Let Me Die the Death of Angels

Here’s an excerpt from a sermon by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux on the Song of Songs. He describes the snatching away of life’s snares that occurs for a soul in ecstasy. It is ‘the death that does not take away life but makes it better’.

What do you think the beloved will receive in heaven, when now she is favoured with an intimacy so great as to feel herself embraced by the Arms of God, cherished on the Breast of God, guarded by the care and zeal of God lest she be roused from her sleep by anyone till she wakes of her own accord.

Well then, let me explain if I can what this sleep is which the Bridegroom wishes His beloved to enjoy, from which He will not allow her to be awakened under any circumstances, except at her good pleasure. This sleep of the bride, however, is not the tranquil repose of the body that for a time sweetly lulls the fleshly senses, nor that dreaded sleep whose custom is to take life away completely. Farther still is it removed from that deathly sleep by which a man perseveres irrevocably in sin and so dies. It is a slumber which is vital and watchful, which enlightens the heart, drives the heart, drives away death, and communicates eternal life that does not stupefy the mind but transports it. And, I say it with out hesitation, it is a death, for the apostle Paul in praising people still living in the flesh spoke thus: ‘For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God’.

It is not absurd for me to call the bride's ecstasy a death, then, but one that snatches away not life but life's snares, so that one can say ‘We have escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowlers’. In this life we move about surrounded by traps, but these cause no fear when the soul is drawn out of itself by a thought that is both powerful and holy, provided that it so separates itself and flies away from the mind that it transcends the normal manner and habit of thinking; for a net is spread in vain before the eyes of winged creatures. Why dread wantonness where there is no awareness of life? For since the ecstatic soul is cut off from awareness of life though not from life itself, it must of necessity be cut off from the temptations of life. How good the death that does not take away life but makes it better; good in that the body does not perish but the soul is exalted.

Men alone experience this. But, if I may say so let me die the death of angels that, transcending the memory of things present, I may cast off not only the desire for what are corporeal and inferior but even their images, that I may enjoy pure conversation with those who bear the likeness of purity.

This kind of ecstasy, in my opinion, is alone or principally called contemplation. Not to be gripped during life by material desires is a mark of human virtue; but to gaze without the use of bodily likenesses is the sign of angelic purity. Each, however, is a divine gift, each is a going out of oneself, each a transcending of self, but in one, one goes much farther than in the other.

Consider therefore that the Bride has retired to this solitude, there, overcome by the loveliness of the place, she sweetly sleeps within the Arms of her Bridegroom, in ecstasy of spirit. Hence the maidens are forbidden to waken her until she herself pleases.

The Soul: the True Temple, the Sacred Sanctuary

This piece from the Carthusian, Dom Augustin Guillerand, teaches us where the true temple is: the human soul. This great Carthusian author, however, in the final paragraph, says something about what the physical temple should be like, that is, the parishes we worship at for Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, etc. Does your parish exhibit the beauty that is suggested here?

We have to accustom ourselves to pray in all places as at all times. The real place to pray in is the soul, for God dwells there. If we would obey our Lord's counsel, when we pray we should enter into the chamber of our soul, close the door and speak to the Father Whose loving Eyes seek ever our own (cf. Saint Matthew 6:6). This inner chamber of our soul is the true temple, the sacred sanctuary, and we carry it with us and can at any time either remain there or quickly return to it should we have been obliged to leave it.

And we must make it a really spotless and beautiful place. Its true beauty, of course, is our Lord's presence. In it He should be able to feel at home, and He is at home if He sees His own features there. These features are His perfections, and when they are reflected in the soul, they are called virtues. The soul that possesses them is beautiful with His beauty; it is ‘perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect’ (Saint Matthew 5:48). The ‘as’ here does not mean ‘as much’; it does not imply equality but resemblance. By the virtues we are re-formed in God's Image, and in the Image of His divine Son, Who came to reveal His Father's features to us, by practicing the virtues.

In this reserved sanctuary -- a new heaven and Kingdom of God -- solitude and silence must reign. God is alone with Himself. The divine Persons do not affect this solitude, they constitute it. The Love Who is their animating force encloses them against all that is not Himself. The City of God is immense, but enclosed. God alone occupies it, and He is All in all. The soul that prays must reproduce this solitude: it must be filled by it to the exclusion of all else. The very colloquy which follows is a kind of silence.

Speech and silence are not opposed: they do not exclude one another. What is opposed to silence is not speech but words: that is, multiplicity. We confuse the silence of Being with the silence of ‘nothingness’, which knows neither how to speak nor how to be silent. All that it can do is to become agitated, and then it dissembles. And it does this by its superficial movements reflecting the nothingness within it. Lip service which has no deep thought to support it; physical postures; facial expressions with no corresponding reality or that flatly deceive -- such is the language of ‘nothingness’.

And that is why it is garrulous. It says little in many words; or it uses words that do not say what it thinks. God needed only one Word to express Himself fully, and it is toward that unity of the Word that we tend when we are alone with God. He has become all, and we tell Him so -- what more can we say? It is the silence of the soul recollected in itself and occupied with Him Whom it finds there. It is the silence of those long nights that Jesus passed on the mountain side during His prayer to God. It was the silence of Gethsemane or of Calvary, broken only by a few words for us.

Churches are places for prayer in common. They must reproduce God's features and those of souls which need the body to express themselves. They must offer to the body lines that run upward toward heaven or fade away in the mystery of a semi-darkness. They must isolate the building from the world and its noises, and for a central point around which everything tends to draw the soul's powers, to concentrate and unify them and evoke our love. They must reveal beauties which are altogether beyond us; they must give us a peace which does not come from created things but draws us above them. They must create a great harmony of the natural and the supernatural, in which He Who has made both matter and spirit is revealed. His presence shines through and His love draws us. We must breathe Him through the very pores of our being, just as we breathe the air. A place of worship which does not evoke this response, and the soul that on entering it does not respond to that appeal, are not true to themselves and deceive others.

Our Lord's Desire for Your Soul

Alas, My beloved, alas My spouse; I stand desiring you, and waiting for you; I wish that you would return to Me with all your heart, and forsaking all vanities, apply yourself wholly to devotion, and give yourself daily to humility; that I might then vouchsafe to talk with you in more familiar sort, and rejoice your mind with far better and purer delights than those you have lain drowned.

I do not require a multitude of works by your hands, but a chaste, faithful and pure heart, which may seek to please Me, and not delight itself. I desire a sincere love and a fervent devotion, that is, a ready and forward will to honour and obey Me, and a sincere and pure intention in performing the things that I command. I wish that your heart should be clear and free of any other love, and if you would present it to Me in this way, I would endow you with greater consolations and far more excellent blessings, than you either dare to presume to desire or are able to conceive.

I am a husband that is bashful, and therefore will never come to you, when I see you busied with other matters altogether vain and unprofitable. When I come I must find you alone, for I stand knocking at your door, being very weak and quaking for cold, even in the same form that I carried, when I was unloosed from the pillar where I was bound, scourged and wounded for your sake. And this I do, that I may make an impression of Myself in your mind, wounded as I was, and that you, embracing Me with the arms of your love, I may unite you unto Me, and inflame you with My Wounds, that still burn with the fervent heat of that charity which I bear towards you.

Oh, if you would love Me as you ought to do, would you not both quickly draw Me into your heart, and also before I came, with a most desirous will, attend and long for My coming; and would you not then clothe the naked, and offer fire to warm him that is cold, that you might be worthy to receive again the chaste embracing of My love, and to enjoy the sweet taste of My Spirit?

~ Alloquia Iesu Christi ad Animam Fidelem, by Lanspergius ~

Drawing Mary's Soul and Ours Together

My sister, my spouse, is a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up ~ Canticle of Canticles 4:12

To be a contemplative is to be receptive of the divine Word; to possess Him spiritually, and to live a life of union with Him. Our Blessed Lady is in truth the model for all contemplatives. She is the Mother of Truth as she is of Fair Love. Our part is to imitate her as faithful and generous children.

The various symbols that illustrate for us the mystery of Mary’s mission – Tower of Ivory, House of Gold, a Fountain sealed, Mirror of Justice, Ark of the Covenant – are at the same time symbols of the soul that loves and possesses God in an interior solitude. Mary’s virtues, the gifts she reveals and that radiate from her, are the essential virtues, the very conditions and special marks of the contemplative life.

According to the hymn we sing at Vespers on all her feasts, Mary is distinguished by her graciousness among women – among so many virgins and mothers on whom God has also bestowed the grace of gentleness, yet whose very gentleness is at the same time their power and strength. But all that is both Virginal and Maternal Mary, the second and spiritual Eve, possesses to an exceptional degree.

We are told that gentleness is the summing-up of all Christian virtues: it consists, above all, of patience and kindness; of respect and love for souls, indeed for all animate being; since one who is gentle is gentle towards all living things. And this, because in its root it derives from harmony with the will of God under all its forms, a tender acquiescence in all that is. It is also the primary requisite for all who long to clarify and liberate their inward vision. There is no contemplative life without infinite patience; light only penetrates souls at rest. Tranquillity is the first disposition necessary, then, if the depths of the soul are to become translucent. The art of contemplating divine truths is the art of remaining still.

Gentleness is the quality of a forgiving and loving soul, and is inseparable from true intellectual insight. When the mind is purified and sees all beings in their proper light, it cannot but be confident and loving. Saint John of the Cross has remarked with great insistence how essential kindness is for all interior progress. Our vocation is truly virginal and a mirror of Mary’s. She had no need to condemn the world; it was the world that broke its strength against her graciousness. So, too, with the contemplative. Our mission is not to judge men, but to live with God.

Another of Our Lady’s virtues which dazzles us, and which was pre-eminent in her, is her purity. Mary is, as it were, the very incarnation of purity, which in turn is so intimately bound up with the gift of wisdom that one can call it the indispensable virtue of the contemplative. It is not merely a question of avoiding the sins of the flesh, but of a delicacy of spirit which shields and reserves itself for the highest joys. To be pure is to know how to establish and maintain solitude of soul for God alone; to reconstruct our Garden of Eden interiorly. We know how Mary is prefigured in the earthly paradise, a sacred reserve inaccessible to the world; a place of delights without blemish or discord, prepared for the new Adam. Such is the contemplative soul: an enclosed garden where one has the joy of receiving directly the divine life in a stillness comparable to that which doubtless reigned at the dawn of the world. Neither thing nor person must come between the soul and God; nothing but that chaste liberty of the dawn of recreation. Then a new creation takes place, and is renewed throughout time: the generation of the Son of God in us.

What conclusions can we deduce from these brief reflections on the resemblance which draws Mary’s soul and ours together? We shall make the resolution to close our minds to all alien preoccupations, and by our recollection drink deeply of the innermost springs of our being. Like Mary, we shall reserve ourselves for joys not of this world, holding on to those joys through all our sufferings, all our separations, all our fears, till they attain their plenitude and enfold our whole being with their consoling peace, bringing us at last to that eternal felicity which we shall know to be the only true joy, when the shadow of this world shall have passed away.

~ Dom Jean-Baptiste Porion~

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

‘The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory’ (Munificentissimus Deus, Pope Pius XII, 1950).

Dear readers, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was declared as an infallible dogma in 1950 by Pope Pius XII, but the belief in Mary's Assumption dates back to the early days of the Church. A very ancient writer, Modestus of Jerusalem asserts: ‘As the most glorious Mother of Christ, our Saviour and God and the giver of life and immortality, has been endowed with life by Him, she has received an eternal incorruptibility of the body together with Him Who has raised her up from the tomb and has taken her up to Himself in a way known only to Him’. There have been many writings from the saints on the subject: John Damascene, Germanus of Constantinople, Anthony of Padua, Albert the Great, Bernardine of Siena, Robert Bellarmine and Francis de Sales, to name only some. The Assumption is not explicitly found in Sacred Scripture but it is there implicitly. Here are some examples: ‘Arise, O Lord, into Your resting place: You and the Ark, which You have sanctified’ (Psalm 132:8). ‘The Queen takes her place at Your right Hand’ (Psalm 45:10). ‘Who is she that goes up by the desert, as a pillar of smoke of aromatical spices, of myrrh, and frankincense, and of all the powders of the perfumer?’ (Songs 3:6). ‘Who is this that comes up from the desert, flowing with delights, leaning upon her beloved?’ (Songs 8:5). Perhaps one of the most convincing and prophetic passages in the Old Testament is found in the First Book of Kings, supporting the Catholic belief that Jesus is the King of kings, Mary His Mother is the Queen who is with Him in His eternal Kingdom, interceding on our behalf: ‘Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him for Adonijah, and the king stood up to meet her and paid her homage. Then he sat down upon his throne, and a throne was provided for the king’s mother, who sat at his right. There is one small favour I would ask of you, she said. Do not refuse me. Ask it my mother, the king said to her, for I will not refuse you’ (1 Kings 2:19-20).

First Reading, Revelation 11:19a; 12:1-6a, 10ab
In the Old Testament the covenant that was kept in the ark was a symbol of God’s presence among His people. The Blessed Virgin Mary carried in her womb not a symbol of God’s presence, but God Himself. Because of this, Mary was the human Ark -- the reality and fulfilment of what the ark of the Old Covenant symbolized. In this, the Book of Revelation, we read about a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. There are two ways to interpret this. First, the woman is the Church which shines with the light of faith under the guidance and protection of the Sun of Justice. The moon represents the changeable things of this world of which the affections of the faithful will rise above; hence, those changeable things will be under our feet. And so, the Church is clothed with Christ, with the changeable things of this world under her feet and is governed by Christ through the twelve stars who are the Apostles. The second way to interpret this is to say that the woman is our Blessed Lady who is clothed with Christ and her crown of twelve stars signifies that she is the Queen of heaven, Queen of the Church, Queen of the Twelve Apostles and Queen of the twelve tribes of Israel. Through this interpretation the Church proclaims that our Blessed Mother was taken to heaven, body and soul to reign as our Queen and Mother. The woman is in pain as she labours to bring forth spiritual children along with Christ in the midst of persecutions and afflictions. The dragon is often identified as the devil or Satan. The seven heads and ten horns represent those who serve the dragon by persecuting the servants of Almighty God. This is alluded to in the Book of Psalms: ‘The kings of the earth rise up and the princes conspire together against the Lord and against His anointed’ (Psalm 2:2). Also, in the Book of Genesis we read as God rebukes the serpent: ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. And to the woman He said, I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children’ (Genesis 3:15-16). In the heart of Mary and the Church is produced the Word that is persecuted by the enemies and the unbelievers of this world. Saint John the Evangelist, the author of the Book of Revelation, must have reasoned that this woman was our Lady. How could he have not thought this? On the Cross, Christ gave her to him to be his Mother (cf. Saint John 19:27). Additionally, tradition teaches us that after Christ’s Ascension, Saint John and Mary were often in each other’s company. While we can say the woman can be identified as either the Church or Mary, it was Saint Ambrose who taught that Mary is a type of the Church in the order of faith, charity and perfect union with Christ. This was reiterated by the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. The dragon’s tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky and hurled them down to the earth. More than likely this is alluding to Lucifer being driven out of heaven bringing with him all the fallen angels who sided with him in rebellion against God. The dragon stood before the woman who was able to flee into the desert to a place prepared for her by God. In the early days of the Church many saints fled to the desert to escape persecution. Saint Jerome points out that it was these types of occurrences that gave rise to the eremitical state of life. In the final verse heaven rejoices in the Church which through her trials and persecutions remained faithful to her Lord and thus was victorious over her enemies.

Second Reading, 1 Corinthians 15:20-27
Saint Paul often makes the comparison between Adam and our Lord. Adam was created into an earthly paradise but his sin corrupted that paradise. Christ came and restored to humanity a Paradise which is not of this world. Paul refers to our Saviour as the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. If Jesus is the firstfruits, then it supposes that others will rise after Him. At the general resurrection Christ will present us to His heavenly Father as the fruits of His glorious triumph over sin and death. Since Paul makes the comparison between Adam and Christ, rightfully the comparison can be made between Eve and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Because of the sin of our first parents, Eve became the mother of the dead. Because of Christ’s victory over sin and death, Mary became the Mother of all the living. Saint Paul writes that all shall be brought to life in proper order; following Christ will be those who belong to Him. In our Blessed Mother is the proof of what Christ has promised. She has been lifted up to her Son, body and soul. Around 380 A.D. Timothy of Jerusalem wrote: ‘The Virgin is immortal because He Who dwelt in her took her to the regions of the Ascension’. Additionally, Gregory of Tours in 580 wrote: ‘Mary, the glorious Mother of Christ, who, we believe, was a Virgin before and after childbirth, was carried to Paradise preceded by the Lord amidst the singing of angelic choirs’. John Henry Cardinal Newman in his work, Meditations and Devotions wrote: ‘Was she [Mary] not nearer to Him than the greatest of the saints before her? Therefore we confidently say that our Lord, having preserved her from sin and the consequences of sin by His Passion, lost no time in pouring out the full merits of that Passion upon her body as well as her soul’. If you think about it, the Church really doesn’t teach anything all that differently about Mary than what the Church teaches about us. Mary was conceived immaculately without the stain of original sin. In Baptism, we are born to a new life in Christ; and in that new birth original sin is washed away. Mary is in heaven, body and soul. Christ promises the same for us. Mary has been granted this grace ahead of time as proof that our Saviour is faithful to what He promises.

Gospel, Luke 1:39-56
With this weekend’s Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, this Gospel is a reminder of one important fact when trying to grow in the spiritual life: where there is Mary, there is Jesus. Look for her and you’ll find Him. Come to her and she’ll lead you to Him. In this Gospel are the makings of the first ever Eucharistic procession. Mary, however, the human Tabernacle, does not need to be carried through the hill country leading to Judah; she is able to carry herself, bringing with her our Lord, her Lord and her Son. The house of Zechariah and Elizabeth suddenly becomes a chapel for adoration. Certainly Elizabeth recognizes Mary as the Tabernacle carrying her Lord when she says: ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me that the Mother of my Lord should come to me’? John the Baptist recognizes his Lord as he leaps for joy in the womb of his mother Elizabeth. In Mary’s Magnificat are the eternal words: ‘From this day all generations will call me blessed.’ It is under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that the angel Gabriel called her blessed at the Annunciation, that Elizabeth calls her blessed at the Visitation, that Mary proclaims her own blessedness for all generations in the Magnificat. The Venerable Bede asserts that in her eternal blessed state we hold her up to the veneration of both men and angels. Saint Jerome adds that Elizabeth too is blessed, yet the excellency of the Mother of God far surpasses that of Elizabeth and every other woman, as the great luminary outshines the smaller stars. Mary brought our Lord into the world. She gave Him to us. She presented Him to Simeon at the temple; she presents Him to us as our Saviour. She was present for many of the events of His human life; and after His Ascension He called her to Himself to be with Him in heaven. He also calls us to heaven to spend eternity with Him; and if we so choose, Mary can be our tour guide in this life’s journey, to direct us along the path that leads to her Son. In the Apostolic Constitution of Pope Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus, are the words: ‘She [Mary], by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body’. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church we read: ‘The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians’ (CCC 966).

Our Love-Reign Medicine

Wherever you are, whatever you do, or wherever you go, My Eye is never off of you, looking and searching out all your acts, all your motions, and all the secret intentions of your heart. And if any time I find in any of these the least unfaithfulness to Me, Who am most faithful, I am justly offended and angry. For I suffered not only with all patience, but even with all willingness, many affronts, reproaches, grief, and torments for your sake.

O My most beloved, to pass over in silence all the pains and torments I endured, tell me, I pray you, what man would have suffered so many and such great disgraces for his friend as I did for you? And yet I endured them when you were My enemy, when you had done no good at all, when did neither love nor know Me; before you were born I loved you, and suffered these grievous and innumerable torments for you.

Why then will you turn away yourself from Me? Why do you seek quietness without Me? You are sickly, and yet will wander abroad. If I forsake you, who will receive you? Who can cure you?

Alas, My beloved, how far you are deceived! Wherever you turn your eyes, or upon whatever you fix your mind, yet you shall find no peace, no joy, or any rest, but in Me only. Your senses deceive you, and they who seem to love you abuse you, and you also deceive yourself, when you refuse a love-reign medicine that would help you, and receive rank poison, which will kill you.

~ Alloquia Iesu Christi ad Animam Fidelem, by Lanspergius ~

Desiring to be a Holocaust for Christ

Beloved Deacons, today we pray for you on this, the feast of Saint Lawrence, deacon and martyr.

The word 'deacon' is derived from the Greek word, 'diakonia' which means 'care' or 'service'.

Saint Ambrose describes a deacon as having three characteristics:

First, a deacon having been sacramentally constituted in the service of self-giving, lives his diaconal ministry giving witness to Christ in martyrdom, the service of charity by acceptance of that greater love which is martyrdom.

Second, in virtue of the link which binds him to the bishop, the deacon lives ecclesial communion by specific service to the bishop, beginning with the Eucharist and in reference to the Eucharist.

Third, in virtue of the Sacrament, the deacon devotes himself fully to the service of a constituent charity and not merely to a human or social fellowship, and thus manifests the most characteristic element of the diakonia.

In De Officiis, Saint Ambrose describes a very heartfelt but intense moment between Lawrence and Sixtus II, the pope who was being led to execution. Here is the exchange according to the Ambrosian text:

Saint Lawrence wept when he saw his bishop, Sixtus, led out to his martyrdom. He wept not because he was being let out to die but because he would survive Sixtus. He cried out to him in a loud voice: 'Where are you going Father, without your son? Where do you hasten to, holy bishop, without your deacon? You cannot offer sacrifice without a minister. Father, are you displeased with something in me? Do you think me unworthy? Show us a sign that you have found a worthy minister. Do you not wish that he to whom you gave the Lord's Blood and with whom you have shared the sacred mysteries should spill his own blood with you? Beware that in your praise your own judgment should not falter. Despise the pupil and shame the Master. Do not forget that great and famous men are victorious more in the deeds of their disciples than in their own. Abraham made sacrifice of his own son, Peter instead sent Stephen. Father, show us your own strength in your sons; sacrifice him whom you have raised, to attain eternal reward in that glorious company, secure in your judgment'.

Sixtus replied: 'I will not leave you, I will not abandon you my son. More difficult trials are kept for you. A shorter race is set for us who are older. For you who are young a more glorious triumph over tyranny is reserved. Soon, you will see, cry no more, after three days you will follow me. It is fitting that such an interval should be set between bishop and Levite. It would not have been fitting for you to die under the guidance of a martyr, as though you needed help from him. Why do you want to share in my martyrdom? I leave its entire inheritance to you. Why do you need me present? The weak pupil precedes the master, the strong, who have no further need of instruction, follow and conquer without him. Thus Elijah left Elisha. I entrust the success of my strength to you'.

Saint Ambrose continues his text by telling us that Lawrence’s longing for martyrdom was due to his desire to be a holocaust for Jesus Christ.

It has been said that Lawrence was roasted to death on a grid-iron three days after the death of Sixtus.