Monthly Archives: February 2015

Theology

Holy Hatred? Repent! And believe in the Gospel!

holyhatred

-by Br Humbert Kilanowski, OP (Br Humbert received his PhD in mathematics from Ohio State University prior to joining the Order.)

“Do I not hate those who hate You,
abhor those who rise against You?
I hate them with a perfect hate,
and they are foes to me.”
-(Psalm 139:21-22)

“With the anniversary of the martyrdom of the second-century Roman priest St. Valentine coming up, we hear a lot of talk about love.  But what about hate?

The Psalmist, in one of several passages excised from the Liturgy of the Hours, shows forth his utter contempt for the enemies of God. At the time, when the kingdom of Israel was fighting to survive among several hostile nations and even factions within itself, the people who rose up against God were seeking to take the life of this psalm’s composer. Today, however, the word “hate” is often employed to undermine the Gospel: Christians, because of violence in the Bible, are continually accused of hate-mongering; preaching the truth about love, marriage, and human nature is often denounced or even prosecuted as “hate speech”; and Fundamentalist protesters bearing signs that read “God hates [insert group here]” only add to the charges. With this in mind, how can hatred be justified, and what can make the Psalmist’s “perfect hate” actually a form of love?

When we consider the nature of hatred, as one of the passions within the body and the soul, we see that it is directly opposed to love, but also that it cannot exist without love. For example, it is impossible to love and hate the same movie. I can say I hated the recent Hobbit films because I loved the book and found the movies to be lacking in the book’s goodness. Love and hate often come together with regard to a limited good, so that willing that good for someone is also willing that someone else be deprived of it: thus if I wish for Ohio State to win the Big Ten championship, I necessarily also wish that Michigan may not win it. (Nothing personal against the team up north, but there can only be one winner.)

However, the salvation of our souls is not a zero-sum game, for eternal life is an unlimited good. In fact, if we love God and wish our own salvation, then we necessarily wish for our neighbors to be saved, for “if anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar” (1 John 4:20). Even those who turn against God and oppose us demand our love, as Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you: love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you (Mt 5:43-44).

To love our enemies, then, means to love who they are (namely, persons made in the image and likeness of God). It means to wish them well and, on a heroic level, to do good for them. Yet with this love comes a concomitant hatred, namely, for the obstacles to our enemies’ true flourishing, that is, their sins, by which they love some lesser good more than God. As St. Thomas Aquinas explains:

Consequently it is lawful to hate the sin in one’s brother, and whatever pertains to the defect of Divine justice, but we cannot hate our brother’s nature and grace without sin. Now it is part of our love for our brother that we hate the fault and the lack of good in him, since desire for another’s good is equivalent to hatred of his evil (ST II-II.34.3).

Moreover, advising our neighbors to cease from sin and return to friendship with God, that is, fraternal correction, is an act of charity and mercy. St. Thomas, following Cicero, even classifies vengeance as a virtue in this circumstance, “with the intention, not of harming, but of removing the harm done” (ST II-II.108.2). As we Dominicans read in the Rule of St. Augustine, when admonishing our brothers in community, we should always “let love of the sinner be united to hatred for his sin.”

Thus we should not hate our enemies (and the enemies of God) in themselves, but hate what it is that makes them enemies. This is the “perfect hate” of which the Psalmist speaks, perfect because it goes hand in hand with love of neighbor, hating whatever prevents him or her from achieving the ultimate goal of eternal life with God. Let us not fall prey to hating those who oppose us, but rather, as Pope Francis exhorts,

At least let us say to the Lord: “Lord, I am angry with this person, with that person. I pray to You for him and for her.” To pray for a person with whom I am irritated is a beautiful step forward in love, and an act of evangelization. Let us do it today! Let us not allow ourselves to be robbed of the ideal of fraternal love! (Evangelii Gaudium 101)”

Love,
Matthew

Catherine de Ricci, February, Lent, Order of Preachers, Saints

Feb 4 – St Catherine de Ricci, OSD(OP) (1522-1590) & Lent approacheth…

Sr Mary of the Compassion, OP
-by Sr Mary of the Compassion, OP, “The Dominican Saints gathered around the Crucified Christ”, ~195x, St Dominic de Guzmán and St Catherine of Siena kneel before the Lord; next to them, is St Martín de Porres in an attitude of adoration and gratitude. The painting is in the Dominican House of Studies, in Washington, DC.

Bottom Row 1 left to right:
† Saint Rose of Lima (1586–1617)
† Fra Angelico (now Blessed John of Fiesole) (1386–1455)
† Saint John of Gorkum (?–1572)
† Saint Catherine of Siena (1347–1380)
† Holy Father Dominic (1170–1221)
† Saint Catherine de Ricci (1522–1589)
† Saint Martin de Porres (1579–1639)
† Sister Maria (Mystic living at the Monastery with the artist)
† Saint Louis Bertrand (1526–1581) Top Row 2, left to right:
† Saint Raymond of Peñafort (1175–1275)
† Saint Antoninus of Florence, Bishop (1389–1459)
† Saint Margaret of Hungary (1242–1271)
† Saint Vincent Ferrer (1350–1419)
† Saint Albert the Great, Bishop (1207–1280)
† Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)
† Blessed Raymond of Capua (1330–1399)
† Alan de la Roche (1428–1479)
† Saint Peter Martyr (1206–1252)
† Saint Pius V, Pope (1504–1572)
† Saint Hyacinth (1185–1257)
† Blessed Lucy of Narni (1476–1544)
† Saint Agnes of Montepulciano (1268–1317)
† Two unknown brothers
Translation of the text at the bottom: Stanza 6 of Saint Thomas Aquinas’ Eucharistic hymn Adoro te Devote:

Pie Pelicane, Jesu Domine,
Me immundum munda tuo Sanguine :
Cujus una stilla salvum facere
Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere.

Lord Jesus, Good Pelican,
wash my filthiness and clean me with Your Blood,
One drop of which can free
the entire world of all its sins.

Constance María Rowe, Sister María de la Compaión, OP (1908-1977), was a Dominican religious who stood out for her artistic brilliance. Born in London in 1908, she was the daughter of an artist from the London Music-Hall. Friendly and talented, she soon showed herself as a young promise of art, especially in the field of painting. She studied at the Clapham School of Art and at age 19 she has the opportunity to enter the Royal College of Art in London, which provided her with complete training with professors of excellent reputation. At 24, as a climax to her studies at the British School in Rome, and having just started her artistic career, she obtained an important success by winning the prestigious Rome Prize for wall painting. A year earlier, in 1931, he had taken the instructions of the Catholic faith in the Brompton Oratory; becoming, at the end of that same year, a Tertiary (Third Order) Dominican. In 1937 she traveled to the United States to enter the Community of the Dominican Sisters of the Perpetual Rosary (also known as the Sisters of the Blue Chapel, Union City, New Jersey), she took her religious vows/profession in 1938. This close community has been very respected and loved by the surrounding neighborhood since its establishment more than a century ago.

Sister Mary was known primarily for her religious paintings – including the representation of some saints, fundamental passages of the gospels such as the nativity or crucifixion of the Lord, and prints with religious motifs. He also created works in a wide artistic repertoire: the design and elaboration of printed prints, silver and gold jewels – for this she learned artistic blacksmithing, mosaic altarpieces, confection of embroidered panels, and even accepted the creation of costumes and decorations of an opera for the Department of Hunter College Music, New York, in the 1950s. She also illustrated several books; and in a timely manner she designed an agenda of notes, published in 1948 with great success, with illustrations that made known her thoughts on how art should be approached and her practical approach to religious life.

One of her most important works is a painting depicting the crucifixion of Jesus Christ accompanied by the best known saints of the Order of Preachers, as above. Some of her works, both religious and secular, have served on various occasions for the economic support of the Blue Chapel monastery. Sister Mary of Compassion Rowe, OP, died on December 6, 1977 at the age of 69. Please click on the image for greater clarity

Crux mihi certa salus – The Cross is my sure salvation.
Crux est quam semper adoro – The Cross I ever adore.
Crux Domini mecum – The Cross of the Lord is with me.
Crux mihi refugium – The Cross is my refuge.
–Prayer of St Thomas Aquinas

Given the brutality we have witnessed of late on the news, I turned off the sound so Mara wouldn’t hear.  Her reading is not to a discomforting level yet for her parents.  I can’t help but feel human suffering is more palpable now, than perhaps I have felt before?  We NEED to pray!  I NEED to pray!  It gets me through the day.  It really does.  Lord, keep us ever mindful of Your Passion.  Ever Mindful.

BrIrenaeusDunlevy-160x160
– by Br Irenaeus Dunleavy, OP

Today the Dominican Order celebrates the feast of St. Catherine de Ricci. She’s known for her mysticism and her devotion, as found in her Canticum de Passione Domini. The studentate has translated and recorded the chant for you.

Watch the video above, sung by the student brothers in Ireland, of the canticle of the Passion of Our Lord. It was revealed to Catherine immediately after her first great ecstasy of the Passion. Our Lady desired Catherine to spread it as a form of prayer and contemplation for the salvation of souls. Below is the text from the canticle which is traditionally chanted by Dominicans on Good Friday.

My friends and loved ones
draw near to me and stand aloof

I am shut up and I cannot come forth
mine eye mourneth by reason of affliction

and my sweat became
like drops of blood falling down on the ground

For dogs have compassed me
the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me

I gave my back to the smiters
and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair

I hid not my face from shame
and from those who spit on me

I am feeble and sore broken
I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart

The soldiers platted a crown of thorns
and put it on my head

They pierced my hands and my feet
I may tell all my bones

They gave me poison to eat
and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink

All they that see me laugh me to scorn
they shoot out the lip, they shake the head

They look and stare upon me
they part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture

into your hands I command my spirit
redeem me, Lord, God of truth.

Remember your servant, O Lord.
when you come into your kingdom

Jesus cried with a loud voice
yielded up the ghost

The Mercy of the Lord
I will sing for ever

Surely he hath borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows

He was wounded for our transgressions
he was bruised for our iniquities

All we like sheep gave gone astray
we have turned every one to his own way

And the Lord hath laid on him
the iniquities of us all

Awake, why do you sleep, O Lord?
arise, and do not cast us off for ever

Awake, why do you sleep, O Lord?
arise, and do not cast us off for ever

Behold, God is my Savior
I will trust, and not be afraid

We ask you, come to help your servants
whom you have redeemed by your perilous blood.

V. Have mercy on us, O benign Jesus. R. Who in Thy clemency didst suffer for us.

Look down, we beseech Thee, O Lord, on this Thy family for which Our Lord Jesus Christ did not hesitate to be delivered into the hands of the wicked, and suffer the torments of the Cross. Amen.

The Canticum de Passione Domini consists of two-line verses from Scripture, both from the Old and New Testaments, which a solo cantor chants in Gregorian mode II (2) while kneeling before the crucifix. The solemn, sorrowful melody pulses like the heavy breathing of the dying Christ, and the silence between verses hangs with the gravity of Calvary. The span of time that passes between the verses communicates the reality that God inspired the words of David, always knowing that Christ’s crucifixion would fulfill them. As God was granting the Israelites their kingdom and building the temple, He was also announcing that He, the true King and Temple, would be torn down.

Yet, Christians know that what was torn down was rebuilt in three days. Friday is perfected by Sunday. Those who die with Christ also rise with Him. From the moment of Baptism we are taken up into the Body of Christ. We begin to live like St. Paul who says, “And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me” (Gal 2:20).

Christ’s presence within St. Paul was so profound that Paul bear[s] the marks of the Lord Jesus in [his] body (Gal 6:17). He is possibly the first saint of the Church to bear the stigmata. Another popular account of the stigmata is that of the Dominican St. Catherine of Siena, but less known are the wounds of her religious sister St. Catherine de Ricci.

There’s an interesting relationship between the two Dominican saints. They share the same name, the same mystical visions, and the same wounds. Look for a painting of St. Catherine de Ricci and try to distinguish her from St. Catherine of Siena. They almost seem to be the same person. This is because both women had a devotion to Christ crucified. Just as Christ was joined to the cross with His wounds, so too these saintly women were joined to Jesus by His wounds. It was de Ricci’s love and union with Christ Crucified that led her to compose the devotion we shared above.

The divine favors that both Catherines received announce the presence of Christ, suffering in His Body the Church. While you or I will likely never encounter such miracles, the reality of Christ’s presence within His faithful people should not be overlooked. It should be seen through the eyes of faith. The baptized are taken up into Christ and adjured to offer their bodies as a living sacrifice. By this, the sufferings of this world are no longer meaningless. God has taken on our sufferings and transformed them into the bridge that connects man to God.

Those who mocked Christ on the Cross, beckoning Him to come down, were ignorant of what was being accomplished – His life was not being taken, but He was laying it down for His friends. What kept Jesus on the Cross was not the nails, but His love. No one else possesses the power to choose his or her own afflictions; we are passive in suffering. Yet, the baptized can join St. Catherine’s example. She meditated on the Passion of Our Lord not because it was something that happened in the past, but it was an event that pervaded time, up to her present and up to our present. Christ continues to suffer in His members. Those in the Church, who unite their sufferings to His wounds, are brought up into something greater than themselves.

Pope Benedict explains,

This liberation of our “I”… means finding oneself within the vastness of God and being drawn into a life. . . . [By the Resurrection] we are associated with a new dimension of life into which, amid the tribulations of our day, we are already in some way introduced. . . . This is the meaning of being baptized, of being Christian.

St. Paul’s own words, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me,” were taken up again by St. Catherine of Siena and St. Catherine de Ricci, marking their own lives. Their similarity of life, their union in the wounds of Christ, bear great witness to the living reality of Jesus in His mystical Body, the Church. They also beckon us all to look to the Passion in prayer. Then, seeing what Christ did two thousand years ago, we can see what Jesus continues to do within us.

Love,
Matthew

February, Saints

Feb 2 – St Jean-Theopane Venard, MEP, (1829-1861), Priest & Martyr, Inspiration of “The Little Flower”

Jean-Theophane_Venard

On February 2, the Church celebrates the feast of St. Jean-Théophane Vénard, a French missionary to Vietnam who was martyred for the faith.

Even as a youngster this holy French priest dreamed of witnessing to the Gospel of Christ. He went to study for the priesthood. Then he entered a college for missionaries in Paris, France. His family, whom he dearly loved, was greatly saddened to think that after he became a priest he would leave them. Theophane realized that the long ocean voyage to the Far East would most probably separate him from his family for the rest of his life.

“My darling sister,” he wrote in a letter, “how I cried when I read your letter. Yes, I well knew the sorrow I was going to bring on my family. I think there will be a special sorrow for you, my dear little sister. But don’t you think it cost me bloody tears, too? By taking such a step, I knew that I would give all of you great pain. Whoever loved his home more than I do? All my happiness on this earth was centered there. But God, who has united us all in bonds of most tender affection, wanted to draw me from it.”

After being ordained a priest, Theophane set out for Hong Kong. He sailed in September 1852. He studied languages for over a year there. Then he went on to Tonkin, present-day Vietnam. Two obstacles were in the way of this zealous missionary: his poor health and a terrible persecution. Yet he struggled bravely on. Often he wrote to tell his beloved sister in France all his adventures and narrow escapes from his persecutors.

Famous for having inspired St. Therese of Lisieux, who said of St. Jean-Théophane that he was someone who had lived her own image of a martyr and missionary, St. Jean was born in France, became a priest in the Society of Foreign Missions, and was sent to Vietnam.

Due to the persecutions of the anti-Christian Vietnamese Emperor Minh-Menh, priests were forced to hide in the forest and live in caves. They were able to sneak out at night and minster to the people. Eventually someone betrayed St. Jean, and he was arrested. During his trial, he refused to renounce his faith in order to save his life. He was condemned to death, and spent the last few weeks of his life locked in a cage.

His gentle ways won even his jailers. He managed to write a letter home in which he said: “All those who surround me are civil and respectful. A good many of them love me. From the great mandarin down to the humblest private soldier, everyone regrets that the laws of the country condemn one to death. I have not been put to the torture like my brethren.” But their sympathy did not save his life. After he had been beheaded, crowds rushed to soak handkerchiefs in his blood. Bishop Retord, the local bishop, wrote of him, “Though in chains, he is happy as a bird!”

It was during his incarceration that he wrote many letters, some to his family. His most famous line is from a letter to his father in which he said, “A slight sabre-cut will separate my head from my body, like the spring flower which the Master of the garden gathers for His pleasure.  We are all flowers planted on this earth, which God plucks in His own good time: some a little sooner, some a little later . . . Father and son may we meet in Paradise. I, poor little moth, go first. Adieu.”

In reading these letters, St. Therese the Little Flower came to understand and use the image of being a little flower, whom God nevertheless cared for and cultivated, despite her minute size.

On the way to martyrdom Father Vénard chanted psalms and hymns. To his executioner, who coveted his clothing and asked what he would give to be killed promptly, he answered: “The longer it lasts the better it will be”.

St. Jean-Théophane Vénard was beheaded Feb. 2, 1861.

His severed head was later recovered and is preserved as a relic in Vietnam. The rest of his body rests in the crypt of the Missions Etrangères in Paris.

http://saints.sqpn.com/thoughts-from-modern-martyrs-jean-theophane-venard/

Love,
Matthew

Theology

Treasury of Merit

-from http://taylormarshall.com/2006/06/indulgences-and-treasury-of-merit.html

taylor_marshall
-by Dr Taylor Marshall

“I must admit that this was the last and most difficult doctrine for me to understand. In fact, I’ve only understood it for a couple of months. As an Anglican, I always held the doctrine of the Treasury of Merit and Indulgences as a major obstacle to Rome. In fact, when Catholics asked, “Why not just become Catholic?” I would usually ask them about indulgences and the treasury of merit and watch them back down. It seems that even Catholics are confused about these teachings and may even be a little embarrassed of them. Luther. Tetzel. Catholics don’t want to go there.

And so it was my “get out of jail free” card. The “ridiculous” doctrine of the Treasury of Merit was something that enabled me to remain Anglican in good conscience. As I began to seriously pray about becoming Roman Catholic I still had a major objection to the Treasury of Merit. It seemed so obviously medieval and late. I saw no Scriptural basis. I decided that if the rest of Catholicism was consistent, this doctrine must fit the system, even if I didn’t understand it. So I decided to move forward and accept it as an act of the will.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches this about the Treasury of Merit:

1476 We also call these spiritual goods of the communion of saints the Church’s treasury, which is “not the sum total of the material goods which have accumulated during the course of the centuries. On the contrary the ‘treasury of the Church’ is the infinite value, which can never be exhausted, which Christ’s merits have before God. They were offered so that the whole of mankind could be set free from sin and attain communion with the Father. In Christ, the Redeemer himself, the satisfactions and merits of his Redemption exist and find their efficacy.”

1477 “This treasury includes as well the prayers and good works of the Blessed Virgin Mary. They are truly immense, unfathomable, and even pristine in their value before God. In the treasury, too, are the prayers and good works of all the saints, all those who have followed in the footsteps of Christ the Lord and by his grace have made their lives holy and carried out the mission in the unity of the Mystical Body.”

After I made plans to be received into the Church, I was reading in the New Testament and crossed these words that I had read and heard hundreds of times:

Matthew 6:19-20
‘Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.’

The word “treasures” jumped off the page. Christ is teaching that we can indeed store up “treasure in heaven.” Everytime we do something good for God, we “lay up treasure in Heaven.” And thus there is truly a treasury of good deeds in Heaven.

And if we are full of charity in Heaven, then we would be willing to share this treasury with all, even our brethren not yet in Heaven. And thus we find that the gracious acts of Christ and all the Saints are indeed laid up in Heaven and can be shared.

The doctrine of the indulgences flows from this understanding. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

1471 “An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints.”

An indulgence is therefore a sharing in those treasures “laid up in Heaven”.

It should be stated that the eternal guilt of a sinner is propitiated by the death of Christ alone. The Catholic Church does not teach that indulgences can get you out of Hell or save you. But the progressive sanctification of a Christian is accomplished by cooperation of the Christian with Christ in union with the whole Church. Indulgences do not affect whether we are saved, but once in a state of grace, the graces received through indulgences do assist us as we journey in holiness and Christian perfection.

You may also enjoy:  http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/01/indulgences-the-treasury-of-merit-and-the-communion-of-saints/

Love,
Matthew