Saturday, July 13, 2013

Collect of the Day: Eighth Sunday After Pentecost

The Eighth Sunday After Pentecost



O God, we ponder Your kindness within Your temple. As Your name, O God, so also Your praise reaches to the ends of the earth. Of justice Your right hand is full. (Ps 47. 10-11)Great is the Lord and wholly to be praised in the city of our God, His holy mountain. (Ps 4. 2) V. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.R. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.O God, we ponder Your kindness within Your temple. As Your name, O God, so also Your praise reaches to the ends of the earth. Of justice Your right hand is full.(The Introit of the Day's Mass)




Collect of the Day

Larg re nobis, qu sumus, D mine, semper sp ritum cogit ndi qurecta sunt, prop tius, et ag ndi: ut, qui sine te esse non p ssumus, sec ndum te vivere vale mus. Per D mminum



Graciously grant to us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the spirit to think and do always such things as are rightful: that we, who cannot exist without Thee, may be enabled to live according to Thy will. Through



Not only are we incapable, of ourselves, of doing any good work, but, without the help of grace, we cannot even have a thought of supernatural good. Now, the surest means for obtaining the help that is so needed by us is to acknowledge humbly before God that we depend entirely upon Him.

-Dom Prosper Gu ranger, O.S.B.



Image from the first Mass of Fr Marek Grabowski, FSSP,



Epistle - Romans, 8. 12-17

Brethren: We are debtors, not to the flesh, that we should live according to the flesh, for if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live. For whoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. Now you have not received a spirit of bondage so as to be again in fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons, by virtue of which we cry, Abba! Father! The Spirit Himself gives testimony to our spirit that we are sons of God. But if we are sons, we are heirs also: heirs indeed of God and joint heirs with Christ.

FromTHE LITURGICAL YEARby Dom Gu ranger, O.S.B.

The apostle and doctor of the Gentiles here goes on, forming to the Christian life the new recruits, whom his own voice and that of his fellow apostles, dispersed as they are throughout the world, are every day leading, by hundreds, to the fount of salvation. Although the Church is all attention to the events which are preparing for Judea, yet is she full of maternal solicitude for the great work of training those children whom she has given to her divine Spouse. Whilst Israel is obstinate in his fatal refusal to accept the Messiah, another family is growing up in his place; and, by its docility, richly repays our Lord for all the rebellion and slights offered Him by the children He had first made His chosen ones. They were the ancient people, and are jealous of others being now called to the same privilege. The contradictions of which Christ complains in the Psalm are anything but over; and yet, thanks to the Church, the Man-God is already the Head of the Gentiles.



Admirable is the fruitfulness of the bride; for wonderful is the power of sanctification which she is using all through the world of various nations. Scarcely has she sprung into her beauteous existence, than she offers to her Lord and her King a new empire, consolidated in unity of love; she presents Him with a generation that is all pure in the intelligence and practice of every virtue. It is quite true, that the Holy Ghost acts directly on the souls of the newly baptized; but there is something else to be considered in the divine plan. It is this: the Word, having been made flesh, and having taken to Himself a bride (which is the visible Church on earth), whom He has made His associate in the work of man's salvation, has willed that the invisible operation of the divine Spirit, who proceeds from Him (the Word, shall not be in its normal state, unless there be added to it the extrinsic cooperation and intervention of this His bride. Not only is the Church the depository of those all-potent formulas and mysterious rites which change man's heart into a new soil, cleansing it from thorns and weeds, making it able to produce a hundredfold, but she also sows the seed of the divine husbandman into that same soil, by her countless modes of teaching the truth. To the Holy Ghost, indeed, a magnificent share is due of that fecundity and that social life of the Church; still, her portion of work is exquisite; it deals with the elect taken as individuals, and consists especially in bringing them to profit by the divine energies of the sacraments which she administers, and in developing the germs of salvation which her teaching plants in their souls.



How important, then, and sublime will ever be that mission, which is confided to those men who are set over particular churches, as teachers or directors of souls; they represent, to these isolated congregations, the common mother of all the faithful, for, in her name, they really provide for the holy Spirit those elements upon which He is to make His all-powerful action felt. For that very same reason, woe to those times when the dispensers of the divine word, having themselves nought but halved or false principles, give but weak, shriveled seed to the souls entrusted to them! The holy Ghost is not bound to supply their insufficiency; ordinarily speaking, He does not supply it, for such is not the way established by Christ for the sanctification of the members of His Church.



The common mother, however, has a supplementary aid for such of her children as may be thus treated; it is her liturgy. There they will find, not only the holy sacrifice which will support them, and the graces of the Sacrament of love which will nourish spiritual life within them, but, moreover, the surest rule of conduct, and the sublimest teachings of every virtue. Such souls as these have perhaps the idea that the poor subjective system they have made for themselves is the royal road to perfection; but, if they be of an earnest good will, desirous to find the best way, God will, some happy day, lead them to find, and finding, to appreciate, the inexhaustible and divinely given treasures of the Church's liturgy; possessing and enriching themselves with these, they will soon put aside what the prophet Isaias terms bread without strength, and water without power. The same prophet would thus urge them, in the Church's name, to what is best: "All ye that thirst, come to the waters! And ye that have no money, make haste, buy, and eat. Come ye! Buy wine and milk, without money, and without any price. Why spend ye money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which doeth not satisfy you? Hearken diligently to me, and eat that which is good, and your soul shall be delighted in fatness!" And truly there is a fact which should rouse, both to attention and gratitude, any Christian who longs to be enlightened as to the best way of getting to heaven: this fact is, that the Church herself has made a selection, for our reading, from the treasury of the Scriptures, and, in her missal, which she puts into our hands, she has inserted practical teachings from the same divine Books, which she knew were best suited to the wants of her children. A Christian, who is humbly and devoutly assiduous in the study of this admirable book of the liturgy, will abound in spiritual knowledge. His guide will say to him, and with a well-grounded assurance: "This is the way; walk in it! And go not aside, neither to the right, nor to the left!" We have no need to wonder at all this; for, in the guidance of souls, the Church is far superior to the most learned doctors and to the greatest saints, all of whom were humble disciples in her school.



Let us put together the few lines which have been read to us as the Epistles of the last three Sundays, taken from that written by St. Paul to the Romans. To say nothing of their infallible truth as being inspired by the Holy Ghost, could we have had any exposition of the principles of revealed morality which could be compared to it? Clearness, simplicity of diction, earnest vehemence of exhortation--all are prefect in these few words; and yet, they are but the outward expression of the sublimest truths of Christian dogma. Let us make the barest possible summary of what these three Epistles have taught us; and we shall see how grand they are. Christ Jesus, foundation of man's salvation; His death and burial made, in Baptism, the regeneration of man; His life in God, the model of our own; the disgrace of our enslaved bodies and its removal; the sanctifying fruitfulness of every virtue substituted in our members for the poisonous roots of all vices; and, on this very Sunday, the pre-eminence of the spirit over the flesh; the duties incumbent on our spirit, if she is to maintain her superiority; what man must do, if he would preserve the liberty bestowed on him by the Spirit of love, and prove himself to be, what he really is, a son of God and joint-heir of Christ. Yes, these are the splendid realities, which are henceforth to light up in us the law of the spirit of life (that is, the law of the life we are to live by the Spirit) in Christ Jesus; these are the axioms of the science of salvation now taught to the whole world, which are to be substituted for both the weaknesses of the Jewish law and empty ethics of philosophers.



For, the leading idea which pervades the whole of this sublime Epistle to the Romans is this: man, unaided by grace, is incapable of producing perfect justice and absolute good. Experience has proved it, St. Paul teaches it, the fathers, will later on, unanimously assert it, and the Church, in her Councils, will define it. True, by the mere powers of his fallen nature, man may come to the knowledge of some truths, and to the practice of some virtues; but, without grace, he can never know and still less observe, the precepts of even the natural law, if they are taken as a whole.



From Jesus, then, from Jesus alone, comes all justice. Not only is supernatural justice, which supposes the infusion of sanctifying grace in the sinner's soul, wholly from Him; but even that natural justice, of which men are so proud, which they say is quite enough without anything else, soon leaves one who does not cling to Christ by faith and love. Our modern world has a pompous phrase about the "the independence of the human mind"; let those who pretend to acknowledge no other goodness but that, go on with their boasting of being moral and honest men; but, as to us Christians, we believe what our mother the Church teaches us; and, agreeably to such teaching, we believe that "a moral and honest man," that is to say, a man who lives up to all the duties of which nature puts upon him, can only be such here below by a special aid of our Redeemer and Saviour Christ Jesus. With St. Paul, therefore, let us be proud of the Gospel; for, as he calls it, it is the power of God, not only to justify the ungodly, but also to enrich souls, that thirst after what is right, with an active and perfect justice. "The just man," says the same apostle, "liveth by faith"; and according to the growth of his faith, so is his growth in justice. Without faith in Christ, the pretension to reach perfection in good, by one's own power and works, produces nothing but the stagnation of pride and the wrath of God.



The Jews are a proof of it. Proud of their Law, which gave them light greater than that enjoyed by the Gentiles, and wishing to make their whole virtue consist in the possession of that Law, they have rejected Him who was the end of the Law, and the source of all holiness; they have refused to accept the Christ, who not only delivered them from their previous misery, but also brought them the knowledge of what would save them, and the strength to fulfill it; they have continued in their iniquity, adding sin upon sin to that contracted from their first parents, and thus "treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath." Now is being fulfilled the prediction of Isaias, whose words might very appropriately have been used by the faithful few of Israel, as they fled from Jerusalem: "Except the Lord of hosts had left us seed, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like to Gomorrha."



"What, then, shall we say?" asks the apostle; and he answers his own question thus: "That the Gentiles, who followed not after justice, have attained to justice, even the justice that is of faith. But Israel, by following after the law of justice, is not come unto the law of justice. Why so? Because they sought it, not by faith, but as it were of works; for they stumbled at the stumbling-stone, as it is written: 'Behold! I lay in Sion a stumbling-stone and a rock of scandal; and whosoever believeth in Him, shall not be confounded.'"



The Gradual seems to express the sentiments of the Jewish converts, who had to depart from their cities; they might thus have besought God to be henceforth their protector and a place of refute where they might be safe. The Alleluia-versicle again sings of the glory that was once given to the Lord in Jerusalem, especially on the holy mountain where His temple was built.



Be my rock of refuge, O God, a stronghold to give me safety. (Ps 3. 3)V. In You, O God, I take refuge; O Lord, let me never be put to shame. (Ps 70. 1)Alleluia, alleluia.V. Great is the Lord and wholly to be praised in the city of our God, His holy mountain. (Ps. 47. 2) Alleluia.



St. Elizabeth Distributing Alms to the Poor by 1736



Gospel - St. Luke, 16. 1-19

At that time, Jesus spoke to His disciples this parable: There was a certain rich man who had a steward, who was reported to him as squandering his possessions. And he called him and said to him, 'What is this that I hear of you? Make an accounting of your stewardship, for you can be steward no longer.' And the steward said within himself, 'What shall I do, seeing that my master is taking away the stewardship from me? To dig I am not able; to beg I am ashamed. I know what I shall do, that when I am removed from my stewardship they may receive me into their houses.' And he summoned each of his master's debtors and said to the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' And he said, 'A hundred jars of oil.' He said to him, 'Take your bond and sit down at once and write fifty.' Then he said to another, 'How much do you owe?' He said, 'A hundred kors of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bond and write eighty.' And the master commended the unjust steward, in that he had acted prudently; for the children of this world, in relation to their own generation, are more prudent than the children of the light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves with the mammon of wickedness, so that when you fail they may receive you into the everlasting dwellings.



FromTHE LITURGICAL YEARby Dom Gu ranger, O.S.B.

The several parts of the parable here proposed to us are easy to be understood, and convey a deep teaching. God alone is rich by nature, for to Him alone belongs the direct and absolute dominion over all things: they are His, because He made them. But, by sending His Son into the world under a created form, He, by this temporal mission, appointed Him heir to all the works of His hands, just as truly as He already was owner of the riches of the divine Nature because of His eternal generation. The rich man, then, of our Gospel is Jesus, who, in His sacred Humanity, united to the Word, is heir of all things, and, as such, all things of the most high God, created or uncreated, finite or infinite, belong to Him. To Him belong the heavens which proclaim His glory, and which, as long as they last, clothe Him with their garment of light; to Him the ocean, whose surges are but a voice that speaks His praise, and hushes the fury of its tempests when He bids it be still; to Him the earth, which gladly offers Him the homage of all its fullness. The grass and flowers of the meadows, the varied fruits, the fertile loveliness of the meadows, the birds of the air and fishes that inhabit the rivers, or that sport in the paths of the sea; the huge oxen as well as the tiniest insect that lives; the wild beasts of the forest or mountain; all are His, all are subjects to His rule. Silver, too, is His, and gold is His; and man, too, is His, and would have been eternally His servant, had not Jesus mercifully vouchsafed to divinize him, and make him a partaker of His own eternal happiness and riches.



Instead of our being His slaves or servants, He would have us be His brothers; and, when He returned from this world to His Father, whom He had also made to be ours by the grace He had infused into us, He sent us the Holy Ghost, who should bear testimony to us that we are the sons of God, and be to us the pledge of our sacred inheritance, heaven. O ineffable riches of the world to come! O inheritance the fullest that ever was! Our Jesus Himself is all joy at the sight of it, and, in the psalm of His Resurrection, He gives expression to that joy. We, His members and joint-heirs, have a right to repeat those words after Him, and say: "The lines are fallen unto me in goodly places; for my inheritance is goodly to me, for the Lord Himself is my portion! I will bless Him for having given me to understand my happiness!"



But, in order that we may attain to those eternal riches, there is a condition imposed on us: we must turn to profit the visible domain of Christ; we must see that it is used in His service. The future rewards we are to have in heaven depend upon the greater or less fidelity wherewith we have employed our share of these inferior good things, for they are entrusted to us, to each of us in the measure which seemed good in God's eyes. What a divine agreement has been drawn up for us! What perfect adjustment between justice and love! Our Lord Jesus Christ has divided His property into two portions; He gives the eternal portion unreservedly to us; it is the only one that is truly great, the only one that is capable of contenting our infinite longings. As to the other portion, which, in itself, would not be worthy of the attention of the divine essence, He could not think of allowing us to set our hearts on it, neither will He permit us to have absolute dominion over it. The real possession of temporal goods belongs, therefore, to Him alone; the ownership of earthly riches, which He permits to the future joint-heirs of His own blissful eternity, is subject to numberless restrictions during their life-time, and, at their death, exhibits its essentially precarious tenure, by not being able to follow its owner beyond the grave.



For the fool, as well as for the wise man, the day will come when his soul will be required of him; and when the rich man, as well as the poor, will be brought before his Maker, exactly as he was on the day of his first entrance into the world, and it will be said to him: "Give an account of thy stewardship!" At that dread hour, the rule observed for the judgment will be that which our Lord revealed to us during His mortal life: "Unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required; and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more." Woe, at that hour, to the servant who has comported himself as though he were the absolute master! Woe to the steward who, disregarding the trust assigned to him, has done just what his own whim suggested with the goods of which he was only the dispenser! When the light of eternity shall be upon him, he will understand the error of his foolish pride. He will see the shameful injustice of a life which the world perhaps thought a very decent one, but which was spent without the slightest regard to God's intentions in giving him the riches of which he boasted. He will then be entirely deprived of them all; neither will it be then in his power to make a better use of them for the future--that is, a use more in accordance with the desirings of God. If he might, at least, make some restitution for the goods he has abused; if he might sue for aid from those with whom he lived upon earth! But, no! When time is over, labour is over too. He has nothing to show for all his riches; he is powerless; and when he goes before that dread tribunal, where every man is afraid that he cannot put his own accounts right, whom can he get to help him?



Happy, therefore, if, now that time is still granted him, he would allow the thousand calls of God to awaken him from his false conscience. Happy if, like the steward mentioned in our Gospel, he would profit by the days he has still to live, and would say to himself those words of Job: "What shall I do, when God shall rise to judge? And, when He shall examine, what shall I answer Him?"



This very Judge, whom he so rightly fears, now most mercifully points out to him how he may escape the punishment due to his past mal-administration. Let him imitate the prudence of the unjust steward, and he will have praise for it from his Lord; not only because of his prudence, but because by thus spreading over God's servants the riches that were entrusted to his care, far from robbing his divine Master, he acts in strict accordance with His wishes. "Who thinkest thou," asks our Lord, "is the faithful and wise steward, whom his Lord sitteth over His family, to give them, in due time, their measure of wheat and oil?" Alms, whether corporal or spiritual, secure us powerful friends for that awful day of our death and judgment. It is to the poor that the kingdom of heaven belongs; so that if we spend the riches of this present life in solacing the sufferings of the poor now that they are living here below, afterwards they will not fail to make us a return by receiving us into their future homes, the everlasting dwellings of heaven.



Such is the immediate and obvious meaning of the parable given to us today. But if we would go further--if we would understand the whole intention of the Church in her choice of the present Gospel--we must listen to St. Jerome, whose homily for last night's Office is put before us as the official interpretation of the sacred text. Let us first listen to the words of Scripture which the saint quotes (they immediately follow those of our Gospel): "He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in that which is greater; and he that is unjust in what which is little, is unjust also in that which is greater. If, then, ye have not been faithful in the unjust mammon, who will trust you with that which is the true?" These words, says St. Jerome, were said in the presence of the scribes and Pharisees; they felt that the parable was intended for them; and they derided the divine preacher. The one that was "unjust in that which is little" is the jealous Jew, who, in the limited possession of the present life, refuses to his fellow-men the use of those goods which were created for all. If, then, you avaricious scribes are convicted of al-administration in the management of temporal riches, who can you expect to have confided to you the true, the enteral, riches of the divine word, and the teaching of the Gentiles? Terrible question, which our Lord leaves thus unanswered; let these unjust stewards, the depositaries of the figurative law, deride Jesus as much as they please, and pretend that His question does not refer to them; they will soon receive the true answer, the ruin of Jerusalem.



Meanwhile, the little humble flock of the elect of Juda, leaving these hard-hearted men to the vengeance which their proud madness is hurrying on, is continuing its journey, knowing that the promises of Sion belong to it. The Offertory-anthem is the expression of their faith and their hope.



Lowly people You save, O Lord, but haughty eyes You bring low; for who is God except You, O Lord? (Ps 17:28, 32.)



Detail from the Polyptych of the Apocalypse (central panel) by , 1390



THE SECRETAccept, we beseech You, O Lord, the gifts which we bring to You out of Your own bounty, so that these most holy sacramental rites may, by the power of Your grace, sanctify us in the conduct of our present life, and lead us to everlasting joy. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

THE COMMUNION VERSE

Taste and see how good the Lord is; happy the man who takes refuge in Him. (Ps 33. 9)

THE POST-COMMUINION

Let us pray. May the heavenly sacrament, O Lord, renew our minds and bodies, so that we may feel the benefit of the worship we perform. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

FROM A HOMILY BY ST. GREGORY THE GREAT

The Lord then goes on to say: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. This hunger is not for bodily food, this thirst is not for any earthly drink: it is a longing to be blessed with righteousness, and, by penetrating the secret of all mysteries, to be filled with the Lord himself.



Happy is the soul that longs for the food of righteousness and thirsts for this kind of drink; it would not seek such things if it had not already savoured their delight. When the soul hears the voice of the Spirit saying to it through the prophet: Taste and see that the Lord is good, it has already received a portion of God's goodness, and is on fire with love, the love that gives joy of the utmost purity. It counts as nothing all that belongs to time; it is entirely consumed with desire to eat and drink the food of righteousness. The soul lays hold of the true meaning of the first and great commandment: You shall love the Lord God with your whole heart, and your whole mind and your whole strength, for to love God is nothing else than to love righteousness.



Finally, just as concern for one's neighbor is added to love of God, so the virtue of mercy is added to the desire for righteousness, as it is said: Blessed are the merciful, for God will be merciful to them.



Remember, Christian, the surpassing worth of the wisdom that is yours. Bear in mind the kind of school in which you are to learn your skills, the rewards to which you are called. Mercy itself wishes you to be merciful, righteousness itself wishes you to be righteous, so that the Creator may shine forth in his creature, and the image of God be reflected in the mirror of the human heart as it imitates his qualities. The faith of those who live their faith is a serene faith. What you long for will be given you; what you love will be yours for ever.



Since it is by giving alms that everything is pure for you, you will also receive that blessing which is promised next by the Lord: Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God. Dear friends, great is the happiness of those for whom such a reward is prepared. Who are the clean of heart if not those who strive for those virtues we have mentioned above? What mind can conceive, what words can express the great happiness of seeing God? Yet human nature will achieve this when it has been transformed so that it sees the Godhead no longer in a mirror or obscurely but face to face - the Godhead that no man has been able to see. In the inexpressible joy of this eternal vision, human nature will possess what eye has not seen or ear heard, what man's heart has never conceived.



Alms to the Poor by , 1781
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