Day for Consecrated Life 2022

For the feast of the Presentation of the Lord this year, MAGNIFICAT has chosen extracts from Pope Francis' homily on 2nd February 2015 as the "Meditation of the Day". The homily was preached at Mass celebrated to mark the World Day of Consecrated Life.

Before our eyes we can picture Mother Mary as she walks, carrying the Baby Jesus in her arms. She brings him to the Temple; she brings him to meet his people. The arms of Mother Mary are like the “ladder” on which the Son of God comes down to us, the ladder of God’s condescension. This is what we heard in the first reading, from the Letter to the Hebrews: Christ became “like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest". This is the twofold path taken by Jesus: he descended, he became like us, in order then to ascend with us to the Father, making us like himself. In our heart we can contemplate this double movement by imagining the Gospel scene of Mary who enters the Temple holding the Child in her arms. The Mother walks, yet it is the Child who goes before her. She carries him, yet he is leading her along the path of the God who comes to us so that we might go to him....

The Gospel speaks to us of Mary and Joseph’s obedience to the “law of the Lord”. Jesus came not to do his own will, but the will of the Father. This way – he tells us – was his “food” (cf. Jn 4:34). In the same way, all those who follow Jesus must set out on the path of obedience.

 In speaking of Simeon and Anna, Pope Francis describes their representing wisdom:

In the account of Jesus’ Presentation in the Temple, wisdom is represented by two elderly persons, Simeon and Anna: persons docile to the Holy Spirit, led by him, inspired by him. The Lord granted them wisdom as the fruit of a long journey along the path of obedience to his law, an obedience which likewise humbles and abases, but which also lifts up and protects hope, making them creative, for they are filled with the Holy Spirit. Simeon praises the Lord and Anna “proclaims” salvation (cf. Lk 2:28-32, 38). As with Mary, the elderly man holds the Child, but in fact it is the Child who guides the elderly man.  Mary, the young mother, and Simeon, the kindly old man, hold the Child in their arms, yet it is the Child himself who guides them both.

The original homily included remarks specifically applying this to the living of the consecrated life, though MAGNIFICAT has not included those remarks in its extract. Pope Francis refers to obedience to the rule of a particular institute as a specific way in which consecrated persons live out the call to obedience typical of the Christian life as a whole:

For us, as consecrated persons, this path takes the form of the rule, marked by the charism of the founder. For all of us, the essential rule remains the Gospel, yet the Holy Spirit, in his infinite creativity, also gives it expression in the various rules of the consecrated life which are born of the sequela Christi, and thus from this journey of abasing oneself by serving...

In persevering along the path of obedience, personal and communal wisdom matures, and thus it also becomes possible to adapt rules to the times. For true “aggiornamento” is the fruit of wisdom forged in docility and obedience.

The strengthening and renewal of consecrated life are the result of great love for the rule, and also the ability to look to and heed the elders of one’s congregation. In this way, the “deposit”, the charism of each religious family, is preserved by obedience and by wisdom, working together. 

The end of a year: how have we lived the time that God has given us?

MAGNIFICAT for today, the eve of a new year, uses as its "Meditation of the Day" an extract from Pope Francis' homily at the Te Deum and celebration of Vespers on this corresponding day in 2013.  

The biblical and Christian vision of time and history is not cyclical but linear: it is a journey that moves toward completion. A year which has passed, then, does not lead us to a reality which ends but to a reality which is being fulfilled, it is a further step toward the destination that awaits us: a destination of hope and a destination of happiness, for we shall encounter God, who is the reason for our hope and the source of our happiness.

As 2013 draws to a close, we gather up, as in a basket, the days, weeks and months we have lived in order to offer them all to the Lord. And let us courageously ask ourselves: how have we lived the time which He has given us? Have we used it primarily for ourselves, for our own interests, or have we also sought to spend it on others? How much time have we reserved for being with God, in prayer, in silence, in adoration?

Pope Francis then directed his attention to the city of Rome, on what was his first New Year as Pope. (MAGNIFICAT did not include this section in its extract.) We can, however, take the words that he addressed to what is now his home and apply them to our own towns and cities.

It is the last day of the year. What shall we do, how shall we act in the coming year in order to make our City a little better? In the new year, Rome will have an even more beautiful face if it is richer in humanity, more hospitable and welcoming; if we are all considerate and generous to those in difficulty; if we cooperate with a constructive and caring spirit for the good of all. Rome in the new year will be better if people do not observe it as “from afar”, on a postcard, if they do not only watch life pass by “from the balcony” without becoming involved in the many human problems, in the problems of men and women, who in the end... and from the beginning, whether we like it or not, are our brothers and sisters. 

Pope Francis' homily concluded with the following passage, included in the MAGNIFICAT extract:

This evening let us conclude the Year of the Lord 2013 by giving thanks and also by asking for forgiveness. The two together: giving thanks and asking for forgiveness. Let us give thanks for all the blessings which God has bestowed on us, especially for his patience and his faithfulness, which are manifest over the course of time, but in a singular way in the fullness of time, when “God sent forth his Son, born of woman” (Gal 4:4). May the Mother of God, in whose name tomorrow we begin a new phase of our earthly pilgrimage, teach us to welcome God made man, so that every year, every month, every day may be filled with his eternal Love. 

St Catherine of Genoa on purgatory

 MAGNIFICAT had a "Meditation of the Day" for All Souls Day that I found an interesting read, and to which I have returned in the days since. It was an extract from St Catherine of Genoa, from a treatise on purgatory whose English translation used as the source for the meditation dates back to 1946. (A quick look at Amazon suggests that there are more recently published editions.)

The extract first articulates a teaching that, whilst guilt for sin has been forgiven, there remains a stain or harm caused by sin that is still to be removed (the added italics are mine):

The souls in purgatory have wills accordant in all things with the will of God, who therefore sheds on them his goodness. And they, as far as their will goes, are happy and cleansed of all their sin. As for guilt, these cleansed souls are as they were when God created them, for God forgives their guilt immediately who have passed form this life having confessed all they have committed and having the will to commit no more. Only the rust of sin is left them, and from this they cleanse themselves by pain in fire. Thus cleansed of all guilt and united in will to God, they see him clearly in the degree in which he makes himself known to them, and see too how much it imports to enjoy him and that souls have been created for this end.

There then follows an account of how God and the soul are related in this process of cleansing, first of all from the perspective of God himself:

I perceive there to be so much conformity between God and the soul, that when he sees it in the purity in which his divine majesty created it he gives it a burning love, which draws it to himself, and which causes it to be so transformed in God that it sees itself as though it were none other than God. Unceasingly he draws it to himself and breathes into it, never letting it go until he has let it to the state whence it came forth, that is to the pure cleanliness in which it was created.

And then, secondly, from the point of view of the soul: 

When with its inner sight the soul sees itself drawn by God with such loving fire, then it is melted by the heat of the glowing love for God, its most dear Lord, which it feels overflowing it. And it sees by the divine light that God does not cease from drawing it, nor from leading it lovingly and with much care and unfailing foresight to its full perfection, doing this of his pure love. But the sould, being hindered by sin, cannot go where God draws it; it cannot follow the uniting look with which he would draw it to hismelf. Again the soul perceives the grieviousness of being held back from seeing the divine light; the soul's instinct too, being drawn by that uniting look, craves to be unhindered. I say that it is the sight of these things which begets in the souls the pain they feel in purgatory.

The meditation ends with a reflection that suggests the soul might even look forward to the experience of purgatory (again, the added italics are mine): 

Not that they take account of their pain; most great though it be, they deem it a far less evil than to find themselves going against the will of God, whom they clearly see to be on fire with extreme and pure love for them. Strongly and unceasingly this love draws the soul with that uniting look, as though it had nothing else than this to do.

The Praise of Glory

 MAGNIFICAT for last Sunday uses as its "Meditation of the Day" an extract from St Elizabeth of the Trinity.  The text is published under the title Heaven in Faith in the Institute of Carmelite Studies (ICS) complete works of St Elizabeth, Volume 1. In the following I use the Scripture translations used in the ICS edition, rather than those used by MAGNIFICAT, which use the Jerusalem translations used in the Liturgy (and thereby seem to lose a subtlety in St Elizabeth's thought).

"If you knew the gift of God", Christ said one evening to the Samaritan woman. But what is this gift of God if not Himself? And, the beloved disciple tells us: "He came to His own and His own did not accept Him". St John the Baptist could still say to many souls these words of reproach: "There is one in the midst of you, 'in you', whom you do not know".

The two words "in you" are inserted into, and emphasized, in the quotation of St John the Baptist, and echo a phrase in St Luke's Gospel.

The MAGNIFICAT meditation then omits a following section, losing a Marian reference in St Elizabeth's thought (St Elizabeth may have included this section prompted by the occurrence of the solemnity of the Assumption at the time of her writing):

"If you knew the gift of God..." There is one who know the gift of God, one who did not lose one particle of it, on who was so pure, so luminous that she seemed to be the Light itself: "Speculum justitiae". One whose life was so simple, so lost in God that there is hardly anything we can say about it.

"Virgo fidelis": that is, faithful Virgin, "who kept all these things in her heart".

 The extract then takes up the theme of the praise of glory, quoting St Paul:

"We have been predestined by the decree of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we may be the praise of his glory."

It is St Paul who tells us this, St Paul who was instructed by God Himself. How do we realize this great dream of the Heart of our God, this immutable will for our souls? In a word, how do we correspond to our vocation and become perfect Praises of Glory of the Most Holy Trinity?

"In Heaven" each sould is a praise of glory of the Father, the Word and Holy Spirit, for each soul is established in pure love and "lives no longer its own life, but the life of God". Then it knows Him, St Paul says, as it is known by Him.... St John of the Cross affirms that "the soul surrendered to love, through the strength of the Holy Spirit, is not far from being raised to the degree of which we have just spoken," eve here below! This is what I call a perfect praise of glory!

 Where the Jerusalem translation "..chosen to be, for his greater glory..." appears to be passive in its intent - it is God's action that makes us manifest his greater glory - ".. so that we may be the praise of his glory" suggests an active sense too, on the part of the soul, though active in response to the initiative of God. Whatever the subtleties of the exegesis of the Scriptural text, the idea that the soul should live as a praise of glory of the Trinity is a key part of St Elizabeth's thought.

Alas! Sin came ...

This if from the "Meditation of the Day" in MAGNIFICAT for 21st March, the fifth Sunday of Lent.

Alas! Sin came, it entered in, it took hold in us, whence the current reign of death and suffering. It is by them that our trial continues: it is by the suffering that must last unto death, even death on a cross, usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis (Ph 2:8). The shadow and  light of the cross now extend over our whole path. The cross is the pillar of cloud, a mixture of brightness and darkness, which goes before us: this is what truly matters, and we need only follow it to the end.

I miss saints during Lent ....

 The liturgy of the Lenten season gives precedence to the week days of Lent over the celebration of those saints who would otherwise be celebrated as memorials or optional memorials. They become "commemorations". And I miss these celebrations of saints ....

Yesterday (9th March) would have seen the celebration of St Frances of Rome. MAGNIFICAT included as its "Meditation of the Day" an extract from an address by Pope Benedict XVI during a visit in 2009 to the monastery of the order of Benedictine oblates founded by St Frances. I was particularly struck by the following section, which reflects the charism of St Frances which is both prayerful and charitable. It is the connection of the gift of a motherhood to that of religious self-gift that caught my attention.

..... I wish to emphasise the feminine dimension: women, who belong wholly to God and wholly to their neighbour; women who are capable of recollection and of generous and discreet service in conversation with Christ and in first-hand experience in the area of charity, assistance to the sick, to the marginalised, to minors in difficulty. This is the gift of a motherhood that is one with religious self-gift, after the model of Mary Most Holy. Let us think of the mystery of the Visitation. Immediately after conceiving the Word of God in her heart and in her flesh, Mary set out to go and help her elderly kinswoman Elizabeth. Mary's heart is the cloister where the Word continues to speak in silence, and at the same time it is the crucible of a charity that is conducive to courageous gestures, as well as to a persevering and hidden sharing.

Hearts Revealed

"Hearts Revealed" is the title of the Meditation of the Day in  Magnificat for today. It is a short extract from Adrienne von Speyr's chapter on the Presentation in the Temple, a chapter in her book Handmaid of the Lord. The chapter is an extended reflection on the significance of the episode of the Presentation in the Temple for the Virgin Mary; Magnificat selects from a section about how the piercing of her soul provides an access for us to the Passion foretold by the words of Simeon.

The meaning of the piercing of the Mother is this: "that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare". If the Mother did not suffer, then these thoughts would never be released of themselves.... Suffering as a simple human and yet raised up to the state of grace and in it participating in the Son's sufferings, the Mother is understandable to everyone. And everything that lives in hearts as an unclear longing for God can, at the sight of the Mother's suffering, take on form and become conscious and evident to the heart itself. Thus, through her suffering, she mediates hidden hearts to the Son; she opens them, because her own heart had been opened by the sword.... The Mother's suffering is like a stairway up to the Cross, which before seemed inaccessible. In her it becomes evident that there really exists the Christian possibility of participation in the divine, redemptive suffering...

Christ the King

 Magnificat has an article by Bishop Hugh Gilbert for the Solemnity of Christ the King, which we celebrate this weekend, at the end of the liturgical year.

The Solemnity of Christ the King has sometimes been called an "idea-feast". It is nothing of the kind. It is the feast of a reality. The reality of Christ's kingship, Christ's kingdom. A bewildering, mysterious reality, even a joke sometimes (at the foot of the cross, for example), and yet more real than any other kingship or kingdom there has ever been. A hidden King, but visible in his sacraments. A king who has come, but is coming again. A kingdom like and unlike, friend and foe to, every other kingdom. A kingdom here and not here, in the world but not of it. The paradoxes are endless....

G.K. Chesterton once remarked that only belonging to the Church sets one free from the degrading slavery of being a child of one's times. And so it is. Affirming, acclaiming this King - You are the Christ, the true King - loosens the clutches of all other competing kingdoms: public opinion, totalitarian governments, market forces, the dogmas of the age, our own addictions, King sin and King death. They all have their day and their sway, but there is something else abroad as well, subverting them all. There is a freedom and a clarity and a kingship of soul in the gift of Jesus the King....

.... surely, we'll find ourselves resolving. We'll find ourselves wanting to live free, with kingship over ourselves, free enough therefore to give ourselves in humble love. Come, you whom my Father has blessed, take for your heritage the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you made me welcome; naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me. That is the kingdom and the kingship of Christ.

Next Sunday it is Advent, and a new liturgical year, a year for hearing St Mark... At the beginning of his Gospel stand the Beatitudes, at the end these works of mercy.... And in the middle comes the acclamation of St Peter, You are the Christ, the messianic King, the Son of God. Let us live what we hear, proud to have Christ as our King.

.... with Pope Francis and not against

I have already observed on this blog that I believe that much of the responsibility for the alleged confusion following Amoris Laetitia must lie with those who have promoted that confusion by a persistent campaign of criticism of the Apostolic Exhortation articulated in part in terms of, oh irony, condemnation of the confusion caused by it and by Pope Francis.

A strand in the criticism has been a discussion of whether or not Amoris Laetitia, both as a document in itself or seen in terms of its specific content, can be considered a document of the Ordinary Magisterium (capitals intended). The intention of this line of argument has been to suggest that, if it is not part of the Magisterium, it can therefore be considered non-binding. The term "Magisterium" in this context refers narrowly to teaching offered as teaching for the universal Church and which is permanent in its character and therefore applicable over all time - Magisterium with a capital "M".

This has appeared to me to be rather beside what is the real point. Whatever we think of it, Amoris Laetitia is clearly an exercise by Pope Francis of his office as the Successor of Peter. It may contain pastoral indications that apply to particular situations of our own times, and therefore might not apply in the future; and it may contain indications for pastoral action that are for a time rather than being such that a future generation might consider binding. But it might also contain parts that are of more permanent value (for example, Chapter IV on love in marriage). In this, it is no different than many other actions of the ordinary magisterium, that is, of the exercise of their office by the Successors of Peter and the bishops in communion with him. The strict discussion of whether or not it is "Magisterium" appears somewhat sterile in this context; the real question for Catholics today is a  rather different question.

Cardinal Marc Ouellet's address to the Canadian Bishops conference very subtly captured the appropriate response (with my emphasis added):

So we must re-read Amoris Laetitia in a spirit of pastoral conversion that assumes, first of all a genuine and unprejudiced receptivity to the pontifical teaching; secondly, a change of attitude in the face of cultures that are far from the faith; thirdly, a convincing testimony to the joy of the Gospel that emerges from faith in the Person of Jesus and his loving and merciful gaze upon all of human reality.

The reading from St Peter Chrysologus offered as the "Meditation of the Day" in MAGNIFICAT for yesterday struck me as very apposite. St Peter Chrysologus is commenting on the Gospel text for yesterday's Mass, in which Jesus dines at the house of a leading Pharisee (Luke 14:1-6). The title given to the meditation was Jesus Went to Dine:

When he had entered the house, it says. In the house there was a trap, in the greeting a trial, in the seat at table a snare .....There jealousy was burning, envy was inflamed, anger was being cooked up, pretence provided the seasoning, and all the courses of slander were being made ready.

And, nevertheless, there that Lamb of God was eating, and not to be fed, but to be killed, just as if he knew none of this. He certainly was eating, brothers, not as if he were ignorant of this, but so that at least by his companionship, by their very intimacy and the gracious way in which he dined together with them, their ferocity might be tamed, their anger soothed, their envy extinguished. Then by his very humaneness these men might now return to being human again, they might acquire some affection, they might notice his gracious charm, they might welcome their parent, they might recognise his kindness, they might acknowledge his powers, they might love his curative treatments, and they might desire, and not attack, his acts of healing.

The Devil ...

..... wears Prada is real. The "Day by Day" meditation in MAGNIFICAT for today reminded me of something I recall striking me strongly during the early days of Pope Francis' pontificate. That was Pope Francis' readiness to talk about the reality of the existence of the devil, as an ordinary part of  Christian experience.

MAGNIFICAT reproduced a large part of this report of a homily by Pope Francis in April 2014. It is worth reading the report in full to capture Pope Francis sense of conviction about the reality of the devil, and of the three characteristics of his temptations: growth, spread and then self justification.

“Of course one of you will say: but Father, you are so old fashioned, speaking about the devil in the 21st century!”. To this Pope Francis replied: “watch out, the devil exists! The devil exists even in the 21st century. And we must not be naive. We must learn from the Gospel how to battle against him”.

The same contrast that we see between Christ and Satan in the Gospel of the first Sunday of Lent, and in Pope Francis' homily, is portrayed vividly in the "Meditation on Two Standards" of the fourth day of the second week of St Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises. Firstly the Standard of Satan:

Consider the address he makes to them, how he goads them on to lay snares for men and bind them with chains. First they are to tempt them to covet riches (as Satan himself is accustomed to do in most cases) that they may the more easily attain the empty honors of this world, and then come to overweening pride.

The first step, then, will be riches, the second honor, the third pride. From these three steps the evil one leads to all other vices.

And secondly, the Standard of Christ:

Consider the address which Christ our Lord makes to all His servants and friends whom He sends on this enterprise, recommending to them to seek to help all, first by attracting them to the highest spiritual poverty, and should it please the Divine Majesty, and should He deign to choose them for it, even to actual poverty. Secondly, they should lead them to a desire for insults and contempt, for from these springs humility.

Hence, there will be three steps: the first, poverty as opposed to riches; the second, insults or contempt as opposed to the honor of this world; the third, humility as opposed to pride. From these three steps, let them lead men to all other virtues.

Madeleine Delbrel: Counting on Mercy

Magnificat for 4th November offered, as the "Meditation of the Day", an extract from the writings of Madeleine Delbrel. Magnificat published it under the title "Counting on Mercy". In the English translation of the original text it is the first paragraphs of a section entitled "Those who are unhappy". It is part of a study written by Madeleine, dated 1951, that reflects on what it means to be a missionary in the Church of her times. The resonance of the study as a whole to Pope Francis' ideas of "missionary parishes" and "missionary disciples" is striking, as is the comparison of the passage offered by Magnificat to the evangelising significance of the Year of Mercy. It is also worth recalling, as we read the following words, Madeleine's own radical choice to live among the workers of a Communist suburb of Paris.

We cannot let mercy dry up, as so often happens today. A greater awareness of the economic hardship of the masses cannot lead us to have scorn for other forms of suffering, or to lose interest in them.

Christ's mercy for the poor is one part of a mercy as vast as all the human griefs combined. It is a mercy for sinners, a mercy for the sick, a mercy for those lamenting their dead, a mercy for those in prison, a mercy for all the little ones.

Because of a reductively materialistic notion of poverty, we are often in danger of forgetting that there are people who are poor in other ways than merely economically; there are other little ones than the workers. There are those who are morally or psychologically weak. There are those who are poor in gifts, in appeal, in love. In addition to the oppressed classes are those who are "unclassifiable".

Those who are little, those who are poor, are not only in the working class. And the working class itself is not made up exhaustively of militants, militants who are already rich in hope, rich in heart, rich in intellectual formation.

It is not up to us to correct Christ's heart either - it belongs to all people and we have to give it to all people.

The personal love of Christ. He calls each one by name - he does not call a category. He knows each one of as the Father knows the Son.

As I looked up this extract in my copy of We, the Ordinary People of the Streets, my eye was caught by the following in the last but one paragraph of the preceding section:

All great human activities function as signs. Just as marriage is the most perfect sign of the union of Christ and his Church, and voluntary celibacy makes us live more fully the reality towards which this sign points, human work is a sign of the Church's toil over the world, a suffering and fruitful labour.

Do good and carry on!

One suspects a certain sense of mischief on the part of the translator into English from the original Italian of Pope Francis' words during the General Audience of 10th September 2014. Extracts from that audience address form the meditation for today in MAGNIFICAT. The choice of text for the meditation reflects today's feast of the Divine Mercy, described by our priest at Mass this morning as being the culmination of the whole of the Year of Mercy.

Mother Church teaches us to give food and drink to those who are hungry and thirsty, to clothe those who are naked. And how does she do this? She does it through the example of so many saints, men and women, who did this in an exemplary fashion; but she does it also through the example of so many dads and mamas, who teach their children that what we have extra is for those who lack the basic necessities. It is important to know this. The rule of hospitality has always been sacred in the simplest Christian families: there is always a plate and a bed for the one in need.

The MAGNIFICAT extract ends with Pope Francis words:

Do good and carry on! 

These translate from the Italian:

Fa’ il bene e vai avanti! [Do what is good, and move forward!]

Perhaps just as thought provoking as the paragraph above, is the following from Pope Francis' audience address:

And thus the Church conducts herself like Jesus. She does not teach theoretical lessons on love, on mercy. She does not spread to the world a philosophy, a way of wisdom.... Of course, Christianity is also all of this, but as an effect, by reflex [but consequently, indirectly - see the Italian below]. Mother Church, like Jesus, teaches by example, and the words serve to illuminate the meaning of her actions.

E allora la Chiesa si comporta come Gesù. Non fa lezioni teoriche sull’amore, sulla misericordia. Non diffonde nel mondo una filosofia, una via di saggezza…. Certo, il Cristianesimo è anche tutto questo, ma per conseguenza, di riflesso. La madre Chiesa, come Gesù, insegna con l’esempio, e le parole servono ad illuminare il significato dei suoi gesti

Did Jesus appear to the Virgin Mary before he appeared to the Magdalen?

This week the meditations in MAGNIFICAT have offered alternative answers to this question. On Monday, the meditation was an extract from Dom Prosper Gueranger's The Liturgical Year vol.7:

Meanwhile, our Risen Jesus has been seen by no mortal eye; he has sped to his most holy Mother. He is the Son of God; he is the vanquisher of death; but he is, likewise, the Son of Mary. She stood near him to the last, uniting the sacrifice of her Mother's heart with that he made upon the cross: it is just, therefore, that she should be the first to partake of the joy of his Resurrection.

The Gospel does not relate the apparition thus made by Jesus to his Mother, whereas all the others are fully described. It is not difficult to assign the reason. The other apparitions were intended as proofs of the Resurrection; this to Mary was dictated by the tender love borne to her by her Son. Both nature and grace required that his first visit should be to such a Mother, and Christian hearts dwell with delight on the meditation of the mystery. There was not need of its being mentioned in the Gospel; the tradition of the holy Fathers, beginning with St Ambrose, bears sufficient testimony to it; and even had they been silent, our hearts would have told it us.

And why was it that our Saviour rose from the tomb so early on the day he had fixed for his Resurrection? It was because his filial love was impatient to satisfy the vehement longings of his dearest and most afflicted Mother. Such is the teaching of many pious and learned writers; and who that knows aught of Jesus and Mary could refuse to accept it?

For Saturday, the vigil of the Feast of Divine Mercy, we are offered this extract from Adrienne von Speyr's meditations on the Gospel of St Mark: Mark, Meditations for a Community. Adrienne comments on the text "He appeared first to Mary of Magdala":

The Lord appears first to the former sinner. She is the first to experience his being alive. And from this, she comprehends the cross. All the sins of the world, also her own, which were so visible, struck the Lord on the cross. But because she is no longer a sinner but, rather, was converted by the Lord already before the cross, he appears to her. She is surely to embody in her person the absolution that is granted to all sinners on the cross.

But beyond this, the Lord placed her under the cross as one who has been converted, as one who loves and does penance in a very profound union of her suffering with his suffering and also of her suffering with the suffering of his Mother. And if the Holy Spirit has found it right to leave the Mother's suffering in mystery and not to mention her joy at the Resurrection of her Son, then it is as if Mary Magdalene is sent ahead in order to represent all those who suffered together directly with the Crucified, above all, the Mother of the Lord. From the outside, she remains, above all, the former sinner, who with the apparition on Easter morning receives the certainty of absolution for the whole Church.

 Adrienne gives an account of Mary's joy at the Resurrection in a chapter of her book The Handmaid of the Lord entitled "Easter". Her words very carefully nuance the primacy of Mary's joy and the absence of a physical apparition.

On Easter morning [the Virgin Mary] is again, as she once was at the angel's apparition, sheer open expectation. She does not anticipate any particular apparition. But her faith is so open that anything can appear within it space. And there he stands before her, her Son in the glory of God, and he fills this space with a fullness which surpasses all human senses. He not only fills the emptiness at hand; he fills it to overflowing, in the way the Godhead brims over man's every expectation. Her first Yes to the angel, her first joy at the conception, her first jubilation in the Magnificat, are like a tiny human beginning compared with this storm of the Easter assent and this fire of a new Magnificat. The first Yes to the angel was full of responsibility for the future. It was spoken wholly in joy, but with the background of the coming suffering as the price she was to pay for this joy in her conception. But the joy of the new assent is so great, it so outshines all else, that it can survey as if from a mountain peak all past suffering and separations and those which are perhaps to come..... She could formulate and utter her first assent herself - could give it expression in the song of the Magnificat. Her new Yes is nameless. It flows into the eternal Yes of God himself like a river into the sea and is washed over and absorbed by it. What she says now is a jubilation that is beyond words.

The two writers do come from very different times, and very different contexts, in the life of the Church, which may go some way to explaining their difference in perspective. But I do find Adrienne von Speyr more compelling than Dom Gueranger.

Archbishop Bergoglio: ".. the privileged locus of the encounter is the caress of the mercy of Jesus Christ on my sin."

The "Day by Day" meditation in Magnificat for today is an extract from the text of an address given at a book launch by the now-Pope Francis but then-Archbishop Bergoglio in 2001. The original source, and a fuller text, is the magazine Traces of Communion and Liberation, in an article entitled: The Attraction of the Cardinal.

What is topical in the text of this address is the way in which the now Pope Francis presents the Christian conception of morality as a response to the encounter with the person of Jesus. The articulation of the primary proclamation of God's love for us in terms of God's mercy towards us has become an almost every day feature of Pope Francis' teaching. It is now very familiar when, listened to during his first Angelus address, for example, it sounded very unusual. In the text of this address published in Traces we can detect a long history of this theme in Pope Francis' own personal thought, and we can see it as Pope Francis' particular way of experiencing the charism of Communion and Liberation:

Everything in our life, today just as in Jesus’ time, begins with an encounter. An encounter with this Man, the carpenter of Nazareth, a man like all men and yet different. The first ones, John, Andrew, and Simon, felt themselves to be looked at into their very depths, read in their innermost being, and in them sprang forth a surprise, a wonder that instantly made them feel bound to Him, made them feel different.

Thus far Fr Luigi Giussani and a classic account of the idea of the encounter with Jesus according to the charism of Communion and Liberation. But then what, with the hindsight of Pope Francis' preaching since being elected Successor of St Peter, we might see as Archbishop Bergoglio's distinctive articulation in terms of mercy (this section of text taken in its fuller form from Traces - my emphasis added):

We cannot understand this dynamic of encounter which brings forth wonder and adherence if it has not been triggered–forgive me the use of this word–by mercy. Only someone who has encountered mercy, who has been caressed by the tenderness of mercy, is happy and comfortable with the Lord. I beg the theologians who are present not to turn me in to the Sant’Uffizio or to the Inquisition; however, forcing things a bit, I dare to say that the privileged locus of the encounter is the caress of the mercy of Jesus Christ on my sin.

Archbishop Bergoglio then goes on - following the line of thought of Fr Giussani and the classic presentation of Communion and Liberation - to indicate how a moral imperative arises from this encounter:

In front of this merciful embrace .... we feel a real desire to respond, to change, to correspond; a new morality arises. .... Christian morality is not a titanic effort of the will, the effort of someone who decides to be consistent and succeeds, a solitary challenge in the face of the world. No. Christian morality is simply a response. It is the heartfelt response to a surprising, unforeseeable, “unjust” mercy .....The surprising, unforeseeable, “unjust” mercy .... of one who knows me, knows my betrayals and loves me just the same, appreciates me, embraces me, calls me again, hopes in me, and expects from me. This is why the Christian conception of morality is a revolution; it is not a never falling down but an always getting up again.

 And, again in a manner that is familiar from his preaching as Pope Francis, Cardinal Bergoglio goes on to speak about the Church as the place where Jesus is encountered today:

Jesus is encountered, just as 2,000 years ago, in a human presence, the Church, the company of those whom He assimilates to Himself, His Body, the sign and sacrament of His Presence.

The topicality of Cardinal Bergoglio's words lies in the way in which a Christian conception of morality is consequent upon the encounter with Christ. It allows us another insight into Pope Francis' controversial observation about the teaching with regard to abortion etc coming after the first proclamation of God's mercy, an observation that I have previously understood in the context of an understanding of the different stages in evangelisation archetypally taught in the Decree Ad Gentes and Pope Paul's Evangelii Nuntiandi.

Can we continue to disbelieve in his disbelief?

Today's "Day by Day" meditation in Magnificat is extracted from the collection of writings of Madeleine Delbrel published in English under the title We, the ordinary people of the streets.

It has a striking relevance to the themes of Pope Francis' encyclical, Lumen Fidei - perhaps not least in the phrase I have used as the title of this post. At least, on my rapid scan reading of the encyclical this appears to be the case. The text of the meditation in Magnificat is taken from the second half of an essay entitled "The Good News" (p.171 ff in my copy of We, the ordinary people of the streets) and is a contribution to a series of discussions about parish life and evangelisation at a conference. If you can find the full text of the essay to read, it is worthwhile.

For his brothers and sisters around him, the Christian is a man who loves the things of this world as they really are, according to their true value, but he is also a person who prefers the God in whom he believes to all other things. This preference leads him to make certain choices. People see him choosing the invisible God. These choices pose a new question to the world, a question about whether there may not be something greater than the world...

The believer, even if his faith is weak, is never completely alone, never completely without help. The non-believer is one who knows loneliness in its absolute form, and inhuman loneliness. He is deprived of the relationship that most fundamentally belongs to him ....

Once we realise this profound misfortune that besets the non-believer, will be ever more dare to infer from what he says, from what he does, from what he seeks, that the Good News of the Gospel would be useless to him? Can we continue to disbelieve in his disbelief?  Or wouldn't the living God of the Gospel rather burn in us with an unbearable intensity to the extent that we did not cry his name out loud to those living in quiet desperation? If, in hearing us call upon God, they were to turn themselves around, it would be for them the beginning of the one and only good News.

The Mystery of Holy Saturday: Luigi Giussani and Pope Francis

The "Meditation of the Day" in Magnificat for Holy Saturday is from Luigi Giussani, the founder of the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation. I am sure that it was chosen before the election of Pope Francis but, given Francis association with the movement, its choice seems fortuitous.

I have not been able to read fully the text of the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires when he presented the Spanish edition of Luigi Giussani's book The Religious Sense, the book that offers the first insights into the charism and method of Communion and Liberation; but the quick read that I did have suggests that Jorge Bergoglio has been profoundly influenced by that charism and method. The text published in the magazine Traces can be downloaded from here: The Gratitude of Buenos Aires. Indeed, I am currently speculating that Pope Francis' anxiety for a Church that moves out to the peripheries, to the margins, can be traced at least in part to the methodology of verification of the Christian claim in the existential experience of human life that belongs to Communion and Liberation. One might also find there the wish for a community life that lies behind Pope Francis arrangement of living in the Casa Santa Marta rather than the Apostolic Palace. Is the key to understanding some of Pope Francis' more challenging (and, in the view of some, self-centred) actions since his election to see him as trying to live something of this charism as Successor of Peter in the same way that he tried to live it as Archbishop of Buenos Aires?

The meditation in Magnificat is extracted from notes written to accompany a CD of Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestral work, and comments particularly on his Russian Easter Festival overture. Luigi Giussani's full Italian text can be found on Google books here - but you might need to scroll down a bit to find it among other contributions. The more familiar you are with the ethos and history of Communion and Liberation and other ecclesial movements, the less obscure the language of the meditation is!

If we stifle the Mystery as a dimension of our relationship with people and things, all reality become like a game: it falls to pieces - looks and hands split it into parts that have no connection with each other ...

The alternative in life is between the response to the Mystery which we are called to give, and living according to a rule of "whatever I like". The task that has been give to us is for us and, as an example, for the world; this task is for the world. Christ, alone, died to call the world back to the fact of the Father; thus, no matter how few we are, we are called to this task to call the world back. There is no middle ground between the task and "whatever I please".

During the night of Holy Saturday, the fact occurred that saves human existence from the confused tremble to which it could seem destined and lifts it up towards a festive task ...

Reality is already in the hands of the one who conquered it, who won it back to himself. All of reality is his creation, to the point that the meaning of all of reality is his person. In him everything consists. To us falls the task to show it to everyone, to declare it, because it is something that is....

Everything is ordered towards a purpose, a beauty, so in our lives what gives meaning and purpose to everything, what recreates harmony, has entered in.

It is a companionship that, above all, opens up this perspective. It is a companionship for the world, a companionship that opens up, adopting the same perspectives as Christ's, that is to say, the redemption of the world, the salvation of the world, to shout the truth to the world, to shout the happiness the world is waiting for, to shout what the world is made of and to shout the world's destiny ... that little by little invades and determines everything.

If one has been attentive to the words and actions of Pope Francis during the first days of his mission as Successor of Peter one cannot read this meditation (taken from a radically different kind of context) without finding in it echoes of what has been offered by Pope Francis as a teaching for the Church and for the world.

Madeleine Delbrel: "Love for the Church"

Yesterday's feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica is a multi-layered feast. At one level it is the same feast as that of the dedication of any other Church, be it our own parish Church (celebrated only in the parish) or our own Diocesan Cathedral (celebrated throughout the diocese). It prompts a meditation on the nature of the Church building as a physical place of the presence of Christ in the world and on the way in which the physical building represents the communion of the faithful; both in their own way representing the place of our encounter with the Father through the Son in the Spirit. In the case of the Diocesan Cathedral it also celebrates the office of the Bishop as the centre of communion and of unity in the Diocese. The antiphons for the Liturgy of the Hours from the Common of the Dedication of a Church express all of these themes.

At a second level, the feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica celebrates the office of the Successor of St Peter, an office of communion for the whole Church made up of the local Churches/Dioceses. The "Meditation of the Day" in Magnificat was particularly interesting in this regard. It was taken from an essay entitled "Love for the Church" by Madeleine Delbrel, and published in the collection We, the Ordinary People of the Streets. [See here for my earlier posts about Madeleine Delbrel, and here for the site of the Association des Amis de Madeleine Delbrel where there is a page considering the theme of love of the Church.]The meditation was very much an excerpt, and it is worth going to the original text to read the whole. Madeleine is very clear that we love "the Christ-Church" and she does not envisage any playing off of love of Christ against love of the Church. And Madeleine's love of the Church was not without its tests, particularly when the  "worker priest" movement in France was suppressed, a movement of which she had been a firm supporter and collaborator. At that time, she undertook a visit to Rome to pray at the tomb of St Peter, and her reflection on that visit ends with these paragraphs:

I also thought a lot about the fact that, though St. John is the "disciple Jesus loved", it was Peter that Jesus asked: "Do you love me?" and it was after his affirmations of love that Jesus gave him the flock. He also explained what it means to love: "That which you have done to the least of mmy brothers, you have done unto me".

It became clear to me how essential it is that people, all people, come to know that the hierarchical Church loves them. Peter - a rock who has been asked to love. I understood that all the expressions of the Church have to be penetrated through and through with love.

This is the background to Madeleine's observation in the last paragraph of the Magnificat meditation that:

Rome, through everything else, is the love of God that has been promised to the Church for eternity.

Though some might want to read Madeleine as criticising the hierarchy of the Church when she observes that we all need to come to know that the hierarchical Church loves us, I think that is to mis-represent her. Rather she is expressing an idea that it is of the very office of the hierarchical Church that it represents the love of God in the Church. The "through everything else" indicates that Madeleine's love of the Petrine office is not just a pietism, but an attitude that takes a real account of the difficulties that can arise from the decisions of ecclesial authority and which she and her friends felt. Madeleine's example for today is that we should continue to love that office and not to adopt an attitude that attacks it.

We will be incapable of incarnating God's love in the world, we will be incapable of bringing the Gospel, which is but the manifestation of love, to the world, if we do not first accept the incarnation of this love in the Church, in the mystical Body of Jesus Christ ....

If, through the long course of history, it was necessary to adapt the liturgy, to explain it, to translate it, and if it is once again necessary to do so in our own time, it never has been and is not today a question of making the liturgy more human. It already is human, and tragically so: it is the Passion of the Son of God made man, made continually present among us....

And, in what might be considered a "strap-line" for the Constitution Gaudium et Spes:

The Church will forever aspire to the world. She doesn't need the world in order to accomplish her mission, but without the world, she would have no mission.

von Balthasar on Marriage

The "Meditation of the Day" in Magnificat for today is an extract from Hans Urs von Balthasar's The Glory of the Lord Vol. 1. The extract makes more sense if, before reading it, you look at Matthew 19:3-12, which is the Gospel reading at Mass today. An intuitive sense of what von Balthasar intends by the word "form" in this passage will do for understanding the passage; but a grasp of the complex and particular philosophical background to this term does make it a bit less obscure. The warning of the last paragraph has, in the present political context, a relevance that perhaps could only have been guessed at the time of the original writing.

What could be stronger than marriage, or what shapes any particular life-form more profoundly than does marriage? And marriage is only true to itself if it is a kind of bracket that both transcends and contains all an individual's cravings to "break out" of its bonds and assert himself. Marriage is that indissoluble reality which confronts with an iron hand all existence's tendencies to disintegrate, and it compels the faltering person to grow, beyond himself, into real love by modelling his life on the form enjoined.

When they make their promises, the spouses are not relying on themselves - the shifting songs of their own freedom - but rather on the form that chooses them because they have chosen it, the form to which they have committed themselves in their act as persons. As persons, the spouses entrust themselves not only to the beloved "thou" and to the biological laws of fertility and family; they entrust themselves foremost to a form with which they can wholly identify themselves even in the deepest aspects of their personality because this form extends through all the levels of life - from its biological roots up to the very heights of grace and of life in the Holy Spirit. And now, suddenly, all fruitfulness, all freedom, is discovered within the form itself, and the life of a married person can henceforth be understood only in terms of this interior mystery ... which mystery is no longer accessible from the profane sphere of the general.

But what are we to say of the person who ignores this form and tramples it underfoot, then to enter into relationships answerable only to his own psychology's principle of "this far and no further?" He is but quick-sand, doomed to certain barrenness. The form of marriage, too, from which derives the beauty of human existence, is today more than ever entrusted to the care of Christians.

Blessed Chiara Badano

In September 2010, Chiara "Luce" Badano was beatified. Something of her significance for young people of our times can be found here and in this report of a presentation of her life that was offered as part of the cultural programme of the 2011 World Youth Day in Madrid.

Magnificat published the following short account of Chiara Badano's life, under the heading "Saints of Today and Yesterday", for Saturday 8th October. One detail of this account appears to differ from other sources, that is, the description of the initial pain of Chiara's illness being felt in the spine rather than, as other accounts suggest, in the shoulder.

As a child, Chiara Badano, of Savona, Italy, imbibed from her mother a deep love for Jesus and Mary. At the age of nine, she learned of the Focolare apostolate, of which she became a devoted member. Chiara was sixteen when as she was playing tennis she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her spine. It proved to be the first sign of bone cancer. As she underwent a gruelling series of medical treatments, she suffered without complaint. Chiara developed a special devotion to Christ in the mystery of the abandonment he experienced in his passion. During her illness, she spent hours conversing with her mother about her faith. Chiara also experienced the higher states of prayer, finding it difficult afterward to descend "from the heights where I spend my days, and where all is silence and contemplation". She was repeatedly heard to pray in her sufferings, "If you will it, Jesus, I will it too". When on her deathbed a priest brought her Viaticum, she saluted the Blessed Sacrament with the words, "Come, Lord Jesus". Having spoken of Christ as her Spouse, Chiara, nineteen at her death on 7th October 1990, was buried in a wedding gown as she had requested.

The first paragraph of the "Day by Day" meditation for today, Sunday, is then taken from the writings of St Catherine of Siena, and has a happy coincidence of theme:

I Caterina, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, am writing to you in his precious blood. I long to see you clothed in the wedding garment without which I know we cannot please our Creator or have a place at the wedding feast of everlasting life. So I want you to dress up, and to make that more possible, I want you to take off all your selfish ... love.

Christ-Church and Christ-life

The "Meditation of the Day" in Magnificat for Friday 18th February was taken from Madeleine Delbrel:

The work of the Christ-Church is that "the world be saved" - through the cross, which makes us children of God in Christ, and through the Gospel, which teaches us how to live as children of God in Christ.

The cross is not something optional, neither for the world, nor for us. Accepting the cross and taking it up is the lion's share of our work....

Christ does not provide his followeres with a set of wings to flee into heaven, but with a weight to drag them into the deepest corners of the earth... Despite any apparent contradiction, we diminish and falsify our love for Christ and the Church wherever we diminish that which draws us to the world and enables us to plunge ourselves into it. This is what the love of the world means, a love that is not an identification with the world, but a gift to it.

It is worth appreciating that Madeleine Delbrel's mission was that of living in a small community being a presence of Christ in a poverty stricken social/political miliieu.

By a curious conjunction, the "Meditation of the Day" for Friday 25th February was taken from the writings of Caryll Houselander.

As to our love, it cannot fail to be creative love it if is Christ's. Loves that we had supposed to ahve no importance but for ourselves - love between husband and wife, parents and children, sisters and brothers, the love of friends - all these natural loves, if we love with Christ's heart, increase the life of the world, and build up the kingdom of heaven here on earth. That harder love to achieve, the love of our enemies, of those who hate us and persecute us, does not merely bring us pardon in our own sins, but is redemptive; it has a reach as wide as the cross, and not only brings mercy to those who are its object, but to the whole world.

Everyone who lives the Christ-life, and therefore loves with the heart of Christ, is adding to the divine love in the world, which is the only force opposed to hate. Whether they love their betrothed, their wife, or children, or their enemy, whether their love is happy and fulfilled or is one that they must forego and seem to frustrate, they are adding to the sum total of the love that is redeeming the world.

The conjunction of the themes between the two passages is quite striking, though perhaps it is not unexpected when you consider the backgrounds of the two writers. But I was also struck by the conjunction of their terms "Christ-Church" and "Christ-life", and what that conjunction suggests about the unity of ecclesial and Christian existence.