly forgive the king and all those who have desired my death. And I pray that they will obtain the desire of Christian baptism.”
At this point, he turned his eyes toward his companions and began to encourage them in their final struggle. The faces of them all shone with great gladness. Another Christian shouted to him that he would soon be in paradise. “Like my Master,” murmured Paul, “I shall die upon the cross. Like him, a lance will pierce my heart so that my blood and my love can flow out upon the land and sanctify it to his name.”

As they awaited death the entire group sang the canticle of Zachary. The executioners stood by respectfully until they had intoned the last verse. Then at a given signal they thrust their spears into the victims’ sides. On that day, February 5, 1597, the church of Japan welcomed its first martyrs

2 Bert Ghezzi. Excerpt taken from “Voices of the Saints”. ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-voices/16th-and- 17th-century-ignatian-voices/st-paul-miki-sj/. Accessed Jan. 31, 2023.

Vigils Reading - 5th Sun ORD
2023-02-05
Let Your Light Shine Before All1 A commentary by St John Chrysostom
We who have once for all clothed ourselves in Christ, and been made worthy to have him dwelling within us, may show everyone, if we choose, simply by the strict discipline of our life and without saying a word, the power of him who dwells in us. Therefore Christ said: Let your light so shine before all, that people may see your good works and praise your Father in heaven. This is a light that reaches not only the bodily senses, but illuminates also the beholder’s mind and soul. It disperses the darkness of evil, and invites those who encounter it to let their own light shine forth, and to follow the example of virtue.
Let your light shine before all, Christ said; and he used the words before all advisedly. He meant, “Let your light be so bright that it illuminates not only yourself, but shines also before those needing its help.” As the light our senses perceive puts darkness to flight, and enables those traveling along a road perceptible to the senses to follow a straight course, so also the spiritual light which shines from blameless conduct illuminates those who cannot see clearly how to live a virtuous life, because their spiritual eyesight has been blurred by the darkness of error. It purifies their inward vision, leads them to live upright lives, and makes them walk henceforth in the path of virtue.
That people may see your good works and praise your Father in heaven.
Christ means: Let your virtue, the perfection of your life, and the performance of good works inspire those who see you to praise the common Master of us all. And so I beg each of you to strive to live so perfectly that the Lord may be praised by all who see you. By the perfection of your lives attract to yourselves the grace of the Spirit, so that the Lord of all creation may be glorified, and so that we may all be found worthy of the kingdom of heaven by the grace, mercy, and goodness of God’s only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be glory, might, and honor now and for ever and for endless ages. Amen
1Journey with the Fathers – Year A – New City Press – N.Y. – 1999 – pg 86

Skema
2023-02-05
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
5th Week in Ordinary Time

Mass Readings: Sunday (A), Weekdays (I)
February 5 – 11, 2023

Sun
5
Mon
6
Tue
7
Wed
8
Thu
9
Fri
10
Sat
11

Office
5th Sunday
St Paul Miki & Companions
Weekday
Office for the Dead
Weekday
St Scholastica
Our Lady of Lourdes

Vigils
Judg 16:23-31
Judg 17:1-13
Judg 18:1-11
Judg 18:13-31
Judg 19:1-21
Judg 19:20-30
Judg 20:1-19

Lauds
Zech 11:1-6
Zech 11:7-14
Zech 11:15-17
Zech 12:1-6
Zech 12:7-14
Zech 13:1-6
Zech 13:7-9

Mass
73
329
330
331
332
333
334

1st
Isa 58:7-10
Gen 1:1-19
Gen 1:20-2:4a
Gen 2:4b-9, 15-17
Gen 2:18-25
Gen 3:1-8
Gen 3:9-24

2nd
1 Cor 2:1-5

Gospel
Matt 5:13-16
Mark 6:53-56
Mark 7:1-13
Mark 7:14-23
Mark 7:24-30
Mark 7:31-37
Mark 8:1-10

Vespers
Phil 2:12-18
Phil 3:2-11
Phil 3:12-16
Phil 3:17-21
Phil 4:1-9
Phil 4:10-14
Phil 4:15-23

Reading: Memorial of the BVM
2023-02-04
Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI 7
to the monks of Heiligenkreuz Abbey
In the life of monks…prayer takes on a particular importance: it is the heart of
their calling. Their vocation is to be men of prayer. In the patristic period the
monastic life was likened to the life of the angels. It was considered the essential
mark of the angels that they are worshippers. Their very life is worship. This
should hold true also for monks. Monks pray first and foremost not for any specific
intention, but simply because God is worthy of being praised…Such prayer for its
own sake, intended as pure divine service, is rightly called officium. It is “service”
par excellence, the “sacred service” of monks. It is offered to the triune God who,
above all else, is worthy “to receive glory, honour and power”, because he
wondrously created the world and even more wondrously renewed it.
At the same time, the officium of consecrated persons is also a sacred service
to men and women, a testimony offered to them. All people have deep within their
hearts, whether they know it or not, a yearning for definitive fulfillment, for
supreme happiness, and thus, ultimately, for God. A monastery, in which the
community gathers several times a day for the praise of God, testifies to the fact that
this primordial human longing does not go unfulfilled: God the Creator has not
placed us in a fearful darkness where, groping our way in despair, we seek some
ultimate meaning; God has not abandoned us in a desert void, bereft of meaning,
where in the end only death awaits us. No! God has shone forth in our darkness
with his light, with his Son Jesus Christ. In him, God has entered our world in all
his “fullness”; in him all truth, the truth for which we yearn, has its source and
summit.
Our light, our truth, our goal, our fulfilment, our life – all this is not a
religious doctrine but a person: Jesus Christ. Over and above any ability of our own
to seek and to desire God, we ourselves were already sought and desired, and
indeed, found and redeemed by him! The gaze of people of every time and nation,
of all the philosophies, religions and cultures, ultimately encounters the wide open
eyes of the crucified and risen Son of God; his open heart is the fullness of love. The
eyes of Christ are the eyes of a loving God.
Your primary service to this world must therefore be your prayer and the
celebration of the divine office. The interior disposition…of each consecrated
person, must be that of “putting nothing before the divine Office”. The beauty of
this inner attitude will find expression in the beauty of the liturgy, so that wherever
we join singing, praising, exalting and worshipping God, a little bit of heaven will
become present on earth…In all our effort on behalf of the liturgy, the determining
factor must always be our looking to God. We stand before God – he speaks to us
and we speak to him…
…among you there burns the Marian flame of a Saint Bernard of
Clairvaux…Perhaps it was because of his particular devotion to Our Lady that he
exercised such a compelling and infectious influence on his many young
contemporaries called by God. Where Mary is, there is the pentecostal breath of the
Holy Spirit; there is new beginning and authentic renewal…Saint Bernard says, and
we say with him: “Look to the star of the sea, call upon Mary…in danger, in distress,
in doubt, think of Mary, call upon Mary. May her name never be far from your lips,
or far from your heart…If you follow her, you will not stray; if you pray to her, you
will not despair; if you turn your thoughts to her, you will not err. If she holds you,
you will not fall; if she protects you, you need not fear; if she is your guide, you will
not tire; if she is gracious to you, you will surely reach your destination”.
7 Pope Benedict XVI. Visit to Heiligenkreuz Abbey: Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI. Sunday, 8
September 2007.

Reading: Weekday
2023-02-03
Ultimate Truth and Sweetness is to be Found in Reading and
Understanding Holy Scripture 6
by Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain
A source of spiritual delight is the word of God contained in Holy Scripture
because there is to be found ultimate truth that enlightens the mind, which, being
mind, has truth as its object. Moreover, there is ultimate sweetness and grace in the
words of Scripture, which draw like a great magnet the hearts of the readers to agree
with them and to be convinced. This is only natural. After all, the words of
Scripture are the words of God and of the Holy Spirit. This is to say that they are
the words of truth itself and grace itself…
St John Chrysostom said, “The reading of Holy Scripture is the opening of
heaven…” In Holy Scripture we see humble words, simple words, but within they
possess such great depths of the knowledge of God that the passing wisdom of this
world cannot even stand beside it. St. Paul wrote about this wisdom of God:
“Among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or
of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and
hidden wisdom of God”…
If you love to enjoy true and complete delight from the Scriptures, seek to
read them not merely with simple understanding, but with deeds and practical
realities. Moreover, seek to read them not merely for the mere love of learning but
also for the sake of ascetic endeavors and discipline, as St. Mark wrote: “Read the
words of Holy Scripture with an eye to practical applications and not merely to be
puffed up by any fine thought that you may receive from it.” Another Father said:
“This is why the lover of knowledge must also be a lover of discipline and practical
application. For knowledge alone does not give light to the lamp.” You will receive
this light if you contemplate on the content of Scripture and realize that it was
written to correct you and not the others, as again St. Mark said: “The humble
person who has a spiritual life reads the Holy Scripture and understands everything
to refer to him and not to others.” For this is true wisdom, fear of God, and
avoidance of evil: “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from
evil is understanding”… “The first wisdom is a praiseworthy life purified by God.”
6 Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain. A Handbook of Spiritual Counsel. The Classics of Western Spirituality. Trans. Peter
A. Chamberas. New York: Paulist Press, 1989. 186-190.

Reading: Presentation of the Lord
2023-02-02
How the Coming and Returning of the Word
Works for the Soul’s Salvation 5
A Reading by St Bernard of Clairvaux
I admit that the Word has also come to me…But although he has come to me,
I have never been conscious of the moment of his coming. I perceived his presence,
I remembered afterwards that he had been with me; sometimes I had a
presentiment that he would come, but I was never conscious of his coming or his
going…How then did he enter? Perhaps he did not enter because he does not come
from outside? He is not one of the things which exist outside us. Yet he does not
come from within me…I have ascended to the highest in me, and look! The word is
towering above that. In my curiosity I have descended to explore my lowest depths,
yet I found him even deeper. If I looked outside myself, I saw him stretching
beyond the furthest I could see; & I looked within, he was yet further within. Then I
knew the truth of what I had read, ‘In him we live & move & have our being’. And
blessed is the man in whom he has his being, who lives for him, and is moved by
him.
You ask then how I knew he was present, when his ways can in no way be
traced? He is life and power, and as soon as he enters in, he awakens my
slumbering soul; he stirs and soothes and pierces my heart, for before it was hard as
stone, and diseased. So he has begun to pluck out and destroy, to build up and to
plant, to water dry places and illuminate dark ones; to open what was closed and to
warm what was cold; to make the crooked straight and the rough places smooth, so
that my soul may bless the Lord, and all that is within me may praise his holy name.
So when the Bridegroom, the Word, came to me, he never made known his coming
by any signs, not by sight, nor by sound, not by touch. It was not by any movement
of his that I recognized his coming; it was not by any of my senses that I perceived
he had penetrated to the depths of my being. Only by the movement of my
heart…did I perceive his presence; and I knew the power of his might because my
faults were put to flight and my human yearnings brought into subjection. I have
marvelled at the depth of his wisdom when my secret faults have been revealed and
made visible; at the very slightest amendment of my way of life I have experienced
his goodness and mercy; in the renewal and remaking of the spirit of my mind, that
is of my inmost being, I have perceived the excellence of his glorious beauty, and
when I contemplate all these things I am filled with awe and wonder at his manifold
greatness.
But when the Word has left me, all these spiritual powers become weak and
faint and begin to grow cold, as though you had removed the fire from under a
boiling pot, and this is the sign of his going. Then my soul must needs be sorrowful
until he returns, and my heart again kindles within me – the sign of his returning.
When I have had such experience of the Word, is it any wonder that I take to myself
the words of the Bride, calling him back when he has withdrawn?…
As often as he slips away from me, so often shall I call him back. From the
burning desire of my heart I will not cease to call him, begging him to return, as if
after someone who is departing, and I will implore him to give back to me the joy of
his salvation, and restore himself to me.
5 St Bernard of Clairvaux. On the Song of Songs IV. CF 40. Trans. Irene Edmonds. Kalamazoo, MI:
Cistercian Publications, 1980. 89-92.

Reading: Weekday
2023-02-01
Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI 4
at Collège des Bernardins, Paris – in 2008
From the perspective of monasticism’s historical influence, we could say
that…the monasteries were the places where the treasures of ancient culture
survived, and where at the same time a new culture slowly took shape out of the old.
…Amid the confusion of the times, in which nothing seemed permanent, they
wanted to do the essential – to make an effort to find what was perennially valid
and lasting, life itself. They were searching for God. They wanted to go from the
inessential to the essential, to the only truly important and reliable thing there is. It
is sometimes said that they were “eschatologically” oriented. But this is not to be
understood in a temporal sense, as if they were looking ahead to the end of the
world or to their own death, but in an existential sense: they were seeking the
definitive behind the provisional…
Because they were Christians, this was not an expedition into a trackless
wilderness, a search leading them into total darkness. God himself had provided
signposts, indeed he had marked out a path which was theirs to find and to follow.
This path was his word, which had been disclosed to men in the books of the sacred
Scripture…
Because the search for God required the culture of the word, it was
appropriate…to have a school, in which these pathways could be opened up…the
monastery…[a school of the Lord’s service]…whose ultimate aim is that man should
learn how to serve God. But it also includes the formation of reason – education –
through which man learns to perceive, in the midst of words, the Word itself…
The Word which opens the path of that search, and is to be identified with
this path, is a shared word. True, it pierces every individual to the heart. Gregory
the Great describes this a sharp stabbing pain, which tears open our sleeping soul
and awakens us, making us attentive to the essential reality, to God. But in the
process, it also makes us attentive to one another. The word does not lead to a
purely individual path of mystical immersion, but to the pilgrim fellowship of faith…
The God who speaks in the Bible teaches us how to speak with him ourselves.
Particularly in the book of Psalms, he gives us the words with which we can address
him, with which we can bring our life, with all its highpoints and lowpoints, into
conversation with him, so that life itself thereby becomes a movement towards
him…
This particular structure of the Bible issues a constantly new challenge to
every generation. It excludes by its nature everything that today is known as
fundamentalism. In effect, the word of God can never simply be equated with the
letter of the text. To attain to it involves a transcending and a process of
understanding, led by the inner movement of the whole and hence it also has to
become a process of living. Only within the dynamic unity of the whole are the
many books one book. The Word of God and his action in the world are revealed
only in the word and history of human beings…
To seek God and to let oneself be found by him, that is today no less necessary
than in former times. A purely positivistic culture which tried to drive the question
concerning God into the subjective realm, as being unscientific, would be the
capitulation of reason, the renunciation of its highest possibilities, and hence a
disaster for humanity, with very grave consequences. What gave Europe’s culture
its foundation – the search for God and the readiness to listen to him – remains
today the basis of any genuine culture.
4 Pope Benedict XVI. Address at the Collège des Bernardins, Paris, Friday, 12 September 2008.

Reading: St. John Bosco
2023-01-31
The Man and the Saint 3
A Reading on St John Bosco
People often said of Don Bosco: “Really, he is quite an ordinary person.”
There was nothing about him that revealed his mission, his profound spirituality or
his sanctity…Only his expression showed the fire that burnt in his heart. His clear
eyes looked right through you, and their brightness was disturbing.
His confidence in God was extreme. He had the faith that moves mountains.
He never doubted as to the outcome of any undertaking. If he were only sure of his
usefulness, he was certain of its success. Obstacles might arise; he laughed at them,
while fighting against them or getting round them. Financial or other means might
be lacking; if they did not come in today, he expected them tomorrow. “The main
thing,” he said, relying upon a long experience, “is to take the burden on one’s
shoulders. As you go forward, the load finds its balance and shakes down.” The
hardest humiliations, the bitterest disillusions, the strongest opposition all left him
smiling. Whence came his serenity?… He abandoned himself in the arms of God
with the uttermost love.
To him, the love of God was one with the love of souls. The second
commandment was like the first and greatest. Not only did this love of souls make
him relish all the miseries of the way, but it also inspired him to pray with an almost
wild boldness. At the beginning of his work he asked his heavenly Benefactress for
a thousand places in Paradise, and he tells us he was given them. Later on,
confronted with the unexpected growth of his enterprise, he went further and asked
for ten thousand places. At last, seeing his Houses all over the world, he was still
more pressing, and asked for a hundred thousand reserved seats for his Sons. And
this time, too, he was certain of having been granted them…His simple and calm
audacity in expressing the deepest of his desires, the salvation of souls, enables us to
surmise the degree of intimacy he had reached in prayer. In truth, such prayer was
the very life of his soul. One of those who knew him best said: “He seemed to live in
a state of permanent contemplation. He worked, indeed, upon the earth, but his
spirit was up yonder, in heaven.”
…Many, we know, have thought that prayer held but a small place in his
timetable. They are mistaken…Don Bosco was incessantly in union with Christ and
His Mother. There was no ecstasy, no irradiation of countenance, no uplifting from
the ground; but more certainly, he used all forms of prayer, vocal or mental, and
especially, that which suddenly elevates the soul till it confronts some divine truth,
embracing it in a single view and possessing it with rejoicing.
This humble and diffident priest never made any claim to be the founder of a
mystical school; but had he started any system of asceticism, he would probably
have based it on the old saying, in its fullest and truest sense: “To work is to pray.”
His own work never was apart from God. It was done under God’s eyes and for Him
only. And the manifold occupations of his hustled days, far from destroying his
serenity, only bound his heart more closely to its source of light and strength and
love – Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, and their servant never ceased feeling
them at his side.
…By the contrast between his humble appearance and the splendour of his
soul, we are driven to acknowledge that this man makes a great figure in the train of
sanctity. There are some Saints more impressive, greater wonder-workers, more
worldwide in their sphere of influence, to be found throughout the twenty centuries
of Christianity; but there are few more striking and more taking personalities to be
met with in the history of the Church.
3 A. Auffray, S.D.B. Saint John Bosco. North Arcot – South India: Salesian House, Tirupattur, 1959. 370-371, 380-382, 388.
