Lay Cistercians of Gethsemani Abbey

Vigils Reading
2024-12-20
O KEY OF DAVID
From a sermon by St Odilo of Cluny
◊◊◊
The testimony of the ancient prophets to Christ’s eternal being and his
boundless divine presence is indeed trustworthy and true, and is confirmed by the
resounding call of that inspired heavenly trumpet: Jesus Christ, yesterday and today,
the same for ever. Our Savior himself tells the Jews in the gospel: Before Abraham
ever existed, I am. With God the Father from all eternity, before Abraham existed
(more accurately, before anything existed,) he had his eternal being; and yet he chose
to be born in time from the stock of Abraham — Abraham who was told by God the
Father: In your posterity all the peoples of the earth will be blessed.
The blessed patriarch David was also granted the sublime privilege of a
similar promise. Revealing to him the hidden secrets of his wisdom, God the Father
told him: The fruits of your body I will set upon your throne.
These two received the promise of the Savior’s coming more plainly than any
of our other forebears, and so they deserved to be given the first and most important
place in the records of our Lord’s ancestry according to the evangelist, Matthew, the
opening words of whose gospel are: The genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of
David, the son of Abraham. With these sacred words of the evangelist both the
prophetic oracles and the apostolic preaching are in accord. It is evident that when
the prophet Isaiah said in the person of God the Father: And so, Israel my servant,
Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend in whom I took
possession of you, his message was that the mediator between God and humankind
would be born according to the flesh from the stock of Abraham.13
The man in the Gospel who was freed from the darkness of ignorance and
enlightened by faith addressed God’s Son as Son of David. Not only did he receive
spiritual insight, but he also deserved to have his bodily sight restored. Christ the
Lord desires to be called by this name, knowing that there is no other name by which
the world can be saved. And if we ourselves wish to be saved by him who is the one
and only Savior, each of us must also say to him: Lord, son of David, have mercy on
me.

Vigils Reading
2024-12-19
O ROOT OF JESSE
From a homily by Fr Geoffrey Preston
◊◊◊
Jesus does not come of a particularly good family. His family is in fact
particularly ungood for much of its past. In the Te Deum we sing to Christ “You
did not scorn the Virgin’s womb.” At first sight that seems rather strange
language to use about the Virgin when she is honored as Mary Immaculate. But
surely it is Mary’s ancestry which is in debate here. The hymn celebrates the
extraordinary condescension of Jesus in being prepared to take not the flesh of
Adam before the Fall but the flesh of all those generations stretching from Adam
through Abraham and David down to Mary.
So we pray to him: “O Root of Jesse.” This means praying to him as Son
of David, as son of all those kings after David, people like Solomon and Asa and
Manasseh and Jeconiah. If he was prepared to come to an Israel and a world
that had produced people like that, then we can fairly expect that he will be
prepared to come to our world and our hearts with all their accumulated weight
of sin. We can be confident that he will come to us as we are, coming through our
past and making it his own. In this way he will reach us where we are and
transform our past so that when we tell the story of our lives we will be able to
include all the mistakes we have made and all the blind alleys we have explored.
Not that we cease to regret. Not that we excuse ourselves for our mistakes.
Not that we become complacent about our evil deeds and thoughts and words. It
is not as though what was once bad has now become good. But if and when the
Messiah comes to us, then we can sing the story of our lives as the story of the
path which he took to come to us, leaping upon the mountains and bounding
over the hills as we hear in the Song of Songs. When he comes we can tell the11
story of our past all over again, as nations retell their history after a change in
their fortunes.
It is a mistake to brood over our past. It is a misunderstanding of what
Messiah means for us to worry about the past. That past is only the raw material
of a story. What matters is how we tell the story using the raw materials. If the
Messiah has come, then the story can be solemnly and gladly sung, to the
accompaniment of all that makes for rejoicing.

Vigils Reading
2024-12-18
O ADONAI
From a sermon by St Gregory of Nazianzus
◊◊◊
The very Son of God, older than the ages, the invisible, the
incomprehensible, the incorporeal the beginning of beginning, the light of light,
the fountain of life and immortality, the image of the archetype, the immovable
seat the perfect likeness, the definition and word of the Father: he it is who
comes to his own image and takes our nature for the good of our nature, and
unites himself to an intelligent soul for the good of my soul to purify like by like.
He takes to himself all that is human except for sin. He was conceived by the
Virgin Mary, who had been first prepared in soul and body by the Spirit; his
coming to birth had to be treated with honor, virginity had to receive new honor.
He comes forth as God, in the human nature he has taken, one being, made of
two contrary elements, flesh and spirit. Spirit gave divinity, flesh received it.
He who makes rich is made poor; he takes on the poverty of my flesh, that
I may gain the riches of his divinity. He who is full is made empty; he is emptied
for a brief space of his glory, that I may share in his fullness. What is this wealth
of goodness? What is this mystery that surrounds me? I received the likeness of
God, but failed to keep it. He takes on my flesh, to bring salvation to the likeness
and immortality to the flesh. He enters a second union with us, a union far more
wonderful than the first.
Holiness had to be brought to us by the humanity assumed by one who is
God, so that God might overcome the tyrant and so deliver us and lead us back
to himself through the mediation of his Son. The Son arranged this for the honor
of the Father, to whom the Son is clearly obedient in all things. The Good
Shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep, came in search of the straying
sheep to the mountains and hills on which we used to offer sacrifice.9
Christ, the light of all lights, follows John, the lamp that goes before him.
The Word of God follows the voice in the wilderness; the bridegroom follows the
bridegroom’s friend, who prepares a worthy people for the Lord by cleansing
them by water in preparation for the Spirit. We need God to take our flesh and
die, that we might live. We have died with him, that we may be purified. We have
risen again with him, because we have died with him. We have been glorified
with him, because we have risen again with him.

Vigils Reading
2024-12-17
O WISDOM
A letter from an anonymous author to Diognetus
◊◊◊
No one has ever seen God or known him, but God has revealed himself to
us through faith, by which alone it is possible to see him. God, the Lord and
maker of all things, who created the world and set it in order, not only loved us
but was also patient with us. So he has always been, and is, and will be: kind,
good, free from anger, truthful; indeed, he and he alone is good.
He devised a plan, a great and wonderful plan, and shared it only with his
Son. As long as he preserved his secrecy and kept his own wise counsel he
seemed to be neglecting us, to have no concern for us. But when – through his
beloved Son – he revealed and made public what he had prepared from the
beginning, he gave us all at once gifts such as we could never have dreamt of,
even sight and knowledge of himself.
After making all his plans in consultation with his Son, God still allowed
us for a time to go our own way, to be swept along by unruly passion, enslaved by
sensuality. This does not mean that he took pleasure in our sins, but only that he
tolerated them. When we had shown ourselves to be unworthy of life, his
goodness would make us worthy of it. When we had shown our inability to enter
the kingdom of God by our own power, we would be enabled to do so by God’s
power.
How immeasurable is God’s generosity and love! He did not show hatred
for us or reject us or take vengeance. He gave his own Son as the price of our
redemption, the holy One to redeem the wicked, the sinless One to redeem
sinners, the just One to redeem the unjust, the incorruptible One to redeem the
corruptible, the immortal One to redeem mortals. For what else could have7
covered our sins but his sinlessness? In whom could we have been sanctified but
in the Son of God alone?
How wonderful a transformation, how mysterious a design, how
inconceivable a blessing! The wickedness of the many is hidden in the One who
is holy, and the holiness of One sanctifies the many.

Vigils Reading
2024-12-16
O KING OF ALL NATIONS
From a treatise by St Hilary of Poitiers
◊◊◊
[A verse from the second Psalm says:] Ask of me, and I will give you
the nations to be your inheritance and the ends of the earth to be
your possession. Christ has indeed received the nations as the inheritance he
asked for. When was this? It was when he prayed: Father, the hour has come.
Give glory to your Son that he may give glory to you, since you have given him
authority over the whole human race, to give eternal life to all those you have
given him.
This, then, is Christ’s inheritance: the whole human race, to whom he
desires to give eternal life. All nations are to be baptized, instructed, and born
again to new life. No longer will they be subject to the government of angels
referred to in the inspired Song of Moses, nor will they be divided up among the
angels in proportion to their numbers; they will be received into the Lord’s
family and reckoned as servants of God. From the dominion of unjust rulers
they will be taken into God’s eternal kingdom. In the past Israel alone was the
Lord’s portion and Jacob his allotted heritage; but now the whole company of
nations has become a single people, the people of the one and only God. All who
are to rise from the dead form the everlasting inheritance of God’s eternal Son,
the firstborn from the dead.
You will rule them with a rod of iron; you will shatter them
like the potter’s vessel. To many people these words seem to conflict with
the goodness of God. Are the nations which the Son of God asked for and
received as his inheritance to be terrorized by an iron rule and smashed like
vessels of clay? No good person, they say, gives or receives anything for the
purpose of destroying it. Does not the Lord prefer the repentance of sinners to5
their death? How then will he be acting in accordance with the nature he claims
to have if he shatters with an iron rod those whom he has asked for as his
inheritance?
These people misunderstand the divine decrees or else fail to recognize
their justice and propriety. You will rule them means that Christ will lead
them like a shepherd, guiding them with a shepherd’s loving care, for he is the
Good Shepherd and we the sheep for whom he laid down his life.

Vigils Reading - 3rd Sunday of Advent
2024-12-15
YOU MUST BUILD UPON ROCK
From a commentary by Origen of Alexandria
◊◊◊
The baptism that Jesus gives is a baptism in the Holy Spirit and in fire.
Baptism is one and the same no matter who receives it, but its effect depends on
the recipient’s disposition. He who is portrayed as baptizing in the Holy Spirit
and in fire holds a winnowing fan in his hand, which he will use to clear the
threshing floor. The wheat he will gather into his barn, but the chaff he will
burn with fire that can never be quenched.
I should like to discover our Lord’s reason for holding a winnowing fan
and to inquire into the nature of the wind that scatters the light chaff here and
there, leaving the heavier grain lying in a heap – for you must have a wind if you
want to separate wheat and chaff.
I suggest that the faithful are like a heap of unsifted grain, and that the
wind represents the temptations which assail them and show up the wheat and
chaff among them. When your soul is overcome by some temptation, it is not the
temptation that changes you into chaff. No, you were chaff already, that is to
say, fickle and faithless; the temptation simply discloses the stuff you were
made of. On the other hand, when you endure temptations bravely it is not the
temptation that made you faithful and patient; temptation merely brings to
light the hidden virtues of patience and fortitude that have been present in you
all along. Do you think that I had any other purpose in speaking to you, said the
Lord to Job, than to reveal your virtue? In another text he declares: I humbled
you and made you feel the pangs of hunger in order to find out what was in
your heart.
In the same way, a storm will not allow a house to stand firm if it is built
on sand. If you wish to build a house, you must build it upon rock. Then any
storms that arise will not demolish your handiwork, whereas the house built
upon sand will totter, proving thereby that it is not well founded.
So while all is yet quiet, before the storm gathers, before the squalls begin
to bluster or the waves to swell, let us concentrate all our efforts on the
foundations of our building and construct our house with the many strong,
interlocking bricks of God’s commandments. Then when cruel persecutions is
unleashed like some fearful tornado against Christians, we shall be able to show
that our house is built upon Christ Jesus our rock.
Far be it from us to deny Christ when the time comes. But if anyone
should do so, let that person realize that it is not at the moment of his public
denial that apostasy took place. Its seeds and roots had been hidden within him
for a long time; persecution only brought into the open and made public what
was already there. Let us pray to the Lord then that we may be firm and solid
buildings that no storm can overthrow, founded on the rock of our Lord Jesus
Christ.

Skema
2024-12-15
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
3rd Week of Advent

Mass Readings: Sunday (C), Weekdays (I)
December 15 – 21, 2024

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

Office
3rd Sunday of Advent
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday

Vigils
Isa 29:13-24
Isa 30:15-26
Isa 45:1-13
Isa 46:1-13
Isa 47:1-15
Isa 48:1-11
Isa 48:12-22

Lauds
Zech 2:10-17
Isa 12:1-6
Isa 40:1-5
Isa 40:6-11
Isa 40:25-31
Isa 41:1-10
Isa 41:11-16

Mass
9
187
193
194
195
196
197

1st
Zeph 3:14-18a
Num 24:2-7, 15-17a
Gen 49:2, 8-10
Jer 23:5-8
Judg 13:2-7, 24-25a
Isa 7:10-14
Song 2:8-14

2nd
Phil 4:4-7

Gospel
Luke 3:10-18
Matt 21:23-27
Matt 1:1-17
Matt 1:18-24
Luke 1:5-25
Luke 1:26-38
Luke 1:39-45

Vespers
Rom 9:1-8
Rom 10:1-13
1 Thess 5:16-24
Phil 1:3-11
Phil 3:17-21
Phil 4:4-9
1 Cor 1:1-9

Vigils Reading - St John of the Cross
2024-12-14
LOVE OF THE CROSS
From an essay by St Edith Stein
◊◊◊
We hear repeatedly that St. John of the Cross desired nothing for himself
but to suffer and be despised. We want to know the reason for this love of
suffering. Is it merely the loving remembrance of the path of suffering of our
Lord on earth, a tender impulse to be humanly close to him by a life resembling
his? This does not seem to correspond to the lofty and strict spirituality of the
mystical teacher. And in relation to the Man of Sorrows, it would almost seem
that the victoriously enthroned king, the divine conqueror of sin, death and hell
is forgotten. Did not Christ lead captivity captive? Has he not transported us
into a kingdom of light and called us to be happy children of our heavenly
Father?
The sight of the world in which we live, the need and misery, and the abyss
of human malice, again and again dampens jubilation over the victory of light.
The world is still deluged by mire, and still only a small flock has escaped from it
to the highest mountain peaks. The battle between Christ and the Antichrist is
not yet over. The followers of Christ have their place in this battle, and their
chief weapon is the cross…
The entire sum of human failures from the first Fall up to the Day of
Judgment must be blotted out by a corresponding measure of expiation. The
way of the cross is this expiation. The triple collapse under the burden of the
cross corresponds to the triple fall of humanity: the first sin, the rejection of the
Savior by his chosen people, the falling away of those who bear the name of
Christian…
The Savior is not alone on the way of the cross… The archetype of
followers of the cross for all time is the Mother of God. …Everyone who, in the
course of time, has borne an onerous destiny in remembrance of the suffering
Savior or who has freely taken up works of expiation has by doing so canceled
some of the mighty load of human sin and has helped the Lord carry his
burden.… The disciples, both men and women, who surrounded [the Savior]
during his earthly life, assist him on the second stretch. The lovers of the cross
whom he has awakened and will always continue to awaken anew in the
changeable history of the struggling church, these are his allies at the end of
time. We, too, are called for that purpose…
But because being one with Christ is our sanctity, and progressively
becoming one with him our happiness on earth, the love of the cross in no way
contradicts being a joyful child of God. Helping Christ carry his cross fills one
with a strong and pure joy, and those who may and can do so, the builders of
God’s kingdom, are the most authentic children of God. And so those who have
a predilection for the way of the cross by no means deny that Good Friday is past
and that the work of salvation has been accomplished. Only those who are
saved, only children of grace, can in fact be bearers of Christ’s cross. Only in
union with the divine Head does human suffering take on expiatory power. To
suffer and to be happy although suffering, to have one’s feet on the earth, to walk
on the dirty and rough paths of this earth and yet to be enthroned with Christ at
the Father’s right hand, to laugh and cry with the children of this world and
ceaselessly sing the praises of God with the choirs of angels — this is the life of
the Christian until the morning of eternity breaks forth.

Vigils Reading - St Lucy
2024-12-13
ST LUCY
From Butler’s Lives of the Saints
◊◊◊
St Lucy is said to have been a Sicilian, born in the city of Syracuse of noble
and wealthy parents and brought up a Christian. She wished to devote her life to
God and to give her fortune to the poor, but during the Diocletian persecutions
a man, usually represented as a Roman soldier, tried to rape her, and she
resisted. He denounced her as a Christian, and she was arrested, tortured and
killed.
Though these traditions have no ascertainable historical basis, her
connection with Syracuse and the existence of an early cult connected with her
name are well established. A fourth-century inscription mentioning that a girl
called Euskia died on Lucy’s feast-day survives at Syracuse. Lucy was honoured
at Rome in the sixth century as one of the most illustrious virgin martyrs whose
lives the Church celebrates. Her name is included in the Canons of the Roman
and Ambrosian rites and occurs in the oldest Roman sacramentaries, in Greek
liturgical books, and in the marble calendar of Naples. Churches were dedicated
to her in Rome, Naples, and eventually Venice. In England two ancient
churches were dedicated to her, and she has certainly been known since the
end of the seventh century. St Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne (23 May),
celebrated her in both prose and verse, though he unfortunately relied on
spurious sources.
Possibly on account of her name,which has connotations of light and
purity (Latin lux/Lucia), legends have long gathered around St Lucy. Some of
the legends and many paintings relate to her eyes. One gruesome story is that
she tore her eyes out rather than surrender to her attacker, and she is sometimes
shown offering them to him. Oddly, she is the patron saint of those with eye
trouble, and a gentler interpretation is that this is because the eyes are the
source of our awareness of light. Her feast-day had long been the occasion for
special ceremonies connected with virginity. It occurs near the shortest day of
the year and is especially celebrated in Sweden as a festival of light, with a
procession of young girls dressed in white and crowned with lighted candles.
The song “Santa Lucia” celebrates her memory.

Vigils Reading - Our Lady of Guadalupe
2024-12-12
THE APPEARANCE OF THE
BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
AT GUADALUPE
From the first written Aztec account of the apparition
◊◊◊
Upon his reaching the top of the hillock, Juan Diego catches sight of a
woman, one who has been taking her stand there. She beckons him to come on,
closer up to herself. Upon reaching her presence, he greatly marvels at her
extreme, her surpassing, her perfect wonderfulness.
Her garments are as the sun, gleaming, glittering. Even the boulder, the
crag, on which she takes her stand sparkles in resplendence, like fine emerald
jade or a bangle when it shines, like the swarming glow of a rainbow in the
gloom. Even the soil, the brambles and prickles and the rest of the varied weeds
that struggle to survive there are shining like emerald, like divine turquoise, to
the tip of every leaf; are glittering like the golden scourings of the gods up every
stalk and twig and thorn.
In her presence he prostrates; he listens to her utterance, her declaration.
These are as of one who sets others at ease, one whose manner is to attract, one
whose attitude is to esteem. She addresses him: “Do listen to me, my littlest one,
Juanito!… “Do know this, do be assured of it in your heart, my littlest one, that I
myself, I am the entirely and ever Virgin Saint Mary, Mother of the True
Divinity, God Himself: Because of Him, life goes on, Creation goes on; His are
all things afar, His are all things near at hand, things above in the heavens,
things here below on the earth. How truly I wish it, how greatly I desire it, that
here they should erect me my temple! Here would I show forth, here would I lift
up to view, here would I make a gift of all my fondness for my dear ones, all my
regard for my needy ones, my willingness to aid them, my readiness to protect
them. For truly I myself, I am your compassionate mother, yours, for you
yourself, for everybody here in the land, for each and all together, for all others
too, for all folk of every kind, who do but cherish me, who do but raise their
voices to me, who do but seek me, who do but raise their trust to me.
For here I shall listen to their groanings, to their saddenings; here shall I
make well and heal up their each and every kind of disappointment, of
exhausting pangs, of bitter aching pain… Therefore, to realize all that my
clemency claims, go to the palace of the Bishop of Mexico, and say that I sent you
to make manifest to him my great desire; namely, that here in the valley a temple
should be built to me. Tell him word for word all that you have seen and heard and
admired. Be assured that I shall be grateful and that I will reward you, for I will
make your life happy and cause you to become worthy of the labor you have taken
and the trouble you perform to do what I enjoin you. Now you have heard all my
bidding, least of my sons. Go and do your utmost.’
“At this point he bowed before her and said, ‘Lady, I go to do your bidding.
As your humble servant, I take my leave of you.’ Then he went on to accomplish
her will, taking the causeway that leads directly to Mexico City.”

Vigils Reading
2024-12-11
PATIENCE WITH THE PROVISIONAL
By Fr Karl Rahner
◊◊◊
People of Advent, of waiting for God, of burning longing for the eternal, can
be overcome by the most terrible and dangerous impatience that there is, a
religious radicalism which has the appearance of being glorious and sublime but
in reality is the contrary of the truly advent attitude.
We thirst for God, hope in him, hope that he will soon establish his
kingdom. He wills the unconditional, the radiant truth whose splendour at once
burns every doubt from the mind, the radical goodness which would destroy all
fear that goodness itself is only a form of self-seeking. But only precursors ever
come; only beginnings are made; messengers come but always with God’s truth
still in merely human words which obscure it. Those messengers of God are
human beings with human traits and sometimes inhuman ones. All that ever
happens are God’s saving deeds (called sacraments) in human ceremonies. All
these provisional things simply continue to proclaim that they themselves are not
the reality. The reality is merely hidden there in al those non-real words, human
beings, signs.
Then human beings who even in their purest religious feeling are sinners,
may lose patience. What are you doing in religion, you human beings, words,
signs, if you are after all not the reality, not the unveiled God immediately
present? Then the impatient think that this God may perhaps be found outside
the human beings, the words and the signs of the Church: in nature, in the infinity
of their own heart, in political projects to establish for ever by force here and now,
the Kingdom of God. Or somewhere else. But in the end these impatient people
realize, very often too late, that they have wandered into the wilderness of their
own empty hearts where the devils dwell, not God; into the loveless desert of a
blind and cruel nature which is only benevolent on Sunday afternoons; into the
arid wasteland of the world where the waters of ideals ooze away the farther one
advances; into the desolate wilderness of a politics which brings about not the
Kingdom of God but simply the tyranny of naked forces.
No, we are not spared it. We must have the patience of men and women of
advent. The Church is only the voice of one crying in the wilderness, announcing
that the final radiant Kingdom of God is still coming and that when God wills,
not when it suits us. We cannot try to ignore the voice of precursors simply
because it comes from the mouths of human beings; we cannot disregard the
messenger of the Church because he too is not worthy to loosen the shoelaces of
the Lord whose forerunner he is, or because he cannot call down fire from
heaven like Elijah. For it is still advent. The Church itself is still an advent
Church; for we are still waiting for him who is to come in the unveiled radiance
of unconditional Godhead with the eternal Kingdom. The Church rightly tells to
prepare of this God the true way, the way of faith, of love, of humility, and the
way of patience with its unimpressive provisional messengers of their poor
words and small signs. For then God will certainly come. He only comes to
those who in patience love his forerunners and the provisional.

Vigils Reading
2024-12-10
COME, LORD JESUS
By Fr Johannes Pinsk
◊◊◊
Advent means coming, the coming of the Lord. If we want to celebrate
Advent with the Church, we must first seek to understand what this means:
“God is coming.” the word “coming” may be regarded as one of the primordial
words in the language of religion, for if religion is the loving and unifying
encounter with God, it can only be realized when God comes. Unfortunately the
same thing happens with God’s coming to us as with his loving us — in both
cases we want to take the second step before the first one. We think that we must
love God first so that he will love us first; and yet, in his first letter Saint John
states expressly, Here is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us. Yes,
we must love God because he first loved us. We cannot come to God unless he
first comes to us.
This coming of God is not merely an interior, spiritual affair; it happens
rather in palpable, concrete forms. So the coming of God has the same meaning
as the revelation of God. Those, therefore, who carefully read and contemplate
the words of holy scripture, which are a sign of his continued and continuous
coming, will not find it difficult to understand that the actual content of
scripture is the proclamation of the coming of God. His coming is the key to the
history of the Old Testament and the basic theme of its people, but this is only a
prelude to that coming of God in which the Word was made flesh.
All these are ideas with which we are very familiar, so familiar in fact that
we tend to think that everything has already been fulfilled. God has come in
Jesus Christ; through him he is with us in his grace by faith and the sacraments.
Gospels: Year A; introduced and edited by John E. Rotelle, Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1995, pp. 16-17.7
Each individual Christian personally, and the Church of Christ as a community,
is a sign of the fact that God has come and is with us forever. Lo, I am with you
always, even to the end of the world. These are the words of our Lord at the end
of Saint Matthew’s gospel.
We Christians today are so conscious of the joy of our belief in the
presence of the Lord, above all in the Eucharist, that we almost forget that Christ
himself continued to speak of his coming right up to the end of his earthly life,
even though he was already present, He spoke of a further coming, beyond the
Church and the sacraments.
Although the One who is to come has already appeared, the New
Testament, like the Old, is full of the promise and expectation of a new coming
of Christ. The gospels speak of it, so do the apostolic letters, and most of all the
Revelation of Saint John. This final book of the Bible teaches us: The Spirit and
the Bride say, “Come.” Let him who hears say: “Come.” He who testifies to
these things says: Yes, indeed, I am coming soon, and the congregation of the
faithful cries out once more: Come, Lord Jesus!

Vigils Reading - Immaculate Conception
2024-12-09
IMMACULATE MARY
By Fr Hugo Rahner
◊◊◊
From the first instant of Mary’s human existence until her assumption
into heaven, every detail of her life that Revelation has provided is a ‘type of
what is to come.’ The Church is symbolized in Mary.
That is true of the first and underlying mystery of her life, which we know
from the sources of Revelation and from the solemn declaration of the Church,
namely that Mary in the first instant of her conception, in virtue of the
redemptive death to come of her divine son, was preserved free from all stain of
original sin. She possessed from the beginning also, precisely as a member of
the human race redeemed by Christ, that gift of sanctifying grace which was
destined originally for the whole human race from Adam and Eve, and restored
to every believer by the death of Christ, the son of Mary. Thus it is that Mary
Immaculate is already an essential symbol of the restoration to grace, a work
which began on the Cross and will have its entire fulfillment at the end of time
by presenting to the eternal father the family of our first parents, redeemed into
the one glorified Body of Christ: a symbol therefore of the Church. This is how
the early fathers saw in Mary Immaculate the Ecclesia Immaculata, and in this
figure of the Church Immaculate the glorious conclusion of the work of
redemption, which will be revealed on that day when God who is able to
preserve you without sin will present you spotless before the presence of his
glory with exceeding joy, in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God’s first word of salvation, spoken outside the locked gates of Paradise,
already indicates a woman, a single woman, who could never be overcome by
Satan: I will put enmities between you and the woman, and your seed and her
seed. This woman was first of all Eve, to whom the astounding promise was
made that the Redeemer should come from her race. But the full meaning of the
prophecy is only realized, when we see foreshadowed in Eve the other Mother of
all the living, who herself should actually give birth to the Savior. But already
then, said Augustine, Mary was included in Eve; yet is was only when Mary
came, that we knew who Eve was. The woman who crushed the serpent’s head
was the mother of God Incarnate. From the beginning of catholic theology the
text has been thus interpreted. Christ, the son of the woman of the promise,
would conquer Satan, and therefore God put enmities between the serpent and
the woman, until the promised seed came to crush its head, the seed of Mary.

Vigils Reading - 2nd Sunday of Advent
2024-12-08
PREPARE A WAY FOR THE LORD
From a commentary by Origen of Alexandria
◊◊◊
The word of God was addressed to John, son of Zechariah, in the desert,
and he went through all the Jordan valley. Where else could he go but through
the Jordan valley, where there would be water at hand to baptize those wishing
to amend their lives?
Now the word Jordan means descent or coming down. Coming down and
rushing in full flood is the river of God, the Lord our Savior, in whom we were
baptized. This is the real, life-giving water, and the sins of those baptized in it
are forgiven.
So come, catechumens, and amend your lives so that you may have your
sins forgiven in baptism. In baptism the sins of those who cease to sin are
forgiven, but if anyone comes to be baptized while continuing to sin, that
person’s sins are not forgiven. This is why I urge you not to present yourselves
for baptism without thinking very carefully, but to give some evidence that you
really mean to change your way of living. Spend some time living a good life.
Cleanse yourselves from all impurity and avoid every sin. Then when you
yourselves have begun to despise your sins, they will be forgiven you. You will be
forgiven your sins if you renounce them.
The teaching of the Old Testament is the same. We read in the prophet
Isaiah: A voice cries out in the desert: Prepare a way for the Lord. Build him a
straight highway.What way shall we prepare for the Lord? A way by land?
Could the Word of God travel such a road? Is it not rather a way within ourselves
that we have to prepare for the Lord? Is it not a straight and level highway in our
hearts that we are to make ready? Surely this is the way by which the Word of
God enters, a way that exists in the spaciousness of the human body. The human
heart is vast, broad, and capacious, if only it is pure… You ought to judge it not
by its physical size but by its power to embrace such a vast amount of knowledge
of the truth.
But so that I may convince you that the human heart is large by a simple
example from daily life, let us consider this. Whatever city we may have passed
through, we have in our minds. We remember its streets, walls, and buildings,
what they were like and where they were situated. We have a mental picture of
the roads we have traveled. In moments of quiet reflection our minds embrace
the sea that we have crossed. So, as I said, the heart that can contain all this is
not small!
Therefore, if what contains so much is not small, let a way be prepared in
it for the Lord, a straight highway along which the Word and Wisdom of God
may advance. Prepare a way for the Lord by living a good life and guard that way
by good works. Let the Word of God move in you unhindered and give you a
knowledge of his coming and of his mysteries.

Skema
2024-12-08
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
2nd Week of Advent

Mass Readings: Sunday (C), Weekdays (I)
December 8 – 14, 2024

Sun
8
Mon
9
Tue
10
Wed
11
Thu
12
Fri
13
Sat
14

Office
2nd Sunday of Advent
Immaculate Conception
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday
Our Lady of Guadalupe
St Lucy
St John of the Cross

Vigils
Isa 22:8b-23
Rom 5:12-21
Isa 24:19-25:5
Isa 25:6-26:6
Prov 8:32-9:11
Isa 27:1-13
Isa 29:1-8

Lauds
Isa 4:2-6
Isa 43:1-7
Isa 9:1-6
Isa 11:1-9
Sir 4:11-18
Zeph 3:14-20
Isa 11:10-16

Mass
6
689
182
183
690A
185
186

1st
Bar 5:1-9
Gen 3:9-15, 20
Isa 40:1-11
Isa 40:25-31
Rev 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab
Isa 48:17-19
Sir 48:1-4, 9-11

2nd
Phil 1:4-6, 8-11
Eph 1:3-6, 11-12

Gospel
Luke 3:1-6
Luke 1:26-38
Matt 18:12-14
Matt 11:28-30
Luke 1:39-47
Matt 11:16-19
Matt 17:9a, 10-13

Vespers
Rom 5:1-11
Gal 4:21-5:1
Rom 8:18-27
Rom 6:16-23
Gal 3:23-29
Rom 8:1-6
Rom 8:9-17

Vigils Reading - St Ambrose
2024-12-07
REMAIN WITHIN
From a letter by St Ambrose
◊◊◊
If someone has taken up residence in the heavenly city, let him not leave
its life and customs, since he is an inhabitant. Let him not again depart, or
retrace the steps, I do not say, of the body, but of the heart. Let him not come
back from there. Behind him is wantonness; behind is impurity. Your feet
should not turn back, neither should your actions turn back. Your hands should
not hang idle, nor should the knees of your devotion and faith become weak. Let
no weakness cause your will to backslide, nor evil deeds recur. You have made
your entrance, now remain. You have reached this place, stand firm. ‘Being safe,
save thy life.’
In your ascent, take the straight path; it is not safe to turn back. Here is
the road; there is downfall. Here is the path upward; there, a precipice… The
Lord who is powerful will protect you if you are grounded and hedged round
with the ramparts of the Prophets and the bulwarks of the Apostles. For this
reason, the Lord says to you: ‘Enter and tread the grape, for the vintage time is
here.’ Let us be found within, not out of doors. In the Gospel, too, the Son of God
says: ‘Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take his vessels.’ Surely, He
does not mean our present dwelling but that one of which ‘He has spread the sky
like a roof.’
Remain within, therefore, within Jerusalem, within your soul which is
peaceful, meek, and tranquil. Do not leave it or go down to take your vessels
with honors or riches or pride. Remain within, so that strangers may not pass
through you, so that neither sins nor vain works nor useless thoughts may pass
through your soul. This will not happen if you wage a holy war against the snare
of the passions on behalf of devotion and faith and in the pursuit of truth, if you
will put on the armor of God in your fight against spiritual diseases and the
cunning of the Evil One who tempts our senses with cunning and fraud. Yet, he
is easily crushed by the gentle warrior who does not sow discord, but, as befits
the servant of God, attaches faith with moderation and refutes those who are his
adversaries. Of this man Scriptures says: ‘Let the warrior who is gentle arise,’
and the weak man says: ‘I can do all things in him who strengthens me.’

Vigils Reading
2024-12-06
THE SUMMIT OF WAITING
By André Rétif
◊◊◊
John’s stay in the desert was simply a burning expectation of the Savior.
All the aspirations of the prophets and the just in Israel and the extremely
fervent desire of the remnant of the holy people found in him their concentrated
and almost explosive expression. Christ was certainly present to John in his
solitude. And so, when he saw Him with his eyes, his body did not quake. His
faith was so lively and enlightened that he thought his eyes of flesh had seen
Him previously.
“A happy life,” says St. John Chrysostom, “is to leave humans, seek the
company of angels, flee the cities and find Christ in solitude.” Can better words
be found to express at once both the focal point of his expectation and its
realization? To find Christ in renouncing and abandoning all. This chaste man
of faith had been the first to light his lamp and was like a person waiting. He was
going to be the first to hear the shout in the night: “Behold, the Bridegroom
comes!” This friend of the Bridegroom who gives his heart free rein, is the first
to leap with celestial joy when his Beloved approaches. He was, it has been said,
starving, but only for the One who was to come. Hence, he continues to be the
model of every Christian and every missionary, whom each dawn and each
sunset should find awaiting the return of the Son of Man anxiously, but without
agitation, joining in that expectation of the last things, which we know throbbed
in the hearts of the early Christians.
To John the outline of the Messiah, which became clearer as he prayed
and meditated on the sacred passages, was exceptionally real, tangible and
electrifying, and the whole world, contained in the Baptist’s soul, was sighing for
His presence far more ardently than the stag after living water.
We must not think that, because John the Baptist fled from the world, he
was insensible to the ardent longings of his times. Just as a landscape has to be
viewed from high above in order that one may appreciate its vast expanse, John
had to leave the world to understand it and discover its immense distress; for,
when viewed in God, things become extraordinarily clear and well defined.
John, preceding his captain, the Messiah, was the first to test his strength with
the devil and sense that the fate of a great number of souls depended on the
outcome of the conflict. John was the first to take upon himself responsibility
for the crowds whom he reached through the light of God without knowing
them, and to pronounce the cry of pity for the sheep without a shepherd. Was he
not already the shepherd of that immense flock that was to be led back to the
fold of God? Was he not an invisible and unknown shepherd who would be
imprisoned and decapitated in going to find his sheep?
John the Baptist is like all true contemplatives, monks and saints in being
eminently of his own times, which, however, he surpasses no matter what angle
we view him from. Together with Mary, whose expectation preceded his own
and was superior to it, he is the summit of the waiting for the Messiah, and he
resembles those peaks on which the sun is already shedding its faint red rays
when everywhere else night still reigns. If we are really to be men of our own
times, do we not have to free ourselves from them in order to discover through
God the whole of their inner meaning?

Vigils Reading
2024-12-05
OUR NEED OF
THE INCARNATION OF CHRIST
From an oration by St Gregory of Nazianzus
◊◊◊
The very Son of God, older than the ages, the invisible, the
incomprehensible, the incorporeal, the beginning of beginning, the light of
light, the fountain of life and immortality, the image of the archetype, the
immovable seal, the perfect likeness, the definition and word of the Father: he it
is who comes to his own image and takes our nature for the good of our nature,
and unites himself to an intelligent soul for the good of my soul, to purify like by
like. He takes to himself all that is human, except for sin. He comes forth as God,
in the human nature he has taken, one being, made of two contrary elements,
flesh and spirit. Spirit gave divinity, flesh received it.
He who makes rich is made poor; he takes on the poverty of my flesh, that
I may gain the riches of his divinity. He who is full is made empty; he is emptied
for a brief space of his glory, that I may share in his fullness.
What is this mystery that surrounds me? I received the likeness of God
when I was created, but I failed to keep it. He takes on my flesh, to bring
salvation to the image, immortality to the flesh. He enters into a second union
with us, a union far more wonderful than the first.
Holiness had to be brought to us by the humanity assumed by one who
was God, so that God might lead us back to himself through the mediation of his
Son. The Son arranged this for the honor of the Father, to whom the Son is
clearly obedient in all things.
The Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep, came in search
of the straying sheep to the mountains and hills on which you used to offer
sacrifice. When he found it, he took it on the shoulders that bore the wood of the
cross, and led it back to the life of heaven.
We need God to take our flesh and die, that we might live. We have died
with him, that we may be purified. We have risen again with him, because we
have died with him. We have been glorified with him, because we have risen
again with him.

Vigils Reading
2024-12-04 08:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York)
THE JOY OF ADVENT
By Thierry Maertens & Jean Frisque
◊◊◊
The announcement of John the Baptist’s birth has put in relief the salient
traits of his personality. The circumstances of his birth hardly add new
elements. Neither the birth nor the circumcision are told for themselves. They
serve only as a framework for the imposition of the name already proclaimed by
the angel.
Thanks to the unexpected agreement of Zechariah and Elizabeth, the
name of John the Baptist appears to be willed by heaven. The healing of
Zechariah’s dumbness too is a sign of a heavenly manifestation. Luke dwells on
the astonishment and joy caused by the manifestation. These are characteristic
symptoms of messianic times. The swiftness with which the news spreads,
image of the swiftness of the spread of the gospel, is also a sign of the presence of
heaven among human beings.
At the very time these two first chapters of Luke were first put out, the
contemporary world was singularly bereft of joy. The Jewish nation was
crushed under the heel of an occupying power, while the Greek peoples were
reduced by apathy to alienation.
Are things very different now, with uneasiness on every horizon, in a
world where the majority of people are ignored and alienated?… Yet Luke’s
message remains valid. Joy resides in the assurance that one has communion
with God, and that God is present even in human events. It is not however an
immediate consequence of belief in God’s presence. The God of the Jansenists
is not a joyful God, nor is the God of the pious. The God who gives joy is the God
who is present in the whole texture of a human being’s life, in secular activities,
in the most private thoughts and the deepest encounters, in sufferings that
surmount discouragement. The joy of messianic times is this joy.

Vigils Reading - St Francis Xavier
2024-12-03
ST FRANCIS XAVIER
From Butler’s Lives of the Saints
◊◊◊
Francis Xavier was born in Spanish Navarre at the castle of Xavier, near
Pamplona, in 1506, the youngest of a large family. He entered the college of St
Barbara and in 1528 gained the degree of licentiate. It was here that he met
Ignatius Loyola, and later joined with him in the first band of seven who vowed
themselves to the service of God at Montmartre in 1534. With them he received
the priesthood at Venice three years later and in 1540 Ignatius appointed him to
join Fr Simon Rodriguez on the first missionary expedition the Society sent out
to the East Indies…
They arrived at Goa, India on May 6, 1542, after a voyage of thirteen
months. Francis opened the mission with the Christians of Goa, instructing
them in the principles of religion and forming the young to the practice of virtue.
He walked through the streets ringing a bell to summon the children and slaves
to catechism. He offered Mass with lepers each Sunday. For the instruction of
the very ignorant or simple he versified the truths of religion to fit popular
tunes, and this was so successful that the practice spread till these songs were
being sung everywhere, in the streets and fields and workshops…
But before he left he heard about Japan for the first time from Portuguese
merchants. The next fifteen months were spent in endless traveling between
Goa, Ceylon and Cape Comorin, consolidating his work and preparing for an
attempt on that Japan into which no European had yet penetrated. In April 1549
Francis set out, accompanied by a Jesuit priest and lay-brother and three
Japanese converts. On the feast of the Assumption they landed in Japan, at
Kagoshima on Kyushu.
Francis set himself to learn Japanese. A translation was made of a simple
account of Christian teaching, and recited to all who would listen. The fruit of
twelve months labor was a hundred converts, but then the authorities began to
get suspicious and forbade further preaching. So, leaving one of the Japanese
converts in charge of the neophytes, Francis pressed further with his
companions and went by sea to Hirado, north of Nagasaki. Before leaving
Kagoshima he visited the fortress of Ichiku, where the baron’s wife, her steward
and others accepted Christianity. Xavier left the rest in the care of the steward,
and twelve years later the Jesuit lay-brother, Luis de Almeida, found these
isolated converts still retaining their first fervor and faithfulness.
At Hirado the missionaries were well received by the ruler and they had
more success in a few weeks than they had had at Kagoshima in a year. Xavier’s
objective was Miyako (Kyoto), then the chief city of Japan. In due time he was
able to be received by the authorities, who gave him permission to preach and
provided an empty Buddhist monastery for a residence. He preached with such
fruit that he baptized many in that city.
Francis decided to revisit his charge in India, from whence he hoped to
extend his mission to China. After dealing with matters in India, Xavier set sail
for China. In august 1552 the convoy reached the desolate island of Shang-
chwan, half-a-dozen miles off the coast and a hundred miles south-west of Hong
Kong. Here Xavier fell sick with a fever and died on December 3. He was buried
on the island, but his body which was found to be incorrupt, was later moved to
Goa. He was canonized in 1622 at the same time as Ignatius of Loyola.

Vigils Reading
2024-12-02
THE ADVENT OF GOD
From “Pathways in Holy Scripture” by Dom Damasus Winzen
◊◊◊
The word Advent had for the people of old a magic sound. It put before
their eyes the glorious scene of the king’s return from a victorious war. Preceded
and followed by the might of his arms, carrying with him the spoils of victory,
the hosts of the captives, the treasures of the enemy, he stands on his chariot,
vested in the purple of triumph, the golden wreath of victory on his head. The
whole city is in a delirium of joy. The festive throngs of the citizens line the
streets. They greet their king with the royal shout, acclaiming him as savior and
kyrios with incense and hymns. In the evening thousands of lights appear on
windows and doorways, on temples, gates and palaces, for the light is come, and
the glory of the king is risen upon the city.
The Advent of our Ecclesiastical Year does not celebrate the triumphant
entry of an earthly king into his capital, but it sees the King of kings whose might
covers the earth like a cloud, returning to the world which He had left because of
its sin, crushing His enemies, extirpating sin and establishing a kingdom of
peace for those who believe in Him. This is the Divine Action of salvation which
constitutes the real meaning of history, although it may take centuries and
centuries to be accomplished. That the birth of Mary’s little babe in the humble
manger of Bethlehem is the beginning of this glorious Advent would be hidden
from the eyes of men, had the glad tiding not been announced from heaven and
had the Holy Spirit not spoken in times past to the fathers by the prophets. It is
really the vision of the prophets which opens the eyes of the faithful to see
beneath the humble form of man the glory of God, and to realize that Christ’s
First Coming in patience and charity is the beginning of the Day of judgment
which will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven to receive the
Eternal Kingdom from the hands of the Father. It is the unique gift of the
prophets to see sign and reality, the human and the divine, the present and the
future in their compenetration. Therefore, they “rendered service not so much
to them selves but to us,” [as it is written in the first letter of Peter, us] who
celebrate the Advent of God in that incomparable compenetration of visible sign
and divine reality which is the liturgy of the Church.

Vigils Reading - 1st Sunday Advent
2024-12-01
THE COMING OF
YOUR ETERNAL JUDGE
From a commentary by St Gregory the Great1
◊◊◊
The Lord says: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not
pass away. He means: Nothing that is lasting in your world lasts for eternity
without change; and everything that in Him is perceived as passing away is kept
firm, without passing away. His utterance, which passes away, expresses
thoughts that endure without change.
Therefore, my friends, do not love what you see cannot long exist. Keep in
mind the apostle’s precept, in which he counsels us not to love the world or the
things in the world, because if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is
not in him. The day before yesterday…you heard that an old orchard was
uprooted by a sudden hurricane, that homes were destroyed and churches
knocked from their foundations. How many persons who were safe and
unharmed in the evening, thinking of what they would do the next day, suddenly
died that night, caught in a trap of destruction?
We must reflect that to bring these things about our unseen Judge caused
the movement of a very slight breeze; he called a storm out of a single cloud and
overthrew the earth; he struck the foundations of many buildings, causing them
to fall. What will the Judge do when he comes in person, when his anger is
burning to punish sinners, if we cannot bear him when he strikes us with an
insignificant cloud? What flesh will withstand the presence of his anger, if he
moved the wind and overthrew the earth, stirred up the air and destroyed so
many buildings? Paul referred to this severity of the Judge who is to come and
said: It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Dearly beloved, keep that day before your eyes, and whatever you now
believe to be burdensome will be light in comparison with it. The Lord says of
this day through the prophet: Yet once more and I will shake not only the earth
but also the heavens.
You see how he moved the air, as I said, and the earth did not withstand it.
Who then will bear it when he moves the sky? What shall we call these terrors we
see but heralds of the wrath to come? We must reflect that these troubles are as
much unlike the final one as the herald’s role is unlike the judge’s power. Give
hard thought to that day, dearly beloved; amend your lives, change your habits,
resist and overcome your evil temptations. The more you now anticipate his
severity by fear, the more securely will you behold the coming of your eternal
Judge.

Skema
2024-12-01
Biblical Readings for Office and Mass
1st Week of Advent

Mass Readings: Sunday (C), Weekdays (I)
December 1 – 7, 2024

Sun
1
Mon
2
Tue
3
Wed
4
Thu
5
Fri
6
Sat
7

Office
1st Sunday of Advent
Advent Weekday
St Francis Xavier
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday
Advent Weekday
St Ambrose

Vigils
Isa 1:1-18
Isa 1:21-2:5
Isa 2:6-22
Isa 3:1-15
Isa 10:5-21
Isa 19:11-25
Isa 21:1-12

Lauds
Micah 7:14-20
Isa 6:1-7
Isa 6:8-13
Isa 7:1-9
Isa 7:10-16
Isa 5:1-7
Isa 5:15-25

Mass
3
175
176
177
178
179
180

1st
Jer 33:14-16
Isa 2:1-5
Isa 11:1-10
Isa 25:6-10a
Isa 26:1-6
Isa 29:17-24
Isa 30:19-21, 23-26

2nd
1 Thess 3:12-4:2

Gospel
Luke 21:25-28, 34-36
Matt 8:5-11
Luke 10:21-24
Matt 15:29-37
Matt 7:21, 24-27
Matt 9:27-31
Matt 9:35-10:1, 5a, 6-8

Vespers
Rev 22:12-21
Rom 1:1-12
Rom 1:13-17
Rom 2:1-11
Rom 2:12-16
Rom 2:17-24
Rom 3:21-26

Vigils Reading - St Andrew
2024-11-30
THE APOSTLE,
ST ANDREW
From a sermon by St John Henry Newman7
◊◊◊
St John the Evangelist, [introduces St Andrew in his gospel] under
circumstances which show that, little as is known of this Apostle now, he was, in
fact, very high in the favour and confidence of his Lord. In his twelfth chapter he
describes Andrew as bringing to Christ certain Greeks who came up to
Jerusalem to worship and who were desirous of seeing Him. And, what is
remarkable, these strangers had first applied to St Philip, who, though an
Apostle himself, instead of taking upon him to introduce them had recourse to
his fellowtownsman St Andrew… “Philip comes, and tells Andrew; and again,
Andrew and Philip tell Jesus.”
These two Apostles are also mentioned together in the sixth chapter of the
same Gospel, at the consultation which preceded the miracle of the loaves and
fishes; and there again Andrew is engaged, as before in the office of introducing
strangers to Christ. “There is a lad here,” he says to his Lord, a lad who perhaps,
had not courage to come forward of himself, “who has five barley loaves and
two small fishes.”… After our Lord had predicted the ruin of the Temple, “Peter,
James, John, and Andrew asked Him privately: ‘Tell us when shall these
things be?‘” and it was to these four that our Saviour revealed the signs of his
coming, and of the end of the world. Here St Andrew is represented as in the
special confidence of Christ; and associated too with those Apostles whom he is
known to have selected from the Twelve, on various occasions, by tokens of his
peculiar Favour.
Little is known of St Andrew in addition to these inspired notices of him.
He is said to have preached the Gospel in Scythia; and he was at length martyred
in Achaia. His death was by crucifixion; that kind of cross being used, according
to the tradition, which still goes by his name. Yet, little as Scripture tells us
concerning him, it affords us enough for a lesson, and that an important one.
These are the facts before us. St Andrew was the first convert among the
Apostles; he was especially in our Lord’s confidence; thrice is he described as
introducing others to him; lastly, he is little known in history, while the place of
dignity and the name of highest renown have been allotted to his brother Simon,
whom he was the means of bringing to the knowledge of his Saviour.
Our lesson then is this; that those persons are not necessarily the most
useful in their generation, nor the most favored by God, who make the most
noise in the world, and who seem to be principals in the great changes and
events recorded in history; on the contrary, that even when we are able to point
to a certain number of persons as the real instruments of any great blessings
vouchsafed to humankind, our relative estimate of them, one with another, is
often very erroneous: so that, on the whole, if we would trace truly the hand of
God in human affairs, and pursue his bounty as displayed in the world to its
original sources, we must unlearn our admiration of the powerful and
distinguished, our reliance on the opinion of society, our respect for the
decisions of the learned or the multitude, and turn our eyes to private life,
watching in all we read or witness for the true sign of God’s presence, the graces
of personal holiness manifested in his elect; which, weak as they may seem to
humankind, are mighty through God, and have an influence upon the course of
his Providence, and bring about great events in the world at large, when the
wisdom and strength of the natural man are of no avail.

Vigils Reading
2024-11-29
THE VIRGINITY OF SPIRIT
By Thomas Merton
◊◊◊
The monastic life of humility, obedience, liturgical prayer, lectio divina,
penance, manual labor, contemplation, tends to ever purify the soul of the monk
and lead him to intimacy with Christ in that sacred virginity which makes him
worthy of marriage with the Word of God. This spirit of virginity is the true
essence of the contemplative life which is our vocation.
We are not contemplative by the mere fact of living an enclosed and
penitential life. We can indeed be more active, more restless and more
distracted in the cloister than we would be in the active life, if we do not possess
the interior virginity of spirit, the silence and peace of soul, which enable us to
find God in His word, to listen to the words of Christ, to move with the
breathings of the Holy Spirit within us.
The virginity of spirit to which we are called is a purity of heart in which
our souls preserve their baptismal innocence, or the innocence of the second
baptism of our vows, and offer themselves in perfect purity to God. Virginity of
soul does not preclude temptation and trials, but the deep spirit of faith which it
implies enables us always to rise above the flesh and its storms in order to
meditate on the incorruptible beauty of the Word. St Augustine defines
virginity as: “Perpetual meditation, in corruptible flesh, of what is
incorruptible.” The life of the virgin soul that is the spouse of Christ is a life
lived in the pure, limpid radiance of the Word Himself.
The virginity of spirit which keeps us united to the Word is the perfection
of the monastic life. By it, the monk not only renounces human marriage, but
rather lays hands upon the supernatural and mystical reality of which marriage
is only an external symbol – the union of love which joins the soul to God “in
one spirit.
” Virginity of spirit keeps the soul in constant contact with the Holy
Word of God, the sanctity of God Himself. Above all, sacred virginity makes
visible the union of the Church with Christ her Divine Spouse. Pope Pius XII
says:
“The most delicate fruit of virginity is this: that virgins make
tangible as it were the perfect virginity of their Mother the Church
and the sanctity of her intimate union with Christ. The greatest
glory of the virgins is undoubtedly to be the living images of the
perfect integrity of the union of the Church and her Divine
Spouse.”
This is the end and the perfection of the monastic vocation: to find Christ,
the Word, to cling to Him in the purity of perfect love and unalterable peace, and
to say with the Bride in the Canticle: “I found Him whom my soul loves: I held
him: and I will not let Him go”
.

Vigils Reading - Thanksgiving
2024-11-28
THE FULLNESS
OF THANKSGIVING
By Xavier Leon-Dufour5
◊◊◊
The first reality of biblical history is the gift of God, gratuitous,
superabundant, without return. The encounter with God does not put human
beings simply in the presence of the absolute; it completes them and transforms
their lives.
Thanksgiving appears as the response to this progressive and continual
grace which one day should blossom in Christ. At the same time there is an
intense awareness of the gifts of God, a spirit of soul permeated with wonder
because of God’s generosity, a joyous recognition before the divine greatness;
thus thanksgiving is essential in the Bible because it is a fundamental religious
reaction of creatures when they discover, in a tremor of joy and veneration,
something of God’s greatness and glory. The capital sin of pagans, according to
Paul, is “not to have rendered to God either glory or thanksgiving”. And, in fact,
in the mass of hymns created by the piety of Mesopotamia, the sentiment of
thanksgiving is rare; while it is very frequent in the Bible and brings out
powerful outpourings of the soul.
At the time of the New Covenant thanksgiving truly breaks forth,
becoming present everywhere in the prayer and the life of the Christians as it
had never existed before among the just of the past. Biblical thanksgiving is
truly and essentially Christian. It is not exclusively Christian, however, to the
extent that, as was written in the Old Testament, “Israelites praise without
giving thanks.” If the Old Testament does not yet know the fullness of
thanksgiving, it is because it has not yet tasted the fullness of grace. If praise,
more spontaneous, more exteriorized, holds therein perhaps a greater place
than thanksgiving properly so called, more reflective, more attentive to God’s
actions and self revelation, it is because the most holy God is revealed only
progressively, unveiling little by little the amplitude of the action and the depth
of the gifts of God.
Because it is the revelation and the gift of perfect grace, in the person of
the Lord, it is also the revelation of the perfect thanksgiving rendered to the
Father in the Holy Spirit. The supreme act of the Lord is thanksgiving; the
sacrifice which Jesus made of His life in consecrating it to the Father in order
that He may sanctify His own is our Eucharist. At the last supper and on the
cross, Jesus reveals the drive of all His life and that of His death: thanksgiving
from the heart of the Son. The passion and death of Jesus were necessary that
He might fully glorify the Father, but all His life was an incessant thanksgiving,
which sometimes was made explicit and solemn, to draw all to believe and
return thanks to God with Jesus.
The essential object of this thanksgiving is the work of God, the Messianic
realization, notably manifested by miracles, the gift of His word which God has
made to everyone. The gift of the Eucharist to the church expresses an essential
truth: only Jesus Christ is our thanksgiving, just as He alone is our praise. It is
He first of all who gives thanks to the Father, and Christians afterwards in
Him. In Christian thanksgiving, Christ is the sole model and sole mediator. In
the heavenly Jerusalem, with the Messianic work fulfilled, thanksgiving
becomes pure praise of glory, dazzling contemplation of God and the eternal
marvels.

Vigils Reading
2024-11-27
THE WOUNDEDNESS
OF ALL MORTALS
From a sermon by Isaac of Stella4
◊◊◊
“Jesus, when he saw how great was their number, went up to the
mountainside.” Today, dear friends, we see our heaven-sent Physician
unsealing the precious perfumes that he has brought with him from the bosom
of the Father; brought to heal the wounds of the man who, on his way down
from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell in with robbers. This unnamed man on his way
down represents Adam and all his descendants. It was only right that he should
fall in with robbers, he was but paying for the freely chosen folly of his journey.
Had he but chosen it, Adam could have remained in the happy state bestowed
on him at his creation, in that wealth of good things safe from all loss. He freely
fell because he chose to do so, and because he journeyed down, he fell into the
grip of the ruthless. He had to endure what he did not wish precisely because he
refused to stay where suffering could never have touched him.
These malicious robbers are not only the evil spirits, but also the many
passions of our bodies and spirit that wounded the Psalmist and made him
groan, “Oh, how often you have burdened me with bitter trouble.” Yes, he
suffers unwillingly although deservedly; the price (I beg to repeat) of his freely
deciding to descend was his meeting robbers and suffering at their hands. Never
would the Lord of mercy have allowed man to fall into such cruel hands had not
man by his own personal and conscious wickedness first deserted him to whom
he should have looked for strength. Man forsook God, man went his way down,
and because he went down, he was forsaken by him who did not go down.
Forsaken by God, man fell into the power of him to whom such power was
permitted, the devil. He showed no pity, but robbed, wounded, and left him
half-dead. He who is altogether dying left man half-dead, in other words half-
alive. And such is the life of mortal man: a living dying. The devil’s dying, on the
other hand, is completely deadly, leaving no room for recall to life. The angels’
living in its turn, is fully vital, having no tendency toward death.
Mortal man, then, is left half-dead — though alive, he tends inevitably
towards death, though dead, he is open to cure. “They wounded him,” the
Gospel tells us. We must look into this, see what these wounds are, even if our
situation teaches us what it means far better than any explanation. In addition
to the weaknesses and afflictions of the body, themselves “past all numbering”,
the wounds inflicted on and infecting mankind, in and from our first parent, are
of seven kinds, of many species, and beyond all counting. The infections that
stem from Original Sin and afflict us all are only seven, but they beget a
wayward, viper-like brood that caters to all sorts of sinful tendencies.

Vigils Reading
2024-11-26
THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY
From “The Faith and Modern Man” by Fr Romano Guardini3
◊◊◊
We associate the word saints with the idea of exceptional persons. In the
New Testament, however, it signifies Christians generally. Being a Christian at
all was extraordinary. For the Christians stood out sharply from the
environment; either one lived in the Old Testament world, or in the Hellenistic-
pagan world, and by both they were regarded as something strange if not
hostile. The experience of conversion lifted them out of the environment. A
sense of the reality of God not learned from natural religious experience or from
the teaching of the Old Testament had shaken and, at the same time, blessed
them.
In the existence of Christ, God’s countenance had been unveiled. The life
of Christ had made them aware of how God is minded toward us. These
experiences had changed their whole lives. They had acquired new ideas of God,
new standards of judging the world. The “renewal of mind” of which the Gospel
speaks and which they had begun to fulfill, now consisted not only in a
conversion to a good and pious life, but in a change of direction in their whole
way of thinking. Thus for them, actually, “all things had become new” -and with
all these “new things” they found themselves still in an old world, a world which
regarded them with distrust and hostility. All this is, in itself, extraordinary
-indeed the very essence of the extraordinary, and the “saint” was one who led
this existence.
But the spread of Christianity and its increase in members tended to
obscure its unique nature. Time went on, the Gospel grew familiar, and the
sense of newness wore off. Christianity became the state religion and, as such,
the official order of society. Thus the fact that being a Christian at all was in itself
extraordinary faded out of people’s consciousness, and Christianity grew to be
regarded as normal and usual.

Vigils Reading - St Catherine of Alexandria
2024-11-25
ST CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA
From Butler’s Lives of the Saints2
◊◊◊
Since about the tenth century, veneration of St Catherine of Alexandria
has been marked in the East, but from the time of the Crusades until the 18th
century her popularity was even greater in the West. Numerous churches were
dedicated in her honor, including the parish church of Gethsemani Abbey at
New Haven, KY. She was venerated as patroness of maidens and women
students of philosophers, preachers and apologists. Adam of St Victor wrote a
poem in her honor; hers was one of the heavenly voices heard by St Joan of Arc.
But not a single fact about her life or death has been established.
It is said in her Acts that she belonged to a patrician family of Alexandria
and devoted herself to learned studies, in the course of which she learned about
Christianity. She was converted by a vision of Our Lady and the Holy Child.
When Maxentius began persecuting Christians, Catherine went to him and
rebuked him for his tyranny. He could not answer her arguments against his
gods, so summoned fifty philosophers to oppose her. These confessed
themselves convinced by the learning of this Christian girl, and were therefore
burned to death by the infuriated emperor. Then he tried to seduce Catherine
with an offer of a consort’s crown, and went off to inspect a camp. On his return
he discovered that his wife and an officer had gone to see Catherine out of
curiosity and had both been converted, together with two hundred soldiers of
the guard. They accordingly were all slain and Catherine was sentenced to be
killed on a spiked wheel. When she was placed on it, her bonds were
miraculously loosed and the wheel broke, its spikes flying off and killing many
of the onlookers. Then she was beheaded.
All the texts of the “acts” of Catherine state that her body was carried by
angels to Mount Sinai, where a church and monastery were afterwards built. In
527 the Emperor Justinian built a monastery for hermits of the place, and the
body of Catherine was said to have been taken there in the 8th or 9th century.
The monastery has borne her name since then. The great monastery of Mount
Sinai still claim the alleged relics of St Catherine, in the care of the monks of the
Eastern Orthodox Church. Archbishop Falconio of Santa Severina said that the
meaning of the “angels” is that her body was carried by the monks of Sinai to
their monastery. Tradition has referred to the monastic life as “the angelic life”.
This is still a current expression in Eastern monasticism.

Vigils Reading - 34th Sunday - Christ the King
2024-11-24
THE KINGDOM OF
THE BELOVED SON
From a commentary by St Augustine1
◊◊◊
Banish the groundless fear that filled Herod the Great on hearing that
Christ was born. More cruel in his fear than in his anger, he put many children
to death, so that Christ also would die. But my kingdom is not of this world, says
Christ. What further reassurance do we seek? Come to the kingdom not of this
world. Be not enraged by fear, but come by faith. In a prophecy Christ also
said…God the Father has made me king on Zion his holy mountain. But that
kingdom and that mountain are not of this world.
What in fact is God’s kingdom? It is simply those who believe in him,
those to whom he said: You are not of this world, even as I am not of this
world. He willed, nevertheless, that they should be in the world, which is why
he prayed to the Father: I ask you not to take them out of the world, but to
protect them from the evil one. So here also he did not say my kingdom is not
in this world, but is not of this world. And when he went on to prove this by
declaring: If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have fought to
save me from being handed over… he concluded by saying…my kingdom is not
from here.
Indeed, his kingdom is here until the end of time, and until the harvest it
will contain weeds. The harvest is the end of the world, when the reapers who
are the angels, will come and gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin, and this
could not happen if his kingdom were not here. But even so, it is not from here
for it is in exile in the world. Christ says to his kingdom: You are not of the
world, but I have chosen you out of the world. They were indeed of the world
when they belonged to the prince of this world, before they became his
kingdom. Though created by the true God, everyone born of the corrupt and
accursed stock of Adam is of the world. On the other hand, everyone who is
reborn in Christ becomes the kingdom which is no longer of the world. For so
has God snatched us from the powers of darkness, and brought us into the
kingdom of his beloved Son: that kingdom of which he said My kingdom is not
of this world; my kingly power does not come from here
