Lay Cistercians of Gethsemani Abbey

Vigils: St. Bonaventure
2024-07-15
THE LIFE OF ST BONAVENTURE
From Butler’s Lives of the Saints 2
◊◊◊
Of the youth of this greatest successor of St Francis of Assisi nothing is
known beyond the facts that he was born at Bagnoregio, near Viterbo, in the
year 1221, the son of John Fidanza and Mary Ritella. He was clothed in the order
of Friars Minor and studies at the University of Paris under an Englishman,
Alexander of Hales, ‘the Unanswerable Doctor’; Bonaventure, who was to
become known as the Seraphic Doctor, himself taught theology and Holy
Scripture there from 1248 to 1257.
Bonaventure was called by his priestly obligation to labor for the salvation
of his neighbor, and to this he devoted himself with enthusiasm. He preached
to the people with an energy which kindled a flame in the hearts of those that
heard him. While at the University of Paris he produced one of the best-known
of his written works, the “Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard”,
which covers the whole field of scholastic theology. The years of his public
lecturing at Paris were greatly disturbed, however, by the attack made on the
mendicant friars by the other professors at the university. Jealousy of their
pastoral and academic success and the standing reproof to worldliness and ease
of the friars’ lives were in part behind this attempt to get them excluded from
the schools. The leader of the secular party was William of Saint-Amour, who
made a bitter onslaught on the mendicants in a book called “The Perils of the
Last Times”, and other writings.
Bonaventure, who had to suspend lecturing for a time, replied in a treatise
on evangelical poverty, named “Concerning the Poverty of Christ”. The pope,
Alexander IV, appointed a commission of cardinals to go into the matter at
Anagni, and on their findings ordered Saint-Amour’s book to be burnt,
vindicated and reinstated the friars, and ordered the offenders to withdraw
their attack. A year later, in 1257, St Bonaventure and St Thomas Aquinas
received the degree of doctor of theology together.
In 1257 Bonaventure was chosen minister general of the Friars Minor. He
was not yet thirty-six years old, and the order was torn by dissensions, some of
the friars being for an inflexible severity, others demanding certain mitigation
of the rule; between the two extremes were a number of other interpretations.
Some of the extreme rigorists, called Spirituals, had even fallen into error and
disobedience, and thus given a handle to the friars’ opponents in the Paris
dispute. The new minister general wrote a letter to his provincials in which he
made it clear that he required a disciplined observance of the rule, involving a
reformation of the relaxed, but giving no countenance to the excesses of the
Spirituals.
At Narbonne in 1260, the first of the five general chapters which he held,
he produced a set of constitutions on the rule, which were adopted and had a
permanent effect on Franciscan life, but they failed to pacify the excessive
rigorists. At the request of the friars assembled in this chapter, he undertook to
write the life of St Francis, which he compiled with a spirit which shows him to
have been filled with the virtues of the founder whose life he wrote. He governed
his order for seventeen years and has been justly called its second founder.
2 BUTLER’S LIVES OF THE SAINTS, Concise Edition edited by M. Walsh (Harper San Francisco, 1991) pp. 216-
217.

Vigils: Bl. Virgin Martyrs of Orange
2024-07-16
THE MARTYRS OF ORANGE
◊◊◊
The Martyrs of Orange were a group of 32 beatified religious women
martyred at Orange, France, during the French Revolution between July 5 and
26, 1794. Two were Cistercian nuns from Avignon, the others were from
Bollene, near Avignon. The others…included 16 Ursulines, 13 Sacramentine
nuns and one Benedictine nun. For refusing to take the oath of Liberty of the
new regime, the nuns were expelled from their convents, arrested and held in
La Cure prison in Orange. These and other nuns formed a kind of religious
community and spent hours in prayer and religious exercises daily until
condemned for fanaticism and superstition…
The martyrs of the prison ships of Rochefort died in 1794, the same year
as the nuns of Orange, and were declared martyrs in 1925. On October 1, 1995,
Pope John Paul II beatified three other Cistercians at the same time as 61 other
priests and religious of various Congregations. They were not the only
Cistercians who died of starvation or illness in the slave ships or on the islands
off the shore of La Rochelle. Our Menology mentions several others. Yet for the
cause of beatification, only 64 among the 547 who died, were retained as
martyrs, namely, those who were explicitly mentioned in the list of the
deported.
The three Cistercians were: Br Elias Desgardin, Dom Paul Charles, and
Dom Gervais Brunel. Br. Elias Desgardin was a lay Brother from Sept Fons. He
cared for his sick companions. A martyr of charity, he died of typhoid fever at
the age of forty-four. He was buried on the island of Aix… Dom Paul Charles
was the Prior of Sept Fons. Detained on the ship Les Deux Associes, he died at
the age of fifty-one, esteemed and loved by his companions in captivity. He was
buried on the island called Madame. The third beatified martyr was Dom
Gervais Brunel, Superior of La Trappe, who died at the age of fifty in a
provisional hospital on the island Madame. Stricken with typhoid fever, he
arrived there on the point of dying, dying on the very day of the disembarkment.
One of them made a statement that can be applied to all these beatified
religious and to many others condemned to die on the prison ships: “If we are
the most unhappy of men, we are also the happiest of Christians”.

Vigils: Weekday
2024-07-17
RELIGION IN A FREE SOCIETY
By Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel 3
◊◊◊
Little does contemporary religion ask of man. It is ready to offer comfort;
it has no courage to challenge. It is ready to offer edification; it has no courage
to break the idols, to shatter callousness. The trouble is that religion has
become…institution, dogma, ritual. It is no longer an event. Its acceptance
involves neither risk nor strain. There is no substitute for faith, no alternative
for revelation, no surrogate for commitment. We define self-reliance and call it
faith, shrewdness and call it wisdom, anthropology and call it ethics, literature
and call it Bible, inner security and call it religion, conscience and call it God.
However, nothing counterfeit can endure forever…
It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for
the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame
religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but
because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely
replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today
is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom
rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority
rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
The primary task of religious thinking is to rediscover the questions to which
religion is an answer, to develop a degree of sensitivity to the ultimate questions
which its ideas and acts are trying to answer…
The most serious obstacle which modern men encounter in entering
discussion about the ideas of the Bible, is the absence from man’s consciousness
of the problems to which the Bible refers. The Bible is an answer to the
question, “What does God require of man?” But to modern man, this question
is suppressed by another one, namely, “What does man demand of God?”
Modern man continues to ponder: “What will I get out of life?” What escapes
his attention is the fundamental, yet often forgotten question, “What will life
get out of me?”
Absorbed in the struggle for the emancipation of the individual we have
concentrated our attention upon the idea of human rights and overlooked the
importance of human obligations… Oblivious to the fact of his receiving
infinitely more than he is able to return, man began to consider his self as the
only end… We can ill afford to set up needs, an unknown, variable, vacillating,
and eventually degrading factor, as a universal standard, as a supreme, abiding
rule or pattern for living. This, indeed, is the purpose of our religious traditions:
to keep alive the higher Yes as well as the power of man to say, “Here I am”; to
teach our minds to understand the true demand and to teach our conscience to
be present…
It is an inherent weakness of religion not to take offense at the segregation
of God, to forget that the true sanctuary has no walls. Religion has suffered from
the tendency to become an end in itself, to seclude the holy, to become
parochial, self-indulgent, self-seeking; as if the task were not to ennoble human
nature but to enhance the power and beauty of its institutions or to enlarge the
body of doctrines. It has often done more to canonize prejudices than to wrestle
for truth; to petrify the sacred than to sanctify the secular. Yet the task of
religion is to challenge the stabilization of values. Religion is not for religion’s
sake but for God’s sake.
3 Excerpted and quoted from The Insecurity of Freedom (New York: Schocken Books, 1959, 1960,
1963, 1964,1966), pp.1-23. Accessed online, July 5, 2023.

Vigils: St. Camillus de Lillus
2024-07-18
ST CAMILLUS DE LELLIS
From Butler’s Lives of the Saints 4
◊◊◊
Camillus de Lellis was born in 1550 at Bucchianico…. When he was
seventeen he went off with his father to fight with the Venetians against the
Turks. But soon he contracted a painful and repulsive disease in his leg that
was to afflict him for the rest of his life. In 1571 he was admitted to the San
Giacomo hospital for incurables at Rome, as a patient and servant. After nine
months he was dismissed, for his quarrelsomeness among other things. He
returned to active service in the Turkish war. Though Camillus habitually
referred to himself as a great sinner, his worst disorder was an addiction to
gambling that continually reduced him to want and shame. In the autumn of
1574 he gambled away his savings, his arms, everything down to his shirt, which
was stripped off his back in the streets of Naples.
The indigence to which he had reduced himself, and the memory of a vow
he had made in a fit of remorse to join the Franciscans, caused him to accept
work as a laborer in the new Capuchin buildings at Manfredonia, and there a
moving exhortation which the guardian of the friars gave him one day,
completed his conversion. He… fell on his knees, and with tears deplored his
past life, and cried to Heaven for mercy. This happened on Candlemas day in
1575, the 25th of his age. From that time he never departed from his penitential
course. He entered the novitiate of the Capuchins, but could not make
profession because of the disease in his leg. He therefore returned to the
hospital of San Giacomo and devoted himself to the service of the sick. The
administrators of the hospital witnessed his charity and later appointed him
superintendent of the hospital.
To make himself more useful in spiritually assisting the sick, he
proceeded, with the approval of his confessor, St. Philip Neri, to receive Holy
Orders… With two companions he laid the foundations of his congregation.
They went every day to the hospital of the Holy Ghost, where they served the
sick with such affection and diligence that it was obvious to all who saw them
that they considered Christ Himself as lying sick or wounded in His members…
Camillus was afflicted by many illnesses himself: the disease in his leg for
forty-six years, a rupture for thirty-eight years, two sores in the sole of his foot,
which gave him great pain. Yet under these infirmities, he would not allow
anyone to wait on him, but sent all his brethren to serve others. When he was
not able to stand, he would creep out of his bed, even at night, and crawl from
one patient to another to see if they wanted anything.
Camillus saw the foundation of fifteen houses of his brothers and eight
hospitals… He expired on July 14, 1614, being sixty-four years old. St Camillus
de Lellis was canonized in 1746, and was, with St. John of God, declared patron
of the sick by Pope Leo XIII, and of nurses and nursing associations by Pope
Pius XI.
4 Butler’s Lives of Saints, vol. 3, pg. 134, P.J. Kennedy & Sons, New York, 1956.

Vigils: Weekday
2024-07-19
DIRECT YOUR THOUGHTS UTTERLY TO GOD
From “The Form of Living” by Richard Rolle 5
◊◊◊
Because you have abandoned the comforts and the pleasures of this world
and devoted yourself to the solitary life for the love of God, in order to endure
distress and hardship in this life and subsequently to come to [rest and joy in
heaven], I believe most sincerely that the consolation of Jesus Christ, and the
sweetness of his love, with the fire of the Holy Spirit who cleanses all sin, shall
be in you and with you, leading you and instructing you how you are to meditate,
how you are to pray, and what you are to do, so that after a few years you shall
certainly have more delight in being yourself and speaking with your beloved
and your spouse, Jesus Christ…
People suppose that we live in suffering and in a life of” privation, but we
have more pleasure and more real delight in one day than they have in worldly
things throughout their entire lives. They see our bodies, but they do not see
our hearts, where all our comfort lies. If they could see the heart, many of them
would abandon all they have in order to follow us. So be heartened and
emboldened and do not fear any discomfort or hardship, rather fix your whole
desire on Jesus, so that your life may be good and quiet… It is the special
goodness of God that he should encourage miraculously those who have no
encouragement from the world. If they give their hearts entirely to him and
desire nothing, and look for nothing except himself, then he gives himself in
sweetness and delight, in the ardor of love… No man can arrive at such
revelation and grace on the first day, but through long labor and diligence in
loving Jesus Christ…
Direct your thoughts utterly to God, as you have by your outward
appearance directed your body. For I don’t want you to think that all those who
bear the outward appearance of holiness are holy and not preoccupied by the
world; nor that all who concern themselves with worldly affairs are sinful. But
those alone are holy, whatever condition or rank they are in, who despise all
worldly things, that is to say, who do not cherish the things of the world, but
burn in the love of Jesus Christ, whose every desire is directed toward the joy of
heaven, and who hate all sin, and never give up doing good, and feel in their
heart a sweet savor of the love that never ends.
And all the same, they reckon themselves to be the most despicable of all
men, and consider themselves the most contemptible, most insignificant and
most abject. This is the lifestyle of the holy: follow it, and be holy… For those
who follow Jesus Christ in voluntary poverty, and in humility, in love and in
patience, give up exactly the same amount as those want to acquire who do not
follow him. And consider how great and how good is the state of mind within
you, with which you present your vows before him, because that is what he is
looking for, and also whether you are offering your prayers with great yearning
love, and strive eagerly, with great fervor, to see him, seeking no earthly
consolation except for the taste of heaven, and take your delight in the
contemplation of it.
I want you to be constantly climbing toward Jesus, and intensifying your
love and your attendance on him… If you apply all your thoughts on how you
may love your Jesus Christ more than you have been doing, then I venture to
say that your worth is increasing and not diminishing.
5 Richard Rolle. The English Writings. Trans. Rosamund S. Allen. New York: Paulist Press, 1988.
157-158, 160-161, 163

Vigils: Memorial of the BVM
2024-07-20
MARY AND THE RETURN OF THE LORD
From a book by René Laurentin 6
◊◊◊
It is of the essence of the Christian message that we shall turn our gaze to
the future, to the completion and consummation of all things which the Lord’s
return will bring about.
At that time (already present in the eternity of God), the frontiers between
the earthly and the heavenly are abolished. The corporal world is transfigured,
God is all in all. Time, too, is abolished for the Church. This fragmentary
duration of time, linked up with humanity’s advance along the road to their
salvation, gives place to the infinitely simple rhythm of eternity: the rhythm of
God which gathers together every duration of time and heaps up every hope.
Here the task of Mary, as mother, comes to an end, but her love remains. For
her, at the heart of things, nothing changes. It is the Church which changes,
and only for the reason that its situation is modified.
From the outset Mary had preceded the Church at every stage of its life,
and here we see the Church joining her once more. Between them there is no
longer any difference in the realm of place and time. The tension of nature over
against heaven, of time over against eternity, has been abolished. At the end of
the journey, there they are, perfectly reunited in the place and at the time of
which God is the measure…
Mary was the first personal realization of what awaits the redeemed. She
is that still, but the distances have been done away with.
The Church continues to look at Mary in Christ, but in a different way: no
longer as its future and as a token of its hope, but only as the summit of its
communion in Christ. The Church used to look at Mary [in the same way] as a
fleet in the storm looks at the first ship which has crossed the bar and reached
port. Now, the Church has re-joined her at the end of the voyage. There is no
longer either separation or distance, but common joy in reunion in Christ, and
this dialogue between them is nothing but the overflowing abundance of their
thanksgiving.
In this communion, of which Christ is the beginning and the completion,
we see again the situation of Pentecost: Mary in the Church, but beyond this
world. In the city that is all light, the grandeur of Mary is no longer veiled by
any kind of shadow. The hierarchy, which was the visible summit of the Church
here below, no longer has any purpose. The world of the signs and means of
grace which it administered in this lower world has passed away, and only the
realities remain. The grandeurs of hierarchy are effaced, and the grandeurs of
holiness, at last unveiled, shine forth in all their glory. In the crowd of the
redeemed, ranged henceforth according to their union with Christ and no
longer according to their function, the Mother of Christ occupies the first place,
without common measure with the others. She is seen in the pure truth of the
situation in which God has placed her, at a higher level of grace and glory than
that of the others: between the Redeemer who reigns over her from the
infinitude of his Godhead and the remainder of the redeemed whom she enfolds
in her maternal love.
6 Court traité sur la Vierge Marie, Lethielleux, Paris, 1967, pp. 156-157; reprinted in ALectures chrétiennes pour notre
temps@ (M 82): 8 1971, Abbaye d’Orval, Belgium.

Skema
2024-07-21
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
16th Week in Ordinary Time

Mass Readings: Sunday (B), Weekdays (II)
July 21 – 27, 2024

Sun
21
Mon
22
Tue
23
Wed
24
Thu
25
Fri
26
Sat
27

Office
16th Sunday
St Mary Magdalen
Weekday
Weekday
St James
SS Joachm & Ann
Memorial of the BVM

Vigils
1 Sam 10:17-11:15
Exodus 15:1-21
1 Sam 12:1-25
1 Sam 13:2-22
Jerm 26:1-15
1 Sam 13:23-14:23a
1 Sam 14:23b-48

Lauds
Nahum 1:9-2:1
Isa 12:1-6
Nahum 2:2-8
Nahum 2:9-14
Wis 3:1-9
Nahum 3:1-7
Nahum 3:8-13

Mass
107
603
396
397
605
399
400

1st
Jer 23:1-6
Song 3:1-4b
Mic 7:14-15, 18-20
Jer 1:1, 4-10
2 Cor 4:7-15
Jer 3:14-17
Jer 7:1-11

2nd
Eph 2:13-18

Gospel
Mark 6:30-34
John 20:1-2, 11-18
Matt 12:46-50
Matt 13:1-9
Matt 20:20-28
Matt 13:18-23
Matt 13:24-30

Vespers
1 Tim 6:11-16
Acts 13:26-31
1 Tim 6:17-21
2 Tim 1:1-8
Acts 11:27-12:5
2 Tim 1:9-14
2 Tim 2:1-7

Vigils Reading - 16th Sunday
2024-07-21
A KINDLY SAVIOR AND PHYSICIAN
From a commentary by Bede the Venerable1
◊◊◊
The apostles returned to Jesus and reported to him everything they had
done and taught. As well as reporting to him…they told him what had befallen
John the Baptist while they were teaching. And he said to them: Come away to
some place where you can be alone by yourselves and rest awhile.
The following words show what real need there was to give the disciples
some rest: For many were coming and going and they had no time even to eat.
The great happiness of those days can be seen from the hard work of those who
taught and the enthusiasm of those who learned. If only in our time such a
concourse of faithful listeners would again press round the ministers of the
word, not allowing them time to attend to their physical needs! For those denied
the time needed to look after their bodies will have still less opportunity to heed
the soul’s or the body’s temptations. Rather, people of whom the word of faith
and the saving ministry is demanded in season and out of season have an
incentive to meditate upon heavenly things so as not to contradict what they
teach by what they do.
And they got into the boat and went away by themselves to a deserted
spot. The disciples did not get into the boat alone, but took the Lord with them,
as the evangelist Matthew makes clear.
Many people saw them set out and recognized them, and from all the
towns they hastened to the place on foot and reached it before them. The fact
that people on foot are said to have reached the place first shows that the
disciples did not go with the Lord to the opposite bank of the Jordan, but
crossed some stream or inlet to reach a nearby spot in the same region, within
walking distance for the local people.
Thus when Jesus landed he saw a large crowd. He took pity on them
because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them
many things.
Matthew relates more fully how he took pity on them. He says: And he
took pity on them and cured their sick. This is what it means really to take pity
on the poor, and on those who have no one to guide them: to open the way of
truth to them by teaching, to heal their physical infirmities, and to make them
want to praise the divine generosity by feeding them when they are hungry as
Jesus did…
Jesus tested the crowd’s faith, and having done so he gave it a fitting
reward. He sought out a lonely place to see if they would take the trouble to
follow him. For their part, they showed how concerned they were for their
salvation by the effort they made in going along the deserted road not on
donkeys or in carts of various kinds, but on foot. In return Jesus welcomed those
weary, ignorant, sick and hungry people, instructing, healing, and feeding them
as a kindly savior and physician, and so letting them know how pleased he is by
believers’ devotion to him.

1 Journey with the Fathers – Year B – New City Press – 1999 – pg 100.3

Vigils Reading - St Mary Magdalen
2024-07-22
KEEP WATCH AT THE DOORS OF WISDOM
From a sermon by Blessed Guerric of Igny2
◊◊◊
Abraham exulted that he might see the day of Christ and by this token he
saw and rejoiced. You too, if you keep watch daily at the doors of wisdom,
steadfast at its threshold, if you stay awake through the night with Magdalen at
the entrance of his tomb, if I am not mistaken you will experience with Mary
how true are the words we read of the Wisdom which is Christ: “She is easily
seen by those who love her and she is found by those who seek her. She
anticipates those who desire her and shows herself to them first. He who, as
soon as it is light, keeps watch for her will not have to toil, for he will find her
seated at his doors.” So did Christ, Wisdom himself, promise in the words: “I
love those who love me, and they who from early morning keep watch for me
will find me.”
Mary found Jesus in the flesh. For this she was keeping watch… You, who
no longer ought to know Jesus according to the flesh but according to the spirit,
will be able to find him spiritually if you seek him with a [similar] desire, if he
finds you likewise vigilant in prayer. Say then to the Lord Jesus with the desire
and the affection of Mary: “My soul has longed for you during the night, my
spirit too, deep within me; from early morning I will keep watch for you”. Say
with the voice and the mind of the Psalmist: “God, my God, for you as soon as
it is light I keep watch, my soul is athirst for you”. And see if it is not your lot
to sing with him: “We have been filled early in the morning with your mercy,
we have exulted and been delighted”.
Keep watch then, brethren, intent in prayer; keep watch and carefully
guard your actions; especially since the morning of that day which has no sunset
has already shone upon us. For already eternal light has come back to us from
the nether regions, more serene and more pleasing, and the morning has given
its welcome to the newly restored Sun. Indeed it is time now for us to arise from
sleep; the night has passed away, while the day has drawn near. Keep watch, I
say, that the morning light may rise for you, that is Christ, whose coming forth
has been made ready like the dawn, ready to renew often the mystery of the
morning of his resurrection in those who keep watch for him. Then you will sing
with jubilant heart: “God the Lord has shone upon us… For then he will give you
a glimpse of the light which he has hidden in his hands, telling his friend that it
is his possession and he can attain to it.

2 “Sermon 35: the Third Sermon for Easter”
, Liturgical Sermons, vol. 2 (CF 32), Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications,
1971, pp. 93f.5

Vigils Reading
2024-07-23
A JOYFUL AND GENUINE HUMILITY
From a sermon by St Bernard of Clairvaux3
◊◊◊
Do you see that humility makes us righteous? I say humility and not
humiliation. How many are humiliated who are not humble! There are some
who meet humiliation with rancor, some with patience, some again with
cheerfulness. The first kind are culpable, the second are innocent, the last just.
Innocence is indeed a part of justice, but only the humble possess it perfectly.
He who can say: “It was good for me that you humiliated me,” is truly humble.
The person who endures it unwillingly cannot say this; still less the one who
murmurs. To neither of these do I promise grace on the grounds of being
humiliated, although the two are vastly different from each other, since the one
possesses his own soul in his patience, while the other perishes in his
murmuring. For even if only one of them does merit anger, neither of them
merits grace, because it is not to the humiliated but to the humble that God gives
grace.
But he is humble who turns humiliation into humility, and he is the one
who says to God: “It was good for me that you humiliated me.” What is merely
endured with patience is good for nobody, it is an obvious embarrassment. On
the other hand we know that “God loves a cheerful giver.” Hence even when we
fast we are told to anoint our head with oil and wash our face, that our good
work might be seasoned with spiritual joy and our holocaust made fat. For it is
the possession of a joyful and genuine humility that alone enables us to receive
grace. But the humility that is due to necessity or constraint, that we find in the
patient person who keeps his self-possession, cannot win God’s favor because
of the accompanying sadness, although it will preserve his life because of
patience. Since he does not accept humiliation spontaneously or willingly, one
cannot apply to such a person the scriptural commendation that the humble
man may glory in his exaltation.
If you wish for an example of a humble person glorying with all due
propriety, and truly worthy of glory, take Paul when he says that gladly will he
glory in his weaknesses that the power of Christ may dwell within him. He does
not say that he will bear his weaknesses patiently, but he will even glory in them,
and that willingly, thus proving that to him it is good that he is humiliated, and
that it is not sufficient that one keep his self-possession by patience when he is
humbled; to receive grace one must embrace humiliation willingly.
You may take as a general rule that everyone who humbles himself will
be exalted. It is significant that not every kind of humility is to be exalted, but
that which the will embraces; it must be free of compulsion or sadness. Nor on
the contrary must everyone who is exalted be humiliated, but only he who exalts
himself, who pursues a course of vain display. Therefore it is not the one who is
humiliated who will be exalted, but he who voluntarily humiliates himself; it is
merited by this attitude of will. Even suppose that the occasion of humiliation
is supplied by another, by means of insults, damages or sufferings, the victim
who determines to accept all these for God’s sake with a quiet, joyful conscience,
cannot properly be said to be humiliated by anyone but himself.

3 (CF 7:162-163).7

Vigils Reading
2024-07-24
THE SHIELD OF FAITH
By William of St Thierry4
◊◊◊
To the devil who was tempting him to blasphemy and saying: All this I
will give you if you will fall down and adore me, the Doctor of truth [Jesus]
opposed only the shield of truth and authority, saying: It is written: you will
worship the Lord your God, and him only will you serve. But in the Book of
Kings, when the minions of the Assyrian king blasphemed the Lord, Hezekiah
ordered his own, saying: Give them no answer!
For we must not answer the spirit of blasphemy in any way or converse
with it, but only oppose to it the shield of faith. Its virulent malice tries to pollute
whatever you bring against it. It does not do this to get a satisfying answer, but
is only putting on pressure to sadden the conscience of the believer or somehow
to corrupt the purity of his faith.
These are twin evils; one is the sting of the flesh, the other that of the soul.
Among lazy persons they are both like a natural reminder which takes its origin,
as I have said, from [Adam,] the one who yearned to be like God because of the
incantation of the old serpent. Immediately given over to the yearnings of the
flesh, he blushed at himself and covered those parts of the body which He, who
had created them, created without any need for covering. Each vice must have
its own antidote. The same remedy does not apply to all members. What heals
the head does not heal the foot, nor can what heals the weakness of the soul heal
the weakness of the flesh. Temptation of the flesh needs afflictions of the flesh
and physical labors, but temptation of the soul cries out for the help of prayer,
reading and meditation and any other spiritual study there may be.

In particular one never acquires purity of faith except by true and
profound humility of heart, dutiful devotion and unflagging perseverance in
prayer. We must pray frequently, therefore, and must say: Lord, increase in us
our faith! Often those who are advancing in it, if they do not have the grace that
helps them, suffer a natural uneasiness.
Rationality, in itself restless and impudent, often assaults faith there,
where it possesses the faculty of reasoning, although with no intention of
contradicting it; not so that it can run against faith but so that it can run with
faith. As human reason is accustomed to act in human realities through, as it
were, the unavoidable medium of believing, so it tries to break through into the
recognition of divine realities. But since it mounts from a different direction, it
slips, it stumbles, it sinks until it turns back to the door of faith, to him who
said: I am the door. And once humbled beneath the yoke of divine authority, as
it is more humble, so more securely does it enter in.

4 (CF 15:37-38).9

Vigils Reading - St James
2024-07-25
CAN YOU DRINK THE CHALICE?
From a homily by St John Chrysostom5
◊◊◊
Let no one take scandal if we say now that the apostles were not perfect,
for the mystery of the cross had as yet not been consummated; the grace of the
Holy Spirit had not yet been infused into their hearts. If you are desirous of
knowing their virtue, consider what kind of men they were after the grace of the
Spirit had been given, and you will see that they overcame every perverse
inclination in them. For this very purpose their imperfection is now revealed
that you might clearly see what they suddenly became through the operation of
grace.
That they once sought nothing spiritual, nor thought about the Kingdom
of Heaven, is very clear. But still let us consider how they approached our Lord
and what they said. “We desire,” they said, “that whatsoever we ask of thee,
thou wilt grant us.” To which Christ replied, “What do you desire?” – certainly
not because He did not know, but that He might compel them to answer and
thereby might lay open the wound and thus apply the remedy. But they,
blushing and held back by shame because they had come to Him motivated by
human aspirations, took Christ apart from the rest and questioned Him. They
moved aside lest perhaps they be heard by the rest. And so at last they said what
they wished. I conjecture that they had heard that the disciples were to be
seated on twelve thrones and they wished to ask for the place of honor in this
assembly; they knew that at other times they were given precedence over the
rest, but fearing that Peter might be put before them, they were bold enough to
request, “Say that one may sit on thy right hand, the other on they left.” And
they pressed Him saying, “Speak thus.”
And what did He say? That He might show that they sought nothing
spiritual, and did not even realize what they were asking – for had they known
they would not have asked it – Jesus said to them, “You know not what you ask;
you know not how great, how admirable a thing this is, far surpassing even the
higher Powers.”
And He added further: “Can you drink the chalice which I shall drink, and
be baptized with the baptism wherewith I am baptized?” Notice how He moves
them from their present state of mind by bringing to their attention things
entirely contrary. “For,” He says, “you ask me for crowns and honors, but I
speak to you of struggle and perspiration. This is not a time for rewards, nor
will my glory appear at this time, but the present is the time of death and
dangers.” But observe how by His very manner of questioning He exhorts and
consoles. He did not say, “Can you undergo suffering? Can you shed your
blood?” But He said, “Can you drink the chalice?” Then by way of consolation
He adds, “which I am to drink.” So that by their very union with Him they might
become more eager for hardships.

5 The Liturgical Readings. St. Meinrad’s Abbey Press, 1943, pp. 422-423.11

Vigils Reading - SS Joachim & Ann
2024-07-26
JOACHIM AND ANN
From a sermon by St John Damascene6
◊◊◊
Ann was to be the mother of the Virgin Mother of God, and hence nature
did not dare to anticipate the flowering of grace. Thus nature remained sterile,
until grace produced its fruit. For she who was to be born had to be a first-born
daughter, since she would be the mother of the first-born of all creation, in
whom all things are held together.
Joachim and Ann, how blessed a couple! All creation is indebted to you.
For your hands the Creator was offered a gift exceeding all other gifts: a chaste
mother, who alone was worthy of him.
And so rejoice, Ann, that you were sterile and have not borne children;
break forth into shouts, you who have not given birth. Rejoice, Joachim,
because from your daughter a child is born for us, a son is given us, whose
name is Messenger of great counsel and universal salvation, mighty God. For
this child is God.
Joachim and Ann, how blessed and spotless a couple! You will be known
by the fruit you have borne, as the Lord says: “by their fruits you will know
them”. The conduct of your life pleased God and was worthy of your daughter.
For by the chaste and holy life you led together, you have fashioned a jewel of
virginity; she who remained a virgin before, during and after giving birth. She
alone for all time would maintain her virginity in mind and soul as well as in
body. Joachim and Ann, how chaste a couple! While safeguarding the chastity
prescribed by the law of nature, you achieved with God’s help something which
transcends nature in giving the world the Virgin Mother of God as your
daughter. While leading a devout and holy life in your human nature, you gave
birth to a daughter nobler than the angels, whose queen she now is.
Girl of utter beauty and delight, daughter of Adam and mother of God,
blessed the loins and blessed the womb from which you come! Blessed the arms
that carried you, and blessed your parent’s lips, which you were allowed to cover
with chaste kisses, ever maintaining your virginity. Rejoice in God, all the earth.
Sing, exult and sing hymns. Raise your voice, raise it and be not afraid.

6 The Liturgy of the Hours – vol. III – Catholic Publishing Co – New York – 1975 – pg 1556.13

Vigils Reading - Memorial BVM
2024-07-27
THE BLESSING GIVEN TO MARY
By Paschasius Radbertus7
◊◊◊
The nature and the greatness of the blessed and glorious ever-virgin Mary
is divinely declared by the Angel, when he says, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is
with you. Blessed are you among women”. For surely it was fitting that the
Virgin should be enriched by gifts so great as to make her full of grace, who in
her turn was to give such gifts! For Mary has given glory to heaven, and to the
earth she has given the Lord. She has poured out peace upon the world, brought
faith to nations, put an end to vice, given law to life, and discipline to conduct.
Truly she is “full of grace,” because grace comes to others by measure, but
on Mary it poured itself out all at once in all its fullness. Truly, “full of grace”,
for even though, as we believe, grace was in the holy patriarchs and prophets, it
was not yet in its fullness. But, in Mary? Hers was the whole fullness of that
grace which is in Christ, though in a different manner than it was in him. And
this is why the angel says, “Blessed are you among women,” that is to say, more
blessed than all other women. Thus, whatever curse had been incurred through
Eve was wholly taken away through the blessing given to Mary.
It was in praise of Mary, as it were, that Solomon says in the Song of
Songs, “Come, my dove, my immaculate one! For see, the winter is past, the
rains are over and gone”. And then he says, “Come from Lebanon, come and
be crowned!”. Not without reason is Mary bidden to come from Lebanon, for
“Lebanon” means “shining whiteness.” Mary was dazzling white with her many
virtues and merits, and, by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, she became whiter than
snow itself, showing in all things the simplicity of the dove. For everything about
Mary is wholly the work of purity and simplicity, wholly grace and truth, wholly
mercy and that justice which has looked down from heaven. She is, then,
immaculate, because corruption has had no part in her. She has encompassed
a man in her womb, as the holy Jeremiah testifies, and received him from no
other person. “The Lord,” he says, “has made a new thing upon the earth, and
a woman shall encompass a man”.
Truly this was a new thing, an act of power new in a surpassing degree,
when God, whom the world cannot contain nor man see and live, entered the
guest chamber of Mary’s womb in such a way as not to know confinement within
her body, was so borne that the whole God was within her, came forth in such a
way that, as Ezekiel prophesied, the door remained closed.
This is why the same Song of Songs sings of her, “An enclosed garden, a
fountain sealed, your plants are a paradise”. Truly a garden of delights,
planted with all kinds of flowers and filled with the perfumes of all virtues; so
enclosed as to have known no violation, no corruption by deceit or wile; a
fountain sealed, therefore, with the seal of the whole Trinity.

7 Ps.-Jerome, Ep. 9.5, 9 (PL 30.126-127, 131-132). Translation by the Cistercian Lectionary Project (1968), 10*-ll*.15

Skema
2024-07-28
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
17th Week in Ordinary Time

Mass Readings: Sunday (B), Weekdays (II)
July 28 – August 3, 2024

Sun
28
Mon
29
Tue
30
Wed
31
Thu
1
Fri
2
Sat
3

Office
17th Sunday
SS Martha, Mary & Lazarus
Office for the Dead
St Ignatius of Loyola
St Alphonsus Ligouri
Weekday
Memorial of the BVM

Vigils
1 Sam 15:1-23
1 Sam 15:24-16:13
1 Sam 16:14-17:11
1 Sam 17:12-37
1 Sam 17:38-18:5
1 Sam 18:6-30
1 Sam 19:1-24

Lauds
Nahum 3:14-19
Habakkuk 1:1-4
Hab 1:5-11
Hab 1:12-17
Hab 2:1-4
Hab 2:5-8
Hab 2:9-14

Mass
110
401, 607
402
403
404
405
406

1st
2 Kgs 4:42-44
Jer 13:1-11
Jer 14:17-22
Jer 15:10, 16-21
Jer 18:1-6
Jer 26:1-9
Jer 26:11-16, 24

2nd
Eph 4:1-6

Gospel
John 6:1-15
John 11:19-27
Matt 13:36-43
Matt 13:44-46
Matt 13:47-53
Matt 13:54-58
Matt 14:1-12

Vespers
2 Tim 2:8-13
2 Tim 2:14-19
2 Tim 2:20-26
2 Tim 3:1-9
2 Tim 3:10-17
2 Tim 4:1-8
2 Tim 4:9-22

Vigils Reading - 17th Sunday
2024-07-28
THE WORD OF GOD
From a commentary by St Augustine1
◊◊◊
The miracles wrought by our Lord Jesus Christ are truly divine works,
which lead the human mind through visible things to a perception of the
Godhead. God is not the kind of being that can be seen with the eyes, and small
account is taken of the miracles by which he rules the entire universe and
governs all creation because they recur so regularly. Scarcely anyone bothers to
consider God’s marvelous deeds, his amazing artistry in every tiny seed. And so
certain works are excluded from the ordinary course of nature, works which
God in his mercy has reserved for himself, so as to perform them at appropriate
times. People who hold cheap what they see every day are dumbfounded at the
sight of extraordinary works even though they are no more wonderful than the
others.
Governing the entire universe is a greater miracle than feeding five
thousand people with five loaves of bread, yet no one marvels at it. People
marvel at the feeding of five thousand not because this miracle is greater, but
because it is out of the ordinary.
Who is even now providing nourishment for the whole world if not the
God who creates a field of wheat from a few seeds? Christ did what God does.
Just as God multiplies a few seeds into a whole field of wheat, so Christ
multiplied the five loaves in his hands. For there was power in the hands of
Christ. Those five loaves were like seeds, not because they were cast upon the
earth but because they were multiplied by the one who made the earth.

This miracle was presented to our senses in order to stimulate our minds;
it was put before our eyes in order to engage our understanding, and so make
us marvel at the God we do not see because of his works which we do see. For
then, when we have been raised to the level of faith and purified by faith, we
shall long to behold, though not with our eyes, the invisible God whom we
recognize through what is visible.
This miracle was performed for the multitude to see; it was recorded for
us to hear. Faith does for us what sight did for them. We behold with the mind
what our eyes cannot see; and we are preferred to them. Because of us it was
said: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.
When the people saw the sign Jesus had performed, they said: Surely
this must be a prophet. He was in fact the Lord of the prophets, the fulfiller of
the prophets, the sanctifier of the prophets; yet he was still a prophet, for Moses
had been told: I will raise up for them a prophet like yourself. The Lord is a
prophet, and the Lord is the Word of God, and without the Word of God no
prophet can prophesy.
The Word of God is with the prophets, and the Word of God is a prophet.
People of former times were deemed worthy to have prophets inspired and filled
by the Word of God; we have been deemed worthy to have as our prophet the
Word of God Himself.

1 A Commentary on the Gospel of Mark According to St Augustine.3

Vigils Reading - SS Martha, Mary, & Lazarus
2024-07-29
THE HAPPINESS OF
MARTHA AND MARY
From a sermon by St Aelred of Rievaulx2
◊◊◊
Jesus entered a certain fortress, and a certain woman named Martha
received him into her house. And she had a sister named Mary. You have heard
in the Gospel about the great happiness of the two women. Truly, brothers, great
was the happiness of Martha, who welcomed such a guest, who waited upon
him, who was completely engaged with serving him. Great was the happiness of
Mary, who recognized the excellence of her guest, who listened to his wisdom
and tasted his sweetness. For in this way the evangelist recounts the fact that
our Lord Jesus Christ entered a fortress, where a certain woman who was called
Martha welcomed him into her house and waited upon him. She had a certain
sister, who was called Mary, who, as soon as Jesus entered, immediately
hastened to his feet and sat there and listened to his sweet words. She was
attentive upon the words of the Lord to such an extent, that she cared nothing
about what might be done in the house, what anyone was saying, or indeed even
how hard her sister was working.”
…
If therefore, brothers, our soul according to what we have said, becomes
a fortress, it is fitting that two women live in it: one who sits at the feet of Jesus
and listens to his words, the other who waits upon Jesus and feeds him.
Consider this, brothers: if Mary were alone in this house, there would be no one
to feed the Lord; if Martha were alone, there would be no one to take delight in
the discourses and presence of the Lord. Therefore…Martha signifies that
action by which a person labors for Christ, and Mary signifies that rest by which
a person ceases from bodily activities and takes delight in the sweetness of God,
either through reading, prayer, or contemplation. Therefore, brothers, as long
as Christ is poor and goes about afoot on earth, and is hungry and thirsty, and
is tempted, it is necessary that both of these women dwell in one house, that
both of their actions be in one soul.
As long as you or I or anyone else is on earth, he himself is present in the
world, if we are his members. Whenever those who are his members are hungry,
thirsty, and tempted, then Christ will be hungry, thirsty, and tempted. For this
reason, Christ himself will say on the day of judgment: “Whenever you, did it to
one of the least of my brothers or sisters, you did it to me”. Therefore, brothers,
in this miserable and burdensome life, it is necessary that Martha be in our
house, that is, that our soul be busy with bodily activities. As long as we must
eat and drink, then we have to labor. As long as we are tempted by carnal
pleasures, it is necessary for us to tame the flesh by vigils, fasts, and bodily labor.
This part is Martha’s.
Mary also should be in our soul, for she represents activity of spirit. We
should not always give ourselves to bodily exercises but occasionally should rest
and see how delightful, how sweet, is the Lord; we should sit at the feet of Jesus
and listen to his word. In no way ought you to neglect Mary because of Martha,
nor again Martha because of Mary. If you neglect Martha who will feed Jesus?
If you neglect Mary, what will it benefit you that Jesus entered your house, since
you taste nothing of his sweetness?

2 CSQ 32 : 45, 48.5

Vigils Reading - Office for the Dead
2024-07-30
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD TO COME
From “Sacraments and Orthodoxy” by Fr Alexander Schmemann3
◊◊◊
The liturgy of Christian death does not begin when one comes to the
inescapable end and their corpse lies in church for the last rites while we stand
around, the sad yet resigned witnesses of the dignified removal of one from the
world of the living. It begins every day as the Church ascending into heaven,
“puts aside all earthly care”; it begins every feast day; it begins especially in the
joy of Easter. The whole life of the Church is in a way the sacrament of our death,
because all of it is the proclamation of the Lord’s death, the confession of his
resurrection.
The Church is the entrance into the risen life of Christ, 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 things present, or things to come;
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 of the
Kingdom, mine this expectation of Christ, mine the certitude that Christ is Life,
my very death will be an act of communion with Life. For neither life nor death
can separate us from the love of Christ. I do not know when and how the
fulfillment will come. I do not know when all things will be consummated in
Christ. I know nothing about the “when’s” and “how’s.” But I know that in Christ
this great Passage, the Pascha of the world has begun, that the light of the “world
to come” comes to us in the joy and peace of the Holy Spirit, for Christ is risen
and Life reigns.

Vigils Reading - St Ignatius of Loyola
2024-07-31
THE INTERIOR GRACE OF PRAYER
From “The Spiritual Journal” of St Ignatius of Loyola4
◊◊◊
In the usual prayer, from beginning to end, I had the help of a very interior
and gentle grace, full of warm devotion and very sweet. While preparing the
altar and vesting, I saw a representation of the name of Jesus with much love,
confirmation and increased desire to follow him, accompanied by tears and
sobs.
All through the Mass very great devotion, on the whole, with many tears,
and several times loss of speech, all devotion and feeling being directed to Jesus.
I could not apply myself to the other Persons, except to the First Person as
Father of such a Son, with spiritual answers, how he is Father, how he is Son!
Having finished Mass, I had during the prayer that same feeling towards the
Son, and how I would have desired the confirmation of the Most Holy Trinity,
and felt that it was given to me through Jesus, when he showed himself to me
and gave me such interior strength and certainty of the confirmation, without
any fear of the future. The thought suggested itself to me to beg Jesus to obtain
pardon for me from the most Holy Trinity. I felt an increased devotion, tears
and sobs, and the hope of obtaining the grace, when I found myself so vigorous
and strengthened concerning the future.
Later…there was a fresh representation of Jesus with great devotion and
movement to tears. Later, as I walked through the street, I had a vivid
representation of Jesus with interior movements and tears. After I had spoken
with [Cardinal] Carpi, and was on the way home, I felt great devotion. After
dinner, especially when I passed through the door of the Vicar, in the house of
the Cardinal of Trani, I felt or saw Jesus, had many interior movements and
many tears, begging and praying Jesus to obtain pardon for me from the Most
Holy Trinity, while I felt remaining in me a great confidence of being heard.
At these times, when I sensed or saw Jesus, I felt so great a love within
me that I thought that nothing could happen in the future that would separate
me from Him, or cause me to doubt about the graces or confirmation I had
received.

4 reprinted in Light from Light, ed. by L. Dupre and J. Wiseman, OSB, New York: Paulist Press, 1988, pp. 266-267.9

Vigils Reading - St Alphonsus Ligouri
2024-08-01
THE FULLNESS OF HIMSELF
From a sermon by St Alphonsus Ligouri5
◊◊◊
All holiness and perfection of soul lies in our love for Jesus Christ our
God, who is our Redeemer and our supreme good. It is part of the love of God
to acquire and to nurture all the virtues that make one perfect.
Has not God in fact won for himself a claim on all our love? From all
eternity he has loved us. And it is in this vein that he speaks to us: “O consider
carefully that I first loved you. You had not yet appeared in the light of day, nor
did the world yet exist, but already I loved you. From all eternity I have loved
you.”
Since God knew that we are enticed by favors, he wished to bind us to his
love by means of his gifts: “I want to catch mortals with these snares, these
chains of love in which they allow themselves to be entrapped, so that they will
love me.” And all the gifts which he bestowed on us were given to this end. He
gave us a soul, made in his likeness, and endowed with memory, intellect and
will; he gave us a body equipped with the senses; it was for us that he created
heaven and earth and such an abundance of things. He made all things out of
love for us, so that all creation might serve us, and we in turn might love God
out of gratitude for so many gifts.
But God did not wish to give us only beautiful creatures; the truth is that
to win for himself our love, he went so far as to bestow upon us the fullness of
himself. The eternal Father went so far as to give us his only Son. When he saw
that we were all dead through sin and deprived of his grace, what did he do?
Compelled, as the Apostle says, by the superabundance of his love for us, he
sent his beloved Son to make reparation for us and to call us back to a sinless
life.
By giving us his Son, whom he did not spare precisely so that he might
spare us, he bestowed on us every good: grace, love and heaven; for all these
goods are certainly inferior to the Son: He who did not spare his own Son, but
handed him over for all of us; how could he fail to give us along with his Son
all good things?

5 The Liturgy of the Hours – vol. III – pg 1568 – Catholic Book Publishing Co – New York – 1975.11

Vigils Reading
2024-08-02
CONSOLATION AND DESOLATION
From “The Spiritual Exercises” of St Ignatius of Loyola6
◊◊◊
I call it consolation when an interior movement is aroused in the soul, by
which it is inflamed with love of its Creator and Lord, and as a consequence, can
love no creature on the face of the earth for its own sake, but only in the Creator
of them all. It is likewise consolation when one sheds tears that move to the
love of God, whether it be because of sorrow for sins, or because of the sufferings
of Christ our Lord, or for any other reason that is immediately directed to the
praise and service of God. Finally, I call consolation every increase of faith,
hope, and love, and all interior joy that invites and attracts to what is heavenly
and to the salvation of one’s soul by filling it with peace and quiet in its Creator
and Lord.
I call it desolation what is entirely the opposite of what is described above,
as darkness of soul, turmoil of spirit, inclination to what is low and earthly,
restlessness rising from many disturbances and temptations which lead to want
of faith, want of hope, want of love. The soul is wholly slothful, tepid, sad, and
separated, as it were, from its Creator and Lord. For just as consolation is the
opposite of desolation, so the thoughts that spring from consolation are the
opposite of those that spring from desolation.
In time of desolation we should never make any change, but remain firm
and constant in the resolution and decision which guided us the day before the
desolation, or in the decision to which we adhered in the preceding consolation.
For just as in consolation the good spirit guides and counsels us, so in desolation
the evil spirit guides and counsels. Following his counsels we can never find the
way to a right decision.
Though in desolation we must never change our former resolutions, it will
be very advantageous to intensify our activity against the desolation. We can
insist more upon prayer, upon meditation, and on much examination of
ourselves. We can make an effort in a suitable way to do some penance.
When we are in desolation, we should be mindful that God has left us to
our natural powers to resist the different agitations and temptations of the
enemy in order to try us. We can resist with the help of God, which always
remains, though we may not clearly perceive it. For though God has taken from
us the abundance of fervor and overflowing love and the intensity of His favors,
nevertheless, we have sufficient grace for eternal salvation.
When one is in desolation, he should strive to persevere in patience. This
reacts against the vexations that have overtaken him. Let him consider, too,
that consolation will soon return, and in the meantime, he must diligently use
the means against desolation which have been given above.

6 Trans., Louis J Puhl SJ, Loyola Chicago, 316. 3. pp 142-143.13

Vigils Reading - Memorial of BVM
2024-08-03
MARY AND GOD’S REDEMPTIVE PLAN
From “Seasons of Celebration” by Thomas Merton7
◊◊◊
In Mary is perfectly realized God’s whole creative and redemptive plan.
That is why she is said to be for us a light of truth and a pattern of life. That is
why her spiritual beauty includes in itself all the beauty which we see here and
there, in partial and incomplete form, in the universe. In her is all the beauty of
the world, transfigured and elevated to a level beyond our comprehension: and
yet since that perfection was reached by the fulfillment of the obediential
potency in her nature, which is also our nature, there is a certain connaturality
in us which makes us respond to her transcendent radiance even though it
remains obscure to us. We cannot help but see that she is, like ourselves, a
human creature whose littleness has been glorified in the light of Christ and
who has been saved from the power of darkness and evil by the grace of His
cross.
It remains then for us to celebrate her immaculate beauty, to open our
hearts to the same light of truth which sanctified her, the same grace which
made her pleasing to the Most High, Who is her creator as He is ours, and who
wishes to see realized in us the same ineffable mystery of light. More than that,
He wishes to see the whole world saved and transfigured in that light, by reason
of our perfect acceptance of His gift, His love, and His grace, and our
transmission of the power of His love to all people and to all other beings by our
work, our prayers and our love.

7 New York, 1965, pp. 169-170.

Skema
2024-08-04
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
18th Week in Ordinary Time

Mass Readings: Sunday (B), Weekdays (II)
August 4 – 10, 2024

Sun
4
Mon
5
Tue
6
Wed
7
Thu
8
Fri
9
Sat
10

Office
18th Sunday
Weekday
Transfiguration of the Lord
St Cajetan
St Dominic
St Teresa Benedicta
St Lawrence

Vigils
1 Sam 20:1-24a
1 Sam 20:24b-21:1
2 Cor 3:7-4:6
1 Sam 21:2-22:5
1 Sam 22:6-23
1 Sam 23:1-28
Exodus 18:13-26

Lauds
Hab 2:15-20
Hab 3:1-7
Sir 48:1-11
Hab 3:8-15
Hab 3:16-19
Zephaniah 1:1-6
Tobit 4:5-11

Mass
113
407
614
409
410
411
618

1st
Exod 16:2-4, 12-15
Jer 28:1-17
2 Peter 1:16-19
Jer 31:1-7
Jer 31:31-34
Nah 2:1, 3; 3:1-3, 6-7
2 Cor 9:6-10

2nd
Eph 4:17, 20-24

Gospel
John 6:24-35
Matt 14:13-21
Mark 9:2-10
Matt 15:21-28
Matt 16:13-23
Matt 16:24-28
John 12:24-26

Vespers
Titus 1:1-9
Titus 1:10-16
1 Jn 5:9-12
Titus 2:11-15
Titus 3:1-8a
Titus 3:8b-15
Jas 1:1-11

Vigils Reading - 18th Sunday
2024-08-04
THE BREAD OF LIFE
From a commentary by Theophylact of Ohrid1
◊◊◊
Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written, “He gave them
bread from heaven to eat.” Wishing to persuade Christ to perform the kind of
miracle that would provide them with bodily nourishment, the people in their
insatiable greed called to mind the manna. What was the reply of Our Lord
Jesus, the infinite wisdom of God? It was not Moses who gave you bread. In
other words, “Moses did not give you the true bread. On the contrary everything
that happened at that time was a prefiguring of what is happening now…”
Our Lord refers to himself as the true bread not because the manna was
something illusory, but because it was only a type and a shadow, and not the
reality it signified.
This bread, being the Son of the living Father, is life by its very nature,
and accordingly gives life to all. Just as earthly bread sustains the frail substance
of the flesh and prevents it from falling into decay, so Christ quickens the soul
through the power of the Spirit, and also preserves the body for immortality.
Through Christ, resurrection from the dead and bodily immortality have been
graciously bestowed upon the human race.
Jesus said to the people: “I am the Bread of Life. Whoever come to me
shall never hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” He did not
say the bread of bodily nourishment, but the bread of life. For when everything
has been reduced to a condition of spiritual death, the Lord gave us life through
himself, who is bread because, as we believe, the leaven in the dough of our
humanity was baked through and through by the fire of his divinity. He is the
bread not of this ordinary life, but of a very different kind of life which death3
will never cut short.
Whoever believes in this bread, will never hunger, will never be famished
for want of hearing the Word of God, nor will such a person be parched by
spiritual thirst through lack of the waters of baptism and the consecration
imparted by the Spirit. The unbaptized, deprived of the refreshment afforded
by the sacred water, suffer thirst and great aridity. The baptized on the other
hand, being possessed of the Spirit, enjoy its continual consolation.

Vigils Reading
2024-08-05
AN INDESTRUCIBLE TEMPLE
From a homily delivered at the Council of Ephesus
by St Cyril of Alexandria1
◊◊◊
I see here a joyful company of Christians met together in ready response
to the call of Mary, the holy and ever virgin Mother of God. Now the joyful
saying of David the psalmist: How good and pleasant it is for brothers to live
together in unity has come true for us. Therefore, holy and incomprehensible
Trinity, we salute you at whose summons we have come together to this church
of Mary, the Mother of God.
Mary, Mother of God, we salute you. Precious vessel, worthy of the whole
world’s reverence, you are an ever-shining light, the crown of virginity, the
symbol of orthodoxy, an indestructible temple, the place that held him whom
no place can contain, mother and virgin. Because of you, the holy Gospels could
say: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
We salute you, for in your holy womb he, who is beyond all limitation,
was confined. Because of you, the holy Trinity is glorified and adored; the cross
is called precious and is venerated throughout the world; the heavens exult; the
angels and archangels make merry; demons are put to flight; the devil, that
tempter, is thrust down from heaven; the fallen race of humans is taken up on
high; all creatures possessed by the madness of idolatry have attained
knowledge of the truth believers receive holy baptism; the oil of gladness is
poured out, the Church is established throughout the world; pagans are brought
to repentance.
What more is there to say? Because of you, the light of the only-begotten
Son of God has shone upon those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of5
death; prophets pronounced the word of God; the apostles preached salvation
to the Gentiles, the dead are raised to life, and kings rule by the power of the
holy Trinity.
Who can put Mary’s high honor into words? She is both mother and
virgin. I am overwhelmed by the wonder of this miracle. Of course, no one could
be prevented from living in the house he had built for himself, yet who would
invite mockery by asking his own servant to become his mother?
Behold then the joy of the whole universe. Let the union of God and man
in the Son of the Virgin Mary fill us with awe and adoration. Let us fear and
worship the undivided Trinity as we sing the praise of the ever-virgin Mary, the
holy temple of God himself, her Son and spotless Bridegroom. To him be glory
for ever and ever.

Vigils Reading - Transfiguration of the Lord
2024-08-06
THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS
By Han Urs von Balthasar1
◊◊◊
The Gospel of the Transfiguration is preceded by the first reading telling
the story of Abraham’s sacrifice. And for good reason, for the Transfiguration
of the Lord was to be the Father’s demonstration of what his “beloved Son” truly
is, the One whom he will permit to be ‘slaughtered’ for and by mankind. For the
Jews, Abraham’s sacrifice is … the climax of their relationship with God, and
they emphasize that it was a double sacrifice: the sacrifice of a father, who draws
his knife, and the sacrifice of a son, who agreed to his own slaughter …. [The
event represents] the extreme form of what God can require … from a man who
is in a covenant relationship with him. The horror of it consists not in the
command to kill the son of one’s own body …; rather, the horror lies in the fact
that this son was miraculously given by God and destined to imitate and
accomplish the divine promises. In his command God contradicts himself. Yet
though the command may be incomprehensibly contradictory to man, he must
obey because God is God.
The second reading resolves the apparent paradox by showing that God
reveals himself as love in essence, a love that does not contradict itself if it sends
the Son of God into real death and thereby fulfills the promise to “give
everything”, namely, to bestow eternal life. Here the extreme is not the one-
sided obedience of man in the face of an incomprehensible command of God;
rather it is the way the Son’s obedient willingness to enter death for the sake of
everyone is united with the Father’s willingness to sacrifice … [everything, even
to the point of not holding back his Son]. In this, God is not only “with us”, as
in the Old Testament’s “Emmanuel”, but is ultimately “for us”, his chosen ones.
In this he has not merely given us something great, but has given us everything
he is and has ….
In this perspective the true meaning of the light… radiating from the Son
on the mountain in the Gospel can be understood. In no way is this light
produced through absorption in oneself; rather it is the radiant … light of
perfect surrender: it shows what the Father has really given up to “slaughter”
for the world, what the new Isaac permits to be done to himself out of obedient
love toward the Father, what the “overshadowing” luminous cloud veils [in the]
divine mystery. Fear and chatter on the part of the men necessarily follow, but
they are commanded to avoid abusing by empty talk what they have witnessed.
It will interpret itself in the death and Resurrection of the Lord.

Vigils Reading - St Cajetan
2024-08-07
ST CAJETAN
From the writing of Alban Butler1
◊◊◊
St Cajetan was son of Caspar, Count of Thiene, of the nobility of Vicenza,
where he was born in 1480. Two years later his father was killed, fighting for
the Venetians against King Ferdinand of Naples. Cajetan went for four years to
Padua University, where he distinguished himself in theology, and took the
degree of doctor in civil and canon law in 1504. He then returned to his native
town, of which he was made senator. In pursuance of his resolve to serve God
as a priest he received the tonsure. In 1506 he went to Rome. Soon after his
arrival Pope Julius II conferred on him the office of protonotary… On the death
of Julius Cajetan refused his successor’s request to continue in that office, and
devoted three years to preparing himself for the priesthood. He was ordained
in 1516, being thirty-three years old, and returned to Vicenza in 1518.
Cajetan had re-founded a confraternity in Rome called “The Oratory of
the Divine Love”, which was an association of zealous and devout clerics who
devoted themselves to labor with all their power to promote God’s honor and
the welfare of souls… but consisted only of men in the lowest station of life. This
circumstance gave great offence to his friends, who thought it a reflection on
the honor of his family. He persisted, however, and sought out the sick and the
poor throughout the whole town, served them and cared for those who suffered
from the most loathsome diseases in the hospital of the incurables. He founded
a similar oratory at Verona and then went in 1520 to Venice where he took up
his lodgings in the new hospital of that city… He introduced exposition of the
Blessed Sacrament in that city, as well as continuing the promotion of frequent
communion.
The state of Christendom at this time shocked and distressed Cajetan, and
in 1523 he went back to Rome to confer with his friends of the Oratory of Divine
Love. They agreed that little could be done other than by reviving in the clergy
the spirit and zeal of those holy pastors who first planted the faith, and a plan
was formed for instituting an order of regular clergy upon the model of the lives
of the Apostles. The first associates of Cajetan were John Peter Caraffa, who
later became pope under the name of Paul IV. The institute was approved by
Clement VII, and Caraffa was chosen as the first provost general. From the
name of his episcopal see of Theatensis these clerks regular came to be
distinguished from others as Theatines.
The success of the new congregation was not immediate, and in 1527,
when it still numbered only a dozen members, the army of Emperor Charles V
sacked Rome. The Theatines house was demolished and the members had to
escape to Venice. Cajetan was sent to Verona, where both the clergy and the
laity were opposing the reformation of discipline, which their bishop was
endeavoring to introduce among them. A general improvement was the fruit of
his example, preaching and labors.
Worn out with trying to appease civil strife in Naples, and disappointed
at the suspension of the Council of Trent, from which he hoped so much for the
Church’s good, Cajetan had to take to his bed in the summer of 1547. The end
came on Sunday, August 7. Many miracles wrought by his intercession were
approved at Rome after rigorous scrutiny, and he was canonized in 1671.

Vigils Reading - St Dominic
2024-08-08
THE PRAYER OF ST DOMINIC1
◊◊◊
The holy father Dominic also had another beautiful way of praying, full of
devotion and grace. After the canonical Hours and the grace which is said in
common after meals, the father would go off quickly on his own to a cell or
somewhere, sober and alert and anointed with a spirit of devotion which he had
drawn from the divine words which had been sung in choir or during the meal;
there he would sit down to read or pray, recollecting himself in himself and
fixing himself in the presence of God. Sitting there quietly he would open some
book before him, arming himself first with the sign of the cross, and then he
would read. And he would be moved in his mind as delightfully as if he heard
the Lord speaking to him.
As the Psalm says, “I will hear what the Lord God is saying in me.” It was
as if he were arguing with a friend; at one moment he would appear to be feeling
impatient, nodding his head energetically, then he would seem to be listening
quietly, then you would see him disputing and struggling, and laughing and
weeping all at once, fixing his gaze, submitting, then again speaking quietly and
beating his breast. If anyone was inquisitive enough to want to spy on him
secretly, he would find that the holy father Dominic was like Moses, who went
into the innermost desert and saw the burning bush and the Lord speaking and
calling to him to humble himself. The man of God had a prophetic way of
passing quickly from reading to prayer and from meditation to contemplation.
When he was reading like this on his own, he used to venerate the book
and bow to it and sometimes kiss it, particularly if it was a book of the gospels
or if he was reading the words which Christ had spoken with his own lips. And
sometimes he used to hide his face and turn it aside, or he would bury his face
in his hands and hide it a little in his scapular. And then he would also become11
anxious and full of yearning, and he would also rise a little, respectfully, and
bow as if he were thanking some very special person for favours he has
bestowed. Then, quite refreshed and at peace in himself, he would continue
reading his book.

Vigils Reading - St Teresa Benedict
2024-08-09
THE EUCHARIST
AS A MEANS OF SALVATION
From an essay by St Edith Stein1
◊◊◊
Christ’s suffering and death are continued in His mystical Body and in
each of His members. Everyone must suffer and die. But if that person is a
living member of the Body of Christ, their suffering and death will receive
redemptive power from the divinity of the Head. This is the objective reason
why all the saints have desired to suffer. This is not a pathological pleasure in
suffering. It is true, to natural reason it appears as a perversion. But in the light
of the mystery of salvation it shows itself to be highly reasonable. And thus, the
one who is united to Christ will remain unmoved even in the dark night of
feeling estranged from, and abandoned by God. Perhaps divine providence is
using his agony to deliver another, who is truly a prisoner cut off from God.
Therefore, we will say: “Thy will be done” even, and particularly so, in the
darkest night… For God has come to redeem us, to unite us to Himself and to
each other, to conform our will to His. He knows our nature. He reckons with
it, and has therefore given us every help necessary to reach our goal…
The Savior, knowing that we are and remainA men who have daily to
struggle with our weaknesses, aids our humanity in a manner truly divine. Just
as our earthly body needs its daily bread, so the divine life in us must be
constantly fed. “This is the living bread that came down from heaven”. If we
make it truly our daily bread, the mystery of Christmas, the Incarnation of the
Word, will daily be re-enacted in us. And this, it seems, is the surest way to
remain in constant union with God, and to grow every day more securely and
more deeply into the mystical Body of Christ…13
Is it really demanding too much to make room in our life for the
Eucharistic Savior, so that He may transform our life into His own? We have
time for so many useless things: we read senseless rubbish in books, periodicals
and newspapers… All these are distractions by which one wastes time and
strength…
Thus, being a child of God means to become small and at the same time
to become great. Living eucharistically means quite naturally to leave the
narrowness of one’s own life and to grow into the breadth of the Christ life…
Who could assist at the Holy Sacrifice with a receptive mind and heart and not
be filled with the sacrificial spirit, burning with the desire that his own small
personal life should be merged into the great work of the Savior?

Vigils Reading - St Lawrence
2024-08-10
ST LAWRENCE
By St Augustine1
◊◊◊
The Roman Church commends to us today the anniversary of the triumph
of St. Lawrence. For on this day he trod the furious pagan world underfoot and
flung aside its allurements, and so gained victory over Satan’s attack on his
faith. As you have often heard, Lawrence was a deacon of the Church at Rome.
There he ministered the sacred blood of Christ; there for the sake of Christ’s
name he poured out his own blood. St John the Apostle was evidently teaching
us about the mystery of the Lord’s supper when he wrote: Just as Christ laid
down his life for us, so we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. My
brethren, Lawrence understood this and, understanding, he acted on it. Just as
he had partaken of a gift of self at the table of the Lord, so he prepared to offer
such a gift. In his life he loved Christ; in his death he followed in his footsteps.
Brethren, we too must imitate Christ if we truly love him. We shall not be
able to render better return on that love than by modeling our lives on his.
Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow in his steps.
In saying this, the Apostle Peter seems to have understood that Christ suffered
only for those who follow in his steps, in the sense that Christ’s passion is of no
avail to those who do not. The holy martyrs followed Christ even to the shedding
of their life’s blood, even to reproducing the very likeness of his passion. They
followed him, but not they alone. It is not true that the bridge was broken after
the martyrs crossed; nor is it true that after they had drunk from it, the fountain
of eternal life dried up.
I tell you again and again, my brethren, that in the Lord’s garden are to
be found not only the roses of his martyrs. In it there are also the lilies of the
virgins, the ivy of wedded couples, and the violets of widows. On no account15
may any class of people despair, thinking that Christ has not called them. Christ
suffered for all. What the Scriptures say of him is true: He desires all to be saved
and to come to knowledge of the truth.
Let us understand, then, how a Christian must follow Christ even though
he does not shed his blood for him, and his faith is not called upon to undergo
the great test of the martyr’s sufferings. The apostle Paul says of Christ our Lord:
Though he was in the form of God he did not consider equality with God a prize
to be clung to. How unrivaled his majesty! But he emptied himself, taking on
the form of a slave, made in human likeness, and presenting himself in human
form. How deep his humility!
Christ humbled himself. Christian, that is what you must make your own.
Christ became obedient. How is it that you are proud? When this humbling
experience was completed and death itself lay conquered, Christ ascended into
heaven. Let us follow him there, for we hear Paul saying: If you have been raised
with Christ, you must lift your thoughts on high, where Christ now sits at the
right hand of God.
