Monday 19 October 2020
Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, priests, and their Companions, Martyrs
on Monday of week 29 in Ordinary Time
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, priests, and their Companions, Martyrs
An illustration dated 1740. Canadian National Archives.
The spiritual diaries of St John de Brébeuf
May I die only for you, Jesus, who willingly died for me
For two days now I have experienced a great desire to be a martyr and to endure all the torments the martyrs suffered.
Jesus, my Lord and Saviour, what can I give you in return for all the favours you have first conferred on me? I will take from your hand the cup of your sufferings and call on your name. I vow before your eternal Father and the Holy Spirit, before your most holy Mother and her most chaste spouse, before the angels, apostles and martyrs, before my blessed fathers Saint Ignatius and Saint Francis Xavier – in truth I vow to you, Jesus my Saviour, that as far as I have the strength I will never fail to accept the grace of martyrdom, if some day you in your infinite mercy should offer it to me, your most unworthy servant.
I bind myself in this way so that for the rest of my life I will have neither permission nor freedom to refuse opportunities of dying and shedding my blood for you, unless at a particular juncture I should consider it more suitable for your glory to act otherwise at that time. Further, I bind myself to this so that, on receiving the blow of death, I shall accept it from your hands with the fullest delight and joy of spirit. For this reason, my beloved Jesus, and because of the surging joy which moves me, here and now I offer my blood and body and life. May I die only for you, if you will grant me this grace, since you willingly died for me. Let me so live that you may grant me the gift of such a happy death. In this way, my God and Saviour, I will take from your hand the cup of your sufferings and call on your name: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!
My God, it grieves me greatly that you are not known, that in this savage wilderness all have not been converted to you, that sin has not been driven from it. My God, even if all the brutal tortures which prisoners in this region must endure should fall on me, I offer myself most willingly to them and I alone shall suffer them all.
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The ferial reading for today:
Monday of week 29 in Ordinary Time
A letter to Proba by St Augustine
Let us turn our mind to the task of prayer at appointed hours
Let us always desire the happy life from the Lord God and always pray for it. But for this very reason we turn our mind to the task of prayer at appointed hours, since that desire grows lukewarm, so to speak, from our involvement in other concerns and occupations. We remind ourselves through the words of prayer to focus our attention on the object of our desire; otherwise, the desire that began to grow lukewarm may grow chill altogether and may be totally extinguished unless it is repeatedly stirred into flame.
Therefore, when the Apostle says: Let your petitions become known before God, this should not be taken in the sense that they are in fact becoming known to God who certainly knew them even before they were made, but that they are becoming known to us before God through submission and not before men through boasting.
Since this is the case, it is not wrong or useless to pray even for a long time when there is the opportunity. I mean when it does not keep us from performing the other good and necessary actions we are obliged to do. But even in these actions, as I have said, we must always pray with that desire. To pray for a longer time is not the same as to pray by multiplying words, as some people suppose. Lengthy talk is one thing, a prayerful disposition which lasts a long time is another. For it is even written in reference to the Lord himself that he spent the night in prayer and that he prayed at great length. Was he not giving us an example by this? In time, he prays when it is appropriate, and in eternity, he hears our prayers with the Father.
The monks in Egypt are said to offer frequent prayers, but these are very short and hurled like swift javelins. Otherwise their watchful attention, a very necessary quality for anyone at prayer, could be dulled and could disappear through protracted delays. They also clearly demonstrate through this practice that a person must not quickly divert such attention if it lasts, just as one must not allow it to be blunted if it cannot last.
Excessive talking should be kept out of prayer but that does not mean that one should not spend much time in prayer so long as a fervent attitude continues to accompany his prayer. To talk at length in prayer is to perform a necessary action with an excess of words. To spend much time in prayer is to knock with a persistent and holy fervour at the door of the one whom we beseech. This task is generally accomplished more through sighs than words, more through weeping than speech. He places our tears in his sight, and our sighs are not hidden from him, for he has established all things through his Word and does not seek human words.
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In other parts of the world and other calendars:
Saint Philip Howard, Martyr
A sermon of Ronald Knox
The Prisoner of the Lord
We shall be able to find, in Philip Howard, a model of detachment. He was a man born to enjoy the ease and plenty of an age in which ease and plenty seemed, as never before, within man’s reach, yet sentenced by his own conscience to live the life of a prisoner, within sight and sound of all the amenities he loved. He had, unquestionably, the chance of buying back his liberty at the price of denying his faith; if he would not consent to do that, he was not even to be allowed sight of his wife and children – a harder sacrifice than even St Thomas More had been called upon to make. But Philip Howard, I think, never stopped to ask himself the question, “What have I done to deserve all this?” He was the prisoner of the Lord; in all the circumstances which preyed upon his health and restricted his liberties, he saw nothing but the conditions of an honourable confinement. Cannot we learn from him to think of ourselves as Christ’s prisoners, ready to offer him, in small things or in great, whatever sacrifice is demanded of us by the bestowal of that honourable title?
And I think we shall be able to find in Philip Howard a model of self-effacement. Here was a man who might have been a candidate, and indeed was, when he began life, a candidate for some of the highest prizes the world had to offer; and that in an age of unexampled splendour. When he became a Catholic, and as a Catholic had to spend the last ten years of his life in gaol, he put those brilliant hopes behind him. Can we not imagine what a temptation it must have been to him to fret and to chafe, when he found himself so cut off from all the life of his time? To be unable to assert himself, to make his influence felt, to strike a blow for the causes he had at heart – what an ignominious sense of frustration it must have given him! When they wanted to trump up a charge of high treason against him, what was the figment in which they took refuge? Why, that he had had Masses said for the success of the Spanish Armada! Malice itself was unable to credit him with any more active interference in the political events of his time. Can we not learn from Philip Howard to curb that self-assertiveness in us which makes us want to interfere with the running of things everywhere; to be at the head of every movement, or, if that is impossible, to be always criticising the people who are at the head of it, as if we could have done it better ourselves? Can we not learn to be content with the work, however humble its sphere may be, which God has given us to do; content to be overlooked and passed by, to have our opinion disregarded, to be left out in the cold? The prisoners of Christ, happy, if need be, on a treadmill, because that is how he wants us to serve him?
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