Mariology, The Professed

Mary, Queen of Priests

 

Composed for the World Day of Prayer for Priests, 2008 and the feast of Mary, Queen of Apostles, the Saturday after Ascension. It is a prayer of reparation and hope in the face of discouragement.

At God’s word: “Behold thy Son”
Had new motherhood begun,
Caught in the love of Three in One:
O Queen of priests and mother!

Unto His will thine did bow,
And broached love thenceforth allow,
With singing heart and silent vow:
O valiant maid and mother!

Pure Heart! Hide thy priests therein,
Thieve back hearts that bleed in sin,
And vanquished souls in solace win:
Fair virgin spouse and mother!

With thy grace their hearts endow,
And steel them in courage now
To love Love as thou knowest how,
O Queen of priests and mother.

Why say prayers for priests? Because, as St. John Vianney, the patron saint of priests, once said “After God, the priest is everything.” He also once referred to the priest “the steward of the good God, the distributor of His wealth”, and the priesthood as “the love of the heart of Jesus.”

As Father John Hardon, S.J., once said, “praying and offering God sacrifices for the priesthood are indispensably important,” because “there is no Catholic Church without the priesthood.”

“Mary is in a special manner Queen and Mother of priests.
Because of their resemblance to her divine Son,
Our Lady sees Jesus in each one of them.
She loves them not only as members of the mystical body,
but on account of the priestly character imprinted on their souls,
and for the sacred mysteries which they celebrate in persona Christi.”
-Bl Columba Marmion, OSB

“Inasmuch as priests can be called, by a very special title, sons of the Virgin Mary, they will never cease to love her with an ardent piety, invoke her with perfect confidence, and frequently implore her strong protection.”
-Pope Pius XII

O Mary,
Mother of Jesus Christ and Mother of Priests, [Mater Iesu Christi et Mater sacerdotum]
accept this title which we bestow
on you
to celebrate your motherhood
and to contemplate with you the priesthood
of your Son and of your sons,
O holy Mother of God.

O Mother of Christ,
to the Messiah-Priest you gave a body of flesh
through the anointing of the Holy Spirit
for the salvation of the poor and
the contrite of heart;
guard priests in your heart and in the Church,
O Mother of the Saviour.

O Mother of Faith,
you accompanied to the Temple the Son of Man,
the fulfilment of the promises given to the fathers;
give to the Father for His glory
the priests of Your Son,
O Ark of the Covenant.

O Mother of the Church,
in the midst of the disciples in the upper room
you prayed to the Spirit
for the new people and their shepherds;
obtain for the Order of Presbyters
a full measure of gifts,
O Queen of the Apostles.

O Mother of Jesus Christ,
you were with Him at the beginning
of His life and mission,
you sought the Master among the crowd,
you stood beside Him when He was lifted up from the earth
consumed as the one eternal sacrifice,
and you had John, your son, near at hand;
accept from the beginning those who have been called,
protect their growth,
in their life ministry accompany your sons,
O Mother of Priests.
Amen.
-Pope St John Paul II

Marian Prayer of Priests

O Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen,
Mother of the Church, a priestly people (1 Pet 2,9),
Mother of priests, ministers of your Son:
accept the humble offering of myself,
so that in my pastoral mission
the infinite mercy of Eternal High Priest may be proclaimed:
O “Mother of Mercy”.
You who shared the “priestly obedience” (Heb 10, 5-7; Lk 1, 38), of your Son,
and who prepared for Him a worthy receptacle
by the anointing of the Holy Spirit,
keep my priestly life in the ineffable mystery
of your divine maternity,
“Holy Mother of God”.

Grant me strength in the dark hours of this life,
support me in the exertions of my ministry,
entrust me to Jesus,
so that, in communion with you,
I may fulfil the ministry with fidelity and love,
O Mother of the Eternal Priest
“Queen of Apostles and Help of Priests”.

Make me faithful to the flock
entrusted to me by the Good Shepherd,
You silently accompanied Jesus
on his mission to proclaim
the Gospel to the poor.

May I always guide it
with patience, sweetness
firmness and love,
caring for the sick,
the weak, the poor and sinners,
O “Mother, Help of the Christian People”.

I consecrate and entrust myself to you, Mary,
who shared in the work of redemption
at the Cross of your Son,
you who “are inseparably linked to the work of salvation”.

Grant that in the exercise of my ministry
I may always be aware of the “stupendous and penetrating dimension of your maternal presence”
in every moment of my life,
in prayer, and action,
in joy and sorrow, in weariness and in rest,
O “Mother of Trust”.

Grant, Holy Mother, than in the celebration of the Mass,
source and center of the priestly ministry,
that I may live my closeness to Jesus
in your maternal closeness to Him,
so that as “we celebrate the Holy Mass you will be present with us”
and introduce us to the redemptive mystery of your divine Son’s offering
“O Mediatrix of all grace flowing from this sacrifice to the Church and to all the faithful”
O “Mother of Our Savior”.

O Mary: I earnestly desire to place my person
and my desire for holiness
under your maternal protection and inspiration
so that you may bring me to that “conformation with Christ, Head and Shepherd”
which is necessary for the ministry of every parish priest.

Make me aware
that “you are always close to priests”
in your mission of servant
of the One Mediator, Jesus Christ:
O “Mother of Priests”
“Benefactress and Mediatrix”
of all graces.

Amen.

Loving Father,
I praise you, I love you, I adore you.
Send your Holy Spirit to enlighten my mind
to the truth of your Son, Jesus, Priest and
Victim.
Through the same Spirit guide my heart to his
Sacred Heart,
to renew in me a priestly passion
that I, too, might lay down my life upon the
altar.
May your Spirit wash away my impurities
and free me from all my transgressions in the
Cup of Salvation,
Let only your will be done in me.
May the Blessed Mother of your dearly beloved
Son,
wrap her mantle around me and protect me
from all evil.
May she guide me to do whatever He tells me.
May she teach me to have the heart of St.
Joseph, her spouse,
to protect and care for my bride.
And may her pierced heart inspire me to
embrace as my own your children
who suffer at the foot of the cross.
I humbly cry to her: please be my consoling
mother,
and help me to be a better son.
Lord, make me a holy priest,
inflamed with the fire of your love, seeking
nothing
but your greater glory and the salvation of
souls.
I humbly bless and thank you, my Father,
through the Spirit, in Christ Jesus, your Son and
my brother.
Amen.
O Mary, Queen of priests, pray for us.
Saint John Vianney, pray for us.

Dear Lord,
We pray that the Blessed Mother wrap
her mantle around your priests
and through her intercession
strengthen them for their ministry.
We pray that Mary will guide your
priests to follow her own words,
“Do whatever He tells you” (Jn 2:5).
May your priests have the heart of St.
Joseph,
Mary’s most chaste spouse.
May the Blessed Mother’s own pierced
heart inspire them to embrace
all who suffer at the foot of the cross.
May your priests be holy, filled with
the fire of your love
seeking nothing but your greater
glory and the salvation of souls.

Amen.

“I will first, dearest daughter, speak to thee of the dignity of priests, having placed them where they are through My goodness, over and above the general love which I have had to My creatures, creating you in My image and likeness and re-creating you all to the life of grace in the Blood of My Only-begotten Son, whence you have arrived at such excellence, through the union which I made of My Deity with human nature; so that in this you have greater dignity and excellence than the angels, for I took your human nature and not that of the angels. Wherefore, as I have said to you, I, God, have become man, and man has become God by the union of My Divine Nature with your human nature. This greatness is given in general to all rational creatures, but, among these I have especially chosen My ministers for the sake of your salvation, so that, through them, the Blood of the humble and immaculate Lamb, My Only-begotten Son, may be administered to you.”
—St. Catherine Of Siena

Saint John Vianney, pray for us.

Love for our ordained, even the cranky, less than perfect ones, 🙂
Matthew

Catherine of Siena, Doctors of the Church, Philosophy, Saints, Transcendentals

Beauty, Truth, Goodness, Love: The Dialogue of St Catherine of Siena

Transcendentals

The transcendentals (Latin: transcendentalia) are the properties of being that correspond to three aspects of the human field of interest and are their ideals; science (truth), the arts (beauty) and religion (goodness). Philosophical disciplines that study them are logic, aesthetics and ethics…

…In the Middle Ages, Catholic philosophers elaborated the thought that there exist transcendentals (transcendentalia) and that they transcended each of the ten Aristotelian categories. A doctrine of the transcendentality of the good was formulated by Albert the Great. His pupil, Saint Thomas Aquinas, posited five transcendentals: res, unum, aliquid, bonum, verum; or “thing”, “one”, “something”, “good”, and “true”. Saint Thomas derives the five explicitly as transcendentals, though in some cases he follows the typical list of the transcendentals consisting of the One, the Good, and the True. The transcendentals are ontologically one and thus they are convertible: e.g., where there is truth, there is beauty and goodness, also.

In Christian theology the transcendentals are treated in relation to theology proper, the doctrine of God. The transcendentals, according to Christian doctrine, can be described as the ultimate desires of man. Man ultimately strives for perfection, which takes form through the desire for perfect attainment of the transcendentals. The Catholic Church teaches that God is Himself truth, goodness, and beauty, as indicated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Each transcends the limitations of place and time, and is rooted in being. The transcendentals are not contingent upon cultural diversity, religious doctrine, or personal ideologies, but are the objective properties of all that exists.
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentals

“…(Catherine is a) permanent source of refreshment to the human spirit. She intuitively perceived life under the highest possible forms, the forms of Beauty and Love. Truth and Goodness were, she thought, means for the achievement of those two supreme ends. The sheer beauty of the soul “in a state of Grace” is a point on which she constantly dwells, hanging it as a bait before those whom she would induce to turn from evil. Similarly the ugliness of sin, as much as its wickedness, should warn us of its true nature. Love, that love of (hu)man for (hu)man which, in deepest truth, is, in the words of the writer of the First Epistle of St. John, God Himself, is, at once, the highest achievement of man and his supreme and satisfying beatitude. The Symbols of Catholic theology were to her the necessary and fitting means of transit, so to speak. …the fine allegory of the Bridge of the Sacred Humanity, of the soul in viâ on its dusty pilgrimage toward those gleaming heights of vision. “Truth” was to her the handmaid of the spiritualized imagination, not, as too often in these days of the twilight of the soul, its tyrant and its gaoler. Many of those who pass lives of unremitting preoccupation with the problems of truth and goodness are wearied and cumbered with much serving. We honor them, and rightly; but if they have nothing but this to offer us, our hearts do not run to meet them, as they fly to the embrace of those rare souls who inhabit a serener, more pellucid atmosphere. Among these spirits of the air, St. Catherine has taken a permanent and foremost place. She is among the few guides of humanity who have the perfect manner, the irresistible attractiveness, of that positive purity of heart, which not only sees God, but diffuses Him, as by some natural law of refraction, over the hearts of men. The Divine nuptials, about which the mystics tell us so much, have been accomplished in her, Nature and Grace have lain down together, and the mysteries of her religion seem but the natural expression of a perfectly balanced character, an unquenchable love and a deathless will.
-St. Catherine of Siena (2013-07-31T23:58:59). The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena (with Supplemental Reading: Catholic Prayers) [Illustrated] (Kindle Locations 438-454). TAN Books. Kindle Edition.

“You receive all the divine essence of the sweetest Sacrament in the whiteness in the bread. Just like the sun cannot be divided in the whiteness of the Holy Host. Let us suppose that the Sacred Host could be divided: even if it would be possible to fragment the Holy Eucharist into thousands of tiny Particles, in each one of the tiny Particles there is the presence of Christ, the whole God and the whole Man. In the same manner that a mirror would shatter into thousands of pieces, the Sacred Host will not shatter or divide the image of God and Man that you see in the Host; the image of God and Man is in each fragmented part.”
– Our Blessed Lord to Saint Catherine of Siena (Dialogue)

“I do not wish the soul to consider her sins, either in general or in particular, without also remembering the Blood and the broadness of My mercy, for fear that otherwise she should be brought to confusion. And together with confusion would come the devil, who has caused it, under color of contrition and displeasure of sin, and so she would arrive at eternal damnation, not only on account of her confusion, but also through the despair which would come to her, because she did not seize the arm of My mercy. This is one of the subtle devices with which the Devil deludes My servants, and, in order to escape from his deceit, and to be pleasing to Me, you must enlarge your hearts and affections in My boundless mercy, with true humility. You know that the pride of the Devil cannot resist the humble mind, nor can any confusion of spirit be greater than the broadness of My good mercy, if the soul will only truly hope therein.”
— St. Catherine Of Siena, p. 94

Love, Beauty, Goodness, Truth,
Matthew

Doctors of the Church, Saints, Teresa of Avila

Fire within – St Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church

“Because there is a crucial connection in the divine plan between advanced prayer and generous suffering, we may not omit to mention the extraordinary continuity and number of physical illnesses that beset Teresa from about the age of twenty until her death at sixty-seven. While most writers dealing with the teresian account of contemplation may see no particular significance in the saint’s sicknesses, spiritual direction over the years has taught this observer that there is a close correlation between suffering well and growth in prayer depth. Of itself, of course, suffering improves no one, for a person can become bitter in his woes. But trials borne with love and in union with the crucified Beloved make one grow by leaps and bounds. I have noticed this connection over and over through the years. Students of contemplation must attend to what cannot be coincidental, namely, that this woman who reached the heights of contemplative prayer also descended to the inner abyss of pain. From her early twenties Teresa was in daily discomfort, sometimes in agony.3 She suffered from fevers, tinnitus and a serious heart condition. So grave were some of her afflictions that she “always nearly lost consciousness” and sometimes completely lost it.4 Early in her autobiography she tells us that her heart pains were so severe that she felt she was near death: “For sometimes it seemed that sharp teeth were biting into me . . . because of nausea I wasn’t able to eat anything.” Teresa was so shriveled and wasted away from a daily purge prescribed for her that she considered her nerves to be shrinking, and she said this caused “unbearable pains”. All hope was given up for her life, because in addition to her heart problem she was also tubercular. This last diagnosis did not bother Teresa much because the “bitter torment” of her other problems had already drained and exhausted her. She added that the latter “were like one continuous entity throughout my whole body”.5 A little further on she noted that she was “almost never, in my opinion, without many pains, and sometimes very severe ones, especially in the heart”.6 In a letter to Don Antonio Gaytan she observed that “I was going to say I am well, because, when I have nothing the matter beyond my usual ailments, that is good health for me.”7 From a mere factual point of view one must marvel at what this woman accomplished in her supremely busy life and how it was that she lived as long as she did, for while she lacked the skilled medical treatment of our century, she by no means pampered her body.

Eyewitness accounts agree that throughout her life, from her early teens to mature age, Teresa of Avila had a remarkable impact on people. Though she made no effort to achieve notoriety, as a young woman she became a celebrity. At the Incarnation convent, the important people of Avila who frequented the parlors (apparently as a pastime and for spiritual edification) considered this nun the number-one attraction because of her charm and intelligence and holy conversation. When later during her travels she began to speak at rest stops on the road, the men who cared for the carts and the animals stopped their swearing and quarreling because they preferred hearing about God from her to indulging in their customary pastimes.8 Her persuasive force was such that she transformed an everyday Catholic, none other than her own father,9 into a mystic. One can only be amazed that, in a century hardly known for feminism, a nun could have exercised so strong an influence over men. She was authorized by Rubeo, the master general of the Carmelite Order, to found reformed houses of men, and she gave the discalced habit to St. John of the Cross. She was spiritual director to her married brother Lorenzo, who not surprisingly became a mystic himself, and to at least one bishop. Men had so great a trust in her person and her judgment that they would give her large sums of money to use as she saw fit. About this she confided to Lorenzo that “people have such a blind confidence in me—I don’t know how they can do such things”.10

-Dubay, Fr. Thomas (2009-12-16T22:58:59). Fire Within (Kindle Locations 336-362). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

Love,
Matthew

3 Testimony 58, no. 16, p. 353.
4 Life, chaps. 3 and 4, pp. 38-45.
5 Ibid., chap. 5, nos. 7-8, p. 49.
6 Ibid., chap. 7, no. 11, p. 60. See also Marcelle Auclair, Teresa of Avila (New York: Doubleday, Image edition, 1961), pp. 73-74, for a more detailed description of one of these frightful illnesses.
7 Letter 57, p. 144.
8 E. Allison Peers tells us that Ana reports this “from their own mouths”. See his introduction to the Book of Foundations, vol. 3, p. xii.
9 Auclair, p. 77.
10 Letter 19, p. 75.

Buddhism, Mindfulness, Prayer, Spirituality

Sacrament of the Present Moment – Rev Jean Pierre de Caussade, SJ

“The Sacrament of the Present Moment is a spiritual path outlined by one of the greatest spiritual directors in the history of the Church, Father J. P. de Caussade, S.J.

On this path, we learn that Christ comes to us in a new and living way every day, and in every moment of every day. For this reason, our attention must remain focused on all of the events that occur, minute-by-minute, from the trivial to the sublime, because this is how God speaks to us.

This was the spirituality of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph, who did not have access to spiritual directors, the guidance of hagiography, or volumes of theology.

“All their attention was focused on the present, minute by minute; like the hand of a clock that marks the minutes of each hour covering the distance along which it has to travel. Constantly prompted by divine impulsion, they found themselves imperceptibly turned toward the next task that God had ready for them at each hour of the day.”162

Their lives were guided by a pure and simple commitment to the will of God in whatever form it might present itself in each moment of the day. Even though, on the surface, Mary and Joseph were just ordinary people living an ordinary life in the village of Nazareth, we know that beneath this commonplace exterior, they were unparalleled in holiness. These heights of sanctity were acquired through a complete reliance on God’s grace and obedience to His Will in whatever way it chose to manifest in the everyday moments of their lives.

“But what is the secret of how to find this treasure — this minute grain of mustard seed? There is none. It is available to us always, everywhere. Like God, every creature, whether friend or foe, pours it out generously, making it flow through every part of our bodies and souls to the very center of our being. Divine action cleanses the universe, pervading and flowing over all creatures. Wherever they are it pursues them. It precedes them, accompanies them, follows them. We have only to allow ourselves to be borne along on its tide.”163

Those who abandon themselves to this way of life and who live to discover God’s will in the everyday moments of their life do so without the need to question, to judge, to consider the consequences or the causes or the reasons why this or that may happen.

Instead, “we leave God to act in everything, reserving for ourselves only love and obedience to the present moment.”164

And by doing so, God becomes the source of life for these souls, not through ideas or enlightenment or reasoning, but hidden in the operation and truth of his grace as it manifests in each moment of every day of our lives.

“And so God and His divine order must be cherished in all things, just as it is, without asking for anything more; whatever he may offer us is not our business but God’s, and what he ordains is best. How simple is this perfect and total surrender of self to the world of God! And there, in continual self-forgetfulness to be forever occupied in loving and obeying him, untroubled by all those doubts and perplexities, reverses and anxieties which attend the hope of his salvation and true perfection!”165

This brief expose of the Sacrament of the Present Moment should be enough to expose the similarities — and the immense differences — between this devotion and the practice of mindfulness. About the only thing the two practices have in common is that they both call for a non-judgmental focus on the now, but the underlying motives and end of this focus could not be further apart.

In mindfulness, one focuses on the present moment to become aware of it, to escape the doing mode and enter into the being mode in order to awaken to the experience of each moment.

In the Sacrament of the Present Moment, we dwell in the present not to enter into a state of awareness but into a state of abandonment to the will of God…Instead of being about moment-to-moment awareness, it’s about moment-to-moment surrender. Put simply, the Christian remains in the present moment not for the sake of the present moment, but for the sake of hearing the voice of the God Who speaks to it in that moment.”

-Brinkmann, Susan. A Catholic Guide to Mindfulness (pp. 95-98). Avila Institute for Spiritual Formation. Kindle Edition.

Love,
Matthew

162. de Caussade, Father J. P., S.J., The Sacrament of the Present Moment (New York, NY: Harper One), pg. 1
163. Ibid, pg. 3
164. Ibid, pg. 11
165. Ibid, pg. 25

New Testament, Scripture

Love of God & neighbor

 -Pope Francis kisses the feet of Muslim refugees during the foot-washing ritual at the Castelnuovo di Porto refugees center near Rome, Italy, March 24, 2016. Pope Francis on Thursday washed and kissed the feet of refugees, including three Muslim men, and condemned arms makers as partly responsible for Islamist militant attacks that killed at least 31 people in Brussels.

-by Rev Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen, OCD, Divine Intimacy, Baronius Press, (c) 1964

Presence of God – Make me understand, O Lord, that the surest sign of my love for You is a sincere love for my neighbor.

MEDITATION

A soul who lives for God sometimes needs to be reassured that its love for Him is not an illusion. What criterion will give it the greatest certitude? St. Teresa of Jesus says, “We cannot be sure if we are loving God, although we may have good reason to believe that we are, but we can know quite well if we are loving our neighbor. And be certain that, the farther advanced you find you are in this, the greater the love you will have for God” (Interior Castle V, 3). This is an indisputable argument because the virtue of charity is but one; and while it is difficult to verify our love for God, it is impossible to deceive ourselves about our love for our neighbor. We have no need of any great insight to know whether we are charitable, patient, forgiving, and kind to others, and precisely from the way we behave toward them can we deduce the measure of our love for God.

Sometimes we can deceive ourselves thinking we love God very much because we experience certain spiritual joys during the time of prayer. We believe that we are ready to confront any sacrifice for the love of God because we feel ardent desires arising within us. St. Teresa of Avila, with keen psychological insight, warns souls of the pitfalls into which they may fall and puts them on their guard: “No, sisters, no; what the Lord desires is works. If you see a sick sister to whom you can give some help, never be affected by the fear that your devotion will suffer, but take pity on her: if she is in pain, you should feel pain too; if necessary, fast so that she may have your food, not so much for her sake as because you know it to be your Lord’s will” (Interior Castle V, 3). This is real love, and it was exactly in this sense that St. John the Evangelist said in his first epistle, “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14). He did not say, because we love God, but because we love the brethren, for fraternal charity is the most certain sign of true love for God.

COLLOQUY

“O Lord, the surest sign of my love for You is the degree of perfection with which I keep the commandment of charity toward my neighbor. As this is most important, I must strive to know myself better, even in the very smallest matters, taking no notice of all the fine plans that come crowding into my mind when I am at prayer, and which I think I will carry out and put into practice for the good of my neighbor, in the hope of saving even one soul. If my later actions are not in harmony with these plans, I can have no reason for believing that I should ever have put them into practice. Nor should I, my God, imagine that I have attained to union with You, and love You very much, because of the devotion and spiritual delights which I may have had in prayer. I ought rather to ask You to grant me this perfect love for my neighbor and then allow You to work. If on my side I use my best endeavors and strive after this love in every way I can, doing violence to my own will so that the will of others may be done in everything, even foregoing my own rights; if I forget my own good in my concern for theirs, however much my nature may rebel; if I try to shoulder some trial, should the opportunity present itself, in order to relieve my neighbor of it, You certainly will give me even more than I can desire. But I must not suppose that it will cost me nothing. Besides, Lord, did not the love You had for us cost You, too? To redeem us from death, You died such a grievous death as the death of the Cross” (Teresa of Jesus, Interior Castle V, 3).

Love,
Matthew

Buddhism, Mindfulness

Mindfulness: Syncretism?

No Self, No Soul

“…the Buddhist’s concern (in a charitable act) is not for the welfare of the recipient, but for the liberation of the giver from the burden of self.

…not even the Buddhist notion of self is compatible with Christian belief. Just as there is no permanent soul, there is also no “self” because it’s very existence is denied.

In Buddhist teaching, the individual man is made up of five Skandhas or “heaps”: the Body, the Feelings, the Perceptions, the Impulses and Emotions, and the Acts of Consciousness.

“Each person is not someone endowed with these five “heaps”; he is these ‘heaps,’ the bundle of these Skandhas but without any permanent substratum or soul. In fact, there is no individuality at all. Individuality is only an invented belief, a product of gratuitous imagination, a grand delusion. The aim of the Dharma and the goal of the Middle Way is the extinguishing of belief in an individuality. When the individual ceases to exist, the result is ‘extinction’, Nirvana.”101

Nirvana, then, is actually a negative concept because it means the extinction of the self, the end of the processes of karma and rebirth.

The belief that individuality is an invented concept is radically dissimilar to Christian belief in the innate dignity of the human person.

As Pope St. John Paul II writes, “Human persons are willed by God; they are imprinted with God’s image. Their dignity does not come from the work they do, but from the persons they are.”102

The dramatic differences between the Buddhist and Christian concept of soul and self is perhaps most obvious when we consider the eastern belief in reincarnation, a process by which a person continually dies and is reborn until reaching a state of nirvana or the extinction of the self.

Even though its followers embrace this concept, this total annihilation of self is not the most palatable teaching to some Buddhists.

For example, Paul Williams, professor of Indian and Tibetan Philosophy at the University of Bristol in the UK who converted to Catholicism from Buddhism, says he was always unsettled by this teaching and the many facets of reincarnation that just didn’t add up in his mind.

“[B]uddhists claim, there is no chronological first beginning to the series of past lives. We haveall of us been reborn an infinite number of times. No God is needed to start the series off — for there simply was no first beginning. Things have been around (somewhere) for all eternity,” Williams writes. He uses a hypothetical situation of a man being told that he will be executed in the morning; however, the man should not be terrified because he is going to come back as a cockroach in South America.

“My point is this: What is so terrifying about my being executed at dawn and reborn as a cockroach is that it is simply, quite straightforwardly, the end of me. I cannot imagine being reborn as a cockroach because there is nothing to imagine. I quite simply would not be there at all. If rebirth is true, neither I nor any of my loved ones survive death. With rebirth, for me — the actual person I am — the story really is over.”103

Some Buddhists argue against this conclusion, claiming that the person is made up of thoughts, feelings and perceptions, all of which interact with the body in constantly changing ways. At death this stream of mental energy simply re-establishes itself in a new body.104

This does little to relieve Williams’ discomfort. “There may be another being living its life in some sort of causal connection with the life that was me (influenced by my karma), but for me there is no more. That is it — the end of it. There is no more to be said about me.”

Even though he does not believe this means the Buddhist position is wrong, it simply means that if it’s correct then death is the end, a conclusion he finds to be utterly hopeless.

Reincarnation versus Resurrection

Regardless of this inherently hopeless teaching, recent studies have found a quarter of Americans believe in reincarnation, a number that certainly includes many Christians.105

One reason given by some Catholic believers in rebirth is that the Church has never officially condemned reincarnation. They believe this means reincarnation may one day be reconciled to the Christian concept of death and the afterlife.

However, as Cardinal Christoph Schonborn explains, the reason why the Church never condemned reincarnation is not because she may one day accept it as doctrine but “because reincarnation so obviously contradicts the very principles of this faith that a condemnation has never seemed necessary.”106

Church teaching on this subject is quite clear. “Death is the end of man’s earthly pilgrimage, of the time of grace and mercy which God offers him so as to work out his earthly life in keeping with the divine plan, and to decide his ultimate destiny. When ‘the single course of our earthly life’ is completed, we shall not return to other earthly lives: ‘It is appointed for men to die once.’ There is no ‘reincarnation’ after death.”107

This teaching comes straight from Scripture in the Letter to the Hebrews, which responds to the question of whether or not there is more than one lifetime. It clearly states that it is “appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment.”108

Thus, Catholics believe that “Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven —through a purification or immediately — or immediate and everlasting damnation.”109

In order to fully comprehend the Buddhist concept of reincarnation, however, one must also come to understand the belief in karma.

Karma is the law of moral causation, or cause and effect, which is based upon the idea that nothing happens by accident to a person. Fundamental to both Hinduism and Buddhism, there are differing views on exactly how karma works.

The Buddhist views karma as a way to explain why one person is born into luxury and another is homeless or why one man is a genius and another has severe mental challenges. According to the law of karma, none of these inequalities is accidental, but each is the result of something the person did either in this or a past life for which he or she is being punished or rewarded.

While the theory of karma is a fundamental doctrine in Buddhism, the belief is said to have been prevalent in India and Hinduism long before the advent of Buddhism. The word karma, connected to the meaning it has today, first appeared in Hindu books known as the Upanishads, which were composed over a wide period of time ranging from the pre-Buddhist period to the early centuries BC.

The concept of karma, and its resultant need for reincarnation, is incompatible with Christianity.

The Letter to the Colossians states that “When you were dead in your trespasses . . . God made you alive together with him (Christ) when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.”110 (2:13, 14).

In other words, our “bad karma” was nailed to the Cross of Jesus Christ, who reconciles us to the Father, so there is no need for a “redo” in another life. Instead, the Christian works out his or her salvation during this lifetime here on earth, through repentance and the Sacraments, ultimately relying on God’s grace and the Savior who stands at the heart of our faith.

-Brinkmann, Susan. A Catholic Guide to Mindfulness (pp. 57-62). Avila Institute for Spiritual Formation. Kindle Edition.

Love, & good “karma”,
Matthew

101. Wilkinson, Rev. Peter J., “Buddhism: A Catholic Perspective,” A.C.T.S. No. 1537 (1968)
102. Pope St. John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, No. 11
103. Williams, Paul, “On Converting from Buddhism to Catholicism: One Convert’s Story,” accessed at whyimcatholic.com
104. “Dharma Data: Rebirth,” accessed at Buddhist Studies: Buddha Dharma Education Association at Buddhanet
105. “Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths,” Pew Research Center, Religion and Public Life, December, 2009
106. Schonborn, Cardinal Christoph, excerpt from From Death to Life: A Christian Journey, appearing on Ignatius Insight.com
107. Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York, NY: Catholic Book Publishing, 1994) No. 1013
108. Letter to the Hebrews, 9:27
109. Catechism of the Catholic Church, (Hereafter CCC), No. 1022
110. Letter to the Colossians, 2:13-14 111. 1 Timothy, 1:15

Holy Spirit, Theology

Fire in the belly


-Holy Spirit window, Christ the King Parish, Ann Arbor, MI

-by Rev Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen, OCD, Divine Intimacy, Baronius Press, (c) 1964

Presence of God – Unite me to You, O Lord, and may the power of Your charity enkindle in my heart true apostolic fire.

MEDITATION

St. Thomas teaches that love is like fire. It produces a flame, and the flame of love is zeal. If the fire burns intensely, then the flame will also be intense and devouring. True apostolic zeal is the spontaneous result, the normal fruit of intimate contact of the soul with God through love. The more a soul is united to God by love, the more it becomes enveloped in the flame of His charity, participating in His infinite love for men, in His eternal zeal for their salvation; thus it necessarily becomes apostolic.

It would be an exaggeration to say that one could not be an apostle before being thus intimately enraptured by divine love, but it is evident that the fullness of the apostolate, and therefore of apostolic fecundity, will not be attained without this interior flame which is born of union with God. Until we attain this, we must consider ourselves beginners in the apostolate, like apprentices who apply themselves to an art, executing this or that work without yet being sustained or led by personal inspiration. Beginners must act as such, that is, with caution, giving themselves to the apostolate with prudence and measure, because not having attained that spiritual maturity in which the flame of zeal burns spontaneously within them, they have not as yet those reserves of grace which serve to defend the soul from the dangers of a too intense external activity, and which, at the same time, have the power to make all their labor fruitful. St. Teresa asserts that

“as yet the soul is not even weaned, but is like a child beginning to suck the breast. If it be taken from its mother, what can it be expected to do but die? That, I am very much afraid will be the lot of anyone to whom God has granted this favor, if he gives up prayer; unless he does so for some very exceptional reason, or unless he returns to it quickly, he will go from bad to worse” (St Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle IV, 3).

Let us remark that Saint Teresa is not speaking of souls who are taking the first steps in the interior life, but of those who have attained to the prayer of quiet and could well be called proficients; yet it is no exaggeration to say that, in respect to the apostolate, they are still beginners.

COLLOQUY

“O my God, how fervent and strong is the charity of a soul who is united with You by love! Those whom You have taken to Yourself in this way, cannot confine themselves to their personal advantage, and be satisfied with it. Nor would it suffice for them to go to heaven alone, but with solicitude and affection wholly celestial, and with utmost diligence, they endeavor to lead many others with them. Grant, O Lord, that my love for You may have this same effect on me.” (cf. John of the Cross).

“O Lord, when once a soul is resolved to love You and has resigned itself into Your hands You will have nothing else save that it desire and seek to contribute to Your greater glory.

Oh! the charity of those who truly love You! How little rest will they be able to take if they see they can do anything to help even one soul to make progress and love You better, or to give it some comfort or save it from some danger! How insupportable would their rest become for them!

Even if I can do nothing for others by my actions, I can do a great deal by means of prayer, importuning You, O Lord, for the many souls the thought of whose ruin causes me such grief. I would lose my own comfort, and look upon it as well lost, for I am not thinking of my own pleasure but of how better to do Your will.

O my God, as time goes on, my desires to do something for the good of some soul grows greater and greater, and I often feel like one who has a large amount of treasure in her charge and would like everyone to enjoy it, but whose hands are tied, so that she cannot distribute it…. Unable to contain myself any longer … I call upon You, O Lord, beseeching You to find me a means of gaining some soul for Your service.” (Teresa of Jesus, Foundations, 5-1).

Love & fire,
Matthew

August, Doctors of the Church, Fathers of the Church, John Damascene, Mariology, Saints

Aug 15 – Sermon on the Assumption by St John Damascene (675-749 AD), Doctor of the Church & the Assumption


-Assumption of the Virgin, oil on canvas, Height: 237 cm (93.3 in); Width: 169 cm (66.5 in), by Juan Martín Cabezalero, 1660, Prado National Museum, Spain. Please click on the image for greater detail.

-by St John Damascene

“Thy blessed soul is naturally parted from thy blissful and undefiled body, and the body is delivered to the grave, yet it does not endure in death, nor is it the prey of corruption. The body of her, whose virginity remained unspotted in childbirth, was preserved in its incorruption and was taken to a better, diviner place, where death is not, but eternal life. …Therefore I will not call thy sacred transformation death, but rest or going home, and it is more truly a going home … thou dwellest in a happier state.

Angels with archangels bear thee up. Impure spirits trembled at thy departure. The air raises a hymn of praise at thy passage, and the atmosphere is purified. Heaven rejoices thy soul with joy. The heavenly powers greet thee with sacred canticles and with joyous praise saying:

‘Who is this most pure creature ascending, shining as the dawn, beautiful as the moon, conspicuous as the sun? [cf Revelation 12, Song of Songs 6:10] How sweet and beautiful thou art, the lily of the field, the rose among thorns [cf Song of Songs 1:16, 2:1,2]; therefore the young maidens loved thee [cf Song of Songs 1:3]. We are drawn after the odor of thy ointments [cf Song of Songs 1:3-4]. The King introduced thee into His chamber [cf Song of Songs 2:4]. There Powers protect thee, Principalities praise thee, Thrones proclaim thee, Cherubim are hushed in joy, and Seraphim magnify the true Mother by nature and by grace of their very Lord. Thou wert not taken into heaven as Elias [Elijah] was, nor didst thou penetrate to the third heaven with Paul, but thou didst reach the royal throne itself of thy Son, seeing it with thine own eyes, standing by it in joy and unspeakable familiarity. O gladness of angels and of all heavenly powers, sweetness of patriarchs and of the just, perpetual exultation of prophets, rejoicing the world…refreshment of the weary, comfort of the sorrowful…health of the sick, harbour of the storm-tossed, lasting strength of mourners, and perpetual succour of all who invoke thee…’

We, too, approach thee today, O Queen; and again, I say, O Queen, O Virgin Mother of God, staying our souls with our trust in thee, as with a strong anchor. Lifting up mind, soul, and body, and all ourselves to thee, rejoicing in psalms and hymns and spiritual canticles, we reach through thee One who is beyond our reach on account of His Majesty. If, as the divine Word made flesh taught us, honor shown to servants is honor shown to our…Lord, how can honor shown to thee, His Mother, be slighted? How is it not most desirable?…those who think of Thee should recall the memory of Thy most precious gift as the cause of our lasting joy. How it fills us with gladness! How the mind that dwells on this holy treasury of Thy grace enriches itself.

Watch over us, O Queen, the dwelling-place of our Lord. Lead and govern all our ways as thou wilt…Lead us into the calm harbor of the divine will. Make us worthy of future happiness through the sweet and face-to-face vision of the Word made flesh through thee. With Him, glory, praise, power, and majesty be to the Father and to the holy and life-giving Spirit, now and forever. Amen.”

Love,
Matthew

August, Mariology

Aug 15 – Solemnity of the Assumption & Disfigurement of Death


-please click on the image for greater detail

“At Your right hand stands the Queen in gold of Ophir.” – Ps 45:9

The doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven, body & soul, implicitly taught in the liturgy since at least the sixth century AD and explicitly taught by the ordinary magisterium of the Church since that time, was solemnly defined as a dogma of faith in 1950 by Pope Pius XII, the ONLY time the doctrine of papal infallibility has been invoked since it was dogmatically defined.


-by Br Simon Teller, OP

“Sooner or later, my body will become a corpse.

A corpse looks alien. It’s both strangely familiar (so clearly my body), yet utterly unrecognizable (so clearly not me), putting on display the jarring indignity of death, the separation of my soul from my body—the fundamental elements that constitute me as a human person. Death dissolves the integration of my human identity, separating (in a sense) me from myself.

The cold truth about being mortal is that, sooner or later, we all suffer the disfigurement of death.

All of us except one, who, “when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 966). Death could not defile Mary because she was so closely united, in the core of her identity, to her Son, the very Source of Life.

While she gave her own physical likeness to Jesus, Mary was deeply conformed to Him as one made in the Divine Image. She defined her very identity by this conformity: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done unto me according to thy word” (Lk. 1:38). Through her union with the Divine Word, Mary’s heart and soul magnified the glory of the Lord. She was full of grace, full of Divine Life, which is to say that she was full of Divine Love—the Love that the deep waters of death cannot quench (cf. Song of Songs 8:6-7). Because of this, when she came to the end of her earthly life, she crossed over those waters of death undefiled to the core of her being, with the harmonious union of her body and soul intact.

Mary’s assumption into heaven teaches us what it means to be fully alive, truly ourselves, immune to death’s sting, immortal. The true life is the life of grace, our participation in the Divine Life of God, into which we are initiated and in which we are sustained through the Sacraments. When we lose this Divine Life through sin we become spiritual corpses—alienated from our true selves, unrecognizable, disfigured. The Sacraments incorporate us into the resurrection of Christ, raising our spiritual corpses from the dead and making us participants in the undying life of God.

Mary lives now in heaven to save us from eternal death. She is our Blessed Mother, gaining for us the gift of Divine Life through her prayers, now and at the hour of our death. Which is why today, on the Feast of the Assumption, we entrust ourselves, body and soul, to Mary, Queen of Heaven.”

Love,
Matthew

Ecclesiology

1 Cor 12:26 – one suffers, all suffer…

Jesus, You who have accepted me as a member of Your Mystical Body, grant that I may not be in it as a stranger, but that I may work for the good of all my brethren.

“If a thorn,” says St. John Chrysostom, “gets into the sole of the foot, the whole body feels it and is solicitous for it: the back bends, the hands reach down to draw it out, the head is lowered, and the eyes watch very carefully and anxiously.

The cause of all evils lies in the fact that we consider as alien the things that concern our own body [the Mystical Body of Christ]. No one is fulfilling his own duty if he ignores his neighbor’s salvation. If you dare to contend that you have nothing in common with your fellow member; if you think you have nothing in common with your brother, then neither have you Christ for your Head.”

“O Lord, turn Your merciful eyes upon Your people and upon Your Mystical Body, the Holy Church, since You will receive more glory from pardoning many souls than You will by pardoning only me, a wretched creature who has offended You so often. I beseech You, therefore, divine eternal Charity, to avenge Yourself on me and be merciful to Your people; I shall never depart from Your presence until I see that You have shown mercy to them. How could I be happy if I had eternal life and Your people were condemned to death?… Therefore, I wish, and as a favor I implore You, to show mercy to Your people by that same charity which moved You to create man to Your image and likeness so that He might have a share in You and in Your life.

O Lord, I offer You my life now and forever, whenever it shall please You to take it, and I offer it for Your glory, humbly beseeching You, by the merits of Your Passion, to cleanse and purify Your Spouse, the Church, from every defect; delay no longer!… I turn my gaze in another direction and I see the lost souls of countless sinners. My heart is broken at the sight of them, or rather, it is dilated by the force of bitter regret. I am overcome with compassion, and I cannot help weeping for their misery as if I found myself—like them—soiled with the mire of their guilt.

Lord, during Your mortal life, You bore the weight of two crosses by carrying in Your body the heavy burden of our sins. In order that I may be conformed to You, You have burdened me with the weight of two crosses: one crushes my body with infirmities and other distresses, the other transfixes my soul which grieves for the perdition and blindness of so many poor, obstinate sinners.” (St. Catherine of Siena).

Love & compassion, literally “to suffer with”,
Matthew

Summa Catechetica, "Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam." – St Anselm, "“Si comprehendus, non est Deus.” -St Augustine, "Let your religion be less of a theory, and more of a love affair." -G.K. Chesterton, “When we pray we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us.” -St Jerome, "As the reading of bad books fills the mind with worldly and poisonous sentiments; so, on the other hand, the reading of pious works fills the soul with holy thoughts and good desires." -St. Alphonsus Liguori, "And above all, be on your guard not to want to get anything done by force, because God has given free will to everyone and wants to force no one, but only proposes, invites and counsels." –St. Angela Merici, “Yet such are the pity and compassion of this Lord of ours, so desirous is He that we should seek Him and enjoy His company, that in one way or another He never ceases calling us to Him . . . God here speaks to souls through words uttered by pious people, by sermons or good books, and in many other such ways.” —St. Teresa of Avila, "I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men and women who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, and who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity… I wish you to enlarge your knowledge, to cultivate your reason, to get an insight into the relation of truth to truth, to learn to view things as they are, to understand how faith and reason stand to each other, what are the bases and principles of Catholicism, and where lie the main inconsistences and absurdities of the Protestant theory.” (St. John Henry Newman, “Duties of Catholics Towards the Protestant View,” Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England), "We cannot always have access to a spiritual Father for counsel in our actions and in our doubts, but reading will abundantly supply his place by giving us directions to escape the illusions of the devil and of our own self-love, and at the same time to submit to the divine will.” —St. Alphonsus Ligouri, "The harm that comes to souls from the lack of reading holy books makes me shudder . . . What power spiritual reading has to lead to a change of course, and to make even worldly people enter into the way of perfection." –St. Padre Pio, "Screens may grab our attention, but books change our lives!" – Word on Fire, "Reading has made many saints!" -St Josemaría Escrivá, "Do you pray? You speak to the Bridegroom. Do you read? He speaks to you." —St. Jerome, from his Letter 22 to Eustochium, "Encounter, not confrontation; attraction, not promotion; dialogue, not debate." -cf Pope Francis, "God here speaks to souls through…good books“ – St Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, "You will not see anyone who is really striving after his advancement who is not given to spiritual reading. And as to him who neglects it, the fact will soon be observed by his progress.” -St Athanasius, "To convert someone, go and take them by the hand and guide them." -St Thomas Aquinas, OP. 1 saint ruins ALL the cynicism in Hell & on Earth. “When we pray we talk to God; when we read God talks to us…All spiritual growth comes from reading and reflection.” -St Isidore of Seville, “Also in some meditations today I earnestly asked our Lord to watch over my compositions that they might do me no harm through the enmity or imprudence of any man or my own; that He would have them as His own and employ or not employ them as He should see fit. And this I believe is heard.” -GM Hopkins, SJ, "Only God knows the good that can come about by reading one good Catholic book." — St. John Bosco, "Why don't you try explaining it to them?" – cf St Peter Canisius, SJ, Doctor of the Church, Doctor of the Catechism, "Already I was coming to appreciate that often apologetics consists of offering theological eye glasses of varying prescriptions to an inquirer. Only one prescription will give him clear sight; all the others will give him at best indistinct sight. What you want him to see—some particular truth of the Faith—will remain fuzzy to him until you come across theological eye glasses that precisely compensate for his particular defect of vision." -Karl Keating, "The more perfectly we know God, the more perfectly we love Him." -St Thomas Aquinas, OP, ST, I-II,67,6 ad 3, “But always when I was without a book, my soul would at once become disturbed, and my thoughts wandered." —St. Teresa of Avila, "Let those who think I have said too little and those who think I have said too much, forgive me; and let those who think I have said just enough thank God with me." –St. Augustine, "Without good books and spiritual reading, it will be morally impossible to save our souls." —St. Alphonsus Liguori "Never read books you aren't sure about. . . even supposing that these bad books are very well written from a literary point of view. Let me ask you this: Would you drink something you knew was poisoned just because it was offered to you in a golden cup?" -St. John Bosco " To teach in order to lead others to faith is the task of every preacher and of each believer." —St. Thomas Aquinas, OP. "Prayer purifies us, reading instructs us. Both are good when both are possible. Otherwise, prayer is better than reading." –St. Isidore of Seville “The aid of spiritual books is for you a necessity.… You, who are in the midst of battle, must protect yourself with the buckler of holy thoughts drawn from good books.” -St. John Chrysostom