Dom Prosper Guéranger:
The remaining Sundays are the
last of the Church’s
Cycle, but their proximity with its final termination varies each
Year according as Easter was early or late. This their moveable
character does away with anything like harmony between the
composition of their Masses and the Lessons of the Night Office, all
of which, dating from August, have been appointed and fixed for each
subsequent week. This we have already explained to our Readers.
Still, the instruction which the
Faithful ought to derive from the sacred Liturgy would be incomplete,
and the spirit of the Church, during these last weeks of her Year
would not be sufficiently understood by her children, unless they
were to remember that the two months of October and November are
filled, the first with readings from the book of the Machabees, whose
example inspirits us for the final combats, and the second with
lessons from the Prophets proclaiming to us the judgements of God.
Durandus, Bishop of Mende, in his
Rational, tells us that this, and the following Sundays till
Advent, bear closely on the Gospel of the Marriage-Feast, of which
they are really but a further development. “Whereas,” says he,
speaking of this twenty-first Sunday, “this Marriage has no more
powerful opponent than the envy of Satan, the Church speaks to us
today on our combat with him, and on the armour with which we must be
clad in order to go through this terrible battle, as we will see by
the Epistle. And because sackcloth and ashes are the instruments of
penance, therefore does the Church borrow for the Introit the words
of Mardochai, who prayed for God’s
mercy in sackcloth and ashes.”
These reflections of Durandus are
quite true but if the thought of her having soon to be united with
her divine Spouse is uppermost in the Church’s
mind, yet it is by forgetting her own happiness and turning all her
thoughts to mankind, whose salvation has been entrusted to her care
by her Lord, that she will best prove herself to be truly His Bride
during the miseries of those last days. As we have already said, the
near approach of the general judgement and the terrible state of the
world during the period immediately preceding that final consummation
of time is the very soul of the Liturgy during these last Sundays of
the Church’s Year. As
regards the present Sunday, the portion of the Mass which used
formerly to attract the attention of our Catholic forefathers was the
Offertory taken from the book of Job, with its telling exclamations
and its emphatic repetitions. We may, in all truth, say, that this
Offertory contains the ruling idea which runs through this
twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost. Reduced like Job on the
dung-hill, to the extremity of wretchedness, the world has nothing to
trust to but to God’s
mercy. The holy men who are still living in it, imitating in the name
of all mankind, the sentiments of the just man of Idumea, honour God
by a patience and resignation which do but add power and intensity to
their supplications. They begin by making their own the sublime
prayer made, by Mardochai, for his people who were doomed to
extermination. The world is condemned to a similar ruin (Esther xiii.
9‒11).
Epistle – Ephesians vi. 10‒17
Brethren, be strengthened in the
Lord, and in the might of His power. Put on the armour of God, that
you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our
wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities
and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against
the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Therefore take to
yourself the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the
evil day, and to stand in all things perfect. Stand, therefore,
having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the
breastplate of justice, and your feet shod with the preparation of
the gospel of peace; in all things taking the shield of faith, with
which you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most
wicked one. And take to yourself the helmet of salvation, and the
sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Thanks be to God.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
The early beginnings of man’s
union with his God are, generally speaking, deliciously calm. Divine
Wisdom, once He has led His chosen creature by hard laborious work to
the purification of his mind and senses, allows him (when the sacred
alliance is duly concluded) to rest on His sacred breast and
thoroughly attaches the devoted one to Himself by delights which are
an ante-dated Heaven, making the soul despise every earthly pleasure.
It seems as though the welcome law of Deuteronomy were always in
force (Deuteronomy xxiv. 5), namely, that no battle and no anxiety
must ever break in upon the first season of the glorious union. But
this exemption from the general taxation is never of long duration,
for combat is the normal state of every man here below (Job vii. 1).
The Most High is pleased at
seeing a battle well fought by His Christian soldiers. There is no
name so frequently applied to Him by the Prophets as that of the God
of Hosts. His divine Son, who is the Spouse, shows Himself here on
this Earth of ours as the Lord who is mighty in battle (Psalm xxiii.
8). In the mysterious nuptial Canticle of the forty-fourth Psalm He
lets us see Him as Most Powerful Prince girding on His grand Sword
(Psalm xliv. 4) and making His way, with His sharp arrows, through
the very heart and thick of His enemies (Psalm xliv. 6) in order to
reach, in fair valiance and beautiful victory, the Bride He has
chosen as His own (Psalm xliv. 5). She, too, just like Him —she,
the Bride, whose beauty He has vouchsafed to love (Psalm xliv. 12)
and wills her to share in all His own glories (Psalm xliv. 10) —
yes, she too advances towards Him in the glittering armour of a
warrior (Canticles iv. 4) surrounded by choirs (Canticles vii. 1)
singing the magnificent exploits of the Spouse and, she herself
terrible as an army set in array (Canticles vi. 9). The armour of the
brave is on her arms and breast. Her noble bearing reminds one of the
tower of David with its thousand bucklers (Canticles iv. 4).
United to her divine Lord,
warriors the most valiant stand about her. They merit that privilege
by their well-proved sword and their skill in war. Each one of them
has his sword quite ready because of the night-surprises which the
enemy may use against this most dear Church (Canticles iii. 7, 8).
For until the dawn of the eternal day when the shadows of this
present life are put to flight (Canticles iv. 6) by the light of the
Lamb (Apocalypse xxi. 9, 23) who will then have vanquished all His
enemies — yes, until that day, power is in the hands of the rulers
of the world of this darkness, says Saint Paul in today’s
Epistle. And it is against them that we must take to ourselves the
armour of God which he there describes. We must wear it all if we
would be able to resist in the evil day.
The evil days spoken of by the
Apostle last Sunday (Ephesians v. 16) are frequent in the life of
every individual as likewise in the world’s
history. But,for every man, and for the world at large, there is one
evil day, evil beyond all the others: it is the last day, the day of
judgement, the day of exceeding bitterness, as the Church calls it on
account of the woe and misery which are to fill it. We talk of so
many years as passing away, and of centuries succeeding each other.
But all these are neither more nor less than preparations hurrying on
the world to the Last Day. Happy they who, on that Day, will fight
the good fight (2 Timothy iv. 7) and win victory! Or who, as our
Apostle expresses it, will stand while all around them is ruin, yes,
stand, in all things, perfect! They will not be hurt by the second
death (Apocalypse ii. 11). Wreathed with the crown of justice (2
Timothy iv. 8) they will reign with God (Apocalypse xx. 6) on His
throne, together with His Son (Apocalypse iii. 21).
The war is an easy one when we
have this Man-God for our Leader. All He asks of us is what the
Apostle thus words: “Be strengthened in the Lord, and in the might
of His power!” It is leaning on her Beloved that the beautiful
Church is to go up from the desert and thus supported she is actually
to be flowing with delights (Canticles viii. 5) even in those most
sad days. The faithful soul is out of herself with love when she
remembers that the armour she wears is the armour of God, that is,
the very armour of her Spouse. It is quite thrilling to hear the
Prophets describing this Jesus, this Leader, of ours, accoutred for
battle and with all the pieces we, too, are to wear: He girds Himself
with the girdle of faith (Isaias xi. 5), then He puts the helmet of
salvation on His beautiful head (Isaias lix. 17), then the
breastplate of justice (Wisdom v. 19), then the shield of invincible
equity (Wisdom v. 20), and finally a magnificently tempered sword,
the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God (Apocalypse ii.
16). We should almost think we were here having a list of our own
arms. Well, yes, but they are His first. And the Gospel shows Him to
us as entering, Himself, on the great battle, that He might show us
how to use these same divine arms which He puts upon each of us, if
we will but be His soldiers.
This armour consists of many
parts, because of its varied uses and effects. And yet, whether
offensive or defensive, all of them have one common name, and that
name is Faith. Our Epistle makes us say so. And our Jesus, our
Leader, taught it us when to the triple temptation brought against
Him by the devil on the mount of Quarantana, He made answer to each
temptation by a text from the sacred Scriptures (Matthew iv. 1‒11)
The victory which overcomes the world is our Faith, says Saint John
(1 John v. 4). When Saint Paul, at the close of his career, reviews
the combats he had fought through life, he sums up all in this
telling word: “I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy iv. 7). The life
of Paul in that should be the life of every Christian, for he says to
us: “Fight the good fight of faith!” (1 Timothy vi. 12). It is
Faith which, in spite of those fearful odds enumerated in today’s
Epistle as being against us, it is Faith that ensures the victory to
men of good will. If, in the warfare we must go through, we were to
reckon the chances of our enemies by their overwhelming forces and
advantages, it is quite certain that we should have little hope of
winning the day: for it is not with men like ourselves, it is not, as
the Apostle puts it, with flesh and blood, that we have to wrestle,
but with enemies that we can never grapple with, who are in the high
places of the air around us and are, therefore, invisible and most
skilled, and powerful, and wonderfully up in all the sad secrets of
our poor fallen nature, and turning the whole weight of their
advantages to trick man and ruin him out of hatred for God. These
wicked spirits were originally created that in the purity of their
unmixed spiritual nature they should be a reflex of the divine
splendour of their Maker. And now, having rebelled by pride, they
exhibit that execrable prodigy of angelic intelligences spending all
their powers in doing evil to man, and in hating truth.
How, then, are we who, by our
very nature are darkness and misery, to wrestle with these spiritual
principalities and powers who devote all their wisdom and rage to
produce darkness so as to turn the whole Earth into a world of
darkness? “By our becoming Light,” answers Saint John Chrysostom.
The light, it is true, is not to shine on us in its own direct
brightness until the great day of the revelation of the sons of God
(Romans viii. 19), but meanwhile we have a divine subsidy which
supplements sight. That subsidy is the Revealed Word (2 Peter ii.
19). Baptism did not open our eyes so as to see God, but it opened
our ears so as to give us to hear Him when He speaks to us. Now He
speaks to us by the Scriptures and by His Church, and our Faith gives
us, regarding Truth thus Revealed, a certainty as great as though we
saw it with the eyes of either body or soul, or both. By his
child-like docility, the just man walks on in peace with the
simplicity of the Gospel within him. Better than breastplate or
helmet, the shield of faith protects us, and from every sort of
injury. It blunts the fiery darts of the world, it repels the fury of
our own passions, it makes us far-seeing enough to escape the most
artful snares of the most wicked ones. Is not the word of God good
for every emergency? And we may have it as often and as much as we
please.
Satan has a horror of the
Christian who, though he may be weak in other respects, is strong in
this divine word. He has a greater fear of that man than he has of
all your schools of philosophy, and all its professors. He has got
accustomed to the torture of such a man crushing him beneath his feet
(Romans xvi. 20) and with a rapidity (Romans xvi. 20) which is akin
to what our Lord tells us He Himself witnessed: “I saw Satan, like
lightning, falling from Heaven” (Luke x. 18): it was on the great
battle-day (Apocalypse xii. 7) when he was hurled from paradise by
that one word Michael — exquisite word, which was given to the
triumphant Archangel to be his everlasting noble name! And he
himself, by that word of God, and by that victory for God, was made
our model and our defender. We have already explained to our readers
why it is that these closing weeks of the Church’s
Year are so full of the grand Archangel Saint Michael.
Gospel – Matthew xviii. 23‒35
At that time, Jesus spoke to His
disciples this parable: The Kingdom of Heaven is like a king who
would take an account of his servants. And when he had begun to take
the account, one was brought to him that owed him ten thousand
talents: and as he had not the means to pay it, his lord commanded
that he should be sold, and his wife and children, and all that he
had, and payment be made. But that servant falling down besought him,
saying, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you all.” And the
lord of that servant, being moved with pity, let him go and forgave
him the debt. But when that servant had gone out, he found one of his
fellow-servants that owed him a hundred pence; and laying hold of
him, he throttled him, saying, “Pay me what you owe.” And his
fellow-servant falling down besought him, saying, “Have patience
with me and I will pay you all.” And he would not, but went and
cast him into prison till he paid the debt. Now his fellow-servants,
seeing what was done, were very much grieved, and they came and told
their lord all that had been done. Then his lord called him and said
to him, “You wicked servant, I forgave you all the debt because you
besought me; should not you then have had compassion also on you
fellow-servant, as I had compassion on you?” And his lord being
angry, delivered him to the torturers until he paid all the debt. So
will my heavenly Father do to you, if you forgive not every one his
brother from your hearts.
Praise to
you, O Christ.
Dom
Prosper Guéranger:
“O thou just Judge of vengeance
(on man) grant us the gift of forgiveness, before the Day of
reckoning cometh!” Such is the petition that comes from the heart
of holy Mother Church as she thinks on what may have befallen those
countless children of hers who have been victims of death during
this, as every other, year. It is, moreover, the supplication that
should be made by every living soul after hearing the Gospel just
read to us. The Sequence Dies Irae from which these words are
taken is not only a sublime prayer for the Dead. It is, likewise, and
especially at this close of the Ecclesiastical Year, an appropriate
expression for all of us who are still living. Our thoughts and our
expectations are naturally turned towards our own deaths. We almost
seem forgotten and overlooked in this evening of the world’s
existence. But it is not so, for we know from the sacred Scripture
that we will join those who have already slept the last sleep, and
will be taken, together with them, to meet our divine Judge (1
Thessalonians iv. 14‒16).
Let us hearken to some more of
our Mother’s words in
that same magnificent Sequence. This is their meaning: “How great
will be our fear when the Judge is just about to come, and rigorously
examine all our works! The trumpet’s
wondrous sound will pierce the graves of every land and summon us all
before the throne! Death will stand amazed, and nature too, when the
creature will rise again, to go and answer Him that is to judge! The
written Book will be brought forth, in which all is contained, for
which the world is to be tried. So, when the Judge will sit on his
throne, every hidden secret will be revealed, nothing will remain
unpunished! What shall I, poor wretch, then say? Who ask to be my
patron, when the just man himself will scarce be safe? O King of
dreaded majesty! who saves gratuitously them that are saved, save me,
fount of love! Do thou remember, loving Jesu! that I was cause of
your life on earth! Lose me not, on that Day!”
Undoubtedly, such a prayer as
this has every best chance of being graciously heard, addressed as it
is to Him who has nothing so much at heart as our salvation and who,
for procuring it, gave Himself up to fatigue, and suffering, and
death on the Cross: but we should be inexcusable, and deserve
condemnation twice over, were we to neglect to profit of the advice
He Himself gives us by which to avert from us the perils of “that
day of tears, when guilty man will rise from the dust and go to be
judged!” Let us, then, meditate on the parable of our Gospel, whose
sole object is to teach us a sure way of settling, at once, our
accounts with the divine King. We are all of us, in fact, that
negligent servant, that insolvent debtor, whose master might in all
justice sell him with all he has, and hand him over to the torturers.
The debt contracted with God, by the sins we have committed, is of
that nature as to deserve endless tortures. it supposes an eternal
Hell in which the guilty one will ever be paying without ever
cancelling his debt. Infinite praise, then, and thanks to the divine
Creditor who, being moved to pity by the entreaties of the unhappy
man who asks for time and he will pay all —yes, this good God
grants him far beyond what he prays for, He, there and then, forgives
him the debt. He puts but this condition on the pardon, as is evident
from the sequel: He insists, and most justly, that he should go and
do in like manner towards his fellow-servants who may, perhaps, owe
something to him. After being so generously forgiven by his Lord and
King — after having his infinite debt so gratuitously cancelled —
how can he possibly turn a deaf ear to the very same prayer which won
pardon for himself, now that a fellow servant makes it to him? Is it
to be believed that he will refuse all pity towards one whose only
offence is that he asks him for time, and he will pay all?
“It is quite true,” says
Saint Augustine, “that every man has his fellow-man a debtor, for
who is the man that has had no one to offend him? But, at the same
time, who is the man that is not debtor to God, for all of us have
sinned? Man, therefore, is both debtor to God, and creditor to his
fellow-man. It is for this reason that God has laid down this rule
for your conduct: that you must treat your debtor, as He treats
his... We pray every day. Every day we send up the same petition to
the divine throne. Every day we prostrate ourselves before God, and
say to Him: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive them that are
debtors to us” (Matthew vi. 12) Of what debts speak you? Is it of
all your debts? Or of one or two only? You will say: Of all. Do you
therefore forgive your debtor, for it is the rule laid upon you. It
is the condition accepted by you.”
“It is a greater thing,” says
Saint John Chrysostom, “to forgive our neighbour the trespasses he
has committed against us, than to condone him a sum of money. For, by
forgiving him his sins, we imitate God.” And, after all, what is
the injury committed by one man against another man, if compared with
the offence committed by man against God? Alas! we have all got the
habit of that second. Even the just man knows its misery seven times
(Proverbs xxiv. 16) over and, as the text probably means, seven times
a day, so that it comes ruffling our whole day long. Let this, at
least, be our parallel habit: that we contract a facility in being
merciful towards our fellow-men since we, every night, have the
assurance given us that we will be pardoned all our miseries on the
condition of our owning them. It is an excellent practice not to go
to bed without putting ourselves in the dispositions of a little
child who can rest his head on God’s
bosom and there fall asleep. But if we thus feel it a happy necessity
to find in the heart of our heavenly Father (Matthew vi. 9)
forgetfulness of our day’s
faults, yes, more an infinitely tender love for us His poor tottering
children, how can we, at that very time, dare to be storing up in our
minds old grudges and scores against our neighbours, our brethren,
who are also His children? Even supposing that we had been treated by
them with outrageous injustice or insult, could these their faults
bear any comparison with our offences against that good God, whose
born enemies we were, and whom we have caused to be put to an
ignominious death?
Whatever may be the circumstances
attending the unkindness shown us, we may and should invariably
practise the rule given us by the Apostle: “Be kind one to another!
Merciful! Forgiving one another, as God has forgiven you, in Christ!
Be imitators of God, as most dear children!” (Ephesians iv. 32, v.
1). What! You call God your Father and you remember an injury that
has been done you? “That,” says Saint John Chrysostom, “is not
the way a son of God acts in! The work of a son of God is this — to
pardon one’s enemies, to
pray for them that crucify him, to shed his blood for them that hate
him. Would you know the conduct of one who is worthy to be a son of
God? He takes his enemies, and his ingrates, and his robbers, and his
insulters, and his traitors, and makes them his brethren and sharers
of all his wealth!”
