Some thoughts on Passiontide

For those of you paying attention, yesterday was the Fifth Sunday of Lent, commonly called Passion Sunday (not to be confused with Palm Sunday, on which the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ is first proclaimed).  Having noticed an outbreak of liturgical minimalism and spiritual mediocrity in my part of the world with regard to some of the most beautiful and ancient traditions that the Roman Rite has to offer vis a vis Passiontide, I submit to you some reflections from that indomitable liturgical scholar, Dom Prosper Guéranger, OSB.

During the preceding four weeks, we have noticed how the malice of Jesus' enemies has been gradually increasing.  His very presence irritates them; and it is evident that any little circumstance will suffice to bring the deep and long-nurtured hatred to a head.  The kind and gentle manners of Jesus are drawing to Him all hearts that are simple and upright; at the same time, the humble life He leads, and the stern purity of His doctrines, are perpetual sources of vexation and anger, both to the proud Jew that looks forward to the Messiah being a mighty conqueror, and to the pharisee, who corrupts the Law of God, that he may make it the instrument of his own base passions.  Still, Jesus goes on working miracles; His discourses are more than ever energetic; His prophecies foretell the fall of Jerusalem, and such a destruction of its famous temple, that not a stone is to be left on a stone.  

The doctors of the Law should, at least, reflect upon what they hear; they should examine these wonderful works, which render such strong testimony in favor of the Son of David; and they should consult those divine prophecies which, up to the present time, have been so literally fulfilled in His person.  Alas! they themselves are about to carry them out to the very last iota.  There is not a single outrage or suffering foretold by David and Isaiah, as having to be put upon the Messiah, which these blind men are not scheming to verify.  [And the same lamentable conduct that characterizes the Synagogue of the day] is but too often witnessed nowadays in those sinners, who, by habitual resistance to the light, end by finding their happiness in sin.  

Neither should it surprise us, that we we find in people of our own generation a resemblance to the murderers of our Jesus: the history of His Passion will reveal to us many sad secrets of the human heart and its perverse inclinations; for what happened in Jerusalem, happens also in every sinner's heart.  His heart, according to St. Paul, is a Calvary, where Jesus is crucified.  There is the same ingratitude, the same blindness, the same wild madness, with this difference: that the sinner who is enlightened by faith, knows Him whom he crucifies...

Everything around us urges us to mourn  The images of the saints, the very crucifix on our altar, are veiled from our sight.  The Church is oppressed with grief.  During the first four weeks of Lent, she compassionated her Jesus fasting in the desert; His coming sufferings and crucifixion and death are what now fill her with anguish...It is to express this deep humiliation that the Church veils the cross...Let us go back, in thought, to the sad day of the first sin, when Adam and Eve hid themselves because a guilty conscience told them they were naked...Our first parents sought to hide themselves from the sight of God.  But it will not be thus forever.

This Sunday is called Passion Sunday because the Church begins, on this day, to make the sufferings of our Redeemer her chief thought. 

We owe it to ourselves during this blessed Passiontide to seek to be drawn into the great salvific mystery of Christ's suffering and death by meditating day and night on how it was not the scribes and pharisees who crucified Our Lord, but our own sins--past, present, and future.  How great a mystery it is to contemplate how our sins--the very sins that scourged Him, that crowned Him with thorns, that placed a cross on His shoulders, that mocked and beat Him, that drove nails into His hands and feet, that pierced His heart with a lance--should be overcome by the very agony that they inflicted...that the great death that they brought about would ultimately be their very nullification!  

It's not too late for us all to make of this Passiontide an intense spiritual exercise by which we become more acutely aware of our sins, and by which we seek to hide ourselves from the gaze of Almighty God, that, in being truly repentant and seeking forgiveness, we might be called to that Heavenly Banquet wherein we may look upon the face of God and bask in the rays of His ineffable glory at Christ's Resurrection, and in the life to come!

(Cynical re-cap: Stop being pansies.  Veil your images.  Repent.  Acknowledge your sins.  Confess them. Gain Eternal Life.)

Thoughts on Silence - MUST READ!

Some thoughts on silence...  (h/t to Casa Santa Lidia)

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Pastoral Letter of Bishop Hugh, O.S.B.
Diocese of Aberdeen, Scotland

To be read and distributed at all Masses on the 3rd Sunday of Advent, 2011

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Plague of Noise

We live in a noisy world. Our towns and cities are full of noise. There is noise in the skies and on the roads. There is noise in our homes, and even in our churches. And most of all there is noise in our minds and hearts.

Create Silence

The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard once wrote: 'The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and I were asked for my advice, I should reply: "Create silence! Bring people to silence!" The Word of God cannot be heard in the noisy world of today. And even if it were trumpeted forth with all the panoply of noise so that it could be heard in the midst of all the other noise, then it would no longer be the Word of God. Therefore, create silence!'

'Create silence!' There's a challenge here. Surely speaking is a good and healthy thing? Yes indeed. Surely there are bad kinds of silence? Yes again. But still Kierkegaard is on to something.

Without Silence No Meeting With God

There is a simple truth at stake. There can be no real relationship with God, there can be no real meeting with God, without silence. Silence prepares for that meeting and silence follows it. An early Christian wrote, 'To someone who has experienced Christ himself, silence is more precious than anything else.' For us God has the first word, and our silence opens our hearts to hear him. Only then will our own words really be words, echoes of God's, and not just more litter on the rubbish dump of noise.

The Silence of Our Lady, Saint Joseph, and John the Baptist

'How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.' So the carol goes. For all the noise, rush and rowdiness of contemporary Christmasses, we all know there is a link between Advent and silence, Christmas and silence. Our cribs are silent places. Who can imagine Mary as a noisy person? In the Gospels, St Joseph never says a word; he simply obeys the words brought him by angels. And when John the Baptist later comes out with words of fire, it is after years of silence in the desert. Add to this the silence of our long northern nights, and the silence that follows the snow. Isn't all this asking us to still ourselves?

When Deep Silence Covered All Things

A passage from the Old Testament Book of Wisdom describes the night of Israel's Exodus from Egypt as a night full of silence. It is used by the liturgy of the night of Jesus' birth:

'When a deep silence covered all things and night was in the middle of its course, your all-powerful Word, O Lord, leapt from heaven's royal throne' (Wis 18:14-15).

'Holy night, silent night!' So we sing. The outward silence of Christmas night invites us to make silence within us. Then the Word can leap into us as well, as a wise man wrote: 'If deep silence has a hold on what is inside us, then into us too the all-powerful Word will slip quietly from the Father's throne.'

The Silence of the Word

This is the Word who proceeds from the silence of the Father. He became an infant, and 'infant' means literally 'one who doesn't speak.' The child Jesus would have cried - for air and drink and food - but he didn't speak. 'Let him who has ears to hear, hear what this loving and mysterious silence of the eternal Word says to us.' We need to listen to this quietness of Jesus, and allow it to make its home in our minds and hearts.

'Create silence!' How much we need this! The world needs places, oases, sanctuaries, of silence.

Silence in Church

And here comes a difficult question: what has happened to silence in our churches? Many people ask this. When the late Canon Duncan Stone, as a young priest in the 1940s, visited a parish in the Highlands, he was struck to often find thirty or forty people kneeling there in silent prayer. Now often there is talking up to the very beginning of Mass, and it starts again immediately afterwards. But what is a church for, and why do we go there? We go to meet the Lord and the Lord comes to meet us.

'The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him!' said the prophet Habakkuk. Surely the silent sacramental presence of the Lord in the tabernacle should lead us to silence? We need to focus ourselves and put aside distractions before the Mass begins. We want to prepare to hear the word of the Lord in the readings and homily. Surely we need a quiet mind to connect to the great Eucharistic Prayer? And when we receive Holy Communion, surely we want to listen to what the Lord God has to say, 'the voice that speaks of peace'? Being together in this way can make us one - the Body of Christ - quite as effectively as words.

Two People Talking

A wise elderly priest of the diocese said recently, 'Two people talking stop forty people praying.'

Norms for Silence in Church

'Create silence!' I don't want to be misunderstood. We all understand about babies. Nor are we meant to come and go from church as cold isolated individuals, uninterested in one another. We want our parishes to be warm and welcoming places. We want to meet and greet and speak with one another. There are arrangements to be made, items of news to be shared, messages to be passed. A good word is above the best gift, says the Bible. But it is a question of where and when. Better in the porch than at the back of the church. Better after the Mass in a hall or a room. There is a time and place for speaking and a time and place for silence. In the church itself, so far as possible, silence should prevail. It should be the norm before and after Mass, and at other times as well. When there is a real need to say something, let it be done as quietly as can be. At the very least, such silence is a courtesy towards those who want to pray. It signals our reverence for the Blessed Sacrament. It respects the longing of the Holy Spirit to prepare us to celebrate the sacred mysteries. And then the Mass, with its words and music and movement and its own moments of silence, will become more real. It will unite us at a deeper level, and those who visit our churches will sense the Holy One amongst us.

The Devil Loves Noise; Christ Loves Silence

'Create silence!' It is an imperative. May the Word coming forth from silence find our silence waiting for him like a crib! 'The devil', said St Ambrose, 'loves noise; Christ looks for silence.'

Yours sincerely in Him,
+ Hugh, O. S. B.
Bishop of Aberdeen
7 December 2011.

Mid-Lent Exhortation

The following exhortation comes from the Fourth Sunday of Lent in the Mozarabic Rite.

Looking forward, dearly beloved brethren, to the hope of the Passion and Resurrection of the Son of God, as also to the manifestation of the glory of our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: resume your strength and courage.  Be not daunted by the labor you have to go through, but remember the solemnity of the holy Pasch, for which you are so ardently longing.  One half of holy Lent is over: you have gone through the difficulties of the past, why should you not be courageous about the future fast?  Jesus, who deigned to suffer fatigue for our sake, will give strength to them that are fatigued.  He that granted us to begin the past, will enable us to complete the future.  Children!  He will be with us to assist us, who wishes us to hope for the glory of his Passion.  Amen!

We mustn't forget that Lent is not over.  No, our journey has only begun.  And that spiritual good that we undergo during Lent by engaging in solemn prayer, fasting, and alsmgiving, is not merely to occupy our hearts and minds for these forty days.  No!  Lent should be but a catalyst for true, lifelong conversion.  What a pity it is to see so many Christians cast aside their lives of dissipation and sin for a mere forty days, only to spend the next 325 squandering the very salvation in which we hope to attain through the Paschal Feasts for which we are preparing ourselves!

How sad it is that so many of us are willing to give up so little in order to identify more closely with Him who gave so much for our sake!

Halfway there...

My apologies for the unexpected cessation of posts...as they say, "Lent happens!"

For your consideration, some inspirational words from Dom Prosper Guéranger in The Liturgical Year.  (Just pretend it's still Thursday of the Third Week of Lent!)

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This day brings us to the middle of Lent, and is called mid-Lent Thursday.  It is the twentieth of the forty fasts imposed upon us, at this holy season, by the Church.  The Greeks call the Wednesday of this week Mesonestios, that is, the mid-fast.  They give this name to the entire week,which, in their liturgy, is the fourth of the seven that form their Lent.  But the Wednesday is, with them, a solemn feast, and a day of rejoicing, whereby they animate themselves to courage during the rest of the season.  The Catholic nations of the West, though they do not look on this day as a feast, have always kept it with some degree of festivity and joy.  The Church of Rome has countenanced the custom by her own observance of it; but, in order not to give a pretext to dissipation, which might interfere with the spirit of fasting, she postpones to the following Sunday the formal expression of this innocent joy, as we shall see further on.  Yet, it is not against the spirit of the Church that this mid-day of Lent should not be marked by some demonstration of gladness; for example, by sending invitations to friends, as our Catholic forefathers used to do; and serving up to table choicer and more abundant food than on other days of Lent, taking care, however, that the laws of the Church are strictly observed.  But alas! how many even of those calling themselves Catholics have been breaking, for the past twenty days, these laws of abstinence and fasting!  Whether the dispensations they trust to be lawfully or unlawfully obtained, the joy of mid-Lent THursday scarcely seems made for them.  To experience this joy, one must have earned and merited it, by penance, by privations, by bodily mortifications; which is just what so many, now-a-days, cannot think of doing.  Let us pray for them, that God would enlighten them, and enable them to see what they are bound to do, consistently with the faith they profess.

At Rome, the Station is at the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian, in the forum.  The Christians of the middle ages (as we learn from Durandus, in his Rationale of the Divine Offices) were under the impression that this Station was chosen because these two saints were, by profession, physicians.  The Church, according to this explanaton, would not only offer up her prayers of this day for the souls, but also for the bodies of her children: she would draw down upon them--fatigued as she knew they must be by their observance of abstinence and fasting--the protection of these holy martyrs, who, whilst on earth, devoted their medical skill to relieving the corporal ailments of their brethren.  The remarks made by the learned liturgiologist Gavantus, in reference to this interpretation, lead us to conclude that, although it may possibly not give us the real motive of the Church's selecting this Station, yet it is not to be rejected.  It will, at least, suggest to the faithful to recommend themselves to these saints, and to ask of God, through their intercession, that they may have the necessary courage and strength for persevering to the end of the holy season in what they have, so far, faithfully observed.