Some Thoughts on Concelebration

Here are some excerpts from a talk I gave on Concelebration to my dear friends at Saint Benedict's Abbey in Still River, Massachusetts last week.

SOME REFLECTIONS ON CONCELEBRATION

Saint Benedict Abbey

5 December 2017

First, allow me to express my gratitude to Abbot Xavier and the community of Saint Benedict for the opportunity to offer you some brief reflections on the subject of concelebration of the eucharistic liturgy in the Latin Church. I am all the more humbled to follow by some months the presentation by Abbot Cassian Folsom, OSB, which I will seek neither to repeat, dispute, nor nuance. I will, however, offer three presumptions and then three observations and an equal number of conclusions which I hope you might find helpful in your consideration of this important topic.

But first, three Presuppositions.

1. The daily celebration of Mass by priests has been a part of our tradition for the past several centuries. Today, the Code of Canon Law encourages priests "to celebrate frequently; indeed, daily celebration is recommended earnestly…” (canon 904). The celebration of Mass may be fulfilled either by concelebration or celebrating Mass with a smaller group of the faithful, the latter being the right of any priest in good standing, no matter the circumstances (Cf. SC, 57.2.2)

2. The regulation of concelebration belongs to the Bishop and his guidance is always more important than any scholar, liturgist or individual priest. In addition, the guidelines and practice of the Holy Father, the Bishops of a given region and especially the Bishop of a particular Church is always instructive.

3. Recent interest in the question of concelebration has grown largely from the resurgence of the extraordinary form. The social media sites which recently exploded with rumors of a supposed plan by the Holy Father to require concelebration in Roman seminaries are remarkably the same sites campaigning for the suppression of the ordinary form in favor of the restoration of the extraordinary one.

Now don’t get me wrong here, as my work for the past twenty years has made abundantly clear, I believe that midcourse corrections in the implementation of the conciliar reform are both necessary and helpful. But the danger of concelebration becoming the latest arrow in the quiver of those opposing the conciliar reform is a real one.

My third presupposition, then (which has gone on entirely too long) is that the debate is too often driven by celebrities of the right in interviews, slogans or attacks on the very idea of a conciliar liturgical reform. Such contributions are, in my view, seldom helpful and often contribute more heat than light to any serious consideration of what the Church asks of us and how we can serve those ends.

THREE OBSERVATIONS

1. Concelebration in the early Church
We know a lot about how concelebration takes place today. We have documents and pictures, blogs, twitter feeds and lots of personal experience. We know what works and what doesn’t. We know what is appealing and what is not. We know what feels like it has flowed organically from previous forms and what seems disjunctive. We know a lot about today.

We also know a fair amount about what happened in the first centuries of the Church, inasmuch as we know anything about what really happened in the earliest days of the Church. Indeed, as Father Cassian demonstrated to you a couple months ago, we have a lot of texts, each of them written in an attempt to respond to some sort of disruption in the life of the Church. Most of them are laws or correctives or pronouncements, from which we can learn what the legislator wanted concelebration to be and what it was probably not doing at a given time and place.

So while we lack a complete understanding of the what or the why of concelebration in those earliest days, there are a few conclusions we can draw:

1. That concelebration, as the name implies, served in many cases as an expression of or guarantor of ecclesial unity. The Bishop of the North is welcome to join the Bishop of the South at the Altar for the Eucharist, thus expressing a certain unity of faith, belief and practice.

2. I believe we are also safe to say that concelebration was often an expression of the unity of the presbyterium with its episcopus. The fairly early tradition of the Bishop gathering his priests around him was another and more intensive expression of the unity and the dependency of priest upon Bishop and Bishop upon his priests which would come to be described in our own day as “the preminent expression of the the Church.”

3. The ritual forms which concelebration took were diverse from place to place. Who said what words with whom and what gestures, epicletic, indicative or epicletic, were as unique as all other other ritual elements in the Latin West and there was no real attempt to bring them into sync with each other.

4. The idea of presbyteral concelebration seemed generally restricted to monasteries or other religious communities of priests, since by definition that’s where you had a lot of priests and the question of concelebration would occur.

These are conclusions I draw from the texts which you have already examined with the good Abbot emeritus of Norcia. However, I would suggest that there might be something more to be learned from some iPhone snapshots, if you will, of what concelebration looked like in the first twelve hundred years of the life of the Church. However, before we take a quick look at three examples of such snapshots, a couple words of caution.

Artistic depictions of liturgical acts tend to depict only the most idealized Verson of events. By way of example, an ivory engraving of a concelebration at Saint Benedict’s Abbey would, I assure you, show all the fathers in identical chasubles of beautiful ornament, surrounded by brothers in freshly starched and immaculate surplices. But is that the daily reality? Let it suffice to say that the artist working in ivory, stone or painted plaster will always show the best side of his benefactor.

A second caution. The original intent of the artwork will often be different than the needs of the contemporary observer. In other words, we come at the artwork with a whole different set of suppositions and questions and experience than the original artist and original observers. Accidental depictions of gesture, vesture, arrangement or action, which may prove to be the most interesting of all.

Well, with these disclaimers in mind, let’s take a look at three images.

FIRST IMAGE

The first of these three images is presented as a kind of type of a widespread arrangement of Churches in the first nine hundred years of the life of the Church, regarding which I draw your attention to the Cathedral Basilica on the island of Torcello, about a half hour by vaparetto from San Marco in Venice.

The form which the Church would take in the ninth century (which survives essentially intact today) is believed to have grown organically from its basic late sixth century arrangement. I use it as a type which was widely reproduced or at last reflected in the basic elements of a large number of basilicas from the fourth century on.

The area of the Church we are examining is what we currently call the presbyterium, with the Bishop’s cathedral in the center, a location identical to the position of the faldstool or curial chair of the civil magistrate who administered justice from the tribune of its secular precursor.

Growing out from the cathedra is a sort of presbyteral bench, here a kind of presbyteral bench on steroids. In most simpler basilicas it is a single bench, almost always touching the cathedra and then tracing the entire circumference of the apse wall. The precedent here is a similar structure, known as the subsellia, which would be occupied by the lesser officials of Roman civil courts.

So what does the presbyteral bench and cathedra tell us about concelebration? Nothing definitively. But it does show us that there is permanent seating in the presbyterium, a name applied early on to both the body of presbyters and the area of the Church in which this bench sits. It is a bench which comes to be known as presbyteral and it reflects the relationship between the Bishop and his priests as the same sort of relationship which previously existsed between greater and lesser civic officials in similar Roman basilicas.

Intriguing, but not definitive.


SECOND IMAGE

The second image I wish to call to your attention is housed in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England. It’s an ivory panel from a late tenth century Graduale cover created somewhere in the area of modern-day Lorraine, France.

This gorgeous image is of a Bishop about to celebrate Mass with five deacons behind him and in front of him, seven singing priests. The book on the desk is inscribed in Latin with the introit for the first Sunday in Advent, beginning Ad te levavi animam meam. His right hand is raised, not in blessing, but to signal that he is ready to begin.

Notice the priests are all dressed in the same conical chasubles and extend their hands toward the altar in the same manner as the celebrant.

THIRD IMAGE

The final image is taken from the delightful Collegiate Basilica of Santa Maria della Assunta in the remote hill-town of Lugnano in Teverina.

The Basilica, one of my favorites in all of Tuscany, was completed in the twelfth century. In passing, I might note that it includes a remarkable hanging stone tabernacle, but that’s for another talk. For our purposes I wish to examine a capitol on the second column from the front on the left hand side. Here is what it appears to depict: …at the center, a priest in conical chasuble stands at an altar with a large bowl-like chalice at the center. The priest’s hands are extended in what well may be an epiclesis, albeit with the right thumb and index finger joined.

To his left (our right) is a minister with one hand over his heart, looking intently at the action taking place at the altar. The figure of greatest interest, however, is to the left of the celebrant: another priest in in conical chasuble with his hands extended toward the offerings. Here, I would suggest, is clear evidence of a concelebration in this collegiate Church.

These three snapshots from the sixth, eleventh and twelfth centuries show that concelebration did exist for a little more than millennium in the Church. And while this iconographic evidence is isolated and less than comprehensive by its nature, it adds a visual element which can help us better enter into what concelebration looked like through the late middle ages.

2. The Vision of the Fathers of Vatican II
Now lets jump ahead four centuries to the 1570 Missal. Here, the practice of concelebration has practically disappeared from the Liturgy with the idiosyncratic exceptions of a Priest or Bishop concelebrating at the Mass of his ordination.

The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council significantly expanded the occasions for concelebration, describing it as an appropriate manifestation of the unity of the priesthood. In order to highlight this unity, the Fathers extended this permission in three ways:

First to Holy Thursday, both at the Chrism Mass and the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, to Councils, Bishops’ Conferences, Synods and the Mass for the Blessing of an Abbot.

Secondly, ordinaries were empowered to decide whether concelebration was opportune at the principal Mass in any local community or any kind of meeting of priests. The principle criteria to be applied in the Bishop’s decision was whether
“the needs of the faithful” demanded that the priests celebrate other Masses for the faithful rather than particiopatre in the concelebration. The presumption, then, is that concelebration is the norm, unless the good of the faithful requires their ministry.

In fact, the third edition of the Roman Missal goes one step further by allowing that “all Priests belonging to the community who are obliged, as a matter of duty, to celebrate individually for the pastoral benefit of the faithful may also on the same day concelebrate at the conventual or community Mass.”

And these statements are followed by a remarkable principle, which further develops the conciliar decree: “it is preferable that Priests who are present at a celebration of the Eucharist, unless excused for a just reason, should usually exercise the function proper to their Order and hence take part as concelebrants, wearing sacred vestments. Otherwise, they wear their proper choir dress or a surplice over a cassock.” Usually concelebrate. Otherise, in choro.

In a religious community particularly, the norm, then, is clearly concelebration at the principle or conventual Mass, and even when it is necessary that priests celebrate individually for the faithful, they still concelebrate with their brothers whenever possible.

3. THREE CONCLUSIONS
So what, in fact, is the norm for concelebration in the Church today and does it accord with the vision of the Church?

First, concelebration is the norm. In religious communities, at gatherings with the Bishop, large funerals, seminaries or just about any time large numbers of priests gather, concelebration has become the norm. Increasingly, great attention is being paid by diocesan officials to the decorum of such celebrations with careful attention to the rubrics for concelebration the purchasing of diocesan chasubles, etc.

There are, admittedly, isolated exceptions. But the fact is that the practice, the teachings of the Bishops and the legislation of the Church, while allowing for the choice of priests to celebrate individually, especially when the needs of the faithful call for his ministry, the fact remains that since the first rite of concelebration was issued by the Holy See in 1972, the teaching has been consistent and clear:

“…great weight is to be given to concelebration of the eucharist. Concelebration is a strengthening of of the fraternal bonds of priests and of the whole community (Cf. LG 28, PO 8), because this manner of celebrating the sacrifice in which all share consciously, actively, and in the way proper to each is a clearer portrayal of the whole community acting together and is the preeminent manifestation of the church in the unity of sacrifice and priesthood and in the single giving of thanks around the one altar (Cf. SCR Decree Ecclesiae semper; Instruction Eucharisticum Mysterium, no. 44).

Secondly, this normative practice has been regulated and promoted by the Bishops.

The USCCB Guidelines for Concelebration of the Eucharist were approved by the United States Conference in 2003 and state that

“Concelebration should be understood as an appropriate way for priests to participate in the celebration of the Eucharist, expressive of their unique relationship with Christ the High Priest and of the unity of the priesthood.” And that “concelebration is always encouraged, “unless the welfare of the Christian faithful requires or urges otherwise.”(Code of Canon Law, Canon 902)

Likewise, the Bishops of England and Wales have reminded each of their Bishops that he enjoys the authority “to decide when concelebration was opportune…when a number of priests might be able to join together in a single celebration.” Those Guidelines begin, by the way, with a quote from SC 26: “Liturgical services are not private functions, but are celebrations belonging to the Church, which is the ‘sacrament of unity,’ namely the holy people united and ordered under their bishops.”

Among the Diocesan guidelines for concelebration in this country, one Bishop decrees in 2003 simply that “It is preferable that priests who are present at a Eucharistic Celebration participate as concelebrants.” While another, in 2011, is even more specific: “unless the welfare of the Christian faithful requires or urges otherwise, concelebration is always encouraged.” (GCE #6-7).

Of the fourteen Diocesan Norms I have examined in preparation for this talk, each have expressed the view that concelebration is the norm and private celebrations the exception.

Third, and finally, I ask you to call to mind the morning Mass at Saint John’s Seminary, where every morning more than a dozen priest faculty members gather for the celebration of the Eucharist.

Like all seminaries, we are regulated by the USSCB’s Program for Priestly Formation, no. 116 of which states:

“All priests who are not bound to celebrate individually for the pastoral benefit of the faithful should concelebrate at the community Mass insofar as possible. Priest-faculty members concelebrate when they are present for Mass.”

The Holy See laid the ground work for this understanding in 1979 with its Instruction on Liturgical Formation in Seminaries, writing that “…Mass must be the work of the entire seminary community. In it each and every person is to share according to his status. Thus, the priests who live in the seminary and who are not bound by pastoral obligation to celebrate Mass somewhere else should, as a praiseworthy act, concelebrate. As deacons, acolytes, and lectors should do their respective tasks…”

Which brings us back to Pope Francis, whose rumored actions regarding concelebration and the Roman Seminaries has not yet shown his head above the parapet. Yet the Holy Father’s motivations for such an action have been evident from the moment he warned us about the “unending challenge to overcome individualism and experience diversity as a gift, seeking the unity of the presbyterate, which is a sign of God’s presence in community life.”

So will a new decree regarding Roman Seminaries emerge? Who knows, and such gossip is seldom helpful to the kind of mature and irenic discussion you have invited me to contribute to this blessed house.

All I know is that concelebration works at Saint John’s Seminary and, according to the judgment of the Bishops in most places and most times in the Church of our day.

On Purity

Here is my December Rector's Conference On Purity.  The video is followed by the text for your listening and reading enjoyment.


   

ON PURITY

8 DECEMBER 2017

Why do we call her the Virgo Purissima, Virgin Most Pure? A great question for this eve of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.

I suppose we call her pure because of her virginity, a perpetual sign of her total consecration to God. But virgnity is but the sign of her purity, a single manifestation. What makes the Virgin Mother pure is her total consecration to God. She is completely his, one hundred percent, unadulterated even by the stain of sin. She is the most blessed exemplar of what God has called us to be: given to him, consecrated only to perfect love.

The purity of perfect love. So, what do we mean by purity?

In the same year this seminary was opened a new product hit the market which promoted itself as 99 and 44/100% pure. They called it Ivory soap. The 99 and 44/100% pure was the result of an analysis by a laboratory which determined Ivory soap had not harmful additives, unlike theca stile soap which had been popular up until that time. What sold it was it was pure. Only soap. It did what it was made to do and nothing more.

Like purity baby products. Made to make your baby better. And nothing else. Or pure cotton makeup pads. All they do is clean you face. With pure cotton and nothing else.

They’re all pure, like the freshly fallen snow…All so perfect, because there is nothing there but the essense of what it was made to be, uncorrupted, clean and pure.

Like a beautiful fresh glass of sparkling cold water on a hot summer’s day, just waiting to refresh you. Just water. Fresh, pure refreshing water.

But sadly, sometimes corruption stains purity. The sinful enters in, and before you know it, we are transformed into something other than that for which they were made.

We become distracted by the bright shiny things….and before you know it, impurities have turned what was crystal clear into something quite cloudy and even rancid. And the impurities are usually deceptive in their means of infiltration…even attractive at first, until they getcha in the end!

Terrible temptations, awful opportunities for corruption arise in seemingly the most innocently tempting places. Even when a little boy chases after his paper boat, never knowing what awaits him in the dark sewer, never suspecting what it is.

IMPURITY TODAY
There’s lots of signs of impurity about these days, I’m afraid. Signs that the pure purpose for which we were made has been colored, corrupted and made into something it was not supposed to be.

I think of Beyoncé at the Grammy’s shorlty after she announced she was pregnant. She explained that her costume was inspired by the Roman goddess Venus, the Virgin Mary, and the African goddess Mami Wata.

And who can keep up with the Kardashians? Kim, the one in the middle, recently commented on the ticking of her biological clock lamenting: “I think if I'm forty and I don't have any kids and I'm not married, I would have a baby artificially inseminated. I would feel like Mary - like Jesus is my baby.”

And what of us? Are we so pure? Do we seek after purity. Do we strive to be only what God has called us to be. Are we more often like Mary or Beyoncé? Like the Christ or the Kardashians?

Our beloved Pope Emeritus onced helped us to struggle with this question when he ofeered a reflection on the words of the Psalmist: He "who has clean hands and a pure heart" can stand in the holy place.

“A heart is pure when it does not pretend
and is not stained with lies and hypocrisy:
a heart that remains transparent like spring water because it is alien to duplicity.
A heart is pure when it does not estrange itself with the drunkenness of pleasure,
a heart in which love is true and is not only a momentary passion.
Clean hands and a pure heart: if we walk with Jesus, we ascend and find the purification that truly brings us to that height to which man is destined: friendship with God himself.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Palm Sunday 2007.)
Let’s take just three of his descriptions of a pure heart.

A heart which does not pretend.
Does a seminarian’s heart ever pretend? Do we pretend that we are the master of our world and that God is so lucky we chose him? Do we wrap ourselves sometimes in a protective cloak of narcissism that shields us from the demands of loving others and the obligation we owe to the truth.

I was a first year theologian and scared to death by all of my brothers who I thought were so much smarter than I was. Plus they were always already piously praying in chapel when I got there…and I had to fight just to get up in time....and to make it worse, all the hot water was gone when I got to the showers! And you know, they’d go on and on after class about how brilliant that lecture had been and how he touched on the real secret of reforming the Church and I didn’t understand a blessed word that he said! And then at the apostolate, where I was supposed to be teaching freshman theology, the kids picked up my every insecurity and went for the jugalur until I almost cried.

So how did I respond? But acting like the king of the world! Burying my insecurities beneath a heavy blanket of arrogant condescension.... I came across as the omniscient, who if the pope would have just had the common sense to call me, would have solved all the problems of the world!

While inside I was a scared little kid, petrified of trusting God, and convinced it was all about to fall apart without a moment’s notice. I was impure. Adulterated by fear and pretending I was God to cover it all up!

A heart which remains as transparent as spring water!!
What a great image. A pure heart create for me O God, transparent to my spiritual Director, to myself and to God! But if I had a nickel for every time I hid something from my spiritual director, I’d have a house on the cape! Because I couldn’t possibly tell him I’d done that! People like me don’t get caught doing that! And I couldn’t possibly tell him I started struggling with that other thing again! That was last year’s struggle and I have grown to full manhood in Christ and no longer struggle with childish things!

And those feelings! How can I possibly say it out loud?! The lust, the pride, the jealousy and all the other unspeakable stuff! I’m a seminarian for God’s sake....quite literally! How can I ever let him know about....?

What would he think of me? He would think I wanted to strive for purity. He would think I was courageous enough to be transparent, to give it ALL to God. To open my arms, with Jesus, on the cross

A heart which does not intoxicate itself with pleasure.
Do we ever intoxicate ourselves with pleasure, so we don’t have to face the truth? And here I speak not of sex or money or stuff like that, but the more subtle intoxication of grasping for power, like the grudges we embrace in our hearts and take consolation from in moments of desperation.

The revenge we plot in the middle of the night and the resentment we feel when “he gets what we know he doesn’t really deserve.” The auto-erotic pleasure of creating a world in my own image and likeness, over which I reign supreme. Supreme and impure with the inclusions of my our self-delusion.

REDEMPTION THROUGH THE CRIB AND THE CROSS
OK. So that’s me, and it’s you. God, what a mess we are! Can such as us ever know redemption? Can the sewage which flows in my veins ever be made pure again?

Yes, says the baby who lies in the crib. And yes, he says again, as he hangs from the Cross for our sins.

For the great good news of Christmas is that we, who are called to purity, to just be what God has called us to be, can be restored as the pure sons of God, unadulterated and living only for him.

For the love of the child in the manger is “the purest love of the purest life.” And in the loving it makes us pure.

“Christ came, and comes now, [she writes] that we should have life and have it in its fullness, that we should be wholly human, wholly natural, wholly supernatural, that in all our loves he should be our life...The way to begin healing the wounds of the world is to treasure the Infant Christ in us; to be not the castle but the cradle of Christ; and, in rocking that cradle to the rhythm of love…” (Caryll Houselander, Wood of the Cradle, Wood of the Cross. 1995)

The rhythm of the Child and his Blessed Mother. Purified and made new, whether you are Charlie Brown or Scrooge.

First Snow Upon the Seminary...

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of Storm.”

EMERSON, The Snow Storm.

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

Here is Father Joseph Briody's homily from this morning's Mass.

Our first parents were cast out of Eden and could not return there. The cherubim would block the entrance. The image of the cherubim would also block the way into the holy of holies in the Temple. They were embroidered on the curtain, a reminder that the holiness of God could not be trifled with.  While the cherubim guarded the holiness of the Lord by closing off access, other angelic messengers would open up avenues of relationship with the Lord. The angels of the Lord would continue ascending and descending as Jacob saw in his vision at Bethel. Often the specific role of these messengers was to announce a son where there was no hope of new life, a son in whom the Lord would begin to deliver his people and restore them. Isaac, Samson, Gideon, Samuel and John the Baptist come to mind, most of whom figure in the readings of Advent, most announced by angels, sons conceived in seemingly impossible situations such as old age or barrenness. Such obstacles made no difference because this was the work of God for whom all things are possible. 

Early in Genesis three angels visit Abraham and promise a son. They pose the question: “is anything impossible for God?” This question receives its definitive answer, on the lips of the Archangel Gabriel in Luke’s Gospel when he says: “For nothing is impossible for God” (Lk 1:37). In Genesis it is a question. In Luke, it is an answer, a declaration. It is as though Gabriel is answering the question of his Genesis colleagues back across the centuries, “No, nothing is impossible with God.” 

Today’s reading from Genesis gives a glimpse of the loving purposes of God from the beginning. Even after our first parents rejected him, God did not abandon them. While life in Eden was over, God’s care continued. He clothed Adam and Eve.  He put a mark on Cain to protect him. He promised them a Savior in the proto-evangelium, the first proclamation of the Gospel, where it is said that the Woman’s seed would crush the power of evil: of sin, death and Satan. The happy fault, the necessary sin of Adam would win for us so great a Redeemer! Our destiny was not to return to paradise but to be enthroned in heaven. What the Archangel Gabriel opened up in his announcement to Mary is much greater than what was closed off by the cherubim at Eden.

It would be impossible to solemnize adequately the events described in today’s Gospel, the purity and faith of Immaculate Mary (Virgo Purissima) and the Incarnation of the Word. Before Mary, the world was bleak, dreary, weary, dark, dank, a land where, as C.S. Lewis wrote: “it was always winter but never Christmas.” The Divine Office speaks of Mary as the white dawn before the rising Sun of Justice. The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin was already glimpsed by Elijah from Mount Carmel in the tiny cloud that would end the drought in the land. The hymn for Morning Prayer spoke of a new happiness, yet unknown to the world, that came with Mary. On the threshold of Christ’s coming, even fear melts away. The fear that surrounds the first sin and all sin – “I was afraid because I was naked” - is banished by Gabriel’s message to Mary: “Do not be afraid.” 

The words of Gabriel that became the “Hail Mary,” are the words that opened up the way for the Lord to come to us. The salvation of each one of us is tied to that holy prayer. When we use the words of the Angelic Salutation, the “Hail Mary,” we invoke and appropriate the salvation announced when first those words were uttered. It is no mystery then why this prayer and its repetition, for instance in the Rosary, is so powerful and efficacious. The Hail Mary, the Rosary, puts us in touch with Mary who draws us into the mystery of Christ. It places us in her Immaculate Heart, that heart where the mysteries of Christ were first contemplated, where Christ is formed, and where we will always find peace. 

The last words of the first reading tell us with a note of fatality that Eve became the mother of all the living. Original sin would be transmitted to her children. But Mary full of grace, would be miraculously preserved. “Blessed be her holy and immaculate conception!” we pray every evening in this chapel. The Fathers of the Church were quick to see Mary as the New Eve, the one who is truly Mother of all the living because she is the Mother of Life. They summarized it as “Death through Eve. Life through Mary!” It’s no wonder that great theologians, including Blessed Cardinal Newman, called her “all-powerful” in her intercession. St. Bernard describes the confidence we should have in her when he wrote:

In danger, in distress, in uncertainty think of Mary, call upon Mary.
… that you may obtain the help of her prayers, never forget the example of her life.
If you follow her, you cannot falter;
if you pray to her, you cannot despair;
if you think of her, you cannot err.
If she sustains you, you will not stumble;
if she protects you, you have nothing to fear;
if she guides you, you will never flag;
if she is favorable to you, you will attain your goal.

Death through Eve. Life through Mary!

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee. Amen.

The Eagles at Holy Cross

On Monday, December 4, the Saint John's Seminary Eagles basketball team took on the seminarians from Hellenic College Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. It was the Eagles’ first official game as a team. In a hard-fought game, Saint John's came out on top with a final score of 42-37.

“We have made huge strides since our first practice. I am so proud of the guys!” said Peter Schirripa (1PT, Boston). “Everyone battled out there, and showed great composure in the closing minutes. I love our attitude, our energy, and especially our commitment to one another. We were the more united team, and it really showed when the game was on the line."

The team only expects to improve between now and the big tournament at Mundelein Seminary at the end of January. Reflecting on the fraternity and commitment of the team, assistant coach Steven Restrepo (1T, Boston) said, "The guys are starting to believe in one another. If we continue improving, SJS will make some noise in Chicago.”

Photo, from left to right: Bro. Francis McCarty, O.S.B., assistant coach (1T, Saint Anselm Abbey); Steven Restrepo, assistant coach (1T, Boston); Francis Trewin (2PT, Boston/Neocatechumenal Way); Gabriel Hanley (1T, Boston/Neocatechumenal Way); Robert LeBlanc (1T, Boston); Joseph Moynahan (1T, Manchester); Derek Mobilio (2PT, Worcester); Peter Schirripa, coach and team captain (1PT, Boston); Diego Valdez (1T, Boston/Neocatechumenal Way); Daniel Simard (1PT, Manchester); Alex Boucher, assistant coach (2T, Portland); Matthew Valles (1PT, Portland); Deacon Joseph Kim (4T, Boston).  Not pictured: Nicholas Stano (2PT, Boston).

Great Inside Joke for Saint Nicholas Day...

A Day with the Little Sisters of the poor

I was truly honored to lead a day of recollection with the sisters and residents at the Little Sisters of the Poor in Somerville on Friday.  Because it was a First Friday, my brothers and sisters from Malta joined us for their monthly practice of serving lunch to the residents of the Jeanne Jugan Residence.  Here's a great picture we took right after lunch.

The day of recollection was on "Seeing Jesus with my Eyes and Heart." Here are the two conferences I gave.

Blessed are the eyes that see! 

It all started with Juliana, a Norbertine nun who lives in Belgium at the end of the twelfth century. When she was five years old both of her parents died and she and her sister Agnes went to live at the Mont-Cornillon convent, where the Augustinian nuns took care of the lepers.

She grew up in the convent and loved, even as a little child, to sit there in Church and stare at the little red light by the tabernacle for hours on in. At the age of sixteen she had a vision of Christ, calling her to lead others to him in the Blessed Sacrament. It was a vision she would keep secret for the next twenty years.

When she had reached the ripe old age of 54, the Bishop established the feast of Corpus Christi, for which she had so long prayed, would be celebrated once a year. It spread from there to Germany, Bohemia, Moravia and, eventually, to the entire Church.

Before she died, the great Domincan Scholar, Saint Thomas Aquinas, ahile living in the Italian hill town of Orvieto, composed prayers and hymns for use on this feast, including an old favorite of ours, the Pange Lingua, beginnign with the words: Sing my tongue!

Pange, lingua, gloriósi
Córporis mystérium,
Sanguinísque pretiósi,
Quem in mundi prétium
Fructus ventris generósi
Rex effúdit géntium.

Perhaps the most familair verse of that hymn is the fith one, which we have been singing at benediction since we were little kids:

Tantum ergo sacramentum
Venerémur cérnui:
Et antíquum documéntum
Novo cedat rítui:
Præstet fides suppleméntum
Sénsuum defectui.

Now, I know the Little Sisters of the Poor, the residents of this holy house and certainly my brothers and sisters from Malta, could each translate the Tantum ergo with no help from me….but just in case there are any strangers among us, let’s take a look at the last two lines of that fifth verse:

Præstet fides suppleméntum
Sénsuum deféctui.

Sénsuum deféctui: What the senses can’t perceive
Præstet fides suppleméntum: Let faith make up for

In other words, what we can’t see with our eyes, we see by faith.

In just a few moments, I will raise the consecrated host and chalice of wine and declare: Behold the Lamb of God! And we will respond, looking at the consecrated bread and wine with the words: Lord, I am not worthy…but say the word and I will be healed! We will recognize Jesus in those elements of bread and wine and, like the Centurion, profess both our unworthiness and our faith in the presence and the power of CHrist.

And how do we recognize Christ in the breaking of the bread? Like the disciples on the way to Emmaus, we recognize him with our eyes informed by our faith in what we see.

The Eucharist, then, teaches us to see rightly. Those of no faih could enter this Church and see the fancy gold safe with the little red light and think that’s where you keep your money, or the narcotic medicines. But those with the eyes of faith see their Lord, ever present present, ever caring, ever ready to heal.

Those of little faith could walk in and see in that crucifix a sign of failure, himiliation and discrace. A man condemned to die for sins against the nation, stripped, beatan and nailed to a cross to die. Deemed worthless to a world which shouts “crucify him! Crucify him!” But those with the eyes of faith see in his death the end of all dying, in his passion a lesson in how to love and in his sacrifice, the forgiveness of our sins.

Those of little faith would see in this priest, and aging out of shape man who never had children, never made very much money and always lived in someone else’s house. Some might even suspect him of propensities to molestation, while others would view him as quaint and outdated. But to the eyes of faith I, in all my littleness and anadequacy have been chosen by God to live and act in th image of his Son. His Son the eternal high priest, who consecrates with these hands, absolves with this voice and shepherds with the mind and heart of this unworthy vessel. To those with the eyes of faith, I am the chosen one of the God who writes straight with crooked lines, called to shepherd, to teach and to sanctify this world in his name.

Those of little faith would see in one of the Little Sisters of the Poor, a sweet and maybe even adorabe, if aging nun, who reminds them of a time gone back. To them she appears naive and unengaged in the big and important things of life. They are puzzled that in a world that measures success by how big and powerful and rich you are, she spends her days trying to be little I service to the weakest and poorest of the world. But to those with the eyes of faith, she is a reflection of the light a dark world needs so desperately to see, the loving touch in a world contaminated by brutality and the sign of how to be holy, gentle and true. To the eyes of faith she is a wonder, a miracle and a glimpse of the face of God: a God who is poor and true and faithful.

Those of little faith would see in the woman who has grown old, sitting there praying the rosary and defined more by her yesterdays than her tomorrows. But to the man or woman of faith, she is a font of wisdom, a testimony to love and the hope for what we can become. She is Anna in the temple, Elizabeth with her Blessed Niece and Ruth with her daughter-in-law.

Those of little faith would see in the poor man someone who has nothing worthwhile. Unlike the Greek monk in the story told by Nikos Kazantzakis. The Greek monk who saw with the eyes of faith.

All his life, we are told, the monk had desired to make a pilgrimage to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to walk three times around it, to kneel and to return home to his monastery. Having begged for over forty years, he finally saved up enough coins to make the journey. So he set off, walking out the front doors of the cloister.

But no sooner had he walked a few steps from his cell when he encountered a poor man picking at the grass for food. “Where are you going, Father?” the man asked him. “To the Holy Sepulchre,’ he replied. ‘By God’s grace I shall walk three times around it, kneel, and return home a different man from what I am.”

“How much does a trip like that cost, Father?” inquired the man. “This much,” the monk answered, as he raised up a small sack of coins. “With that small sack,” the poor man said, “I could feed my wife and hungry children for a week…Tell you what. Why don’t you give me the money, walk three times around me, then kneel and go back into your monastery.”

The sad little monk thought for a moment, remembered the Gospels he had heard throughout the years, looked at the poor man and recognized in him the face of Jesus. He handed the sack of coins to the man, walked three times around him, knelt and went back into the monastery.

He returned to his cell a new person, having recognized the beggar as Christ, who had been waiting for him for forty years; not in some glorious shrine, nor in a place far away, but as a poor man, right outside his door.

In the Eucharist, the eyes of faith see Christ. In the priest the poor man, the sister and person weighed down by the burden of their years, the eyes of faith see Christ.

And it is the Eiucharist which teaches us to see rightly with the eyes of faith, to, in the the words of Pope Francis, Pope Francis, “live the Eucharist in our daily lives, as a Church and individual Christians.”

“The Eucharist is not a mere memory of some sayings and actions of Jesus,” the Holy Father eeminds us, but rather “it is the word and gift of Christ's presence here that comes to us and nourishes us with his Word and his life.”

___________

Blessed is the heart that loves! 

Did you notice how dark it gets by four o’clock and how the sun was barely up jus a few hours ago?! There was even frost on my windshield this morning and there are trees and twinkling lights everywhere you look.

That’s how we know that it is the season of “blessed hope and [of] the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.” It is a remarkable season, some say magical. A time of transformation and of hope. A time of waiting. Our hearts wait.

As the hearts of the prophets waited. As those in the diaspora waited. As the sacred heart of Mary waited. Our hearts ache for God, and we wait…

The heart of the addict in the alley waits: for a God who will come and remove all that enslaves him...

The heart of the single mother waits: for a day when she no longer has to work 54 hours, a night when she can sleep eight, a life when she’ll finally know the kids will be ok.

The hearts of the family in Raqqa waits: for a morning when there are no more explosions, and every sound is not feared as the precursor to an assault, and you don’t have to bury your child or your brother or your friend;

The heart of the old man all alone at home waits: for the day he will no longer be all by himself, when pain will no longer be his only constant companion, and when he can once again rest in the embrace of her whom he loved.

Hearts waiting…Not waiting in dread fear, like the Psalmist who cries through the night, “on the brink of the grave…” But hearts waiting with persistence.

‘As one who waits for God as though he were coming every evening…Waits all his life for the God who is always coming…the God who does not show himself to satisfy your curiosity, but who instead unveils himself before your faithfulness and your humility.

As one who waits in joyful hope, as one who waits with a joyful, hopeful heart!

There’s a little line from Paul’s letter to Titus that we pray everyday as a kind of bridge to the minor doxology which concludes the embolism at the end of the Lord’s Prayer. Paul writes that we are expectantes beatam spem et adventum gloriae magni Dei et salvatoris nostri Iesu Christi.

awaiting the blessed hope
and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Waiting in joyful hope, with baited breath, as we gaze toward the Eastern skies in expectation of the one who rises with healing in his wings…

It’s like the Collect for this coming Sunday, at least 1100 years old and first used as an Advent post communion prayer in the old Gelasian Sacramentary

Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God, the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming, so that, gathered at his right hand, they may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.

The prayer is in two acts, each inspired by Jesus’ words in Matthew 25.

Act one is the wise and foolish virgins, who “took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.” This story was so popular in the early days of the Church that it was painted on the walls of a Baptistry in a remote Roman outpost in Syria in the late second century. We see the virgins with their lamps lit (they were the ones who brought the extra flasks of oil) going out to meet the bridegroom.

Several hundred years later, the Church adopts today’s prayer which asks the Father to give us to resolve to run fourth (occurentes) to meet the Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus, when he returns to his Bride, the Church to judge the living and the dead.

The second part of the prayer is also inspired by the story of what will happen at the end of the world. The Lord will return in glory upon a cloud, accompanied by his angels, and the dead will rise. We will stand before the Lord and be separated based on the way we have lived our lives, separated as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. The sheep will be gathered at his right hand and the goats at his left.

“Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’”

This is what the Collect is describing for when it asks that we be “gathered at his right hand, [that we] may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.”

What helped me to understand this ancient prayer was recalling an experience I had when I was in second grade.

It was the day on which I got the only gold star on a paper that I ever received. I think I felt prouder that day than I have at any graduation or the reception of any reward or honor since.

I ran home to show my mother, who kissed me and put the blue lined yellow paper with the gold star on the refrigerator. But I ripped it down and ran out to the couch and knelt there with my nose against the window as I waited fro my Father to return from work. I watched and watched for him for what seemed like seventeen years! Then finally, I saw his old red truck coming down the dirt road and I heard the sound of it coming up the gravel driveway.

I ran out that screen door like a shot and, ,y heart beating a mile a minute, I smiled from ear to ear. Then I waved my gold-starred paper before him to show him how wonderful his son really was! And you know what, he laughed and smiled and swooped me up into his arms and told me I was just as wonderful as I thought I was. And we went in and had a wonderful supper.

That’s what the prayer’s about: about a world that needs to be confident in its righteous deeds and in the love of a merciful Savior. And when he comes, they need not hide under the couch in fear that he will find out about this or that! No. They gather up all their righteous deeds and run out to meet him!

Our hearts wait in joyful hope for him to come in glory, who first came in a manger. Luke said it best and the Contemporary English Version in its her-simplicity, translates Luke’s Kenotic message most closely:

And while they were there, she gave birth to her first-born son. She dressed him in baby clothes and laid him in a feed-box, because there was no room for them in the inn. (Luke 2:6)

The only Son of the Living God came into the world robed in baby clothes and reigning from a feed-box, because there was no room for him in the inn.

This total self-emptying ….And for all its distress and evasion of love, our culture loves “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Cor 10:1) that is born in a manger.

Which is what Saint Bernard of Clairvaux meant by the ”coming [that] lies between the other two.” “In the first, Christ was our redemption; in the last, he will appear as our life; in this middle coming, he is our rest and consolation.”

So our work this Advent, in meekness and kenotic Paschal love is to prepare a manger for the Christ Child. For, in the end, your heart is the only manger worthy of the Son of God. A manger not of straw, but of flesh and blood, your struggles and your sacrifices and the offering of your life.

All your little crosses form the cross bars of his crib, bound by the iron nails forged in the fiery trials which have come your way. Your loneliness and confusion are the straw upon which he rests his head, while your faithfulness and devotion are the swaddling clothes that keep him warm.