Oratorian

The Feast of the Deus Absconditus

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The Adoration of the Shepherds, Philippe de Champaigne, c. 1645 (Source)

It is customary to regard Christmas as a feast of divine manifestation. God has become man. He has entered the human story in a definitive and absolutely singular way. Grace, like a geyser, erupts from the cave at Bethlehem to inundate the whole world.

Our festivities have made this season merry. Our sermons and celebrations, our songs and specials, our gifts and feasting – everything seems to collude in a joyous conspiracy to rob us of our gloom at what is, by nature, a terribly depressing time of year. And there is much to rejoice in when we regard the Holy Infant surrounded by his Virgin Mother and foster-father. But I think we have missed something.

God is everywhere hidden – a Deus Absconditus. His Face, as it were, abides behind more veils than that which cloaked His glory in the Temple. In the depths of human sin, the heart fashions idols and chases phantasms. This is not merely true of those outside the Church; how often do we Christians find ourselves falling into the same wicked habits, preferring the things of earth to the things of heaven! I am not excused from this very charge. I, too, am in need of mercy.

Christmas is not so much a feast of divine manifestation as a testament of God’s enduring hiddenness. The Infant King has no caparisoned herald to announce him in the highways and byways, so as to bring the mighty to pay their homage. Instead, He sends His angels to summon the lowly and humble from afar off in the fields. Why were the shepherds summoned first, and not the townspeople of Bethlehem? Only a few souls received this extraordinary grace. We do not know their names. We have no idea what happened to them in the end. We have no sense of whether the peculiar privilege granted to them bore fruit in their own salvation. But I would like to believe that they did achieve the Beatific Vision. I hope they are in a high choir of Heaven. As deep calls to deep, so does the Hidden God love those elect souls who remain hidden in pious obscurity. In a beautiful passage, Fr. Faber calls these souls, which exist even today,

a subterranean world, the diamond-mine of the Church, from whose caverns a stone of wondrous lustre is taken now and then, to feed our faith, to reveal to us the abundant though hidden operations of grace, and to comfort us, when the world’s wickedness and our own depress us, by showing that God has pastures of His own uunder our very feet, where His glory feeds without our seeing it.

Fr. Frederick William Faber, Bethlehem, 228.

How then is this a divine manifestation? If anything, God draws the shepherds into the very obscurity in which He always abides. It is a manifestation that negates itself. They share His hiddenness, so similar to the dim glory of the Holy of Holies. The shepherds become human extensions of His sacred obscurity. Each one is a living shroud of the Divine Presence. Their lives, already hidden from the proud eyes of the world, are now forever hidden in God’s and written into His story.

God led the shepherds to that bed by the grace of an angelic call. He led the Magi instead by a less glorious, if no less effective, grace. They saw a marvel in the sky and followed it. Strange phenomena are another of God’s many veils, though not so beautiful and not so clear as revelation. We do not even know if the star they followed was supernatural or just a prodigy of nature. Directly or indirectly, Providence used it as a beacon to light their way to the dark and holy cave.

Nativity, Philippe de Champaigne (Source)

But the shepherds were first. And surely in this we discover a truth confirmed throughout the long history of the Church’s experience in the world. God does not reveal Himself to the learned and those wise in the judgment of the World. The Incarnation, like all the works of grace, is “unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness” (1 Cor. 1:23 DRA). Our Lady sings as well that “He hath shewed strength with his arm: he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the humble and meek” (Luke 1:51-52, BCP 1662).

Worldly learning is totally bereft of access to God. It is little better than blindness. Thinking otherwise is mere pride and vanity, and only deepens the darkness. St. Paul tells us that “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Cor. 13:12 KJV). Natural reason can help us see that there is a God, as well as to illuminate a few of His basic features. But no sage, however wise, and no scholar, however learned, grasped the mystery of the Incarnation of the Logos. Still less could they have foreseen that this holy child was, as it were, born as a sacrifice. Even the Prophets were entrusted with signs alone, and not the true substance of the mystery they preached. That was reserved first for the Virgin Immaculate in holy poverty, then for St. Joseph her Most Chaste Spouse, then the family of the Holy Forerunner, and then to the humble shepherds. Only after all of them did the Magi arrive to gaze upon the faze of God Incarnate. In delaying the Magi, Providence teaches us that the mysteries of grace are a crucifixion of natural reason. But in condescending to let them enter and adore the Divine King, He shows us that He will crown our earnest efforts to reach Him, as only He can, with His mercy.

But still, so very few are the witnesses of this God who remains, as it were, quite hidden! A handful of Jewish shepherds, and three pagan scholars with their retinue. He is brought to the Temple and circumcised – a prophetess and a priest, both soon to depart for eternal life, are entrusted with the secret. Anna and Simeon are a reminder that “salvation is of the Jews,” (John 4:22 KJV) and comes from no other people on earth. The gratuitous particularity of this chosen people, this priestly nation among all others, comes from the newborn babe that Simeon held in his hands. Perhaps, looking upon that smiling face, he suddenly saw all the covenants telescope into one, all collapse into themselves and center upon and magnify this child. Perhaps he knew he was holding the heavenly High Priest, of which his own office was merely a shadow.

The Presentation in the Temple, Philippe de Champaigne (Source)

Quite soon, the Lord departs from Bethlehem when a wicked and impudent king seeks His life. Then those martyrs, the Holy Innocents, water the ground of Bethlehem with their sainted blood. That grisly dewfall covered the steps of the escaped God who, in His Mercy, made them a very different kind of witness to His Incarnation. But their names are also covered in obscurity. They, too, remain in a kind of holy hiddenness.

There is a common thread between these four groups – or at least, explicitly in the first three, and only implicitly in the last. Contact with the Divine Presence, hidden for so long, brings forth adoration in the soul. The shepherds adore, the Magi adore, the dwellers in the Temple adore, and the Holy Innocents join Him in an oblation of their very blood. This grace of adoration is not given to all souls, but is nevertheless a defining characteristic of the Christian life. It is the sine qua non of Heaven. It is the essence of Christian life. Wherever one adores Our Lord in truth and earnestness, even a soul very imperfectly purified, we can be sure that grace is working there.

This Christmas, let us pray that the Incarnate Lord will grant us the graces of humility, of adoration, and of an earnest search for the God who remains always hidden from our mortal eyes.

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The Saint of Joy’s “Mépris du Monde”

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Still Life with Skull, Philippe de Champaigne, c. 1671 (Source)

The rather romantic image of St. Philip Neri as always laughing, joking, and cheerful is a far cry from reality, as anyone who has immersed himself in the saint’s biographies and hagiographies will know. St. Philip, well-versed in the spirituality of the Desert Fathers, displayed a profound and salutary disillusionment with the charms of the world. Well did he know the verse that reads, “Adulterers, know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becometh an enemy of God” (James 4:4).

St. Philip expressed this mépris du monde in a little-known song based on famous verses in Ecclesiastes. It is one of the few writings allegedly from his hand to have been preserved. While the attribution remains uncertain, the opinions expressed below conform to the Maxims of the Saint, especially his frequent attempts to provoke thoughts of death. He was known to approach worldly young men and ask what they desired. At each answer, he would like Socrates say, “And then? And then?” leading eventually on to death. At which point, many souls realized the vanity of their desires and subsequently converted. St. Philip also used to say, “The things of this world do not remain constantly with us, for if we do not leave them before we actually die, in death at least we all infallibly depart as empty-handed as we came.” And he exhorts all Christian souls, “We must not be behind time in doing good; for death will not be behind his time.”

The song can be found in an appendix to Fr. Faber’s English translation of The School of Saint Philip Neri by Giuseppe Crispino, whence I have transcribed it. The original Italian text may be seen there as well. I offer it here to my readers who many not have access to this rather obscure book for their edification and private devotions to the Saint.

The sentiments of the Saint in this song are, I believe, particularly well-suited to a time of global pandemic, when pious souls ought more than ever to contemplate their own mortality.

Vanitas, Adriaen van Utrecht (Source)

Deceit of the World

Vanitas Vanitatum et Omnia Vanitas
Attributed to Saint Philip Neri

Vanity of vanity,
Everything is vanity;
All the world is vanity,
Everything is vanity.

If it grants your heart’s desire,
All to which you now aspire;
When death comes, how will it be?
Everything is vanity.

If you live a thousand years,
Healthy, happy, free from fears;
When death comes, how will it be?
Everything is vanity.

If you have a thousand men,
Serving day and night, what then?
When death comes, how will it be?
Everything is vanity.

If you have a warrior host,
More than Xerxes ere could boast;
When death comes, how will it be?
Everything is vanity.

If you speak in every tongue,
Hear your learning’s praises sung:
When death comes, how will it be?
Everything is vanity.

If you have unbounded ease,
Mansions, gardens, what you please;
When death comes, how will it be?
Everything is vanity.

Gratify your every whim,
Fill your life’s cup to the brim:
When death comes, how will it be?
Everything is vanity.

Turn your heart to God above,
Give to Him alone its love;
Help unfailing He will be,
All the rest is vanity.

If no pleasure is denied,
If each wish is gratified,
When death comes, how will it be?
Everything is vanity.

If your well-filled coffers hold
Riches, treasures, silver, gold;
When death comes, how will it be?
Everything is vanity.

If you live upon this earth,
Always gay and full of mirth;
When death comes, how will it be?
Everything is vanity.

If you always have your will,
Far from pain and every ill;
When death comes, how will it be?
Everything is vanity.

If your heart is ever glad,
Ever cheerful, never sad;
When death comes, how will it be?
Everything is vanity.

All your wishes check, control,
Go to God who loves your soul.
Now and for eternity;
All the rest is vanity.

St Philip Neri and the Sick

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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)

Pierre de Bérulle on the Interior Sufferings of Jesus

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For this Friday in Passiontide, we have another offering in the Lenten Spirituality Series. This time it comes from the great Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle (1575-1629), mystic, founder of the French Oratory, and sponsor of the Carmelites of France. Immersed in the Fathers and dedicated to the reform of the clergy initiated at the Council of Trent, Bérulle was perhaps the most influential writer of the French School of Spirituality. His vast corpus has been rarely translated in English, so I present my own translation here from his Oeuvres Complètes, pg. 1045-46. In this excerpt from the “Opuscules Divers de Piété,” we encounter one of the key themes of the French School – the interior life of Christ.

Jacques Sarazin’s monument for Cardinal de Bérulle (1575 – 1629), formerly at the chapel of the Carmelite nuns of the Rue Saint-Jacques, and now in the Louvre (Source)

Of the Interior Sufferings of Jesus – Of the Sentiments of the Son of God in Regards to His Most Holy Passion

…

If so many holy souls have been sacredly occupied with pious, devout, and admirable sentiments with regards to the Cross, the Son of God, who is the source, the principle, and the exemplar of the life of His saints, will not have been removed therefrom. On the contrary, He will have been occupied and filled with the same advantage that His incomparable life has over the life of the saints.

We adore and admire in the Son of God two types of life: the life of glory and the life of the Cross; two lives in the Son of God, two very different lives, two very busy lives, without either one of these lives and occupations impeding the other. On the contrary, that [life] of glory dignifies the sufferings of Jesus, in that they are established in the self-same glory: that only belongs to Jesus and to His sufferings, that had had these two privileges, to be established in the divine life, in the glorious life; instead of the sufferings of the saints that are only established in human life, in the holy life. The life of the Cross testifies to His grandeur and His power of finding and taking the same place of glory.

Each life has its object, its knowledge, and its sentiment, as it appears in the human life of the senses; how much more in the spiritual and divine life? The life of glory has its object, its light, and its suffering, which is its sentiment. The life of the Cross also has its object, its light, its suffering. The devout life has its objects, its thoughts, its sentiments. Oh! What are the sentiments of the life of glory! What are the sentiments of the life of the Cross!

These sentiments of the Son of God, in regard to the Cross, had been, as soon as its arrival in the divine life, glorious and passible, continuing during the whole course of His life, even unto death; some of anguish and others of languor towards His cross: Baptismo habeo baptizari, et quomodo coarctor donec perficiatur! “And I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized: and how am I straitened until it be accomplished?” (Luke 12:50 DRA)

These sentiments had been universal as those of glory, which spread through the soul, the powers, and the glorified body. His agony is one the sentiments of the Cross that had occupied and filled all parts of the Son of God’s body; because, by this mystery, all the parts of His body had been rendered capable and sensitive in view of the Cross.

Besides this mystery of agony…these sentiments of the life of the Cross occupied the heart, the soul, and the spirit of Jesus; everything therein had been penetrated, His heart had not waited even to be pierced by the lance to be pierced by this pain; this pain had wounded it living and the lance had pierced it in death.

Until we be introduced into the sanctuary of the life of the Son of God, let us adore these sentiments – so divine and so vast – upon a subject so grand.

There are three different principles of these admirable sentiments: thought, light, and the powerful hand of God himself, imprinting these sentiments immediately upon the heart and the spirit of Jesus. The light of glory, clearly seeing God in His grandeur and His essence, had perhaps been employed in its efficacy to operate these divine sentiments. Thoughts at once devout, luminous, and efficacious, but ordinary for the Son of God, had also operated sentiments in His soul, albeit inferior to those that the light of glory and the immediate hand of God had worked there.

Abandonment on the Cross is one of these sentiments imprinted by the Eternal Father immediately.

Seven Years a Catholic

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Triptych of the Mystic Bath, Jehan de Bellegambe, 16th c. (Source)

Seven years ago, on the evening of March 30th, 2013, I was received into the Church at the Easter Vigil. I took St. Thomas Aquinas as my patron saint, and I was confirmed by our pastor at St. Brigid’s Church, John’s Creek, Georgia. He has since gone on to become a bishop and is now the Ordinary of Memphis. I, meanwhile, have had many ups and downs in the life of the spirit. From 2014 on I have consecrated each year to a different Holy Person. I have not always been faithful to the spirit of these consecrations. I have often been useless and even actively unhelpful in my service to God and my neighbor. I have been known to set a bad example, and I know that from time to time I have offended or scandalized others. For that, I am truly sorry.

But throughout the years, I have never lost trust in the grace of God and my hope in the Blessed Sacrament.

O Precious Blood of Jesus, source of all life and grace, have mercy on us (Source)

And it is in view of that hope that I consecrate this next year of my Catholic life to the Most Precious Blood of Jesus. I have long had a devotion to the Precious Blood, and I hope that this coming year will bring a renewed gratitude for that Blood so plenteously shed for the whole world.

Father Faber, in that marvelous book on the subject, writes,

The Precious Blood is invisible. Yet nothing in creation is half so potent. It is everywhere, practically everywhere, although it is not omnipresent. It becomes visible in the fruits of grace. It will become more visible in the splendors of glory. But it will itself be visible in Heaven in our Lord’s glorified Body as in crystalline vases of incomparable refulgence. It belongs to Him, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, although its work is the work of the whole Trinity. In its efficacy and operation it is the most complete and most wonderful of all revelations of the Divine Perfections. The power, the wisdom, the goodness, the justice, the sanctity, of God, are most pre-eminently illustrated by the working of this Precious Blood.

Fr. Faber, The Precious Blood.
Source

It seems to me somehow appropriate as well to repair unto the Precious Blood in a time of tumult and pestilence, when dead seems to be all around. Every Christian, if a Christian he truly be, is only so by the merits of the Precious Blood. It is our common inheritance as adopted Sons of God.

And what a cause of joy! Is it any wonder that some of the finest hymns praise the Precious Blood with an exuberance and a delight that anticipates what we shall feel in the Parousia? Perhaps this is one of the great attractions of the devotion, at least for me. As someone with a pessimistic temperament and a profound sense of the centrality of suffering in the Christian life, I sometimes struggle to cultivate a joyful approach to faith. But can there be anything that kindles more joy than the absolute gratuity, liberality, and efficacy of the Precious Blood in redeeming us? I wish we could all feel what Father Faber felt when he contemplated the gift of the Precious Blood, which is neither more nor less than the whole mystery of our salvation:

The Word delights eternally in His Human Blood. Its golden glow beautifies the fires of the Holy Ghost. Its ministries beget inexplicable joys in the Unbegotten Father. I was upon the seashore; and my heart filled with love it knew not why. Its happiness went out over the wide waters and upon the unfettered wind, and swelled up into the free dome of blue sky until it filled it. The dawn lighted up the faces of the ivory cliffs, which the sun and sea had been blanching for centuries of God’s unchanging love. The miles of noiseless sands seemed vast as if they were the floor of eternity. Somehow the daybreak was like eternity. The idea came over me of that feeling of acceptance, which so entrances the soul just judged and just admitted into Heaven. To be saved! I said to myself, To be saved!

Then the thoughts of all the things implied in salvation came in one thought upon me; and I said, This is the one grand joy of life; and I clapped my hands like a child, and spoke to God aloud. But then there came many thoughts all in one thought, about the nature and manner of our salvation. To be saved with such a salvation! This was a grander joy, the second grand joy of life: and I tried to say some lines of a hymn; but the words were choked in my throat. The ebb was sucking the sea down over the sand quite silently; and the cliffs were whiter, and more day like. Then there came many more thoughts all in one thought; and I stood still without intending it. To be saved by such a Saviour! This was the grandest joy of all, the third grand joy of life; and it swallowed up the other joys; and after it there could be on earth no higher joy. I said nothing; but I looked at the sinking sea as it reddened in the morning. Its great heart was throbbing in the calm; and methought I saw the Precious Blood of Jesus in Heaven, throbbing that hour with real human love of me.   

Fr. Faber, The Precious Blood.
Source

Pray for me in this coming year, dear readers. Know that I will be praying for you and commending you always to the source of all life, all joy, all love, all purity, all sanctity, all wisdom, and all grace – the Most Precious Blood of Jesus. To whom be all glory, in the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and every shall be, world without end. Amen.

The Eucharistic Man of Sorrow/Mystical Vine, Anonymous, Mexican, 19th c. (Source)

Elsewhere: On the Rule of St. Benedict

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I don’t usually like to write two “Elsewhere” posts in a row, but there’s a very good chapter talk on the Rule of St. Benedict over at Vultus Christi that is, I believe, worthy of my readers’ attention. The author points to the spiritual fullness of the Rule. St. Benedict gathers together the very best of the great spiritual traditions of the Church. Put another, more historically correct way, his Rule has served as the “wellspring” from which all manner of saints have drawn the waters of life.

St. Scholastica, 18th century, Wienerwald, Austria (Source)

Monasticism is the norm of the Christian life. It is the baptismal life as such, to which every other charism must be compared. Those who do not have a priestly or religious vocation are not exempt. Even those in the world must develop a “monasticism of the heart,” a certain enmity towards the Flesh and a love of God in the Mass. St. Benedict’s Rule, in its great flexibility and simplicity, is a very good guide to achieving that inward state, itself an ever more perfect conformity to Christ.

The whole chapter is worth reading, but here’s an excerpt that struck me:

If you were or are attracted to Carmel, to Saint Teresa and Saint John of the Cross, or to Saint Thérèse and her Little Way, know that nothing of their teaching is missing from the Rule of Saint Benedict: purification of the heart, ceaseless prayer, secret exchanges with the Word, the Divine Bridegroom, and participation by patience in the Passion of Christ.

If you were or are drawn to Saint Dominic, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Catherine of Siena, know that the Rule of Saint Benedict calls you to the joy of the Gospel, to the love of chastity, to the quest for Truth, to confidence in the mercy of God for sinners, and to the ceaseless prayer of the heart represented by the Holy Rosary.

If you were or are fascinated by the Little Poor Man of Assisi, the Seraphic Saint Francis, know that the Rule of Saint Benedict offers you complete disappropriation to the point of having neither your body nor your will at your own disposal; that the Twelfth Degree of Humility is configuration to the Crucified Jesus; and that the adorable Body of Christ, the Sacred Host, shows you the perfection of monastic holiness in silence, hiddenness, poverty, and humility.

If you were or are charmed by Saint Philip and the Oratory, know that the Rule of Saint Benedict calls you to good cheer, to gentlemanly courtesy, to an ever greater infusion of the charity of God, that is the Holy Ghost.

Vultus Christi
The Death of St. Benedict, Douai Abbey. Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew OP (Source)

Any Catholic who wants a deeper spiritual life cannot neglect the monastic tradition. It brought forth all the others, and continues to enrich them. I have written in the past on the likeness between St. Philip and St. Benedict. Much more could be said for the monastic roots of each of the spiritual families listed above.

I can’t help but notice that one major stream of Latin Catholic spirituality is absent from this list: Ignatian spirituality. Perhaps this is because the Ignatian charism depends upon a subjective, individualistic, and pscyhologized spiritual experience rather than the objective, external, communitarian piety of liturgy that stands at the heart of St. Benedict’s Rule. This is not to say that Ignatian spirituality is necessarily worse or that it cannot produce saints. Nor is it to say that St. Ignatius could have produced his school without the preceding sixteen centuries of spiritual development. But the assumptions of Ignatian spirituality are so divorced from the monastic tradition as to constitute a sui generis chapter in the history of Latin Spirituality. St. Ignatius inaugurated a real break from the Western tradition of prayer and ascesis, a break that was, in fact, little more than an epiphenomenon of the advent of modernity in the prior century.

But these historical-theological considerations are secondary to a deeper admiration for the piece. May St. Benedict pray for all of us who would seek the Face of God.

St. Philip Neri and the God Who Dwells With Men

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The Vision of St. Philip Neri, Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani (Source)

“Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people; and God himself with them shall be their God.” – Revelation 21:3

St. Philip’s feast always falls within that sunny period of the Church’s year when, passing from Easter to Ascensiontide and following on to Pentecost and Corpus Christi, we find our days running over with the majesty of these great mysteries. The days grow longer, and so they seem to grow more golden with the ever-descending light of the Holy Ghost. We are in a season of peculiar glory. The culminating lesson of these mysteries is clear: God has made his dwelling among men, and in the midst of His people shall He reign.

St. Philip receives the Holy Ghost while at prayer in the catacombs. (Source)

St. Philip knew this truth well. His whole life could well be described as a journey between Pentecost and Corpus Christi, the two feasts that most clearly teach us of God’s enduring presence in His Church. It was on the Vigil of Pentecost, 1544, that St. Philip received the grace that would define his vocation and the character of his sanctity. While praying in the catacombs of San Sebastiano, the Holy Ghost descended into St. Philip’s heart visibly and sensibly in the form of a ball of fire. This experience, which provided as much heat and pain as rapturous joy, marked the true beginning of St. Philip’s active ministry. In St. Philip, the Holy Ghost once again made His dwelling among men.

St. Philip Neri Receiving the Holy Spirit in the Catacombs of St. Sebastian, Francesco Solimena (Source)

From then on, St. Philip’s whole life would be marked by a singular union with the Holy Ghost. He became the “tabernacle of the Most High” and a living fountain of graces. His many miracles testify to the indwelling of the Spirit within him. So does his manifest oddity, his clear and salutary estrangement from the ways and works of ordinary men. The prophet writes, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” So does the Holy Ghost speak from the heart of St. Philip. For this reason, the Church applies the words of St. Paul to the new Apostle of Rome:

The love of God has been poured into our hearts
through the Spirit of God dwelling within us

Introit for the Feast of St. Philip Neri

St. Philip’s priestly life was marked by the overwhelming presence of God. Everything about him spoke to the present reality of the supernatural. This reality took two chief forms. The most famous were the astounding miracles wrought by St. Philip – most notably the raising of Prince Paolo Massimo from the dead. But there was also St. Philip’s profound adoration of the Eucharist. His popularization of the Forty Hours’ Devotion was but the visible extension of his love of the Blessed Sacrament. So too were the Eucharistic ecstasies to which he was increasingly susceptible as he became older. St. Philip knew no sweeter hours than those that he spent at Mass as an old man, kneeling in darkness before the altar, lost in the rarefied heights of a contemplation we can barely begin to fathom.

Engraving of St. Philip Neri, Hieronymus Frezza (Source)

One particularly perceptive observer has written:

In recalling the holiness of Saint Philip, it occurs to me that it was essentially this: he was all priest. He was always and everywhere a priest. His priesthood suffused his very being, making him incandescent with the fire of the Cross and of the altar.

Vultus Christi

St. Philip’s extraordinary endowment with the Spirit was ordered towards his life as a priest – namely, towards the glory of God in the Eucharist. This is the case with all of us. The Spirit, God in us, is given precisely for us to receive the Eucharist, God with us. Confirmation, like all the other sacraments, exists with the Eucharist as its proper telos.

The Mass of St. Philip Neri, Circle of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (Source)

How fitting, then, that St. Philip should pass into eternal life when he did. May the 25th, 1595, was the feast of Corpus Christi. As Fr. Faber has it,

Day set on Rome! its golden morn
Had seen the world’s Creator borne
Around St. Peter’s square
Trembling and weeping all the way,
God’s Vicar with his God that day
Made pageant brave and rare!

“St. Philip’s Death,” F.W. Faber

Providence often grants the saints a Christ-like death. It is a sign that, even in suffering and death, God is still dwelling with us. St. Benedict died in choro during a liturgy, just as Christ died in the fulfillment of His high priesthood. Many martyrdoms were accompanied by strange signs and mystical evocations of the Sacrifice of Christ. It should be no surprise that God would take St. Philip in a similarly edifying manner.

The Death of St. Benedict, F. Rosaspina, 1830, after D.M. Canuti. (Source)

In his death, St. Philip reminds us that we are all meant to imitate Christ in His Sacrifice, that is, in the Blessed Sacrament. There is no more perfect pedagogue in the life of the Spirit than the Son, who has presented Himself to us on all the altars of the world. Would that we might take this lesson to heart!

St. Philip died when he did because, by a singular grace of Providence, God was pleased to mark His servant’s passing with the Church’s celebration of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Just as St. Philip honored the Eucharistic God in his life, so did the Eucharistic God honor him in his death.

We, too, can honor the saint best by cleaving to the Lord. St. Philip’s words to a spiritual daughter are as true today as they once were:

“Let us concentrate ourselves so completely in the divine love, and enter so far into the living fountain of wisdom, through the wounded Side of our Incarnate God, that we may deny ourselves and our self-love, and so be unable to find our way out of that Wound again.”

St. Philip Neri

God dwells with us just as He once dwelt in the blessed heart of St. Philip. He comes to us just as He came once to the priestly hands of St. Philip. Let us abide in Him, just as St. Philip did once and does forevermore in the heights of Heaven.

Votive image of St. Philip Neri from the British Museum. As they have it: “St Philip Neri kneeling on a cloud in front of altar; angel to right holding tray with burning hearts and ascending towards Holy Trinity; Virgin Mary mediating surrounded by angels, after Maella. 1801 Engraving, printed on silk.” Note the Eucharist enthroned in a monstrance. (Source)

St. Philip, the Massimo Miracle, and the Priesthood

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The raising of Paolo Massimo (Source).

On March 16th, 1583, St. Philip Neri worked one of his greatest miracles. Having been called to the deathbed of Paolo, the young scion of the noble Massimo family, he arrived to find that he was too late. The youth was half an hour dead and, what’s worse, unshriven. But time and its corrosive powers are nothing before the grace of the Almighty. Thirty minutes of sorrow were given as the short prelude to a feat that would win this servant of God a heavenly renown and, for the youth himself, an eternity of joy.

We can imagine the scene well enough. The wailing mother, pressing her tear-stained face into the breast of her grieving husband, the servants praying for their dear lost lord, the doctors already retreating with a grimace of embarassment at their failure. Into this scene walks the silent old priest, calm as the eye of a hurricane. He receives the news with a stoic frown. Then, lifting his eyes in prayer, imploring the power of the hand that once raised Lazarus, he breathes upon the eyes so lately shut. He whispers,

“Paolo…Paolo…”

This invocation brings forth a mystery beyond reckoning – the boy stirs and wakes, as if he had only nodded off a few minutes before.

We can only imagine the joy that fell upon the hearts of the mourners. What stunned clamor must have erupted in that little chamber! Yet the saint is ever in control. He commands all to leave, that he might hear Prince Paolo’s confession. Having cleansed the boy’s soul with the assoiling balms of penance, St. Philip spoke to him for thirty minutes. Would that we had some record of their conversation! There can be no doubt that the solicitous confessor was preparing the soul to meet God.

For that is the strangest thing of all in the story of the Paolo Massimo’s resurrection. It was only temporary. The thirty minutes of death are undone, yes, but only for about another thirty minutes of life. The parents of the young prince were, no doubt, bitterly disappointed at this second loss, a departure made even more painful by the desperate hope it stirred in their hearts.

Yet it was a miracle indeed – and it shows us a salutary truth about miracles. They are not for our comfort. They are not granted to appease our desires, however noble. Providence instead works all things, natural and graced, with only one end in view – the greater glory of God. St. Philip was sent to bring Paolo Massimo into eternal life, not to grant him any more time on earth. That was his duty, the quintessential duty of every priest.

We live in an age when the priesthood seems so mired in scandal and banality, torn this way and that by the worldly ambitions of the clergy, stained with sins of every kind. Lust, violence, abuse, pride, vanity, greed, division, cruelty, party faction – all of these wicked tendencies and more have obscured the nobility of the sacerdotal office, a dignity drawn entirely from the crucified Heart of our Great High Priest.

That is why we must remember the story of St. Philip and Paolo Massimo. It reminds us of why we have priests – of what the priest must do, and of what he must be.

The priest is a conduit of grace. His steps, his works, his words, his hands do not belong to him, but to God. They step into the wounded rhythm of our natural life and bear the healing presence of the supernatural. They raise us from the dead, but only that we might make a better death in the end.

St. Philip’s miracle today is commemorated with a proper Mass. May he pray that all of us might rise from the living death of sin and enter a dying life of grace.

St. Francis de Sales on Aridity in Prayer

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This Lent, I will post a spiritual lesson every Friday. I start the series with a short passage out of St. Francis de Sales’ famous Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, Chapter 9

Let the Gentleman Saint help you this Lent. (Source)

SHOULD it happen sometimes, my daughter, that you have no taste for or consolation in your meditation, I entreat you not to be troubled, but seek relief in vocal prayer, bemoan yourself to our Lord, confess your unworthiness, implore His Aid, kiss His Image, if it be beside you, and say in the words of Jacob, “I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me;” or with the Canaanitish woman, “Yes, Lord, I am as a dog before Thee, but the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table.”

Or you can take a book, and read attentively till such time as your mind is calmed and quickened; or sometimes you may find help from external actions, such as prostrating yourself folding your hands upon your breast, kissing your Crucifix,—that is, supposing you are alone. But if, after all this, you are still unrelieved, do not be disturbed at your dryness, however great it be, but continue striving after a devout attitude in God’s Sight. What numbers of courtiers appear a hundred times at court without any hope of a word from their king, but merely to pay their homage and be seen of him. Just so, my daughter, we ought to enter upon mental prayer purely to fulfil our duty and testify our loyalty. If it pleases God’s Divine Majesty to speak to us, and discourse in our hearts by His Holy Inspirations and inward consolations, it is doubtless a great honour, and very sweet to our soul; but if He does not vouchsafe such favours, but makes as though He saw us not,—as though we were not in His Presence,—nevertheless we must not quit it, but on the contrary we must remain calmly and devoutly before Him, and He is certain to accept our patient waiting, and give heed to our assiduity and perseverance; so that another time He will impart to us His consolations, and let us taste all the sweetness of holy meditation. But even were it not so, let us, my child, be satisfied with the privilege of being in His Presence and seen of Him.


An Oxonian Blog Worth Reading

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The dreaming spires of Oxford. (Source)

I have just discovered that Once I Was a Clever Boy, a blog I used to enjoy but was sorry to see in hiatus, has returned. John Whitehead, the blog’s author, is a friend and a Brother of the Little Oratory here in Oxford. He hasn’t put up any new content recently. Nevertheless, there was a long time when for whatever technical reason – either on John’s end or mine, I was never sure – the blog was totally inaccessible. I’m very happy to see it’s back, and I look forward to more content from this quintessentially Oxonian blog.