25 JUNE – FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

The fourth Sunday after Pentecost was called for a long period in the West the Sunday of Mercy because, formerly, there was read upon it the passage from Saint Luke beginning with the words: “Be merciful, as your Father is merciful.” But this Gospel having been since assigned to the Mass of the first Sunday after Pentecost, the Gospel of the fifth Sunday was made that of the fourth, the Gospel of the sixth became that of the fifth, and so on up to the twenty-third. The change we speak of was, however, not introduced into many Churches till a very late period, and it was not universally received till the sixteenth century.

While the Gospels were thus brought forward a week — in almost the whole series of these Sundays, the Epistles, Prayers and the other sung portions of the ancient Masses were, with a few exceptions, left as originally drawn up. The connection which the liturgists of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries had fancied they found between the Gospel and the rest of the Liturgy for these Sundays was broken. Thus the Church spared not those favourite views of explanations which were at times far-fetched, and yet she did not intend by that to condemn those writers, nor to discourage her children from perusing their treatises, for, as the holy reflections they contained were frequently suggested by the authority of the ancient Liturgies, such reading would edify and instruct. e are quite at liberty, then, to turn their labours to profit. Let us only keep this continually before us — that the chief connection existing between the several portions of the proper of each Mass for the Sundays after Pentecost consists in the unity of the Sacrifice itself.

In the Greek Church, there is even less pretension to anything approaching methodical arrangement in the Liturgy of these Sundays. On the morrow of Pentecost they begin the reading of the Gospel of Saint Matthew and continue it, chapter after chapter, up to the feast of the Exaltation of the holy Cross in September. Saint Luke follows Saint Matthew, and is read in the same way. The weeks and Sundays of this Season are simply named according to the Gospel of each day, or they take the name of the Evangelist whose text is being read: thus, our first Sunday after Pentecost is called by them the first Sunday of Saint Matthew. The one we are now keeping is their fourth of Saint Matthew.

In a former volume we have spoken of the importance of the eighth day as the Christian substitute for the seventh of the Jewish Sabbath, and as the holy day of the new people of God. The Synagogue, by God’s command, kept holy the Saturday, or the Sabbath —and this in honour of God’s resting after the six days of the creation. But the Church, the Bride of Jesus, is commanded to honour the work of her Spouse. She allows the Saturday to pass — it is the day of her Lord’s rest in the sepulchre: but now that she is illumined with the brightness of the Resurrection, she devotes to the contemplation of His work the first day of the week, the Sunday: it is the day of Light, for on it He called forth material Light (which was the first manifestation of order amid chaos) and, on the same day, He that is the Brightness of the Father (Hebrews i. 3) and the Light of the world (John viii. 12) rose from the darkness of the tomb.

So important, indeed, is the Sunday’s liturgy which every week is entrusted to honour such profound mysteries, that for a long time the Roman Pontiffs kept down the number of Feasts which were above the rank of semi-doubles, that thus the Sunday, which is a semi-double, might not be disturbed. It was not till the second half of the seventeenth century that this discipline of reserve was relaxed. Then it was that it had to give way in order thereby to meet the attacks made by the Protestants and their allies the Jansenists, against the cult of the Saints. Need was of reminding the Faithful that the honour paid to the servants of God detracts not from the glory of their Master, that the cult of the Saints, the Members of Christ, is but the consequence and development of that which is due to Christ their Head. The Church owed it to her Spouse to make a protest against the narrow views of these innovators who were really aiming at lessening the glory of the Incarnation by thus denying its grandest consequences. It was, therefore, by a special inspiration of the Holy Spirit that the Apostolic See then permitted several feasts, both old and new, to be ranked as of a double rite. To strengthen the solemn condemnation she had pronounced against the heretics of that period, she wisely adopted the course of, from time to time, allowing the Feasts of Saints to be kept on Sundays, although these latter were considered as being especially reserved for the celebration of the leading mysteries of our Catholic faith, and for the obligatory attendance of the people.

The Sunday, or Dominical, Liturgy was not, however, altogether displaced by the celebration of any particular feast on the Lord’s Day. For no matter however solemn that feast, falling on a Sunday, may be, a commemoration must always he made of the Sunday by adding its Prayers to those of the occurring Feast, and by reading its proper Gospel, instead of that of Saint John at the end of Mass. Neither let us forget that after the assisting at the solemn Mass and the Canonical Hours, one of the best means for observing the precept of keeping holy the Sabbath day is our own private meditation on the Epistle and Gospel appointed by the Church for each Sunday.

Epistle – Romans viii. 18‒23

Brethren, the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared to the glory to come that will be revealed in us. For the expectation of the creature waits for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him that made it subject, in hope: because the creature also itself will be delivered from the servitude of corruption, to the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that every creature groans and travails in pain even till now. And not only it, but ourselves also, who have the first, fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves, groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God; the redemption of our body.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

The first fruits of the Spirit are the grace and virtues which He has put into our souls as the earnest of salvation and the germ of future glory. Our faith confirms our possession of these divine pledges and regenerate human nature, even amid all the trials of this life, is consoled at the very thought of the noble destiny to which it is called. Satan may use his fiercest efforts to regain his lost ground, and the soul may have many and frequent battles to fight for the holding what was once under the dominion of the enemy, but Christian hope is an armour of Heaven’s own making. Hope enters in even within the veil (Hebrews vi. 19), and then she comes telling the combatant about the disproportion here mentioned by the Apostle between the fatigues of the march here below, and the bliss which is to reward our fidelity in the happy land above. He has the promises of God, and the marvellous dealings of the Paraclete in his regard, both in the past and now — all justifying his expectations of the future glory that will then be revealed, be realised, in him. The very Earth he dwells on, which now so often tyrannises over him and deceives his senses — yes, this very Earth urges him to fix his heart on something far better than herself. She even seems to share in his hopes. Saint Paul tells us so in today’s Epistle: the wild upheavings, the restless changes of material creation, are so many voices clamouring for the destruction of sin, and for the final and total triumph over the corruption which followed sin.

The present condition of this world, therefore, furnishes a special and most telling motive inviting us to the holy virtue of hope. Only they can find anything strange in such teaching who have no idea of how man’s being raised up to the supernatural order was, from the beginning, a real ennobling of the world which was made for man’s service. Men of this stamp have each their own way of explaining God’s creation, but the truth which explains everything both on Earth and in Heaven — the divine axiom which is the principle and reason of everything that has been made — is this: that God, who, of necessity, does everything for His own glory, has, of His own free choice, appointed that the perfection of this His glory will consist in the triumph of His love by the ineffable mystery of divine union realised in His creature. To bring this divine union about is, consequently, by God’s gracious will, not only the one sole end, but, moreover, is the one only law, the vital and constitutive law, of creation.

When the Spirit moved over chaos He adapted the informal matter to the designs of infinite love. Thereby the various elements, and the countless atoms, of the world that was in preparation, really derived from this infinite love the principle of their future development and power. They received it as their one single mission to co-operate, each in its own way, with the Holy Spirit: that is, co-operate in leading man, the creature chosen by Eternal Wisdom, to the proposed glorious end — union with God. Sin broke the alliance and would have destroyed the world from the very fact of sin’s taking from it the purpose of its existence, had it not been for the incomprehensible patience of the God it outraged, and the marvellous renovations of the original plan achieved by the Spirit of love. A violent state, the state of struggle and expiation has now been substituted for what, in the primal design of the Creator, was to be the effortless advance of the king of creation to His grand destiny, the spontaneous growth of, what some one has called man, the god in the bud. Divine union is still offered to the world but, at what a cost of trouble and travail!

We may still enjoy the eternal music of triumph and all the joys of the divine nuptial banquet but what a long prelude of sighs and sobs must precede! Men, who recognise no other law than that of the flesh, may be as deaf and as indifferent as they please to the teachings of positive revelation, but mere matter will go on ever condemning their materialism. Nature, which they pretend to acknowledge as their only authority, will continue to preach the supernatural with her thousand mouths, and will preach it in every nook of the earth. And creation, disturbed though it be, and turned astray by the Fall of Adam, will still keep proclaiming all the louder because it is in suffering — that the fallen king whom it was intended to serve has a destiny far beyond all finite things. You mysterious sufferings of creatures, which the Apostle here calls your groanings, may we not name you, as one of the poets (Aeneas) did, and speak of you as the tears of things? Truly, you are like the soul of music of this land of trial. We have but to listen to your sweet plaintive sounds, and let you speak your eloquence, and you lead us to Him who is the source of all beauty and love. The pagan world heard your voice, but its philosophers would have it that you meant pantheism! The Holy Ghost had not yet begun His reign. He alone could explain to us the strange language of nature, and her vehement aspirations, all of which had been put into her by Himself. All is now made clear to us: the Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole earth (Wisdom i. 7), the divine Witness who giveth us assurance that we are the sons of God (Romans vii. 16) has carried His precious testimony to the furthest limits of creation, for all creation thrills with expectancy, impatient to see the coming of that glorious day which is to be the revelation of the glory that belongs to these sons of God. It is on their account that they too have had to suffer. Together with them they will be set free, and will share in the brightness of their coronation day. Saint John Chrysostom compares the Earth to “the nurse who has brought up the king’s son. When he succeeds to his father’s kingdom, she too is made all the better off... It is much the same with all men: when a son of theirs is to appear in the splendour of some new dignity, they let his very servants wear richer suits. So will God vest in incorruption every creature when the day of the deliverance and glory of His children will come.”

Gospel – Luke v. 1‒11

At that time, when the crowd pressed upon Jesus to hear the word of God, He stood by the Lake of Genesareth. And He saw two ships standing by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets; and going up into one of the ships that was Simon’s, He desired him to draw back a little from the land: and sitting, He taught the multitudes out of the ship. Now when He had ceased to speak, He said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.” And Simon, answering, said to Him, “Master, we have laboured all night and have taken nothing, but at your word I will let down the net.” And when they had done this they enclosed a very great multitude of fishes and their net broke, and they beckoned to their partners that were in the other ship to come and help them; and they came and filled both the ships, so that they were almost sinking. Which, when Simon Peter saw, he fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” For he was wholly astonished, and all who were with him, at the draught of fishes they had taken; and so were also James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were Simon’s partners. And Jesus said to Simon, “Fear not: from now on you will catch men.” And having brought their ships to land, leaving all things, they followed Him.

Praise be to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

The prophecy and promise made by Jesus to Simon the son of John is now fulfilled. We were in amazement on the day when the Holy Ghost came down at the success which attended Peter’s first fishing for men. He cast in his nets, and it was the choicest of the sons of Israel that he took and offered them to the Lord Jesus. But the barque of Peter was not to be long confined within Jewish waters. Insignificant as it seems to human views, the ship is now sailing on the high seas. It rides on the deep waters, which are, so Saint John tells us, peoples and nations (Apocalypse xvii. 15). The boisterous wind, the surging billows, the storm, no longer terrifies the boat-man of Lake Tiberias, for he knows that he has on board Him who is the Master of the waves, Him, that is, who has given the deep as a garment to clothe the earth (Psalms ciii. 6). Endued with power from on high (Luke xxiv. 49), Peter has cast his net, the apostolic preaching, all over the great ocean: for it is large as is the world, and is to bring the sons of the great fish the divine ICTHUS to the eternal shore. Grand indeed is the work assigned to Peter. Though fellow-labourers have been joined to him in his divine enterprise, yet does he preside over them all as their undisputed head, as master of the ship where Jesus commands in person and directs all the operations to be done for the world’s salvation. Today’s Gospel very opportunely prepares us for and sums up the teachings included in the Feast of the Prince of the Apostles, which always comes close on the fourth Sunday after Pentecost. For that very reason, we leave for the Feast the detailed enumeration of the glories inherent in the Vicar of Christ and limit ourselves, for the present, to the consideration of the other mysteries contained in the text before us.

The Evangelists have left us the account of two miraculous fishings made by the Apostles in presence of their divine Lord: one of these is related by Saint Luke, and the Church proposes it to our considerations for this Sunday. The other, with its exquisite symbolism, was put before us by the Beloved Disciple on Easter Wednesday. The former of these, which took place while our Lord was still in the days of His mortal life, merely describes that the net was cast into the water just as it served the fishermen’s purpose. That it broke with the multitude of the draught, but no notice is taken, by the Evangelist, as to either the number or kind of the fish. in the second it is our Risen Lord who tells the fishermen, His disciples, that it is to be on the right side of their boat that the net must be let down. It catches, and without breaking, a hundred-and-fifty great fishes. These are brought to the shore where Jesus was waiting for them that He might join them with the mysterious bread and fish that He Himself had already got ready for His labourers (John xxi. 1-13).

The Fathers are unanimous in the interpretation of these two fishings — they represent the Church, first of all, the Church as she now is, and next, as she is to be in eternity. As she now is, the Church is the multitude without distinction between good and bad. But afterwards, that is, after the Resurrection, the good alone will compose the Church, and their number will be forever fixed. “The kingdom of Heaven,” says our Lord, “is like a net cast into the sea, and gathering together of all kind of fishes; which, when it was filled, they drew out, they chose out the good into vessels, but the bad they cast forth” (Matthew xiii. 47, 48).

To speak with Saint Augustine, the fishers of men have cast forth their nets. They have taken the multitude of Christians which we see in wonderment. They have filled the two ships with them, the two peoples, Jew and Gentile. But what is this we are told? The multitude weighs down the ships, even to the risk of sinking them. It is what we witness now, the pressing and mingled crowd of the Baptised is a burden to the Church. Many Christians there are who live badly: they are a trouble to, and keep back, the good. Worse than these, there are those who tear the nets by their schisms or their heresies: they are fish which are impatient of the yoke of unity and will not come to the banquet of Christ. They are pleased with themselves. Under pretext that they cannot live with the bad, they break the net which kept them in the apostolic track and they die far off the shore. In how many countries have they not thus broken the great net of salvation? The Donatists in Africa, the Arians in Egypt, Montanus in Phrygia, Manes in Persia. And since their times, how many others have excelled in the work of rupture! Let us not imitate their folly. If grace have made us holy, let us be patient with the bad while living in this world’s waters. Let the sight of them drive us neither to live as they do, nor to leave the Church. The shore is not far off, where those on the right, or the good, will alone be permitted to land, and from which the wicked will be repulsed, and cast into the abyss.