16 JULY – SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Epistle – Romans vi. 3‒11

Brethren, all we who are baptised in Christ Jesus are baptised in His death. For we are buried together with Him by baptism unto death; that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we will also be in the likeness of His resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin may be destroyed, to the end that we may serve Him no longer. For he that is dead is justified from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we will live also together with Christ, knowing that Christ, rising again from the dead, dies now no more, death will no more have dominion over Him. For, in that He died to sin, He died once: but in that He lives, He lives unto God. So do you also reckon that you are dead indeed to sin, but alive unto, God, in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

The Masses of the Sundays after Pentecost have so far given us but once a passage from St Paul’s Epistles. It has been to Saints Peter and John that the preference has been until now given of addressing the Faithful at the commencement of the sacred Mysteries. It may be that the Church during these weeks, which represent the early days of the apostolic preaching, has intended by this to show us the disciple of faith and the disciple of love as being the two most prominent in the first promulgation of the new Covenant which was committed, at the onset, to the Jewish people. At that time Paul was but Saul the persecutor, and was putting himself forward as the most rabid opponent of that Gospel which, later on, he would so zealously carry to the furthest parts of the Earth. If his subsequent conversion made him become an ardent and enlightened apostle even to the Jews, it soon became evident that the house of Jacob was not the mission that was to be specially the one of his apostolate (Galatians ii. 9). After publicly announcing his faith in Jesus the Son of God, after confounding the synagogue by the weight of his testimony (Acts ix. 20, 22), he waited in silence for the termination of the period accorded to Judah for the acceptance of the covenant. He withdrew into privacy (Galatians i. 17-22), waiting for the Vicar of the Man-God, the Head of the apostolic college, to give the signal for the vocation of the Gentiles and open, in person, the door of the Church to these new children of Abraham (Acts x.)

But Israel has too long abused God’s patience. The day of the ungrateful Jerusalem’s repudiation is approaching (Isaias l. 1), and the divine Spouse, after all this long forbearance with His once chosen but now faithless Bride, the Synagogue, has gone to the Gentile nations. Now is the time for the Doctor of the Gentiles to speak. He will go on speaking and preaching to them,to his dying day. The will not cease proclaiming the word to them until he has brought them back, and lifted them up to God, and consolidated them in faith and love. He will not rest until he has led this once poor despised Gentile world to the nuptial union with Christ (2 Corinthians xi. 2), yes, to the full fecundity of that divine union of which, on the 24th and last Sunday after Pentecost, we will hear him thus speaking: “We cease not to pray for you, and to beg that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of God, in all things pleasing Him; being fruitful in every good work. Giving thanks to God the Father, who has made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the Saints in light, and has translated us into the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Colossians i. 9-13. Epistle for the 24th Sunday after Pentecost).

It is to the Romans that are addressed today’s inspired instructions of the great Apostle. For the reading of these admirable Epistles of Saint Paul, the Church, during the Sundays after Pentecost, will follow the order in which they stand in the canon of Scripture: the epistle to the Romans, the two to the Corinthians, then those to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians, will be read to us in their turns. They make up the sublimest correspondence that was ever written, a correspondence where we find Paul’s whole soul giving us both precept and example how best we may love our Lord: “I beseech you,” so he speaks to his Corinthians, “be followers of me, as I also am of Christ” (1 Corinthians iv. 16; xi. 1; Philippians iii. 17; 1 Thessalonians i. 6).

Indeed, the Gospel (1 Thessalonians i. 5), the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians iv. 20), the Christian life, is not an affair of mere words. Nothing is less speculative than the science of salvation. Nothing makes it penetrate so deep in the souls of men as the holy life of him that teaches it. It is for this reason that the Christian world counts him alone as Apostle or Teacher who, in his one person, holds the double teaching of doctrine and works. Thus, Jesus, the Prince of Pastors (1 Peter v. 4), manifested eternal truth to men, not alone by the words uttered by His divine lips, but likewise by the works He did during His life on Earth. So too, the Apostle, having become a pattern of the flock (1 Peter v. 3), shows us all in his own person what marvellous progress a faithful soul may make under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of sanctification.

Let us, then, be attentive to every word that comes from this mouth, ever open to speak to the whole Earth (2 Corinthians vi. 11), but at the same time let us fix the eyes of our soul on the works achieved by our Apostle, and let us walk in his footsteps (Philippians iii. 16). He lives in his Epistles. He abides and continues with us all, as he himself assures us, for the furtherance and joy of our faith (Philippians i. 25, 26).

Nor is this all. If we value, as we ought, the example and the teaching of this father of the Gentiles (1 Corinthians iv. 14, 15), we must not forget his labours, and sufferings, and solicitudes, and the intense love he bore towards all those who never had seen, or were to see, his face in the flesh (Colossians ii. 1-5). Let us make him the return of dilating our hearts with affectionate admiration of him. Let us love not only the light, but him also who brings it to us. Yes, and all them that, like him, have been getting for us the exquisite brightness from the treasures of God the Father and his Christ. It is the recommendation made so feelingly by Saint Paul himself (2 Corinthians vi. 11-13; Hebrews xiii. 7). It is the intention willed by God Himself, by the fact of His confiding to men like ourselves the charge of sharing with Him the imparting this heavenly light to us. Eternal Wisdom does not show herself directly here below. She is hid, with all her treasures, in the Man-God (Colossians ii. 3) she reveals herself by Him (1 Corinthians i. 24), and by the Church (Ephesians iii. 10), which is the mystical body of that Man-God (Ephesians i. 23), and by the chosen members of that Church, the Apostles (1 Corinthians ii. 6, 7). We cannot either love or know our Lord Jesus Christ, save by and in Him (1 Corinthians ii. 8), but we cannot love or understand Jesus unless we love and understand His Church (John xv. 14; Luke x. 16).

Now in this Church, the glorious aggregate of the elect both of Heaven and Earth, we should especially love and venerate those who are in a special manner associated with our Lord’s sacred humanity in making the divine Word manifest — that Word who is the one centre of our thoughts both in this world and in the world to come. According to this standard, who was there that had a stronger claim than Paul, to the veneration, gratitude, and love of the Faithful? Who of the Prophets and holy Apostles went deeper into the mystery of Christ? (Ephesians iii. 4, 5). Who was there like him, in revealing to the world the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Christ Jesus? (2 Corinthians iv. 6). Was there ever a more perfect teacher, or a more eloquent interpreter, of the life of union — we mean of that marvellous union which brings regenerated humanity into the embrace of God, union which continues and repeats the life of the Word Incarnate in each Christian? To him, the last and least of the saints, (as he humbly calls himself,) was given the grace of proclaiming to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. To him was confided the mission of teaching to all nations the mystery of creation —mystery, hidden so long in God, as the secret to be, at some distant day, revealed to men, and would show them what was the one only meaning of the world’s history— the mystery, that is, of the manifestation, through the Church, of the infinite Wisdom which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Ephesians iii. 8-11).

For, as the Church is neither more nor less than the body and mystical complement of the Man-God, so, in Saint Paul’s mind, the formation and growth of the Church are but the sequel of the Incarnation. They are but the continued development of the mystery shown to the angelic hosts when this Word Incarnate made Himself visible to them in the crib at Bethlehem. After the Incarnation God was the better known of his Angels. Though ever the selfsame in His own unchanging essence, yet, to them He appeared grander and more magnificent in the brilliant reflection of His infinite perfections as seen in the Flesh of His Word. So, too, although no increase in them was possible, and their plenitude was their fixed measure, yet the created perfection and holiness of the Man-God have their fuller and clearer revelation in proportion as the marvels of perfection and holiness which dwell in Him, as in their source, are multiplied in the world.

Starting from Him, flowing ever from His fullness (John i. 16), the stream of grace and truth (John i. 14) ceaselessly laves each member of the body of the Church. Principle of spiritual growth, mysterious sap, it has its divinely appointed channels. And these unite the Church more closely to her Head than the nerves and vessels which convey movement and life to the extremities of our body, unite its several parts to the head which directs and governs the whole frame. But, just as in the human body the life of the head and of the members is one, giving to each of them the proportion and harmony which go to make up the perfect man, so in the Church there is but one life — the life of the Man-God, of Christ the head, forming His mystical Body and perfecting, in the Holy Ghost, its several members (Ephesians iv. 12-16). The time will come when this perfection will have attained its full development. Then will human nature, united with its divine Head in the measure and beauty of the perfect age due to Christ, appear on the throne of the Word (Ephesians ii. 6), an object of admiration to the Angels and of delight to the most Holy Trinity. Meanwhile, Christ is being completed in all things and in all men (Ephesians i. 23), as heretofore at Nazareth, Jesus is still growing (Luke ii. 40), and these His advancings are gradual fresh manifestations of the beauty of infinite Wisdom (Luke ii. 52).

The holiness, the sufferings, and then the glory of the Lord Jesus — in a word, His life continued in His members (2 Corinthians iv. 10, 11) — this is Saint Paul’s notion of the Christian life: a notion most simple and sublime which, in the Apostle’s mind, resumes the whole commencement, progress and consummation of the work of the Spirit of love in every soul that is sanctified. We will find him, later on, developing this practical truth of which the Epistle read to us today merely gives the leading principle. After all, what is Baptism, that first step made on the road which leads to Heaven — what else is it but the neophyte’s incorporation with the Man-God, who died once to sin, that he might for ever live in God his Father? On Holy Saturday, after having assisted at the blessing of the font, we had read to us a similar passage from another Epistle of Saint Paul (Colossians iii. 1-4) which put before us the divine realities achieved beneath the mysterious waters. Holy Church returns to the same teaching today, in order that she may recall to our minds this great principle of the commencement of the Christian life, and make it the basis of the instructions she is here going to give us. If the very first effect of the sanctification of one who, by Baptism, is buried together with Christ, be the making him a new man, the creating him afresh in this Man-God (Ephesians ii. 10), the grafting his new life on the life of Jesus by which to bring forth new fruits, we cannot wonder at the Apostle’s unwillingness to give us any other rule for our contemplation or our practice, than the study and imitation of this divine model. There, and there only, is man’s perfection (Colossians i. 28), there is his happiness (Colossians ii. 10). “As, then, you have received the knowledge of Jesus Christ the Lord, walk in him (Colossians ii. 6) for, as many of you as have been baptised in Christ, have put on Christ (Galatians iii. 27).

Our Apostle emphatically tells us that he knows nothing, and will preach nothing, but Jesus (1 Corinthians ii. 2). If we be of Saint Paul’s school, adopting, as we will then do, the sentiments of our Lord Jesus Christ, and making them our own (Philippians ii. 15), we will become other Christs or, rather, one only Christ with the Man-God, by the sameness of thoughts and virtues, under the impulse of the same sanctifying Spirit.

Gospel – Mark viii. 1‒9

At that time, when there was a great multitude with Jesus and they had nothing to eat, calling His disciples together He said to them, “I have compassion on the multitude, for behold they have now been with me three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them away fasting to their home, they will faint on the way, for some of them came from away.” And His disciples answered Him, “From where can anyone fill them here with bread in the wilderness?” And He asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “Seven.” And He commanded the people to sit down on the ground. Taking the seven loaves, giving thanks, He broke them and gave them to His disciples to set before them, and they set them before the people. They had a few little fishes, and He blessed them, and commanded them to be set before them. They ate and were filled, and they took up what was left of the fragments, seven baskets. They who had eaten were about four thousand, and He sent them away.

Praise to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

The interpretation of the sacred text is given to us by Saint Ambrose in his Homily which has been chosen for this Sunday. We will there find the same vein of thought as is suggested by the whole tenor of the Liturgy assigned for this portion of the Year. The holy Doctor thus begins: “After the woman, who is the type of the Church, has been cured of the flow of blood — and after the Apostles have received their commission to preach the Gospel — the nourishment of heavenly grace is imparted.” He had just been asking, a few lines previous, what this signified, and his answer was: “The Old Law had been insufficient to feed the hungry hearts of the nations, so the Gospel food was given to them.”

We were observing this day week that the Law of Sinai, because of its weakness (Hebrews vii. 18, 19) had made way for the Testament of the universal covenant. And yet it is from Sion itself that the Law of Grace has issued. Here again, it is Jerusalem that is the first to whom the word of the Lord is spoken (Isaias ii. 3). But the bearers of the Good Tidings have been rejected by the obdurate and jealous Jews. They, therefore, turn to the Gentiles (Acts xiii. 46) and shake off Jerusalem’s dust from their feet. That dust, however, is to be an accusing testimony (Luke ix. 5). It is soon to be turned into a rain showering down on the proud city a more terrible vengeance than was that of fire which once fell on Sodom and Gomorrha (Matthew x. 15). The superiority of Judah over the rest of the human race had lasted for ages. But now, all that ancient privilege of Israel, and all his rights of primogeniture, are gone. The primacy has followed Simon Peter to the west, and the crown of Sion, which is fallen from off her guilty head (Lamentations v. 16) now glitters, and will so forever, on the consecrated brow of the queen of nations.

Like the poor woman of the Gospel who had spent all her substance over useless remedies, the Gentile world had grown weaker and weaker by the effects of original and subsequent sins. She had put herself under the treatment of false teachers who gradually reduced her to the loss of that law and gifts of nature which, as Saint Ambrose expresses it, had been her “vital patrimony.” At length the day came for her hearing of the arrival of the heavenly Physician. She at once roused herself. The consciousness of her miserable condition urged her on. Her faith got the upper hand of her human respect, and brought her to the presence of the Incarnate Word. Her humble confidence, which so strongly contrasted with the insulting arrogance of the Synagogue, lead her into contact with Christ, and she touched Him. Virtue went forth from Him (Luke viii. 46), cured her original wound and at once restored to her all the strength she had lost by her long period of languor.

Having thus cured human nature, our Lord bids her cease her fast which had lasted for ages. He gives her the excellent nourishment she required. Saint Ambrose, whose comment we are following, compares the miraculous repast mentioned in today’s Gospel with the other multiplication of loaves brought before us on the fourth Sunday of Lent. And he remarks how, both in spiritual nourishment, and in that which refreshes the body, there are various degrees of excellence. The Bridegroom does not ordinarily serve up the choicest wine, he does not produce the daintiest dishes, at the beginning of the banquet he has prepared for his dear ones (John ii. 10). Besides, there are many souls here below who are incapable of rising beyond a certain limit towards the divine and substantial Light which is the nourishment of the spirit. To these, therefore, and they are the majority, and are represented by the five thousand men who were present at the first miraculous multiplication, the five loaves of inferior quality (John vi. 9) are an appropriate food and one that, by its very number, is in keeping with the five senses which, more or less, have dominion over the multitude. But, as for the privileged favourites of grace — as for those men who are not distracted by the cares of this present life, who scorn to use its permitted pleasures, and who, even while in the flesh, make God the only king of their soul — for these, and for these only, the Bridegroom reserves the pure wheat of the seven loaves which by their number express the plenitude of the Holy Spirit, and mysteries in abundance.

“Although they are in the world,” says Saint Ambrose, “yet these men, to whom is given the nourishment of mystical rest, are not of the world.” In the beginning God was, for six days, giving to the universe he had created its perfection and beauty. He consecrated the seventh to the enjoyment of His works (Genesis ii. 1-3). Seven is the number of the divine rest. It was also to be that of the fruitful rest of the Son of God, the perfecting souls in that peace which makes love secure and is the source of the invincible power of the Bride, as mentioned in the Canticle (Canticles viii. 10). It is for this reason, that the Man-God, when proclaiming on the mount the Beatitudes of the law of love, attributed the seventh to the peace-makers, or peaceable, as deserving to be called by excellence the Sons of God (Matthew ii. 9), It is in them alone that is fully developed the germ of divine sonship (Hebrews iii. 14) which is put into the soul at Baptism. Thanks to the silence to which the passions have been reduced, their spirit, now master of the flesh and itself subject to God, is a stranger to those inward storms, those sudden changes, and even those inequalities of temperature which are all unfavourable to the growth of the precious seed (1 John iii. 9). Warmed by the Sun of Justice in an atmosphere which is ever serene and unclouded, there is no obstacle to its coming up, there is no ill-shapen growth: absorbing all the human moisture of this Earth in which it is set, assimilating the very Earth itself, it soon leaves nothing else to be seen in these men but the divine, for they have become in the eyes of the Father who is in Heaven a most faithful image of His first-born Son (Romans viii. 29).

“Rightly then,” continues Saint Ambrose, “the seventh Beatitude is that of the peaceful . To them belong the seven baskets of the crumbs that were over and above. This bread of the Sabbath, this sanctified bread, this bread of rest — yes, it is something great. And I even venture to say that if, after you have eaten of the five loaves, you will have eaten also of the seven, you have no bread on Earth that you can look forward to.” But take notice of the condition specified in our Gospel, as necessary for those who aspire to such nourishment as that. “It is not,” says the Saint, “to lazy people, nor to them that live in cities, nor to them that are great in worldly honours, but to them that seek Christ in the desert, that is given the heavenly nourishment: they only who hunger after it are received by Christ into a participation of the Word and of God’s kingdom.” The more intense their hunger, the more they long for their divine object and for no other, the more will the heavenly food strengthen them with light and love, the more will it satiate them with delight.

All the truth, all the goodness, all the beauty of created things, are incapable of satisfying any single soul. It must have God, and so long as man does not understand this, everything that his senses and his reason can provide him with of good or true, far from its being able to satiate him, is ordinarily nothing more than a something which distracts him from the one object that can make him the happy being he was created to be — a mere something that becomes a hindrance to his living the true life which God willed him to attain. Observe how our Lord waits for all their human schemes to fail, and then he will be their helper, if they will but permit him. The men of today’s Gospel are not afraid to abide with Him in the desert and put up with the consequent privations of meat and drink. Their faith is greater than that of their brethren who have preferred to remain in their home in the cities, and has raised them so much the higher in the order of grace. For that very reason our Lord would not allow them to admit anything of a nature to interfere with the divine food he prepares for their souls. Such is the importance of this entire self-abnegation for souls that aim at the highest perfection of Christian life, such, too, the difficulty which even the bravest find of reaching that total self-abnegation by their own efforts, that we see our Lord Himself acting directly on the souls of his saints in order to create in them that desert, that spiritual vacuum, whose very appearance makes poor nature tremble, and yet which is so indispensable for the reception of his gifts.

Struggling, like another Jacob with God (Genesis xxxii. 24) under the effort of this unsparing purification, the creature feels herself to be undergoing a sort of indescribable martyrdom. She has become the favoured object of Jesus’ research and, as He intends to give Himself unreservedly to her, so He insists on her becoming entirely His. It is with a view to this that He, in the delicate dealings of His mercy, subdues and breaks her in order that He may detach her from creatures and from herself. The piercing eye of the Word perceives every least crease or fold of her spiritual being. His grace carries its jealous work right down to the division of soul and spirit, and reaches to the very joints and marrow, scrutinising and unmercifully probing the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews iv. 12, 13). As the Prophet describes the refiner of the silver and gold which is to form the king’s crown and sceptre (Malachias iii. 3), so our divine Lord: He will sit refining and cleansing in the crucible this soul so dear to Him, that He wishes to wear her as one of the precious jewels of His everlasting diadem. Nothing could exceed His zeal in this work which, in His eyes, is grander far than the creation of a thousand worlds. He watches, He fans the flame of the furnace, and He Himself is called a consuming fire (Deuteronomy iv. 24). When the senses have no more vile vapours to emit, when the dross of the spirit which is the last to yield has got detached from the gold, then does the divine purifier show it with complacency to the gaze of men and angels. Its lustre is all He would have it be so He may safely produce on it a faithful image of Himself.

When the Jewish people were led forth by Moses from Egypt, they said: “The Lord God has called us. We will go three days’ journey into the wilderness, to sacrifice to the Lord our God” (Exodus iii. 18). In like manner the disciples of Jesus have retired into the wilderness, as our today’s Gospel tells us, and after three days they have been fed with a miraculous bread which foretold the victim of the great Sacrifice, of which the Hebrew one was a figure. In a few moments, both the bread and the figure are to make way, on the altar before which we are standing, for the highest possible realities. Let us then go forth from the land of bondage of our sins. And since our Lord’s merciful invitation comes to us so repeatedly, let our souls get the habit of keeping away from the frivolities of Earth, and from worldly thoughts. And let us beseech our Lord that He may graciously give us strength to advance further into that interior desert where He is always the most inclined to hear us, and where He is most liberal with His graces.

9 JULY – FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

This Sunday, which with the Greeks is called the fifth of Saint Matthew, was known by the Latins as the Sunday of the Fishing. such was its name up to the time when the Church had transferred to the previous Sunday the Gospel which suggested that title. The week which it commences is in some ancient lectionaries called the first after the Feast of the Apostles or of Saint Peter. In others it is the second or third after the same feast. These and other similar varieties of names, which it is no rare thing to find in the liturgical books of the Middle Ages, originated in Easters being kept sooner or later in the years when those books were written.

The Church began last night the reading of the second book of Kings. It opens with the description of Saul’s sad end and David’s accession to the throne of Israel. The exaltation of Jesse’s son is the climax to the prophetic life of the ancient people. In David, God had found His faithful servant (Psalms lxxxviii. 21), and He resolved to exhibit him to the world as the most perfect figure of the future Messiah. A solemn promise of Jehovah assured the new monarch as to the future of his race. His throne was to be everlasting (Psalms lxxxviii. 36-38) for, at some future day, it was to be the throne of Him who should be called the Son of the Most High, though, at the same time, He was to be Son of David (Luke i. 32).

But, while the Tribe of Judah was hailing in Hebron the King elected by the Lord, there were dark clouds on the horizon. In her Vespers of yesterday the Church sang, as one of her finest Antiphons, the funeral ode which inspiration dictated to David when he saw the regal crown that had been picked up from the dust and gore of the battle-field, on which had fallen the princes of Israel: “Ye mountains of Gelboe, let neither dew nor rain come upon you, for there was cast away the shield of the valiant, the shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with oil! How are the valiant fallen in battle! Jonathan slain on the high places! Saul and Jonathan exceeding lovely and comely in their life; even in death they were not divided” (2 Kings i. 21, 23, 25).

The proximity of the great solemnity of the Apostles, June the 29th, to the Saturday when this Antiphon is sung, has suggested to the Church to apply its last words to Saints Peter and Paul during the octave of their Feast: “Glorious Princes of the Earth! As they loved each other in their life, so even in their death they were not divided!” Like the Hebrew people at this period of their history, our Christian armies have often had to hail their kings almost in the same breath that said the requiem over their predecessors.

As on last Sunday, so again today the Church seems to unite together the readings of the previous night and the solemn entrance of the Sacrifice. The Introit for this fifth Sunday is taken from Psalm 26 which was composed by David on occasion of his coronation in Hebron. It expresses the humble confidence of him who has nothing here below to trust in, and yet he has the Lord, as his light and salvation. In the events just referred to, nothing less than a blind faith in God’s promises could have kept up the courage of the young shepherd of Bethlehem, and nothing less could have inspired the people who had made him their king. But we must see beyond this. We must understand that the kingship of Jesse’s son and his descendants in the ancient Jerusalem represents, for our Mother the Church, a grander royalt, and a more lasting dynasty — the kingship of Christ and the dynasty of the Sovereign Pontiffs.

Epistle – 1 Peter iii. 8‒15

Dearly beloved, be all of one mind; having, compassion one of another, being lovers of the brotherhood, merciful, modest, humble; not rendering evil for evil, nor railing for railing, but contrariwise, blessing: for o this are you called, that you may inherit a blessing. For, he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile. Let him decline from evil and do good; let him seek after peace and pursue it; because the eyes of the Lord are on the just, and his ears to their prayers, but the countenance of the Lord on on them that do evil things. And who is he that can hurt you, if you be zealous of good? But if also your suffer anything for justice sake, blessed are you. And be not afraid of their fear, and be not troubled: but sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

The Gospel of last Sunday showed us the Apostles hard at work drawing from the waters the living stones with which Jesus is to build His Church. Today it is the head, the one who presides over the mysterious fishing, it is Simon the Son of John who, in our Epistle, addresses himself to those various elements which are to make up the holy city. They are sacred materials all brought together from the deep abyss, that henceforward they may glitter as so many bright pearls with the marvellous light of the Lord Jesus on them (1 Peter ii. 9) The Son of God came down from Heaven for no other purpose than to found on Earth a glorious city in which God Himself might delight to dwell (Apocalypse xxi. 2, 3). He came that He might build for His Father a temple of matchless beauty where praise and love, ceaselessly sounding from the very stones which form its walls, might worthily proclaim that it possessed the sanctuary of the great Sacrifice (1 Peter ii. 4, 5). He Himself made Himself to be the Foundation of the thrice holy structure in which was to burn the eternal holocaust (1 Peter ii. 6, 7). He communicated this character of Foundation of the new temple to Simon His Vicar (Matthew xvi. 18), and by giving him the name of Peter or Rock, on which He built His Church, He as good as told all future generations, what was the one aim of all His divine labours — to build, that is, here on Earth, a Temple worthy of His eternal Father.

Let us, with respectful gratitude, receive from this Vicar of the Man-God the practical lessons which are involved in this master-truth. And, as we are just now in the period of the Year when the Calendar brings the Prince of the Apostles into such welcome prominence, let us be led by the Church nearer and nearer to this Shepherd and Bishop of our souls (1 Peter ii. 25). Union of true charity, concord and peace which must, at every cost, be kept up as the condition for their being happy both now and for ever —such is the substance of the instructions addressed by Simon, now Peter, to those other chosen stones, which rest upon him, and constitute that august Temple to be presented by the Son of Man to the glory of the Most High. Do not the solidity and duration of even Earth’s palaces depend on the degree of union between the materials used in their structure? Again, it is union which gives strength and beauty to all the parts of this immense universe. Let there be a cessation in that mutual attraction which combines them together in one harmonious whole. Let there be a suspension of that cohesion which holds their atoms together, and we will have but an agglomeration of a vile impalpable something scarcely worth the name of dust.

The Creator has made peace in His high places (Job xxv. 2), so that He asks: “Who can make the harmony of heaven to sleep?” (Job xxxviii. 37). And yet, as the Earth in its present condition is to have an end, so too the heavens are to pass away as some worn-out garment (Psalms ci. 26-28). What, then, will be the cause of the stability, what the cement which is to hold together the House prepared for God to dwell in which, when all else has crumbled into change, is to be ever the same? And that dwelling is the Church: the dwelling of the adorable Trinity, up to whose throne there is to be ascending, for all eternity, the fragrance which exhales from her Jesus, her Spouse. Here again, it is the Holy Spirit who must explain to us the mystery of this union which makes up the holy city (Psalms cxxi. 3), and whose duration is to last as long as eternity itself. The charity which is poured forth into our hearts the moment of our Baptism is an emanation of the very love that reigns in the bosom of the blessed Trinity, for the workings of the Holy Spirit in the Saints have this for their aim: to make them enter into a participation in the divine energies.

Having become the life of the regenerate soul, the divine Fire penetrates her whole being with God and communicates to her created and finite love the direction and the power of the Flame that is everlasting and divine. So that, henceforward, the Christian must love as God loves. His charity is then only what it should be, when it takes in everything that God loves. Now, such is the ineffable friendship established by the supernatural order between God and his intellectual creatures, that he vouchsafes to love them with the love with which He loves Himself and, therefore, our charity should include and embrace, not only God Himself, but, moreover, all those beings whom He has called to share, if they will, in His own infinite happiness. This will give us to understand the grandeur and incomparable power of the union in which the Holy Ghost has established the Church. We are not surprised that its bonds should be stronger than death, and its cohesion be proof against all the power of Hell (Canticles viii. ), for the cement which joins the living stones of its walls together partakes of the strength of God Himself, and imitates the stability of His eternal love. The Church is truly that Tower which was built on the waters, which was shown to Hermas. It was formed of brightly polished stones, so closely joined one to the other, that the eye could not perceive the joints.

But let us also understand the importance and the necessity of mutual union for all Christians: there must be among them that love of the brotherhood which is so frequently and so strongly recommended by the Apostles, the co-operators of the Spirit in the building up of the Church. The keeping aloof from schism and heresy, of whose terrible consequences we were told in last Sunday’s Gospel — the repression of hatred and jealousy — no, these are not enough for the making us become useful members of the Church of Christ: we must, moreover, have a charity which is effective, and devoted, and persevering, and brings all souls and hearts into true union and harmony: a charity which, to be worthy of the name, must be warm-hearted and generous, for it must make us see God in our fellow-men, and that will bring us to look upon their happiness or misfortunes as though they were our own. We must have none of that phlegmatic egotism which finds satisfaction in never putting itself out of the way for any body: hateful as such a temperament is, it is far from being a rare one. It holds this peculiar view about charity — that the best way of observing it is to have a complete indifference for those who live with us! With souls of this stamp it is evident they are not bedded in the divine cement: you could never get them to be part of the holy structure: the heavenly Builder is compelled to reject them as unfit, or leave them to lie, around the walls, a heap of unemployed material, which refused all adaptation, and all being shaped, to the general plan.

Still, if the building get finished before they have made up their minds not to be rubbish, woe to them! When it is too late they will open their eyes and understand that Charity is one so that, he does not love God, who does not love his neighbour (John iv. 21). and he who does not love, abides in death (John iii. 14). 2 Let us, therefore, as Saint John counsels us, measure the perfection of our love for God by the love we have for our neighbours (John John iv. 12). Then only will we have God abiding within us (John iv. 12). Then only wiall we be enabled to enjoy the unspeakable mysteries of divine union with Him who only unites Himself with His elect in order to make both them and Himself one glorious temple to the glory of His Father.

Gospel – Matthew v. 20‒24

At that time, Jesus said to his disciples, “Unless your justice exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees you will not enter the kingdom of Heaven. You have heard that it was said to them of old, You must not kill: and whoever kills will be in danger of the judgement. But I say to you, that whoever is angry with his brother will be in danger of judgement; and whoever will say to his brother, Raca, will be in danger of the council and whoever will say, You fool, will be in danger of hell fire. If therefore you offer your gift at the altar, and there you remember that your brother has anything against you, leave your offering before the altar and go first to be reconciled to your brother; and then coming, offer your gift.

Praise to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

The last days of the ancient Jerusalem are fast drawing to their close. In less than a month the frightful ruin of the city that knew not the time of her Lord’s visitation (Luke xix. 44) will have been witnessed by us. It is on the ninth Sunday after Pentecost, during these months of July and August when the armies of Vespasian beheld the destruction of Jerusalem, that the sacred Liturgy commemorates the fulfilment of our Redeemer’s prophecies. During the years which intervened the ancient Temple is still there, with its inner doors closed against all Gentiles. It gives out that, as of old, so now, it holds the Divinity beneath the veils of the old Testament, screening off, even from the children of Israel, its impenetrable Holy of Holies. And yet, the five weeks we have had since Pentecost have shown us how gloriously the Church has been begun on mount Sion. There, fronting the Temple of the restricted and imperfect covenant of Sinai, the Holy Spirit has founded the Church, making her the place where all the nations of Earth are to meet in gladness (Psalms xlvii. 3). She is the city of the great King where all men will henceforth live in the knowledge of God (Jeremias xxxi. 34) and, from the very first moment of her existence, she has been showing herself to us as the abode where Eternal Wisdom has made it His delight to dwell (Proverbs viii. 31; ix. 1). She has proved herself to be the true Holy of Holies in which God and we are to be brought into union.

The law of fear and bondage (Romans viii. 15) is, therefore, forever abrogated by the law of love. A lingering remnant of regard for the once approved institution, which was the depositary of divine revelations (Romans iii. 2) permits the first generation of Jewish converts to observe, if it so pleases them, the practices of their forefathers. But the permission is to cease with the Temple, whose approaching destruction is to bury the Synagogue forever. And even now, before that period of destruction, the prescriptions of the Mosaic law are insufficient to justify the sons of Jacob before God. The ritual ordinances, whose aim was the keeping up the expectation of the future Sacrifice by a ceremonial code of figurative representations, have become useless now that the mysteries they foreshadowed have been accomplished. The very commandments of the Decalogue, those necessary commandments which belong to all times and can never undergo change because they pertain to the essence of the ties existing between creatures and their Creator, yes, even these holy commandments have acquired such additional splendour from the teachings of Jesus, the Sun of all justice, that man’s conscience now finds in them an almost immeasurable increase of moral responsibility and loveliness.

Independently of the positive precept concerning the fruit of the “Tree of Knowledge,” man had received from God, while yet in Eden, the knowledge of those eternal laws. They were written in the life there bestowed on him. From that moment forward he would have to cease being a man before he could entirely divest himself, or lose, that infused knowledge, for it had been given to him as part of his being, as the natural law of his practical judgements, and was thus, to a certain extent, identified with his reason. But man’s reason having, by the Fall, become greatly obscured, his soul had no longer the full and clear notion it previously had of the moral obligations resulting from his own nature as man. His Will, too, was a sufferer by the same Fall. It got depraved. It used the original weakness of reason as an excuse for its own malice, and that malice did but make thicker the darkness which covered its own excesses. Voluntary or heedless victims of error, the Gentiles were seen adapting their conduct to false maxims which were, at times, so contrary to the first principles of morality, that we who have enjoyed the blessings of faith can scarcely believe that men could ever be so wicked as history tells us they were.

Even the descendants of the Patriarchs, though singularly preserved through the benediction given by God to their fathers, were far from being as free as we should have expected them to be from the general corruption. When Moses, sent as he was by God, formed them into a nation whose constitution was fidelity to that written law which was to restore the law of nature, several points had to be left unmentioned, which, according to our Lord’s expression, the hardness of Jewish hearts would never have taken in. After Moses’ death, self-constituted teachers and peculiar sects rose up in the nation and, by dint of absurd traditions and false interpretations, corrupted the spirit, yes, at times the very letter, of the law of Sinai. The Jews looked upon the Law of God as the Magna Carta of their nation. As such, it was put under the protection of the civil power. Various tribunals with more or less of executive authority according to the importance of the cases that had respectively to be brought before them, were to pass sentence on the infractions committed, or the crimes perpetrated, against it. But, with the single exception of the sacred tribunal established under the law of grace in which God Himself acts and speaks in the person of the priest, every judgement passed by men, be their authority ever so imposing, can only deal with exterior facts: so that Moses, in the legislative code he had drawn up, assigned no penalty for interior sins. These, however grievous they may be, are essentially beyond both the appreciation and cognizance of society and the human powers which govern it.

Even now under the New Law, the Church does not inflict her censures on interior faults unless they be made manifest by some act which comes under the senses, just as Moses had done, who, while acknowledging the culpability of criminal thoughts or desires, yet left to God’s judgement what He alone can know. But while nowadays there is not a Christian child who does not know that a wicked thought or desire is unlawful, it was not so with the mass of the Hebrew people. The Prophets were ever striving to get this privileged but grovelling race to raise their thoughts above this present life. And even supposing that much to be gained, there still remained the narrow-minded Jewish notion that beyond the divinely inspired principles of its political constitution and the outward form of its legislation, there was nothing worthy of their attention. They would have scouted the idea that there was a spiritual reality, of far greater and deeper importance, underlying the external code. We see all this strongly marked by what took place shortly after the return from captivity. The last prophets had disappeared, and free scope was given to doctrinal systems which fostered short-sighted theories.

The Jewish casuists were not slow in drawing up their famous formula that all moral goodness was guaranteed to him that had received circumcision! Saint Paul, later on, told them how such a principle was a stumbling-block to the Gentiles, leading them to blaspheme the name of God (Romans ii. 24). According to the moral theology of those Hebrew doctors, conscience meant only what the tribunal of public justice issued as its decisions: the obligations of the interior tribunal of a man’s conscience were to be restricted to the rules followed by the assize-courts. The result of such teaching soon showed itself: the only thing people need care for was what was seen by men. If the fault were not one that human eyes could judge of, you were not to trouble about it. The Gospel is filled with the woes uttered by our Lord against these blind guides who taught the souls they professed to direct, how best to smother law and justice and love under the outward cover of the letter. This Jesus of ours never loses an opportunity of denouncing, and castigating, and holding up to execration, those hypocrites of Scribes and Pharisees who took such pains to be ever cleaning the outside of the dish but, within were full of impurity, and murder, and rapine (Matthew xxii.)

The divine Word who had come down from Heaven to sanctify men in truth (that is, to sanctify them in Himself) (John xvii. 17, 19) had to make this His first care: to restore what time had tarnished, to restore all the original brightness to the changeless principles of justice and right, which rest in Him as in their centre. No sooner had He called disciples around Him and chosen twelve out of their number as Apostles than He began, with all possible solemnity, His divine work of moral restoration. The passage from the Sermon on the Mount which the Church has selected for the Gospel of this fifth Sunday, follows immediately after His declaring that He had come, not to find fault with, or destroy the Law (Matthew v. 17). but to restore it to its true meaning, of which the Scribes had deprived it. Yes, He had come that He might give it all the fullness which the very co-temporaries of Moses were too hard to take in. One should read the whole chapter of Saint Matthew from which our Gospel is taken. The explanations we have been giving will make it easily understood.

In the few lines put before us today by the Church, our Lord tells us not to make human tribunals the standard of the justice needed for our entering into the kingdom of Heaven. The Jewish law brought a man who was guilty of murder before the criminal court of judgement and He, the Master and author of the Law, declares to us that anger, which is the first step leading to murder, even though it lurk in the deepest recesses of the conscience, may bring death to the soul, and thus really incur, in the spiritual order, the capital punishment which human tribunals reserve to actual murder. If, without going so far as to strike the offender, our anger should vent itself in insulting language such as worthless wretch (which in Syriac is Raca) the sin becomes so serious that, weighed in the balance of its real guilt as known by God, it would be a case, not of the ordinary criminal jurisdiction, but of the highest council of the nation. If the angry man pass from insulting to injurious language, there is no human tribunal which, be it as severe as it can be in its verdict, can give us an idea of the enormity of the sin committed. But the authority of the sovereign Judge is not, like that of a human magistrate, confined within certain limits. When fraternal charity is outraged, there is an avenger who will demand justice beyond the grave. Such is the importance of holy charity, which God demands should unite all men together! And so directly opposed to God’s design is the sin,which, in whatever degree, endangers or troubles the union of the living stones of the temple, which has to be built up in concord and love here below to the glory of the undivided and tranquil Trinity!