4 AUGUST – ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

With the Greeks, this Sunday — their eleventh of Saint Matthew — is called The Kings Parable, who calls his servants to account. In the Western Church it has gone under the name of Sunday of the deaf and dumb ever since the Gospel of the Pharisee and Publican has been assigned to the tenth.

Epistle – 1 Corinthians xv. 1‒10

Brethren, Now I make known to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you have received and in which you stand. By which also you are saved, if you hold fast after what manner I preached to you, unless you have believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all, which I also received: how that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures: And that He was buried: and that He rose again the third day, according to the scriptures: And that He was seen by Cephas, and after that by the eleven. Then He was seen by more than five hundred brethren at once: of whom many remain until this present, and some are fallen asleep. After that, He was seen by James: then by all the apostles. And last of all, He was seen also by me, as by one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am. And His grace in me has not been void.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Last Sunday the Publican reminded us of the Humility which should exist in the sinner: today the Doctor of the Gentiles shows us, by his own example, that this virtue is quite as suitable to a man who, though now justified, never forgets how in the past he offended his Maker. The sins of the now just man, even though long since forgiven, are always before him (Psalms l. 5), having a tendency to be his own accuser (Proverbs xviii. 17), he finds, in the fact that God has pardoned and forgotten his sins (Ezechiel xviii) nothing but an additional motive for his own never ceasing to remember them. The heavenly favours which may sometimes come upon him as a recompense for the sincerity of his repentance, the manifestation of the secrets of eternal Wisdom may be accorded him (Psalms l. 8). He may, perhaps, be permitted to enter into the powers of the Lord and there get a keen insight into the rights of infinite justice (Psalms lxx. 16), yet all these favours do but help him to see more clearly the enormity of those voluntary sins of his which added their own malice to the original stains he was born with (Psalms l. 6, 7).

As he progresses in sanctity, Humility becomes to him something more than a satisfaction paid to justice and truth by a mind enlightened from on high: in proportion as he lives with God in closer and closer union and, by contemplation, goes up higher (Luke xiv. 10) in light and love, divine charity, which is ever pressing him (2 Corinthians v. 14) on every side, turns the very remembrance of his past sins into what will make that Charity more ardent. That burning Charity of his fathoms the deep abyss from which grace has drawn him, and then she darts upwards from those depths of Hell more vehement, more imperious, more active, than ever. Gratitude for the priceless riches he now possesses by the munificence of his divine Benefactor does not satisfy that sinner of former days. The avowal of his past miseries must and does escape from his enraptured soul as a hymn to his God. Like Augustine, who was but imitating Paul (1 Corinthians xv. 8‒10) “he glorifies the just and the good God by publishing both the good he has received and the bad of his own acts, and this in order to win over to the One sole object of his praise and his love the minds and hearts of all who hear him.”

This illustrious convert of Monica and Ambrose headed the magnificent Book of his Confessions with these words of the 47th Psalm which so admirably express the object he proposed to himself, by thus telling all about himself: “Great are you, Lord, and exceedingly to be praised: Great is your power, and of your wisdom there is no number” (Psalms xlvii. 2; clxvi. 5), “And yet,” says the Saint, “man wishes to praise you — man, a mere speck of your creation, who carries about him his own mortality and the testimony of his sin, and the testimony that you resist the proud (James iv. 6) and yet, this man wishes to praise you — man, a mere speck of your creation. You excite him to take delight in praising you. Receive, then, the homage which is offered you by the tongue that was formed for the purpose of praising you. Let my flesh and all my bones, that have been healed by you, cry out: ‘Who, Lord, is like you?’ (Psalms xxxiv. 10) Let my soul praise you, that it may love you. And that she may praise you, let her confess your mercies. I wish now to go over, in my mind, all my long wanderings, and I will confess the things which fill me with shame, and will make of them a sacrifice of joy (Psalms xcv. 17). Not that I love my sins, but it is that I may love you, my God, that I recall them to mind. It is out of love of your love that I now recur to those bitter things, that I may taste your delights, Sweetness that never deceives! Blissful Sweetness that has no dangers, you that collects all my powers and recalls them from the painful scattering into which they had been thrown by my separation from you: you one centre of all being! What am I to myself when I have not you, but a guide that leads me to the abyss? Or, what am I, when all is well with me, but a little one that is sucking in the milk which you provide, or enjoying you, the Food that knows not corruption? And what manner of man is any man, for he is but a man? Let them that are strong and mighty — them that have not as yet had the happiness of being laid low and cast down— let them laugh at me! I am a weak man and poor, and I give you praise. For that I need neither voice nor words. The cries of the thought are what you hear. For, when I am wicked, my being displeased with myself is a real giving you praise. But when I am pious, my not attributing it to myself is again, a real giving you praise, for if you, Lord, bless the just man it is because you had first justified him when he was ungodly.”

“By the grace of God, I am what I am.” The just man should make this language of the Apostle be his own. And when this fundamental truth is thoroughly impressed on his soul, then may he fearlessly add with him: “His grace in me has not been void.” For, Humility is based on Truth, as we said last Sunday. And as it would be contrary to truth were one to refer to man what man has from God, so likewise would it be an injury to truth not to recognise, as the Saints did, the works of grace where God has wrought them. In the former case, justice — in the latter, gratitude would be offended — as well as truth. Now, Humility — whose direct aim is to avoid these unjust infringements on the glory due to God by repressing the risings of pride — Humility is also the earnest prompter of gratitude, so truly so, indeed, that a proud man can never be a grateful one. Or, to say it in other words, the greatest enemy to the generous virtue of gratitude is pride.

It is quite true, that it is good and prudent and, generally speaking, necessary for souls to dwell on the consideration of their faults rather than on the favours they have received from God, and this more especially in the first beginning of their conversion — still, it is never lawful for any man to forget that besides being grieved for his past sins and being vigilant as to present temptations, he has also the bounden duty of ceaselessly thanking the divine Benefactor who gave him both the grace of a change of life and the subsequent progress in virtue (Psalms l. 16, 17). When a Christian cannot see a grace or any good in himself without having immediately to struggle against self-complacency and a tendency to prefer himself to others, he must not be troubled, of course, for the sin of pride is not in the evil suggestions which may arise within him, but in the consent which is yielded to such suggestions. And yet, this weakness which accompanies the thinking on God’s graces is not without its dangers in the spiritual life: and the Christian who is resolved on making any advance in perfection must sweetly aim at getting altogether rid of such weakness. Aided by grace, he will gradually find the eye of his soul growing stronger by the infirmity of nature getting cured, and by the removal of the involuntary remnants of sin which, as so many vicious humours, falsify the beautiful light of God’s gifts, or even sometimes distort it altogether by an unhappy refraction. “If your eye be single,” says our Lord, “your whole body will be lightsome, having no part of darkness; the whole will be lightsome” (Luke xi. 34‒36) — the light will enlighten you completely and surely, because it will come to you without any vapoury interference or deviation.

If the eye be simple! Yes, it is holy simplicity, daughter and inseparable companion of humility, that will show us how these two things co-exist and mutually tell on each other when a soul is what it should be — the close deliberate consideration of the favours she has received from Heaven, and the clear consciousness of her own miseries. This admirable simplicity will lead us to the school of the Scriptures and the Saints, there to teach us that the “soul’s being praised in the Lord” (Psalms xxxiii. 3) and our “glorying in the Lord” (1 Corinthians i. 31) is really a giving praise and glory to God Himself. When our Lady declared in her Canticle that all generations would call her blessed, the divine enthusiasm which was inspiring her was quite as fully the ecstasy of her humility as it was that of her love (Luke i. 48). The lives of God’s best servants are at every turn showing us these sublime transports in which they make the Magnificat of their Queen become their own hymn of praise to that God, magnifying Him for all the great things which He, the mighty One, vouchsafed to do through their instrumentality (Luke i. 49). When Saint after having expressed the low estimation he had of himself compared with the other Apostles, then adds that grace had not been a failure in him, and that he had even laboured more abundantly than all of them (1 Corinthians xv. 10), we are not to suppose that he has changed his tone, or that the Holy Spirit, who guides him, now wishes to recall his previous words. No: it is one and the same conviction, one and the same desire which inspire these words, apparently so different and so contrary: the conviction and desire that God must not and will not be disappointed in His gifts, either by the self- appropriation of pride, or by the silence of ingratitude.

We have purposely limited our reflections to the truths suggested by the concluding lines of our Epistle because they complete what we had to say on Humility, that indispensable virtue on which depends not only all progress, but even all surety, in the Christian life. What Saint Paul here says regarding the Resurrection of our Lord, which is the basis of the apostolic preaching and of the faith of mankind (1 Corinthians xv. 14) is a subject of quite equal importance, but this grand doctrine which, through the Paschal solemnity, gives to the Liturgical Year its both pivot and centre, has been treated of, during the Easter Octave with all the fullness it deserved, and even were we not compelled to it from want of space, we could not do better than refer our readers to that Volume.

Gospel – Mark vii. 31‒37

At that time, Jesus again going out of the coasts of Tyre, He came by Sidon to the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis. And they bring to Him one deaf and dumb: and they besought Him that He would lay His hand upon him. And taking him from the multitude apart, He put his fingers into his ears: and spitting, He touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, He groaned and said to him: “Ephpheta!” which is, “Be opened!” And immediately his ears were opened and the string of his tongue was loosed and he spoke right. And He charged them that they should tell no man. But the more He charged them, so much the more a great deal did they publish it. And so much the more did they wonder, saying: “He has done all things well. He has made both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.”

Praise be to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Jesus is no longer in Judea: the names of the places mentioned in the beginning of today’s Gospel tell us very clearly that the Gentile world has become the scene of the divine operations for man’s salvation. What manner of man, then, is this who is led to the Saviour, and the sight of whose miseries make the Incarnate Word heave a sigh? And what is the meaning of the extraordinary circumstances which produce the cure? A single word of Jesus could have done it all, and His power would have shone forth all the more brightly. But the miracle which is here related contains a great mystery, and the Man-God, who aims mainly at giving us a lesson by this His mercy, makes the exercise of His power subordinate to the teaching which he desires to convey to us.

The holy Fathers tell us that this man represents the entire human race, exclusive of the Jewish people. Abandoned for [thousands of] years in the sides, that is, in the countries of the North where the prince of this world was ruling as absolute master (Isaias xiv. 12), it has been experiencing the terrible effects of the seeming forgetfulness on the part of its Creator and Father, which was the consequence of original sin. Satan, whose perfidious craftiness has caused man to be driven out of Paradise, has made him his own prey, and nothing could exceed the artifice he has employed for keeping him in his grasp. Wisely oppressing (Exodus i. 10) his slave, he adopted the plan of making him deaf and dumb, for this would hold him faster than chains of adamant could ever do. Dumb, he could not ask God to deliver him. Deaf, he could not hear the divine voice. And thus the two ways for obtaining his liberty were shut against him. The adversary of God and man — Satan — he may boast of his tyranny. The grandest of all God’s creations looks like a failure. The human race in all its branches and in all nations seems ruined, for even that people whom God had chosen for His own and was to be faithful to Him when every other had gone astray (Deuteronomy xxxii. 9), even that has made no other use of its privileges than the denying its Lord and its King, more cruelly than all the rest of mankind!

What then is the Bride, whom the Son of God came to seek upon the Earth — is the society of saints — to be limited to those few who declared themselves His disciples during the years of His mortal life? Not so: the zeal of the newly formed Church and the ineffable goodness of God produced a far grander result. Driven from Jerusalem as her divine Spouse had been, the Church met the poor captive of Satan beyond the boundaries of Judea. She would fain bring him into the kingdom of God and, through the apostles and their disciples, she brings him to Jesus, beseeching Him to lay His divine hand on him. No human power could effect his cure. He, deafened by the noise of his passions, it is only in a confused way that he can hear even the voice of his own conscience. And as to the sounds of tradition, or the speakings of the prophets, they are to him but as an echo, very distant and faint. Worst of all, as his hearing is gone — that most precious of our senses while on Earth — so likewise is gone the power of making good his losses, for as the Apostle teaches, the one thing that could save him is Faith, and “Faith comes by hearing” (Romans x. 17), and his hearing is dead. Our Jesus groans when they have brought this poor creature before Him. He was grieved at seeing the cruelties the enemy had inflicted on this His own privileged being, this beautiful work, of which He Himself had served as model and type to the Blessed Trinity at the beginning of the world (Genesis i. 26). Raising up to Heaven those eyes of His sacred Humanity, those eyes, whose language has such resistless power (John xi. 42), He sees the Eternal Father acquiescing to the intentions of His own merciful compassion. Then, resuming the exercise of that creative omnipotence which in the beginning had made all things to be very good (Genesis i. 31) and all His works be perfect (Deuteronomy xxxii. 42), He, as God and as the Word (John i. 3), utters the mighty word of restoration: “Ephpheta!” Be opened! Nothingness, or rather (in this instance) Ruin, which is worse than nothingness, obey the well-known voice. The ears of the poor sufferer are opened, joyfully opened to the teachings which his delighted Mother the Church pours into them. She is all the gladder because it was her prayers that won this deliverance, and he in whom Faith comes now through his ears making him a changed being, he, finding that his tongue can speak, speaks, or rather, sings out a canticle of praise to his God, a canticle none the less well sung, because it is the first time he has been able to be its chanter.

And yet, as we were observing this merciful Lord of ours, He by this cure aims not so much at showing the power of His divine word, as at giving a glorious teaching to His followers. He wishes to reveal to them under certain visible symbols the invisible realities produced by His grace in the secret of the Sacraments. It is for the sake of such teaching that the Gospel has mentioned such an apparently trifling detail as this — that when the deaf and dumb man was brought before Him, He took him apart, apart, so to say, from the multitude of the noisy passions and the vain thoughts which had made him deaf to heavenly truths. After all, would there be much good in curing him if the occasion of his malady were not removed and he were to relapse perhaps that same day? So then, having by this separation taken precautions for the future, Jesus inserts into the ears of the man’s body His own divine fingers which bring the Holy Ghost (Luke xi. 20; Matthew xii. 28) and make to penetrate right to the ears of his heart the restorative power of this Spirit of love. And finally, more mysteriously, because the truth which was to be expressed is more profound, He touches with the saliva of His sacred mouth that tongue which had become incapable of giving glory and praise. And Wisdom (for it is she that is here mystically signified) — Wisdom, “that comes forth from the mouth of the Most High” (Ecclesiaticus xxiv. 5) and flows for us from the Saviour’s fountains (Isaias xii. 3) as a life-giving drink (Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 5) — yes, this Wisdom “opens the mouth of dumb man” (Wisdom x. 21), just as she makes “eloquent the tongues” of speechless infants (Wisdom x. 21).

Therefore it is that the Church, in order to show us that the event recorded in today’s Gospel is figurative, not merely of one individual man, but of us all, has prescribed that the circumstances which accompanied the cure of this deaf and dumb sufferer will be expressed in the ceremonies of holy Baptism. The Priest, before pouring the water of the sacred Font on the person who is presented for Baptism, puts on the Catechumen’s tongue the salt of Wisdom and touches his ears, saying: “Ephpheta!” That is, Be opened!

There is an instruction of another kind included in our Gospel, and which is worthy of our notice, as closely bearing on what we have been saying regarding Humility. Our Lord imposes silence on those who have been witnesses of the miraculous cure, although he knew that their praise-worthy enthusiasm could never allow them to obey Him. By His injunction He wishes to give a lesson to his followers that if at times it is impossible to keep men from being in admiration at the works they achieve, if sometimes the Holy Spirit, in opposition to their wishes, forces them to undergo public applause for the greater glory of the God whose instruments they are, yet must they always do all in their power to avoid being noticed. They must prefer to be despised (Psalms lxxxiii. 11) or at least not talked of. They must love to be hid in the secret of the face of God (Psalms xxx. 21) and after the most brilliant, just as truly as they would after the most menial duties, they must say from the heartiest conviction: “We are unprofitable servants, we have but done what we ought to do” (Luke xvii. 10).