St Philip Neri and the Sick

May 25, 2020 / Rick Yoder / 1 Comment

*San Filippo Neri in Glory*, Francesco da Mura (Source)

In this year of pestilence, I am reminded that St. Philip Neri began his good works in Rome by, among things, tending to the sick. The hospitals of sixteenth-century Italy were houses of profound mortification and little hope, not much more than palaces of death. They were chronically understaffed and overwhelmed with the indigent and the ill, who rarely recovered. The conditions were extremely unsanitary: the beds were filthy, the air putrid, the din of agony unremitting. Into these seething crowds of the desperate came St. Philip. He assisted the sick as best he could. His first biographer reports that, once he began to gather a following of disciples,

It was Philip’s custom on weekdays to divide his children in Christ into three or four groups and send them to the city hospitals. To begin with, he would himself go after dinner [lunch – RTY] to visit the sick in hospitals, to enkindle by his example in his followers a great desire to do this work; he would speak to the patients, tend them and do all sorts of things for them, which encouraged in his disciples an ardent desire to do the same. One example will serve to show you how devoted they were to the sick. Giovan Battista Salviati, being very dedicated, was in the hospital called the Consolazione, and headed straight for a patient intending to make his bed, asking him politely to get up so that he could do so. The patient thought he was being mocked. “No, my Lord,” he said, “don’t make fun of me, I’m a poor man.” He knew all about Giovan Battista’s licentious way of life, but was unaware of his marvellous change of character, by which he had wholeheartedly turned away from material concerns to the love of heaven. But what next? Giovan Battista urged him most earnestly, and the sick man was struck not only by his air of authority but even more so by his humility, and got out of bed, lost in admiration. Giovan Battista retained that style of life with an unwavering intent until the day of his death, and having once put his hand to the plough, he never looked behind him.
Antonio Gallonio, The Life of St. Philip Neri
Trans. Fr. Jerome Bertram Cong.Orat.

St. Philip inspired others to help the sick in whatever way the could manage. These works of mercy were the fruit of the genuine conversion he wrought in their hearts by that peculiar influence he possessed. The palpable indwelling of the Holy Ghost in his heart turned him into a living fountain of graces whose streams brought miracles to many souls. Some of these miracles healed the sick and even raised the dead. Yet we must never forget that it was not these extraordinary moments but, rather, the graces of repentance, of conversion, and of final perseverance that were truly the greatest fruits of St. Philip’s particular sanctity. St. Philip’s true fame rests in those whom he carried with him to Heaven, not in the strange and marvelous works that he effected while on earth. The story of Giovan Battista Salviati is one example among many of those who tasted of such sweet fruits. He actualized the grace of his conversion through works of charity towards the sick.

Subsequent writers have retained this act as a sine qua non of the Oratorian life, and then only because St. Philip so clearly demonstrates how essential it is to the Christian life per se.

*The Vision of St. Philip Neri*, Florentine School, 17th c. (Source)

And it seems to me that on this, St. Philip’s feast day, we would be well-advised to do the same. We find ourselves in the midst of a new and terrifying pandemic. Death is everywhere. In the United States alone we have lost 100,000 souls with almost no public mourning. Many of these people have died alone, afraid, in pain, and deprived of the comfort of God’s Church. The nature of the disease means that most of us cannot actively assist in the hospitals for fear of transmission. All we can do is show kindness to our neighbors, help each other obtain the necessary supplies to stop the spread of the disease, and give blood if we have survived the sickness ourselves. That’s as far as practical action goes for most of us. So much for the corporal works of mercy.

But a Christian is never without a way to directly help his brethren. The first and last resort of the faithful must be prayer. Here, too, we can take St. Philip as our model. Lest we place too much emphasis on St. Philip’s merely material acts in visiting the sick, let us turn to the testimony of Giuseppe Crispino,

When we enter a sick-chamber, let us imitate the holy Father Philip, who was accustomed, immediately upon his arrival, to pray for the patients in their own room and to make the bystanders do the same, especially in the case of the dying. The Saint was also accustomed to retire into another room, and there to pray for the sufferer.
Giuseppe Crispino, The School of Saint Philip Neri, pg. 174
Trans. Frederick William Faber

As I have written elsewhere, we must offer intercession for our suffering fellows now more than ever. And we must do so in union with the whole communion of saints. Indeed, one small blessing of this crisis is that it can, if we let it, draw us closer to the “great cloud of witnesses” ever ready to help us. One of St. Philip’s spiritual sons, Fr. Agostino Manni, made special prayers to the Blessed Virgin whenever he went to the hospitals; the Blessed Juvenal Ancina likewise sought the prayers of the living when he ministered to the sick (Crispino 174-76). And that most perfectly Philippine of English Oratorians, Fr. Faber, conceives of intercession for the dying as an intrinsically Marian act. He tells us that

We learn [a lesson] from Mary about the deaths of others. It is, that devotion for those in their last agony is a Mary-like devotion, and most acceptable to her Immaculate Heart. There is not a moment of day or night in which that dread pomp of dying is not going on. There are persons like ourselves, or better than ourselves, and whose friends have with reason loved them more than ever ours have loved us, who are now straitened in their agony, and whose eternal sight of God is trembling anxiously in the balance. Can any appeal to our charity be more piteously eloquent than this?…Are not the dying our brothers and our sisters in the sweet motherhood of Mary? The family is concerned. We must not coldly absent ourselves. We must assist in spirit at every death that is died in the whole world over, deaths of heretics and heathens as well as Christians. For they, too, are our brothers and sisters; they have souls; they have eternities at stake; Mary has an interest in them…How much more must they need prayers, who have no sacraments!…How much more earnest must be the prayers, when not ordinary grace, but a miracle of grace, must be impetrated for them!
Fr. Frederick William Faber, The Foot of the Cross

I cannot help but hear a ringing call to intercession for our own times in these words of Fr. Faber. A greater and more fearsome calamity of general death demands a greater and more dedicated oblation of prayer. Especially when even our brethren in the Faith are so often deprived of the Sacraments that should be their final stay and consolation. Yet the power of God to furnish extraordinary grace is far mightier than any earthly sickness. Healing, protection, mercy, conversion, and consolation: let us boldly ask for these gifts on behalf of the ill, the dying, the dead, their caregivers, and their families…while we still can. The hour is late. Tomorrow we may be struck ill with the dread and deadly pestilence. And then, our every thought diverted, our breath failing, our bodies plunged into the depths of a fatigue from which we shall never rise again, we will be grateful for those pious souls who lift us up to the face of the Father in prayer.

So let us pray while we still can. If we do this in a spirit of charity, we will become true Sons and Daughters of St. Philip and more perfectly emulate the Divine Physician who desires to heal us in soul as well as in body.

May St. Philip Neri pray for us all in this troubled time.

*St. Philip Neri*, Italian School, 18th c. (Source)

A Poem by Montague Summers

June 4, 2018June 19, 2018 / Rick Yoder / Leave a comment

madonna-delle-grazie-santa-chiara-giuseppe-marullo

Madonna delle Grazie, Naples (Source)

Some of my readers will no doubt remember that very strange fellow I once wrote about, the Rev. Montague Summers. I have had to look at quite a lot of his orchidaceous writings recently for my research, including his poetry. Here is one such poem he wrote in Antinous and Other Poems (1907). It was written while he was still an Anglican, though it anticipates the lusciously Baroque spirituality that would mark his later writings.

Madonna Delle Grazie

Montague Summers

In the fane of grey-robed Clare
Let me bow my knee in prayer,
Gazing at thy holy face
Gentle Mary, Queen of Grace.
Thou who knowest what I seek,
Ere I unlock my lips to speak,
For I am thine in every part
And thou knowest what my heart,
Yearning in my fervid breast,
Ere it be aloud confessed,
Longeth for exceedingly,
Mamma cara, pity me!

By the dearth of childlorn years,
By thy mother Anna’s tears,
By the cry of Joachim,
When the radiant seraphim,
Girdled with eternal light,
Blazed upon the patriarch’s sight
With the joyous heraldry
Of thy sinless infancy.

By the bridal of the Dove,
By thy God’s ecstatic love,
By the home of Nazareth,
When the supernatural breath
Of God enfolded thee, and cried:
“Open to me, love, my bride,
Come to where the south winds blow,
Whence the mystic spices flow,
Calamus and cinnamon,
Living streams from Lebanon.
Fresh flowers upon the earth appear
The time of singing birds is near,
The turtle-dove calls on his mate,
The fruit is fragrant at our gate.
Thy lips are as sweet-smelling myrrh,
When the odorous breezes stir
Amid the garden of the kings;
As incense burns at thanksgivings.
Thy lips are as a scarlet thread,
Like Carmèl is they comely head,
Thou art all mine, until the day
Break, and the shadows flee away!”

Mother, by thy agony
‘Neath the rood of Calvary,
When the over-piteous dole
Pierced through thy very soul
With a sevenfold bitter sword
According to the prophet’s word.
By the sweat and spiny caul,
By the acrid drink of gall,
By the aloes and the tomb,
By thy more than martyrdom,
Dolorosa, give to me
The thing I lowly crave of thee.

By thy glory far above,
Mother, Queen of heavenly love,
By thy crown and royal state,
By thy Heart Immaculate,
Consort of the Deity,
Withouten whose sweet assent He
May nothing deign to do or move
Bound by ever hungered love,
God obedient to thee!

Mother, greatly condescending,
To thy humblest suitor bending,
From thy star-y-pathen throne,
Since it never hath been known
Whoso to this picture hied,
Whoso prayed thee was denied,
Mamma bella, give to me,
The boon I supplicate of thee!

In Santa Chiara, Napoli.

Screen Shot 2018-06-04 at 11.43.14 PM.png

“Madonna and Child,” Carlo Crivelli, c. 1480 (Source)

Elsewhere: A Powerful Prayer of Deliverance

May 30, 2018 / Rick Yoder / Leave a comment

Icon of Our Lady of Angels. (Source)

Over at Vultus Christi, you can find a series of Chapter Talks on the Rule of Saint Benedict. Today’s commentary concludes with the story of a mighty prayer of deliverance given by the Blessed Virgin Mary to a French priest of the nineteenth century, Bl. Louis-Edoard Cestac. Here it is:

August Queen of Heaven, sovereign Mistress of the Angels, thou who from the beginning hast received from God the power and the mission to crush the head of Satan, we humbly beseech thee to send thy holy legions, that under thy command and by thy power they may pursue the evil spirits, encounter them on every side, resist their bold attacks, and drive them hence into eternal woe.

Who is like unto God?

O good and tender Mother, thou willest always to be our love and our hope.
O Mother of God, send thy holy Angels to defend us and drive far from us the cruel enemy.
Holy Angels and Archangels, defend us and keep us. Amen.

Go read the whole thing. In fact, all of the commentaries are edifying; read them all.

The Threefold Maternity of Mary

May 11, 2018May 12, 2018 / Rick Yoder / 1 Comment

Our Lady of the Cenacle, pray for us. Photo by Lawrence Lew O.P. (Source)

God seems very fond of doing things in a Trinitarian way. Everywhere we look, in nature, in our lives, in the life of the Church, it seems that we constantly come upon things that speak of threeness-in-oneness. So it is with God’s finest creation, Our Lady. Or rather, with her maternity. She has but one singular motherhood – her highest title, Theotokos, means “Mother of God.” Nothing can surpass this supreme gift. Nothing greater can be said of the Lord’s chosen. Nothing can reveal more about Our Lady’s life and mission. Yet we detect a certain triune quality to this one eminent dignity. We can speak of the threefold maternity of Mary.

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Our Lady of the Annunciation (Source)

First, we encounter Mary’s basic, physical motherhood of Jesus at the Annunciation. In welcoming the will of God into her life, she becomes the mother of the Most High, God Incarnate in Jesus Christ. The Holy Ghost, her divine spouse, conceives the Son in her womb. Her mystical partner and guardian in this parentage is St. Joseph. And in the joy of that maternity, we see Mary and Joseph as two models of chastity. Everything in those joyful mysteries becomes a parable of purity. The sanctity of the Holy Family consists in no small part in the innocence that pervades the hearts of each member. For that innocence is an opening to charity.

Our Lady of Sorrows (Source)

Then, after the three and thirty years, Mary stands mournful beneath the cross. It was there that she became Mother of the Eucharistic Christ. For, offering up the sorrow of her own Immaculate Heart in union with her son’s High Priestly sacrifice, she bound herself to all the altars of the world as first adorer and co-redemptrix. Gone is St. Joseph; in his stead we find St. John, the figure of all priests under Christ. He would share the Eucharistic life with Mary forever after, entrusted with her care. Here, the great virtue uniting both of the hearts below the Cross is obedience. Our Lady obeys the paramount Providence of God in consenting to the sacrifice of her son, and St. John obeys the words of Our Lord in taking responsibility for the Sorrowful Mother.

But it is today’s feast of Our Lady of the Cenacle that points to the full and final extension of these two prior forms of motherhood. It falls on a most interesting point in the calendar, Saturday in the Octave of the Ascension. It is as if we are standing in the middle of a bridge between two shining cities, and can hear the mingled music of both. This liminal quality is important. For the feast we celebrate today has a double meaning. Two feasts of different but equal importance and dignity seem to unite in this celebration.

We have just left Christ in his Ascension. The Ascension is a memorial of Christ’s High Priesthood. It is like the prayers at the foot of the altar in the Cosmic Liturgy. Pentecost is a glorious theophany, the arrival of the Holy Ghost. We are thus mid-way between a mystery of veiling, and mystery of unveiling. And who do we turn to, but Mary, she who both hid and manifested God in her person?

When we celebrate Our Lady of the Cenacle, we commemorate her vigil of silent prayer with the Apostles in the upper room in those intense days following Our Lord’s Ascension. But we also remember the descent of the Holy Ghost into her own Immaculate Heart and into those of her companions. At the deepest level of reality, these constitute a single event in the History of Salvation. And they give us a sense of Mary’s deepening, widening maternity.

Our Lady of the Cenacle (Source)

Wherever Mary communes with her divine spouse, the Holy Ghost, there is conceived the Body of Christ. First, that meant the physically Incarnate Word. Then it was the Eucharist extended throughout all time. And finally, as a consequence of these two forms of motherhood, we come to Mary’s maternity of the Church. This maternity is the crown of the other two, for it has never ended. The Holy Spirit came to that silver throne, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and has never left. In all the rest of Mary’s earthly life and eternal existence in beatitude, she has never been deprived of that intimate union begun in Pentecost. And so the Church remains. Mary’s union with the Holy Ghost is at the very heart of the Church’s being. That union brought forth Christ once. It brings forth the Eucharist at every Mass. And now, at Pentecost, it brings forth the Eucharistic community, Christ in His members.

Yet in what does this exalted maternity consist? Prayer, offered perfectly in the Immaculate Heart united to the Holy Ghost. Contemplation, adoration, reparation, intercession – in all its forms, prayer rises from Mary’s heart like huge storms of incense blowing across a desert plain, raining down graces to make it fertile. Yet one form of prayer does not. Mary cannot be contrite. She has never sinned. But we turn to her mystic partner in this maternity, and find a pillar of penance. Who else shares in the life of the Spirit in such a fiery way, but St. John the Baptist? Such is the heavenly reality expressed by the Deisis icon. It shows the Blessed Virgin Mary, paragon of prayer, and St. John the Baptist, archetype of penance, adoring Christ the Lord. Both Our Lady and St. John represent the twin realities of the Ecclesial life – prayer and penance – ordered to Christ – the Sacraments. We might thus speak of Mary’s motherhood of the Church as her Sophianic Maternity, for it is entirely drawn from and oriented to the Divine Wisdom.

A typical deisis. (Source)

The feast of Our Lady of the Cenacle is thus a profoundly maternal day in the Church’s liturgy. Let us join her in prayer. Perhaps we shall taste something of that everlasting life granted to her in the Cenacle.

Monstra Te Esse Matrem (Source)

Five Years a Catholic

March 30, 2018March 26, 2018 / Rick Yoder / Leave a comment

May the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary pray for us. (Source)

“To begin and end well, devotion to our Blessed Lady, the Mother of God, is nothing less than indispensable.” – St. Philip Neri, Maxims.

Five years ago, I was received into the Roman Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil. The journey since then has been an adventure, to say the least. Not all of it has been good. I’ve continued to make lots of mistakes, often failing in faith, hope, charity, and all the other virtues. Individual Catholics have often disappointed me. There were moments of doubt along the way, and, like the infamous Pillar of Salt, I am no stranger to the occasional backwards glance.

But in reflecting on those five years, the overwhelming feeling is one of gratitude. The many wonderful people I have met – and, more importantly, the graces I have received – have confirmed for me the essential soundness of my choice. I have no regrets. I only wish more people could know the abiding peace that comes with conversion to the Church that Christ established on St. Peter. And having consecrated myself to Mary, I feel as if I have had a new strength in the spiritual life since last Summer.

Thus far, I have dedicated each year to some mystery of the Faith. It is in that same spirit that I consecrate this sixth year of my Catholic life to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. I pray that by her triumphant heart, she will continue to guide me to a more perfect knowledge of Her Father, Son, and Spouse. As St. Philip says, “Our Blessed Lady ought to be our love and consolation.” I hope that she ever will be mine.

And thus on this Good Friday, I beg your prayers and those of the saints, that I might persevere in the faith and grow in the love of God.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, pray for us.
Our Lady Immaculate, pray for us.
St. Joseph, pray for us.
St. Philip Neri, pray for us.

Amen.

The Queen of Heaven. (Source)

Newman on the Sorrowful Mother

March 14, 2018 / Rick Yoder / Leave a comment

Our Lady of Sorrows, Pray for Us. (Source)

Continuing my Lenten series of Wednesday spiritual masters, here are two meditations from Newman on Our Lady’s dolours. They are taken from his Meditations and Devotions. We should never forget the terrible suffering of Our Lady at the foot of the cross. Her unique woes rendered her the Co-Redemptrix of Mankind.

Mary is the “Regina Martyrum,” the Queen of Martyrs

Why is she so called?—she who never had any blow, or wound, or other injury to her consecrated person. How can she be exalted over those whose bodies suffered the most ruthless violences and the keenest torments for our Lord’s sake? She is, indeed, Queen of all Saints, of those who “walk with Christ in white, for they are worthy;” but how of those “who were slain for the Word of God, and for the testimony which they held?”

To answer this question, it must be recollected that the pains of the soul may be as fierce as those of the body. Bad men who are now in hell, and the elect of God who are in purgatory, are suffering only in their souls, for their bodies are still in the dust; yet how severe is that suffering! And perhaps most people who have lived long can bear witness in their own persons to a sharpness of distress which was like a sword cutting them, to a weight and force of sorrow which seemed to throw them down, though bodily pain there was none.

What an overwhelming horror it must have been for the Blessed Mary to witness the Passion and the Crucifixion of her Son! Her anguish was, as Holy Simeon had announced to her, at the time of that Son’s Presentation in the Temple, a sword piercing her soul. If our Lord Himself could not bear the prospect of what was before Him, and was covered in the thought of it with a bloody sweat, His soul thus acting upon His body, does not this show how great mental pain can be? and would it have been wonderful though Mary’s head and heart had given way as she stood under His Cross?

Thus is she most truly the Queen of Martyrs.

Virgen de los Dolores, Private Collection, Puebla, Mexico. (Source)

***

Mary is the “Vas Honorabile,” the Vessel of Honor

St. Paul calls elect souls vessels of honour: of honour, because they are elect or chosen; and vessels, because, through the love of God, they are filled with God’s heavenly and holy grace. How much more then is Mary a vessel of honour by reason of her having within her, not only the grace of God, but the very Son of God, formed as regards His flesh and blood out of her!

But this title “honorabile,” as applied to Mary, admits of a further and special meaning. She was a martyr without the rude dishonour which accompanied the sufferings of martyrs. The martyrs were seized, haled about, thrust into prison with the vilest criminals, and assailed with the most blasphemous words and foulest speeches which Satan could inspire. Nay, such was the unutterable trial also of the holy women, young ladies, the spouses of Christ, whom the heathen seized, tortured, and put to death. Above all, our Lord Himself, whose sanctity was greater than any created excellence or vessel of grace—even He, as we know well, was buffeted, stripped, scourged, mocked, dragged about, and then stretched, nailed, lifted up on a high cross, to the gaze of a brutal multitude.

But He, who bore the sinner’s shame for sinners, spared His Mother, who was sinless, this supreme indignity. Not in the body, but in the soul, she suffered. True, in His Agony she was agonised; in His Passion she suffered a fellow-passion; she was crucified with Him; the spear that pierced His breast pierced through her spirit. Yet there were no visible signs of this intimate martyrdom; she stood up, still, collected, motionless, solitary, under the Cross of her Son, surrounded by Angels, and shrouded in her virginal sanctity from the notice of all who were taking part in His Crucifixion.

Mater Dolorosa, Klauber. (Source)

Prayer Request: Retreat

December 5, 2017December 5, 2017 / Rick Yoder / 5 Comments

Maria Immaculata, Ora Pro Nobis. (Source)

I haven’t been as active on this blog as I had hoped for the last week or so, but I do have several good posts in store. In the meantime, please do pray for me. I’m off to Ireland for a retreat in honor of the Immaculate Conception, and I would appreciate your prayers as I spend this time unplugging and drawing near to Our Lord in His Blessed Infancy.

I noticed yesterday that I’ve accidentally timed the whole thing rather well. I leave England on the feast of St. Birinus, Bishop of Dorchester. He baptized Cynegils, King of the West Saxons, in what is now Dorchester on Thames, only a short bus ride from Oxford. I leave Ireland to return home to the United States on the feast of St. Juan Diego, the first indigenous saint of the Americas (and a deeply Marian one at that). And of course, the culmination of the retreat falls on the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, America’s patronal feast. Providence works through these kinds of coincidences.

557px-The_Immaculate_Conception,_by_Giovanni_Battista_Tiepolo,_from_Prado_in_Google_Earth

The Immaculate Conception, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, c.1767. I love Our Lady’s expression – a mixture of humility before the Spirit above and regal contempt for the Devil at her feet. (Source)

Additionally, by a quirk of the academic calendar, this year is the first time in my life that I will have a genuine Advent. Since seventh grade, I’ve had exams deep into December. Since I became Catholic four and a half years ago, I haven’t had the chance to experience this season for what it is, a time of profound peace, penance, and prayer in preparation for the Nativity of Christ. All of which prompts me to beg for your prayers.

Our Lady, Immaculate, pray for us.
Our Lady, Theotokos, pray for us.
Our Lady, Queen of Heaven, pray for us.

Immaculate Conception, José Claudio Antolinez, 17th century. (Source)

A Word of Thanksgiving

September 24, 2017 / Rick Yoder / 1 Comment

Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us. (Source).

Today, on the double feast of Our Lady of Ransom and Our Lady of Walsingham, I was blessed to consecrate myself totally to the Mother of God at the Church of her Immaculate Heart, otherwise known as the Brompton Oratory. Thank you to everyone who prayed for me en route to this wonderful occasion. I look upon it as a momentous date, a renewal of my entrance into the Church four years ago,

The date and place are especially meaningful to me. I have long had a devotion to Our Lady of Walsingham, Patroness of England. During the stresses of my final year at Virginia, I entrusted all my major projects–in particular my thesis and my graduate school applications–to her. And over the course of the last few years, my love for St. Philip Neri and his sons has grown into a true devotion to the Oratorian way. Brompton was where that began for me, almost two and a half years ago. I date the start of my friendship with St. Philip to my first overawed trip to the Oratory in 2015. And I pronounced my vow of consecration at the altar of Our Lady of the Rosary, a grace that reminded me of all the wonderful Dominicans I have known over the short course of my life as a Catholic.

So thank you to all those who have prayed for me. And please pray still, that I might not forget my vow as the inevitable distractions, delights, and stresses of grad school set in.

Crashaw on Our Lady of Sorrows

September 15, 2017September 14, 2017 / Rick Yoder / Leave a comment

Yesterday, we celebrated the Feast of the Holy Cross. Today, naturally, we follow that sorrowful glory of Jesus with the sorrowful glory of Mary. And Crashaw remains our companion. Here is his “Sancta Maria Dolorum; or The Mothers of Sorrows, A Pathetical Descant upon the Devout Plainsong of Stabat Mater Dolorosa.” You can also find the text over here.

In shade of Deaths sad Tree

Stood doleful she,

Ah she! now by no other

Name to be known, alas, but Sorrow’s Mother.

Before her Eyes
Her’s and the whole World’s joyes,
Hanging all torn she sees; and in his woes
And Pains, her pangs and throes.
Each wound of his, from every part,
All, more at home in her own heart.

2.
What kind of Marble than
Is that cold man
Who can look on and see,
Nor keep such Noble sorrows company?
Sure even from you
(My Flints) some drops are due
To see so many unkind swords contest
So fast for one soft Brest.
While with a faithful, mutual, floud
Her Eyes bleed Tears, his wounds weep blood.

3.
O costly intercourse
Of deaths, and worse
Divided Loves: while Son and Mother
Discourse alternate wounds to one another;
Quick Deaths that grow
And gather, as they come and go:
His Nails write swords in her; which soon her heart
Pays back, with more then their own smart;
Her swords, still growing with his pain,
Turn Spears, and straight come home again;
4.
She sees her Son, her God,
Bow with a load
Of borrow’d sins; and swim
In woes that were not made for him.
Ah hard Command
Of Love! Here must she stand
Charg’d to look on, and with a stedfast Eye
See her life dye:
Leaving her only so much Breath
As serves to keep alive her death.
5.
O Mother Turtle-dove!
Soft sourse of Love,
That these dry Lids might borrow
Somthing from thy full seas of Sorrow!
O in that Brest
Of thine (the noblest Nest
Both of Love’s Fires and Flouds) might I recline
This hard, cold, Heart of mine!
The chil lump would relent, and prove
Soft Subject for the siege of Love.
6.
O teach those wounds to bleed
In me; me, so to read
This Book of Loves, thus writ
In lines of death, my life may copy it
With Loyal cares.
O let me here claim shares;
Yield something in thy sad prerogative
(Great Queen of griefs) and give
Me to my Tears; who, though all stone,
Think much that thou shouldst mourn alone.
7.
Yea let my life and me
Fix here with thee,
And at the Humble Foot
Of this fair Tree take our Eternal Root.
That so we may
At least be in Loves way;
And in these chaste wars while the wing’d wounds flee
So fast ‘twixt him and thee,
My Brest may catch the kiss of some kind Dart,
Though as at second hand, from either Heart.
8.
O you, your own best Darts,
Dear doleful hearts!
Hail; and strike home and make me see
That wounded bosomes their own weapons be.
Come Wounds! come Darts!
Nail’d hands! and pierced hearts!
Come your whole selves, Sorrow’s great Son and Mo∣ther.
Nor grudge a younger Brother
Of grief’s his portion, who (had all their due)
One single wound should not have left for you.
9.
Shall I set there
So deep a share
(Dear wounds) and onely now
In sorrows draw no dividend with you!
O be more wife,
If not more soft, mine Eyes!
Flow, tardy Founts! and into decent showrs
Dissolve my Days and Hours.
And if thou yet (faint soul!) defer
To bleed with him, fail not to weep with her.
10.
Rich Queen, lend some relief;
At least an alms of Grief
To’ a heart who by sad right of sin
Could prove the whole sum (too sure) due to him.
By all those stings
Of Love, sweet bitter things,
Which these torn hands transcrib’d on thy true Heart;
O teach mine too, the Art
To study him so, till we mix
Wounds, and become one Crucifix.
11.
O let me suck the Wine
So long of this chaste Vine,
Till, drunk of the dear wounds, I be
A lost thing to the World, as it to me.
O faithful friend
Of me and of my end!
Fold up my life in Love; and lay’t beneath
My dear Lord’s vital death.
Lo, heart, thy hopes whole Plea! her precious breath
Powr’d out in Prayers for thee; thy Lord’s in death.

Some Saints on the Holy Name of Mary

September 12, 2017September 12, 2017 / Rick Yoder / 1 Comment

The Holy Name of Mary in a church mural. (Source)

The feast we celebrate today has moved around a bit. It only came to the kalendar in 1683, when Pope Innocent XI wished to commemorate the liberation of Vienna from the Ottoman siege. He originally placed it on the 17th, the Octave Day of Our Lady’s Nativity. The feast was later transferred to the 15th, and then done away with altogether by Archbishop Bugnini in one of his more obnoxious acts of liturgical vandalism. Pope St. John Paul II restored it in 2002, and now we celebrate it as an optional memorial on September 12th.

Accordingly, it behooves us to ponder the writings of the saints. For as it is a maxim in theology that we are led by lower things to higher, so we may pursue the heights of Our Lady’s throne only by the steps which our closer contemporaries have tread before us. Besides, while the feast may be relatively new in the life of the Church, the devotion it honors is much older. There is consequently much to choose from.

Consider the words of St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard, Detail. Filippino Lippi, 1480. (Source)

“And the Virgin’s name was Mary.” Let us speak a little about this name, which is said to mean “star of the sea,” and which so well befits the Virgin Mother. Rightly is she likened to a star. As a star emits a ray without being dimmed, so the Virgin brought forth her Son without receiving any injury. The ray takes naught from the brightness of the star, nor the Son from His Mother’s virginal integrity. This is the noble star risen out of Jacob, whose ray illumines the whole world, whose splendor shines in the heavens, penetrates the abyss, and, traversing the whole earth, gives warmth rather to souls than to bodies, cherishing virtues, withering vices. Mary is that bright and incomparable star, whom we need to see raised above this vast sea, shining by her merits, and giving us light by her example.

All of you, who see yourselves amid the tides of the world, tossed by storms and tempests rather than walking on the land, do not turn your eyes away from this shining star, unless you want to be overwhelmed by the hurricane. If temptation storms, or you fall upon the rocks of tribulation, look to the star: Call upon Mary! If you are tossed by the waves of pride or ambition, detraction or envy, look to the star, call upon Mary. If anger or avarice or the desires of the flesh dash against the ship o f your soul, turn your eyes to Mary. If troubled by the enormity of your crimes, ashamed of your guilty conscience, terrified by dread of the judgment, you begin to sink into the gulf of sadness or the abyss of despair, think of Mary. In dangers, in anguish, in doubt, think of Mary, call upon Mary. Let her name be even on your lips, ever in your heart; and the better to obtain the help of her prayers, imitate the example of her life: “Following her, thou strayest not; invoking her, thou despairest not; thinking of her, thou wanderest not; upheld by her, thou fallest not; shielded by her, thou fearest not; guided by her, thou growest not weary; favored by her, thou reachest the goal. And thus dost thou experience in thyself how good is that saying: ‘And the Virgin’s name was Mary.'”

St. Alphonsus Liguori, author of The Glories of Mary. (Source)

St. Alphonsus Liguori, that Mariologist who so scrupulously records the thoughts of prior saints, affirms the antiquity and holiness of this devotion.

To begin with life, the holy anchorite, Honorius, says, that the name of Mary is [full] of all divine sweetness. And the glorious St. Anthony of Padua attributes to the name of Mary the same sweetness as St. Bernard attributed to the name of Jesus. The name of Jesus, said the latter, the name of Mary, said the former, is joy to the heart, honey to the mouth, melody to the ear of their devoted servants. It is related in the life of the venerable Father John Ancina, Bishop of Saluzzo, that when he pronounced the name of Mary, he experienced so great a sensible sweetness that he even tasted it on his lips. We also read that a certain woman in Cologne told the Bishop Marsillius, that whenever she pronounced the name of Mary she perceived in her mouth a taste sweeter than honey. Marsillius made the trial, and he also experienced the same sweetness. We read in the holy Canticles, that at the Assumption of the Virgin, the angels three times asked her name: “Who is she that goeth up by the desert as a pillar of smoke?” “Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising?” And in another: “Who is this that cometh up from the desert, flowing with delights?” Richard of St. Laurence inquires why the angels so often asked the name of this queen, and answers: The sound of the name of Mary was so sweet to the angels, and they repeated the question that they might hear it repeated also.

But I do not hear speak of this sensible sweetness, since it is not commonly granted to all, but I speak of the salutary sweetness of consolation, love, joy, confidence, and strength, which the name of Mary universally gives to those who, with devotion, pronounce it. Speaking on this subject, Francone the Abbot says, that next to the holy name of Jesus, the name of Mary is so rich in blessings, that no other name is uttered on earth or in heaven from which devout souls receive so much grace, hope, and sweetness. For the name of Mary, he goes on to say, contains in itself something admirable, sweet, and divine, which, when it meets a friendly heart, breathes into it an odor of holy sweetness. And the wonder of this great name is, he concludes, that if heard a thousand times by the lovers of Mary, it is always heard as new, the sweetness they experience in hearing it spoken being always the same.

The blessed Henry Suso, also speaking of this sweetness, says, that in pronouncing the name of Mary, he felt his confidence so much increased, and his love so joyfully enkindled, that amidst the joy and tears with which he pronounced the beloved name, he thought his heart would have leaped from his mouth ; and he affirmed that this most sweet name, as honeycomb, melted into the depths of his soul. Whereat he exclaims: Oh most sweet name! oh Mary, what must thou thyself be, if thy name alone is so lovely and sweet?

Nor is this devotion entirely absent outside the Church of Rome. One of George Herbert’s better epigrams runs as follows:

“Anagram,” from The Temple. (Source)

Incidentally, the aforementioned Bishop of Saluzzo, Bl. John Juvenal Ancina, was a founder of the Naples Oratory and a personal disciple of St. Philip Neri. Can there be any doubt that the bishop learned his devotion at the side of his spiritual father?

Bl. Juvenal Ancina of the Oratory. (Source)

And we should learn it in turn from the saints who have gone before us, those holy men and women who now stand rejoicing in an eternal contemplation of Our Lady’s beatific name.

St. Philip Neri Exhorting the Youth to Pray to the Virgin, Pala Pietro. A good metaphor for how the saints instruct us in Marian devotion. (Source)

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