 + At the end of the Gospel of this Holy Mass Our Lord responds to those praising the privilege given to His Blessed Mother in bearing Him with the unexpected yet poignant riposte: “Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and keep it!” The Church meditates on this teaching throughout much of the year in the Gospel of the third votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturdays. But on this third Sunday of Lent—and throughout the coming week—we would do well to ponder it a little more closely.
If we are here this morning (or reading this text) it is probable that we are blessed by God’s Providence to be amongst those who have heard the Word of God—that we self-identify as Catholics. We can sing the Creed with faith, and indeed we believe it. Deo gratias! But of course, the gift of faith is not a gnostic treasure to be guarded parsimoniously. It is not a lamp to be hidden under a bowl but is to shine for all to see so that others may come to live in and by its light. (cf. Mt. 5:15) Now, whilst it is, please God, true that we believe and are indeed grateful for the gift of faith, we may at times hesitate to put the light of our faith on a stand so that others can come to that same faith and be sustained in living it by the radiance of our example. Indeed, at times, the light shed by our own living of the faith may currently be somewhat dim for various reasons. Our Lord’s command to “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven,” (Mt. 5:16) may cause us more embarrassment at times than anything else—be that in respect of our fundamental living of Christian life, or be it in respect of our particular vocation. For it is not enough simply to hear the Word of God, to have faith, to hear His call; no: in order to enjoy the beatitude of eternal life we must also keep His Word—we must live according to it; we must respond wholeheartedly to His call. It is apposite, then, that Our Holy Mother the Church confronts us with this teaching as Lent progresses. For Lent is indeed the time to make a frank assessment of my Christian life. Lent is the time to strip away the distractions and pretences through self-denial and to take time to ask myself in all candour in the silence of prayer: do I keep the Word of God? Am I responding wholeheartedly and without reservation to God’s call to serve Him in my particular vocation? Or am I holding back? Am I happy enough to be Catholic, for sure, but am nevertheless not quite prepared to give myself to God completely so that He can make use of me according to His plan—in ways that I simply cannot presently imagine? Am I too attached to my own will? Do I cling to my vices, even as I know that they are sinful? In examining our consciences in respect of keeping the Word of God, the Gospel of Sexagesima Sunday (the Parable of the Sower; Lk 8:4-15) is of real help. The Sower, as we know, scattered the seed in different places and on different types of soil. Our Lord explains: “The seed is the word of God. The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, that they may not believe and be saved. And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy; but these have no root, they believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. And as for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience.” Where am I in respect of this? What type of soil is my heart, mind and soul? What rocks and thorns need to be removed from them so that, as well as hearing the Word of God, I shall actually faithfully and fruitfully keep it? What do I need to change so that in due season I shall bring forth that fruit that only the generous following of my particular vocation can ensure? My brothers and sisters, these questions cannot be ignored or postponed forever. Spiritual procrastination risks spiritual death and eternal condemnation—which is why our Holy Mother, the Church, calls us each year in Lent to put aside the distractions and diversions that surround us and to take stock of the state of our souls. Let us contemplate Our Lord’s insistence that we keep the Word of God carefully in these sacred days, for even our busyness about right and good things can become a distraction that prevents us from responding to God’s will and His call, be we in the world or in the cloister. As we go now to His altar let us ask anew for the grace and humility this Lent ever to be more attentive to His voice so that we may come to rejoice in the beatitude of those “who hear the Word of God and keep it.” +  + Not everybody is ready to see Christ transfigured. Nor can all yet hear those words of the Father, “This is my beloved Son, listen to Him.” Those select apostles who were taken up the mountain to witness this great event were carefully instructed not to tell the others what they had witnessed until Christ had risen from the dead. Thus, it is with the graces we receive. Whilst they are a great gift, they are not easily sharable, nor should we try to do so without due consideration. The desert fathers, moreover, compare the mouth that is ever speaking of the graces that person has received to a dam with the floodgate open: it can never store up a reserve to be used in due season.
Speech, nonetheless, is necessary. Evil must be combatted, error corrected. Above all, God must be glorified. At the heart of so doing is the missionary imperative, to go out, convert the nations baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost (Matthew 28:19). This obligation rests on all Christians. Indeed, so strong is the obligation that Christ commands us to shout it from the rooftops (Matthew 10:27), whilst St Paul speaks of preaching at both opportune and inopportune moments (II Timothy 4:2). Yet we live in a society very different from that of the first century. No longer is the Gospel received as good news. Rather, it is treated as old news that has lost its vigour. It is treated as no news, but as hearsay which has been heard and dismissed before. Its silent transformation of society has occurred, yet the devolution away from the Gospel is led by the mob, not content with a version of Christianity which is merely cultural, which lacks the power of God. Moreover, truth, they have convinced themselves, does not exist. But even they accept that truth does exist when it suits them. Anything which expresses legitimate or illegitimate difference between peoples and cultures is reprehended as erroneous. Likewise, truth is claimed to be found in the laws of science, politically manipulated to appear to contradict the Gospel. Yet the truth of nature is to be found first in God: no scientific theory can invert that. Rather, natural science can, and in itself does, point to God as Creator. It does prove the reality of truth to any who doubt its existence. We could go on... It is now very rare to find a time that is opportune for proclaiming the salvation of Christ... It is rare for people to search for truth. Before they can do so, they must accept that truth exists. Such an acceptance would call into question much, if not all, upon which they currently depend. Yet this is precisely what we need. To face truth and allow it to unsettle each and every vice that has not been completely uprooted. To allow truth to transform every aspect of our social structures which are built on ambition, jealousy, lies, or ideology. The Church's Tradition has given us the Lenten fast to reexamine that we are truly seeking God and to serve His Church. Only then can we start to find opportune times for the direct preaching of Christ. Christ is the Truth Himself. Only in Him does anything make sense. Only in Him can we live in full freedom. Peace can only come from Him. It is not a matter of awaiting the right opportunity to preach His name, but of creating the opportunity. If the transfigured Christ is going to be imprinted onto hearts everywhere, we must first renew our own wonder of God. The Incarnation must truly be good news. It must excite and animate us. Then shall the power of God show forth in the world. +   + It is one of the more consoling aspects of the mystery of the Incarnation that Our Lord, in His human nature, himself suffered temptation—as the Gospel of this first Sunday of Lent recounts. That the devil tempts Our Lord when He is hungry and is perhaps, therefore, humanly speaking, weaker and more vulnerable, comes as little surprise: the devil chooses his moment carefully, as each of us knows only too well.
Our Lord’s humanity was, of course, not marked by the disastrous effects of Original Sin. But ours is. The weakness of our fallen human nature is far more severe than merely that of hunger. Original Sin and the concupiscence that remains even after its remission by the grace of Baptism almost give the devil a key with which to open the door, as it were. As St Paul himself complains in the letter to the Romans: “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Rom. 7:19) Concupiscence—that weakness and tendency to give into temptation and to fall back into sin—is a reality with which we must each reckon. ‘Dancing with the devil’ can seem very attractive at times, even if we already know that it shall not end well. Indeed, we might easily be forgiven for complaining that Our Lord’s strength in the face of temptation in this morning’s Gospel is all very well and good, but that His humanity is not scarred by Original sin as is ours. How could we be so strong? We would surely falter! Such a protest is understandable, certainly—but it entirely misses the point. For the taking of human nature by Almighty God is the post-Fall re-revelation of our true human nature. God made man in Christ Jesus does not present us with some inspiring ‘superman’; no, it reveals to us, once again, the magnificence of God’s creation of man and woman in nothing less than His own image and likeness as the Book of Genesis (1:26-27) teaches us. The Incarnation reveals to us the truth about human nature, and about whom we are called to be. Thus, the use by the Church’s Liturgy today of the temptations of Our Lord in the desert is not an occasion for distant admiration mixed with quiet despair. No; it is a call to that profound renewal of our human nature that is possible in Christ through Baptism and renewed through the frequent worthy reception of the Sacraments of Confession and Holy Communion. It is a call to take up the spiritual weapons at our disposal—most particularly those of prayer, fasting and almsgiving—and to regain where necessary the lost grace of Baptism or to fortify ourselves further against the inevitable attacks of the world, the flesh and the devil. It is a call to take up the fight anew, to persevere in its exigencies, indeed to perfect it so that the devil no longer has any opportunity and that the concupiscence against which we struggle may recede once and for all into the background. “That would be wonderful, but it’s quite unlikely. I’ve tried so often before. So many Lents have made such little difference,” we may well respond, quite truthfully even—at least in respect of the past. But here we come face to face with the most insidious temptation of the devil, and it is literally vital that we recognise it as such, as a truly deadly temptation, and that we resist it with all our might. For no matter how slothful or seemingly ineffectual our previous efforts may have been, indeed no matter how sinful or far from God we may be or believe ourselves to be, the Incarnation is a reality that is more powerful than evil and its fruits—the redemption of fallen human nature; our redemption—are available to each of us if only we resolve to open ourselves to them and persevere in the working out of their realisation. This, then, is the clarion call of Lent: to dismiss the demonic temptation to sloth and despair and to take up the arms of prayer, fasting and almsgiving anew, to make a good and complete confession of our sins and to be ready to receive Our Lord worthily in Holy Communion at Easter. Yes, we have heard this before. Yes, we have most probably tried this before. But our past feeble attempts do not ultimately matter. What matters is that now, in this Lent, we resist the temptation to wallow in mediocrity and strive anew for perfection in Christ. What matters is that, with Church’s prayer each morning at Lauds, we beg: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and steadfast spirit within me,” (Ps. 50:10) and that we follow up this prayer with the practical steps of repentance, of making a good sacramental Confession, of doing penance and by actually avoiding future occasions of sin as necessary. What matters is that we replace vice with virtue, traditionally with real time given to prayer, to serious fasting and to acts of charity through almsgiving—something for which the traditional Ember days of this coming first week of Lent (i.e. Wednesday, Friday and Saturday) provide an excellent opportunity. Temptation is no news—as the Gospel demonstrates even Our Lord endured temptation in His humanity. What is news—what is truly Good News, the evangelion—is that temptation can be resisted and that our true human nature and dignity can flourish as God intended it in the beginning: if only we will act now to turn to Him anew with the traditional Lenten means at our disposal. +  Last summer a benefactor donated 13 hand-carved oak Stations of the Cross. We were delighted because we have long-since wished to erect a Way of the Cross in our extensive grounds. L'été dernier, un bienfaiteur a fait don de 13 stations du chemin de croix sculptées à la main dans du chêne. Nous en avons été ravis, car nous souhaitions depuis longtemps ériger un chemin de croix dans notre vaste domaine. Of course, one station (n. III) was missing. But an accomplished local Catholic artist was commissioned to carve the missing station – a work which he completed in February. Il manquait bien sûr une station (n° III). Mais un artiste catholique local accompli a été chargé de sculpter la station manquante, une œuvre qu'il a achevée en février. This has allowed us to commission our carpenters to make suitable outdoor frames for each station. So too, a path has been cut up a hill through the woods so that the Way of the Cross shall be a true climb. The coming weeks will see the spaces for each station created in good time for their formal blessing and the Solemn Via Crucis on Good Friday. Cela nous a permis de commander à nos menuisiers des cadres extérieurs adaptés à chaque station. De même, un chemin a été tracé à travers les bois, sur une colline, afin que le chemin de croix soit une véritable ascension. Au cours des prochaines semaines, les espaces destinés à chaque station seront aménagés à temps pour leur bénédiction officielle et la Via Crucis solennelle du Vendredi saint. The cost of all of this work is not negligible and we turn to your generosity this Lent to support this initiative that will enable visitors and retreatants to meditate on Our Lord’s Passion in the tranquil beauty of nature. Le coût de tous ces travaux n'est pas négligeable et nous faisons appel à votre générosité pendant ce Carême pour soutenir cette initiative qui permettra aux visiteurs et aux retraitants de méditer sur la Passion de Notre Seigneur dans la beauté tranquille de la nature. Donations may be made through this fundraiser or by any means given on our website here. USA taxpayers can obtain a tax receipt by donating to our USA Foundation or through the Facebook Lent fundraiser page. UK taxpayers may Gift Aid their donation through Just Giving. Please state that your donation for the Stations of the Cross fundraiser. No donation is too small (or too large). God reward your generosity. Les dons peuvent être effectués par le biais de cette collecte de fonds ou par tout autre moyen indiqué sur notre site web ici. Veuillez indiquer que votre don est destiné à la collecte de fonds pour le Chemin de Croix. Les bienfaiteurs français qui souhaitent recevoir un reçu fiscal pour leur don doivent contacter le monastère en indiquant leur adresse postale et leur adresse électronique. Aucun don n'est trop petit (ou trop grand). Que Dieu récompense votre générosité. Those who wish to donate a station in memory of a loved one who has died may do so. The approximate cost per station is €600 euros. If you wish to do this, please contact us as soon as possible with your preferred station number(s) and we will confirm its availability. A brass plaque will be affixed to each donated station with the words “In memoriam”, the name of the person, and the years of their birth and death. Ceux qui souhaitent faire don d'une station en mémoire d'un proche décédé peuvent le faire. Le coût approximatif par station est de 600 euros. Si vous souhaitez faire un don, veuillez nous contacter dès que possible en indiquant le ou les numéros de station que vous préférez et nous vous confirmerons leur disponibilité. Une plaque en laiton sera apposée sur chaque station offerte, avec la mention « In memoriam », le nom de la personne et ses dates de naissance et de décès. Daignez, Seigneur, récompenser tous ceux qui par votre saint Nom nous font du bien, en leur donnant la vie éternelle. Amen. Reward, O Lord, with eternal life all those who do good to us for the sake of your name. Amen.
Let continue to pray fervently for the unity of the Church and for the Holy Father.
Continuons à prier avec ferveur pour l'unité de l'Église et pour le Saint-Père.  + The Apostles did not understand what Our Lord said to them about the upcoming accomplishment of all that was written about Him by the prophets. Our Lord laid it out plainly before them, yet these things were hidden from them and they “understood not” what was said. The Evangelist is perfectly clear that it is not because they were stupid, but because the time for them to understand, as known by God, had not yet come. Christ’s warning nonetheless served its purpose: they were forewarned about what was to come.
How different this is to the day after the Resurrection when two disciples were departing Jerusalem for Emmaus, with their hope broken (Luke 24:13-35). He whom they had hoped to be the Saviour had been brutally killed, yet as they were walking a stranger came and explained the Law and the Prophets explaining how everything therein related to Jesus Christ. As He did so their hearts burnt within them as everything started to make sense. Suddenly, in Christ, they could understand all the Scriptures and that this must happen. Fundamentally, the difference between the two incidents recounted in the Scriptures and how they relate to Christ is that through the Passion Death and Resurrection of Our Lord, the entire salvific nature of the Incarnation became known to them. God opened their eyes to the realities that are contained within the Scripture so they could understand them as He had inspired them. And so their hearts could not but burn as this became known to them, for the wonder, the majesty and the love that is contained therein is greater than any man can realise by himself. When the Apostles and the Fathers spoke of the Scriptures they regularly mean only the Old Testament, which are but a preparation or a prophecy for the Gospel, whilst the Tradition from the Acts of the Apostles onwards was all looked towards as the definitive explanation of the Scripture in its relation to Jesus-Christ—also as determining the doctrine which pertains to His person. Hence in the Creed: “Christ has risen according to the Scriptures” is a statement that the Scriptures – the Law and Prophets – are about the Passion Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, true God and true man. Without that realisation there can be no hope of understanding them at all. We cannot therefore approach the Sacred Page as something simply to be read, something which is an interesting historical resource, even if it is also an historical resource. Exegesis is not a matter of understanding every historical detail about a passage, although it does help. It is a matter of uncovering how a passage relates to the mystery of the Trinity, and particularly the Incarnation. Scripture is given to us as a tool, unquestionably the best and most fundamental tool, to contemplate Christ under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. It is the latter who has spoken through the prophets and must also be Himself Who does the unpacking of it. It is the person of Christ whom we must know not merely the texts about Him. Yet we cannot know Christ if we do not know Scripture, as is so famously stated by St Jerome. It may be difficult to see how many texts of the Law relate to Christ. Yet all of the injunctions contained therein are nonetheless a preparation for the reality for which the prophets were waiting. All of them must be considered as sacred. Not all of them have the same clarity of perspective as the Gospel accounts, yet there is nothing there that is said idly. The text alone, however, does not suffice. God has opened the eyes of the Apostles. The Revelation given them has been explained by the Fathers and synthesised through the Church’s Magisterium. There is always more to which God can open our eyes to about Himself, without adding anything new, through the contemplation of what He has said through the prophets. +  + Sexagesima Sunday could perhaps be renamed “St Paul’s Sunday,” for his boast in this morning’s Epistle seems never to end, and even in the collect of this Mass we ask Almighty God to be strengthened by the protection of this Doctor of the Gentiles! St Paul almost eclipses the great Parable of the Sower, which is so poignant at so many levels.
Nevertheless, let us stay with St Paul for a while. There is no question that he is a Prince of the Apostles and a great Doctor of the Faith. His boast, in context, is not unmerited. Nor is the veneration given him by the Church since her very foundation. Rightly does Rome boast a splendid Basilica to house his mortal remains and to welcome the constant stream of pilgrims who come to seek his intercession. Yet, this singularly privileged Apostle was still a man, not an angel. As we know from his past, St Paul was not immaculately conceived. His greatness lay in the grace of persevering in the vocation given him at the moment of his conversion—and of that he rightly boasts. Even so, as we hear at the end of this morning’s Epistle, St Paul still struggled: “To keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated,” St Paul tells us. Furthermore—as would any of us—he asked to be freed of this torment: “Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me.” St Paul’s prayer in this instance was in vain, at least in the sense of receiving exactly what he asked for—an experience that perhaps we know only too well! But, as does happen when we pray insistently and sincerely from the depth of our hearts, God’s response transforms the situation to hand and lifts it up to another level, as it were. We who are bound by our natural concerns can be given a glimpse, if not a foretaste, of supernatural realities. And that is precisely what happens here, when, having refused St Paul’s insistence on mundane demands, the Lord responds to St Paul with those potent words: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” My brothers and sisters, there is very much indeed here to contemplate! We rightly seek to conquer our vices and to grow in virtue, but so often become frustrated by our weakness that seems to result at times in our taking two steps backward for every one step forward we are somehow able to make. We become frustrated. Our insistent prayers for relief are not seemingly heard. The thorns in our flesh that succeed only to well in keeping us from being too proud hurt and do their damage and seem to cause even more to others. If we are not careful the temptation to moral despair can become a reality. It is precisely here that the Lord’s words are spoken to us also, this morning, by the Church in her Sacred Liturgy: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” It is exactly in the seemingly desperate circumstances we can so often find ourselves that the Church prays with us and for us, asking that we be strengthened by the protection of he who himself had to learn that weakness is part of our fallen human condition which only reliance on and cooperation with God’s grace can ultimately remedy if we persevere in our Christian vocation. But what does it mean to rely on God’s grace and to cooperate with it? Most certainly it does not mean to wallow in our weaknesses and to indulge them. No: we must continue the battle against vice and seek to grow in virtue, as ever. Reliance on God’s grace is no excuse for spiritual sloth! Reliance on God’s grace does mean, however, that having done all that I possibly can and finding that that is still insufficient, I must in the end hand the matter over to God and be open to His solutions. St Paul persevered faithfully unto the end despite the thorns in the flesh from which he suffered. God’s grace was sufficient. An otherwise limited man became the great Doctor of the Gentiles who shed his blood for Christ rather than renounce the saving Truth He is. So too must we, being prepared when perseverance seems impossible or our hopes and plans and even at times our particular vocation seem to lie in ruins, to pray: “Lord, I can’t do this by myself. I am inadequate. I need your grace. If you want this, you are going to have to help…now!” Such a heartfelt prayer will not go unanswered, but we must be careful—Our Lord has a habit of answering such prayers in ways that we may never have imagined (just ask St Paul) and of making of us something—someone—we could never have imagined being: that “new man…created according to God, in justice and holiness of life,” as the rite of the clothing of a new novice so poignantly insists as the monastic scapular is first placed on our shoulders. “I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses,” St Paul insists “that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” We may not quite have St Paul’s appetite for ‘boasting’, but let us follow his example and not hesitate to recognise our weaknesses and to hand them over to Our Lord, for only then can we experience the plenitude of his grace and experience His power at work in perfecting us, weak as we are. To that end, may the Doctor of the Gentiles, St Paul, pray for us! + |
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