ST LEO THE GREAT: The marvelous power of the crossWhen Christ is lifted up on the cross do not let your inward gaze dwell only upon the appearance he had in the eyes of the wicked, to whom the word was addressed through Moses: Your life will hang before your eyes; night and day you shall be in dread, and have no assurance of your life.
Oh the marvelous power of the cross, the glory in the passion! No tongue can fully describe it. Here we see the judgment seat of the Lord, here sentence is passed upon the world, and there the sovereignty of the Crucified is revealed. You drew all things to yourself, Lord, when you stretched out your hands all the day long to a people that denied and opposed you, until at last the whole world was brought to proclaim your majesty. You drew all things to yourself, Lord, when all the elements combined to pronounce judgment in execration of that crime; when the lights of heaven were darkened and the day was turned into night; when the land was shaken by unwonted earthquakes, and all creation refused to serve those wicked people. Yes, Lord, you drew all things to yourself; the veil of the temple was torn in two and the Holy of Holies taken away from those unworthy high priests. Figures gave way to reality, prophecy to manifestation, law to gospel.
(Sermo 8 de passione Domini 6-7: PL 54, 340-341.)
ST AUGUSTINE: The Sacrifice of ChristEven though the man Christ Jesus, in the form of God together with the Father with whom he is one God, accepts our sacrifice, nonetheless he has chosen in the form of a servant to be the sacrifice rather than to accept it. Therefore, he is the priest himself who presents the offering, and he himself is what is offered.
-- City of God, 10, 20
Prayer. Lord, you gladdened my mind with spiritual joy. How glorious is your cup, surpassing all previous delights.
-- Commentary on Psalm 22, 5
ST FRANCIS DE SALES: If we have a taste for divine things, worldly things will no longer excite our appetite. [The converse holds as well! -- EBB] How can it be possible, after having considered the goodness, the stability and the eternity of God, to have a heart in love with the vanities of this world? We must put up with the vanity of the world, but we must love only the truth of God.
(Letters 439; O. XIII, p. 382)
GK CHESTERTON:ABOVE all, we have the same great upperclass assumption that things are done best by large institutions handling large sums of money and ordering everybody about; and that trivial and impulsive charity is in some way contemptible. As Mr. Blatchford says, "The world does not want piety, but soap--and Socialism." Piety is one of the popular virtues, whereas soap and Socialism are two hobbies of the upper middle class.
('What's Wrong with the World.')
IVO OF CHARTRES (1040–1116): The AnnunciationToday's feast, recalling the extraordinary way in which the Virgin conceived, celebrates the beginning of our reconciliation and proclaims the unerring disposition of God's mercy and power. There is a profound and wonderful mystery hidden in this conception by which the bond of our transgression is canceled, the divine is joined to the human, and two, that is Christ and the Church, become one body. … Let us model ourselves on the one who gave his life on earth as a pattern of Christian living.
(Sermo 15 de Annunciatione B. Mariae: PL 162, 583-586.)
As an Augustinian canon and later bishop of Chartres, Ivo left many letters and some sermons.
EPHREM OF EDESSA (306–373): Our Lord took upon himself our infirmityDetermined to give his disciples an example they could imitate, our Lord himself became one with them by assuming a human soul like theirs. This enabled him to enter into their sentiments and thus to sow the seeds of comfort in their hearts. He acquainted himself with their fear in order that the knowledge of his resemblance to themselves might restrain them from boasting of their readiness to meet death while it was still far off. Fearless though he was, our Lord actually experienced fear and prayed to be delivered from suffering, even though he knew his prayer could not be granted. … By persevering in prayer Jesus was showing us how much we ourselves need to pray if we are to escape the wiles and snares of the devil. It is only by sustained prayer that we gain control of our distracted thoughts.
(Commentary on the Diatessaron 20, 3-4, 6-7: CSCO 145, 201-204.)
Ephrem, deacon of Edessa, was a great poet who used his talent to write about the Christian mysteries in poetic form.
ST AUGUSTINE:Hail, Full of GraceO Mary, when Jesus was conceived in you, he found you a virgin; after being born of you he left you a virgin. He gives you fertility, but he does not violate your integrity. Whence does this happen to you? … Tell me, angel Gabriel, whence this happens to Mary. The angel answers: "I stated this with my greeting, 'Hail, full of grace.'"
-- Sermon 291, 6
Prayer. O Mary, you were a virgin in conceiving, in bearing your child, and in dying. Pray for us to the Lord.
-- The Instruction of Beginners, 22, 40
Acknowledging Sins against OthersAll of us have become members of Christ. How do you fail to sin against Christ when you sin against a member of Christ? Thus, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has anything against you, leave your gift before the altar. God seeks you rather than your gift. Christ seeks the one whom he has redeemed by his Blood rather than what you have found in your storeroom.
-- Sermon 82, 4-5
Prayer. Lord, you are my refuge from the torment of the sins with which my heart besieges me. My joy is in you. Redeem me from the sorrow that my sins cause me.
-- Commentary on Psalm 31 (1), 7
ST FRANCIS DE SALES:Think for a moment of the piety of the Madonna when the angel told her that the Spirit would overshadow her. What sentiments of humility, confidence and courage! At the very moment when she understood that God had given her His heart, that is, His Son, she gave herself to God. … As far as we are concerned, we receive a similar grace in Communion, because not an angel but Jesus Christ Himself assures us that in it the Holy Spirit descends on us. Heavenly power covers us with its shadow and the Son of God really comes to us. He can say that He is conceived and born in us. Truly then, the soul can respond with the Madonna, "I am the servant of the Lord; let is be done to me as you say." [Lk 1:38]
(Spiritual Directory, Art. 12)
Oh, contemplate how Jesus Christ our Savior, at the moment of His Incarnation, took us all without exception on His shoulders, because from that moment He accepted the task of redeeming us by His death on the cross! The Redeemer's soul knew all of us by name, above all on the day of His passion, when He offered His tears, His prayers, His blood and His life for all, and addressed His Eternal Father on our behalf…. O supreme love of the heart of Jesus! What heart can ever bless You as devoutly as it ought?
(T.L.G. Book 12, Ch. 12; O. V, p. 344)
GK CHESTERTON:IT is one of the mean and morbid modern lies that physical courage is connected with cruelty. The Tolstoian and Kiplingite are nowhere more at one than in maintaining this. They have, I believe, some small sectarian quarrel with each other: the one saying that courage must be abandoned because it is connected with cruelty, and the other maintaining that cruelty is charming because it is a part of courage. But it is all, thank God, a lie. An energy and boldness of body may make a man stupid or reckless or dull or drunk or hungry, but it does not make him spiteful.
('What's Wrong with the World.')
MARCELLUS OF ANCYRA (~ca. 280– 374): Jesus commends us all to the FatherJesus Christ, the immortal God, came not to save himself but to save those condemned to death; he suffered not for his own sake but for ours. He took upon himself our wretchedness and poverty so as to enrich us by his own wealth. His suffering is our freedom from pain; his death is our immortality; his grief is our joy, his burial our resurrection, his baptism our sanctification. For their sake, he says, I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth. His bruising is our healing, for by his stripes we were healed. His chastisement is our peace, for the chastisement of our peace is upon him, that is to say, for the sake of our peace he is chastised.
Moreover, when on the cross he says: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit, Jesus commends us all to the Father through himself, all of us who are being brought to life in him. They are his members, and many members are one body, and the body is the Church. As Saint Paul writes to the Galatians: You are all one in Christ Jesus. In himself, therefore, Jesus commends us all to the Father.
(On the Incarnation and Against the Arians 2-5: PG 26, 987-991.)
Marcellus worked with Saint Athanasius to support the faith against the Arians.
ST AUGUSTINE: The Glory of the CrossLet us declare that Christ was crucified for our sake, proclaiming it with joy and pride, not with fear and shame. Paul the Apostle saw in this reason for boasting.
He could have told us many great and holy things about Christ: how as God he shared with his Father the work of creation, and how as man like us he was master of the world. But Paul would not glory in any of these wonderful things.
-- Sermon 218C, 1
Prayer. Lord, in case I would falter, you gave me a remedy through your admonishments. You established the law of forgiveness, so that as I forgive I may be forgiven.
-- Commentary on Psalm 129, 3
ST FRANCIS DE SALES:Live totally united to God and in Him alone, because life separated from Him is nothing but death! You do well not to influence your daughter's will; it is solely the work of the Holy Spirit to send good inspirations according to His own pleasure. On my part, I still have some hope and good indications that He will make her totally and perfectly His own. I do not doubt that she will obtain sufficient help to discover the truth, seeing that she seems marked for divine favor.
(Letters 1090; O. XVII, p. 10)
GK CHESTERTON:SOCIAL reformers have fired a hundred shots against the public-house, but never one against its really shameful character. The sign of decay is not in the public-house, but in the private bar; or rather the row of five or six private bars, into each of which a respectable dipsomaniac can go in solitude, and by indulging his own half-witted sin violates his own half-witted morality. Nearly all these places are equipped with an atrocious apparatus of ground-glass windows which can be so closed that they practically conceal the face of the buyer from the seller. Words cannot express the abysses of human infamy and hateful shame expressed by that elaborate piece of furniture. Whenever I go into a public-house, which happens fairly often, I always carefully open all these apertures and then leave the place in every way refreshed.
('George Bernard Shaw.')
CYPRIAN OF CARTHAGE (ca. 285): Christ's patienceChrist did not govern his disciples as a master rules his slaves. He was kind and gentle, loving them as brothers, even washing the feet of the apostles, showing by his example how a servant should bear himself toward his equals when his master dealt in such a way with his servants. No wonder he could show such goodness to the disciples who obeyed him, if he was able to bear so long and so patiently with Judas, eating and drinking with his enemy, recognizing the foe in his own household yet neither exposing him publicly nor refusing his treacherous kiss.
At the time of his passion and cross, even before it had gone as far as the inhuman crucifixion and the shedding of his blood, how patiently he bore reviling and reproach, insult and mockery! A little while before, he had cured the eyes of a blind man with his spittle, yet now he allowed his tormentors to spit in his face. His servants today scourge the devil and his angels in the name of Christ, but at the time of his passion Christ himself submitted to being scourged. He crowns the martyrs with never-fading flowers, though he himself was crowned with thorns. He was struck in the face with the palms of men's hands, yet it is he who awards the palm of victory to all who overcome. Others he clothes in the garment of immortality, yet he himself was stripped of his earthly garments. He had fed them with bread from heaven, yet he himself was fed with gall; and he who had poured out the saving cup was offered vinegar to drink.
He the innocent, he the just, he rather who is the embodiment of innocence and justice, is counted among evil-doers. Truth is confuted by false evidence. The future judge is subjected to judgment; the Word of God is led to the cross in silence. At the Lord's crucifixion the stars are thrown into confusion, the elements are disturbed, earth trembles, and night swallows up day. But he himself is silent, unmoved, hiding every sign of his Godhead throughout the whole duration of his passion. Enduring all things, he perseveres to the end, so that in him patience may be brought to its full measure of perfection.
(The Virtue of Patience 6-7: CSEL 3, 401-402.)
Cyprian was bishop of Carthage in Northern Africa, and had a keen sense of the unity of the Church.
The power and beauty of these words speak for themselves. Read the passage again.
ST AUGUSTINE: Christ's Cross Abides ForeverThe saving serpent in Moses' time was fashioned from bronze as a symbol of faith in the enduring effects of the Lord's Passion. Faith in Christ's cross abides forever; it is as enduring as bronze. Despite the constant cycle of birth and death, the cross continues to be held high above the earth for the healing of all who gaze upon it.
-- Commentary on Galatians 22
Prayer. How great was your love for us, kind Father! You did not spare your only-begotten Son but surrendered him for the sake of us sinners!
-- Confessions 10, 43
ST FRANCIS DE SALES:The means necessary to build a spiritual edifice and acquire the precious pearl of perfection is the entire renunciation of ourselves and our own will––nothing else. This involves breaking away from all our evil inclinations and aversions. In fact, it is absolutely certain that perfection can be attained in no other way.
(Sermons II; O. IX, p. 82)
Fight your own worst enemy––yourself––by giving yourself to your own true self––Christ. We were all created to be personal recitals of the one hymn of divine glory called Jesus Christ. Without Him, we are as pianos trying to play their own blueprints.
GK CHESTERTON: MODERN and cultured persons, I believe, object to their children seeing kitchen company or being taught by a woman like Peggotty [in David Copperfield]. But surely it is more important to be educated in a sense of human dignity and equality than in anything else in the world. And a child who has once had to respect a kind and capable woman of the lower classes will respect the lower classes for ever. The true way to overcome the evil in class distinctions is not to denounce them as revolutionists denounce them, but to ignore them as children ignore them.
('Charles Dickens.')
AELRED OF RIEVAULX (1109–1167): Always ready to forgiveWho could listen to that wonderful prayer, so full of affection, love, and imperturbable calm—Father, forgive them—and not at once embrace his enemies with all his love? Father, he says, forgive them. Could any prayer be more full of gentleness and love?
Yet he added something more. It was not enough to pray for them: he wished also to excuse them. Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. They are great sinners, yes, but they have little understanding. Therefore, Father, forgive them. They are nailing me to the cross, but they do not know who it is they are nailing to the cross. If they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. Therefore, Father, forgive them. They think it is a lawbreaker, an impostor claiming to be God, a seducer of the people. I have hidden my face from them, and they do not recognize my glory. Therefore, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
If we wish to experience fully the joy of loving our brothers and sisters, we must embrace with real love even our enemies. To prevent this fire of divine love from being cooled by the injuries we receive, let us keep the eyes of our soul always fixed on the serene patience of our beloved Lord and Savior.
(Mirror of Love 3, 5: PL 195, 582.)
Aelred was a member of the Cistercian Order who later became abbot of Rievaulx and was noted for his theological and spiritual writings.
History is the temporally extended mode of Christ's kenosis as God incarnate. Lessing's ditch, namely, that the vagaries and distances of history render it impossible to place faith in Christ, is but the historical form of the same protests against faith which faced the Apostles when they saw Christ face to face. The humility of Christ "hiding his face" extends even into the vagaries and lashings critical historians might like to give Him. Father, forgive them, they know not the inner glory of history, Christ hidden and given in the Eucharist, the one true axis of past, present, and future.
ST AUGUSTINE: Help for a Complete ConversionWhen we transform our old life and give our spirit a new image, we find it very hard and tiring to turn back from the darkness of earthly passions to the serene calm of the divine light. We thus ask God to help us that a complete conversion may be brought about in us.
-- Commentary on Psalm 6, 5
Prayer. Because of your Name may you have mercy on me according to your great mercy, Lord, and by no means abandon the work you have begun but complete what is imperfect in me.
-- Confessions 10, 4
ST FRANCIS DE SALES:To receive Holy Communion every week we must be free of mortal sin and have no affection for venial sin. We should also have a great desire to go to Communion. To go to Communion every day it is necessary, in addition, that we have overcome most of our evil inclinations and that we have consulted our spiritual director.
(INT. Part II, Ch. 20; O. III, p. 118)
Never take the Mass for granted! Otherwise you are only taking yourself for granted! To spurn a great gift is in fact to spurn one's own capacity for love as a human being created in the image of God.
GK CHESTERTON: I HAVE no sympathy with international aggression when it is taken seriously, but I have a certain dark and wild sympathy with it when it is quite absurd. Raids are all wrong as practical politics, but they are human and imaginable as practical jokes. In fact, almost any act of ragging or violence can be forgiven on this strict condition––that it is of no use at all to anybody. If the aggression gets anything out of it, then it is quite unpardonable. It is damned by the least hint of utility or profit. A man of spirit and breeding may brawl, but he does not steal. A gentleman knocks off his friend's hat, but he does not annex his friend's hat.
('All Things Considered.')
FRANCIS DE SALES: Joseph, the father of JesusWho can doubt that when Joseph reached the end of his life, his divine foster child in his turn carried that saintly father from this world to the next, to Abraham's bosom, to be taken to himself in glory on the day of his ascension?
A saint who had loved so deeply during his life could not but die of love. Unable to love his dear Jesus as he wished amid the distractions of this life, and having completed the service required by our Lord's tender years, it only remained for him to say to the Father: "I have finished the work which you gave me to do"; and to the Son: "My child, to my hands your heavenly Father entrusted your body on the day when you came into this world; now to your hands I entrust my spirit on the day I leave this world."
Such, I believe, was the death of this great patriarch, the man chosen to perform for the Son of God the tenderest and most loving offices possible, apart from those fulfilled by his heaven-sent wife, the true mother of that same Son.
(TLG, ??)
As bishop of Geneva, St. Francis worked zealously to bring the people of Chablais from Calvinism back to Catholicism. Together with his friend Saint Jane Frances de Chantal he founded the Order of the Visitation.
ST AUGUSTINE: It Is God Who Initiates ConversionDid you make it possible for yourselves to merit God's mercy because you turned back to him? If you hadn't been called by God, what could you have done to turn back? Didn't the very One Who called you when you were opposed to him make it possible for you to turn back? Don't claim your conversion as your own doing. Unless he had called you when you were running away from him, you would not have been able to turn back.
-- Commentary on Psalm 84, 8
Prayer. Let me not be my own life. I have lived badly on my own account and been death to myself, but in you I live again. Speak to me, O Lord.
-- Confessions 12, 10
ST FRANCIS DE SALES:Thinking of the grandeur of Saint Joseph, consider the words, "Lord, look with favorable eyes on the good and upright of heart." [cf. Ps 36:11] I would like to say a few words about this saint whom we love so much because he has cultivated love in every heart. My God, how good and upright this great saint must have been if the Lord gave him the lofty privilege of being entrusted with His mother and His Son! With these two responsibilities, he could have been envied by the angels. Could anyone in all heaven possess any greater privilege than this? Who is there among the angels who could be compared with the queen of angels? And who can compare with the Son of God Himself? Yet Saint Joseph was closer to them than anyone else.
(Letters 671; O. XV, p. 33)
GK CHESTERTON:EVERY statute is a declaration of war, to be backed by arms. Every tribunal is a revolutionary tribunal. In a republic all punishment is as sacred and solemn as lynching.
('What's Wrong with the World.')
