11 Responses to “Those Old Mass Catholics, on the cutting edge with the Pope!”

1. 1 Anonymous Jan 29th, 2006 at 6:16 pm

   At my Latin Mass this morning, the priest gave detailed instructions to those in attendance on how to obtain the encyclical from the Vatican website. I wonder how many at NOs this morning received similar instructions. Then again, we can’t place all the responsibility on priests; the faithful must be more proactive.

2. 2 Iosephus Jan 29th, 2006 at 6:58 pm

   Good story, Doctor

   We had an encyclical discussion group after we got back from Scranton this afternoon. It was a good time.

3. 3 New Catholic Jan 29th, 2006 at 7:06 pm

   Not to mention that this Sunday’s Epistle was ALL RELATED TO THE ENCYCLICAL’s subject matter.

4. 4 Iosephus Jan 29th, 2006 at 7:40 pm

   Indeed, it was. In Scranton this morning, Fr. Longua, FSSP gave a homily all about love and mentioned not once Deus Caritas Est, a somewhat curious thing, we thought.

5. 5 Roseanne Jan 30th, 2006 at 9:35 am

   anonymous…, at the NO Mass I attend (Syracuse Diocese), yesterday morning, our priest/pastor also gave detailed instructions on how to obtain the Holy Father’s encyclical from the Vatican website. He also discussed the contents of Deus Caritas Est. I was delighted, because I had read it on Saturday. You were wondering about that, so I thought I would volunteer the info.

6. 6 Roseanne Jan 30th, 2006 at 10:11 am

   By the way, can someone tell me why the Encyclical has hyperlinks to the New American Bible in the English version? I went to the Vatican website to see what Bible might be used in other translations and viewed the Portugese version, for example, and there were no links to biblical verses. The Italian translation cited something called Bibbia CEI and the French version, once again, had no hyperlinks. This seems like a strange inconsistancy, n’est-ce pas?

7. 7 johnboy316 Jan 30th, 2006 at 12:13 pm

   Who’s Pope Benedict?

8. 8 Anonymous Jan 30th, 2006 at 12:31 pm

   Roseanne, that’s a joy for me to hear. Thanks for sharing (and for your charity in subtly rebuking my bias). [Thank you, Lord, for teaching us humility.] I also confess to you that I have not yet read the enclyclical, but it is on my “to do” list.

9. 9 Roseanne Jan 30th, 2006 at 2:15 pm

   anonymous, may God bless you for your humility, but I did not mean to rebuke you. I am just another Catholic who is trying to sort it all out…By the way, I would be very interested to know what the people who contribute to your blog think of a recent 2-part homily series about the Catholic Mass, published on his site by Fr. James Farfaglia, a very good, holy priest of my acquaintance, pastor of St. Helena of the True Cross Parish in Corpus Christi, Texas. The link to the first homily is
   http://www.goccn.org/diocese/spcl/RefArcB2/03OTB.asp

   and the second homily can be found at

   http://www.goccn.org/diocese/spcl/reflect.asp

10. 10 Father Mark Daniel Kirby, O.Cist. Jan 30th, 2006 at 2:43 pm

    I preached three homilies in succession, on January 25, 25, and 26, focusing on Deus Caritas Est. The nuns and layfolk in the congregation responded eagerly to the invitation to take and read the encyclical. Here is the text of the three homilies:

    JANUARY 24
    SAINT FRANCIS DE SALES, BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH
    Ephesians 3:8-12
    Psalm 36: 3-4, 5-6, 30-31
    John 15:9-17

    January 24, 2006
    Monastery of the Glorious Cross, O.S.B.
    Branford, Connecticut

    I find it fascinating on this feast of Saint Francis de Sales to compare his Treatise on the Love of God with what Pope Benedict XVI has been saying about his forthcoming encyclical. Yesterday the Holy Father addressed the participants in a meeting of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum on the theme “But the Greatest of These is Love” (1 Cor 13:13). “Today the word love is so tarnished,” he said, “so spoiled and so abused, that one is almost afraid to pronounce it with one’s lips. And yet it is a primordial word, expression of the primordial reality; we cannot simply abandon it, we must take it up again, purify it and give back to it its original splendor so that it might illuminate our life and lead it on the right path. This awareness led me to choose love as the theme of my first encyclical” (Benedict XVI, 23 January 2006).
    The Holy Father has been making us ready for this his first encyclical. He has used several opportunities over the past few weeks to speak of it, to prepare our minds and hearts to receive it. The proper Gospel given us in the lectionary today for the feast of Saint Francis de Sales engages us directly with the core message of the encyclical: a love that is at once desire (eros) and sacrificial self-gift (agápe), a love that is at once attraction, union, and fruition.
    Many will be astonished to discover that the Holy Father finds some of the inspiration for his encyclical in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Poetry, and indeed all the arts, are rightly valued and used as the handmaids of theology. Such has always been the Catholic attitude toward the arts. Saint Francis de Sales knew well the distance separating the sensibility of Rome from that of Geneva. The Church of Dante, and Francis de Sales, and Benedict XVI knows nothing of Calvinism’s cold disdain for the beauty that engages the senses. In the Catholic world-view, that which engages the senses with “the bands of love” (Hos 11:4) and draws the heart “with cords of compassion” (Hos 11:4) leads to the faith-vision of “the God who has assumed a human face and a human heart” (Benedict XVI, 23 January 2006).
    In the Treatise on the Love of God Saint Francis de Sales speaks of the effect of what is loved on the one who loves. He calls it complaisance, meaning the pleasure or delight taken in something or someone. “Delight,” says the gentle bishop, “is the awakener of the heart, but love is its action; delight makes it get up, but love makes it walk. The heart spreads its wings by delight but love is its flight. Love then, to speak distinctly and precisely, is no other thing than the movement, effusion, and advancement of the heart towards good” (Treatise on the Love of God, Chapter XIV).
    Saint Francis de Sales compares the drawing power of love to a magnet attracting iron. Dante in Il Paradiso speaks of the love “which moves the sun and other stars.” Pope Benedict XVI, referring to Dante’s three circles of Eternal Light, says that one drawn into the Light by love will discover in Eternal Light’s central circle a human face, the face of Jesus Christ. “God,” says the Holy Father, “infinite Light, whose incommensurable mystery had been intuited by the Greek philosopher (Aristotle), this God has a human face and - we can add - a human heart” Benedict XVI, 23 January 2006).
    The eros of God, that love by which God is drawn to us, and by which he attracts us to himself is also the love by which he bends low to us in mercy. The Holy Father said yesterday that “God’s eros is not only a primordial cosmic force, it is love that has created man and that bends before him, as the Good Samaritan bent before the wounded man, victim of thieves, who was lying on the side of the road that went from Jerusalem to Jericho” (Benedict XVI, 23 January 2006).
    The divine eros and the divine agápe converge in the Heart of Jesus; they are reflected and revealed on his Holy Face. Referring to his encyclical, the Holy Father said, “I wished to underline the centrality of faith in God, in that God who has assumed a human face and a human heart” (Benedict XVI, 23 January 2006).
    The Most Holy Eucharist is the divine eros and the divine agápe in motion. The sacrifice offered from the altar, making present the saving mystery of the Cross, acts like a magnet on the believing soul. By the Eucharist we are drawn into the circles of Eternal Light to discover, in the Crucified, the human face and the human heart of God. It is the Eucharistic encounter with the face and heart of Crucified love that changes us and fires us with a charity that goes beyond mere philanthropy. The Eucharist is the food of those for whom doing good is not enough. It is the food of sacrificial love. Caritas Christi urget nos. “The charity of Christ,” a charity seen and tasted in the Eucharist, “impels us” (2 Cor 5:14).

    THE CONVERSION OF SAINT PAUL THE APOSTLE
    Acts 9:1-22
    Psalm 116
    Mark 16:15-18

    January 25, 2006
    Monastery of the Glorious Cross, O.S.B.
    Branford, Connecticut

    The coincidence of today’s feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul with the promulgation of Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, Deus caritas est, is at once providential and compelling. Clearly, for Saint Paul the ministry of teaching was an expression of self-giving love, an act of charity. “It is in the sight of God,” he wrote to the Corinthians, “that we have been speaking in Christ, and all for your upbuilding, beloved” (2 Cor 12:19). The Holy Father’s encyclical is, first of all, an expression of apostolic charity. He wrote it, and today offers it to the Church, “impelled by the charity of Christ” (2 Cor 5:14).
    Love awakens love. Receive today’s encyclical as an expression of agápe, the love that pours itself out, the voice of charity speaking the truth. Our reception of the encyclical will reveal, in its own way, the measure of our charity. When one recognizes the truth spoken in love, one is moved to listen more closely to the message, to reflect on it, to store it up in one’s heart and allow it to change one’s life. Is not this the very essence of conversion?
    Charity is not vapid sentimentality. Love - charity, agape - translates into concrete gestures, into responses that are costly, that break into our routines, and oblige us to reapportion our time. Love obliges us, in this instance, to make a real effort of the mind and heart to read, study, and integrate the message of Deus caritas est. There is a charity of the intellect: a stretching of the mind, in desiring love (eros) toward the love that bends low to speak to us. This means working one’s way through the text, pencil in hand. It means pausing to reflect. It means asking oneself questions. It means repeating the hard parts. And it means, above all, turning the message received into prayer, so that the message might change our lives.
    Many will do no more than glance at the headlines of the encyclical or peruse it superficially. Theirs is the greater loss: a failure to hear the voice of love ministering the truth that enlightens, inflames, heals and, ultimately, makes one happy.
    The conversion of Saint Paul on the road to Damascus is the encounter of two loves. Christ Jesus, in speaking to Saul, revealed to him the divine eros, that passionate love of God for him, the love by which God, driven by an infinite desire, seeks out his creature in order to raise him up, in order to unite his creature to himself in the communion of charity. Christ reveals himself to Saul as suffering love. “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” This is the love called agápe, the costly love of sacrifice, the charity of Christ’s bitter passion and death.
    The mystery of the Cross is the revelation of agápe, a revelation driven by eros. Paul was not present on Calvary. Unlike John, he did not contemplate the pierced heart gushing water and blood. But like John, he became the apostle of charity, because when Christ spoke to him on the road to Damascus, he recognized his voice, and allowed the revelation of suffering love to reshape, redirect, and energize his life. This is conversion.
    I call your attention to today’s Postcommunion Prayer:
    May the sacraments we have received, O Lord our God,
    feed within us the burning fire of charity
    which blazed so vehemently in the Apostle Paul
    that he took upon himself the care of all the Churches.
    Every Mass can be for each of us a moment of conversion. Every Mass is the encounter with an amazing Love, with the eros of God, his passionate desire for union with us. Every Mass is the encounter with the agápe of God, the sacrificial love of the Cross by which we are healed and lifted into the Trinitarian mystery of charity offered, charity received, and charity exchanged. Deus caritas est (1 Jn 4:16). “So we know and believe the love God has for us” (1 Jn 4:16).

    SAINTS ROBERT, ALBERIC, AND STEPHEN, ABBOTS OF CÎTEAUX
    2 Corinthians 4: 6-11
    Psalm 1:1-2, 3, 4, and 6
    John 15:9-17
    January 26, 2006
    Monastery of the Glorious Cross, O.S.B.
    Branford, Connecticut

    Saints Robert, Alberic, and Stephen were indomitable believers in the possibility of beginning again. When they went forth to start afresh at Cîteaux, they were already seasoned monks, “men truly wise” (Exordium Parvum, I). The account of their deliberations is given in the Exordium Parvum, a kind of chronicle dating from about the year 1119: “Inspired by the grace of God, these men, while still living in Molesme, often spoke to each other, lamented and were saddened by the transgression of the Rule of Saint Benedict, the Father of Monks” (Exordium Parvum, III). Their new beginning was conceived in compunction; so too in my life and yours. The hope of starting afresh enters through a heart pierced by the Word and brought by the Holy Spirit to a godly sorrow. Hope springs green because it is irrigated by tears.
    The exodus from Molesme to Cîteaux took place on Palm Sunday 1098, coinciding that year with the feast of the Transitus of Holy Father Benedict on March 21st. Every new beginning is at once an exodus and a transitus, a going forth and a passing over, a reliving of the Paschal Mystery. This is as true of the many secret new beginnings prompted by grace as it is of the more visible ones. To leave behind what is old - especially hurts, resentments, and prejudices - is to seek God in poverty of spirit. The first monks of Cîteaux are described as being “poor with the poor Christ” (Exordium Parvum, XV). Theirs was the poverty of inner freedom. Saints Robert, Alberic, and Stephen show us that nothing impedes the grace of a new beginning more than a futile clinging to the dead weight of the past. At the same time they show us that nothing energizes a fresh start in Christ and assures a fruitful future more than a single-minded fidelity to tradition.
    Even when we no longer believe in the possibility of a new beginning for ourselves, God remains relentlessly optimistic. His mercy is inexhaustibly inventive; at every moment he holds out the grace of a new beginning. In this is all our hope. It is possible to begin again. It is possible to “start afresh from Christ.” It is possible, as Saint Paul says, to “forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead” (Phil 3:13).
    The Cistercian reform of Benedictine life was held together by charity. The first generation of Cistercians were aware that their monasteries would remain united, not by detailed and burdensome legislation, but by a lively charity. By 1165 they had completed a document ordering relations between the mother abbey of Cîteaux and her daughter houses. They decided that this decree “should be called a Charter of Charity, for its statutes, spurning the burden of heavy exaction, related only to charity and the welfare of souls in things human and divine” (Charter of Charity).
    This Cistercian description of charity - that which seeks the welfare of souls in things human and divine - is echoed for us in the Holy Father’s encyclical, Deus caritas est. In the conclusion of the encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI speaks of the distinctively monastic exercise of charity. The Holy Father says this: “The entire monastic movement, from its origins with Saint Anthony the Abbot (+ 356), expresses an immense service of charity towards neighbour. In his encounter ‘face to face’ with the God who is Love, the monk senses the impelling need to transform his whole life into service of neighbour, in addition to service to God. This explains the great emphasis on hospitality, refuge and care of the infirm in the vicinity of monasteries” (Deus caritas est, 40).
    Today’s Gospel ends with the new commandment of Christ: “This I command you, to love one another” (Jn 15:17). The holy Abbots of Cîteaux chose a rigorous fidelity to the Rule of Saint Benedict and to tradition because they knew of no better means to purify the spiritual potential of eros - desire for God - and no better way to remove the obstacles to self-sacrificing love, agápe.
    As abbots - fathers of souls - Saints Robert, Alberic, and Stephen had to be, more than anything else, men of hope, teaching by their fidelity from one day to the next, “never to despair of God’s mercy” (RB 4:74). The mercy of God is his agápe in the face of our misery, his agápe coming to meet us in our brokenness and sins. The Eucharist is just that. Pope Benedict writes that, in the Eucharist, “God’s own agápe comes to us bodily in order to continue his work in us and through us” (Deus caritas est, 14). Let us approach the Holy Mysteries today impelled by a holy eros, by what Saint Benedict calls “the joy of spiritual desire” (RB 49:7). It is the agápe of God tasted in the Eucharist, that makes us, like Saints Robert, Alberic, and Stephen, bold enough to start afresh.

11. 11 Anonymous Feb 1st, 2006 at 10:02 am

    Dear Father, thank you for sharing your homilies. I will have to get to Branford, CT someday.

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