Monday 8 February 2021
Monday of week 5 in Ordinary Time
or Saint Jerome Emilian
or Saint Josephine Bakhita, Virgin
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Monday of week 5 in Ordinary Time
From the 'Breviloquium' of St Bonaventure
From the knowledge of Jesus Christ flows the understanding of the whole of holy Scripture
The stream of holy Scripture flows not from human research but from revelation by God. It springs from the Father of lights, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth takes its name. From him, through his Son Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit flows into us; and through the Holy Spirit, giving, at will, different gifts to different people, comes the gift of faith, and through faith Jesus Christ has his dwelling in our hearts. This is the knowledge of Jesus Christ which is the ultimate basis of the solidity and wisdom of the whole of holy Scripture.
From all this it follows that it is impossible for anyone to start to recognise Scripture for what it is if he does not already have faith in Christ infused into him. Christ is the lamp that illuminates the whole of Scripture: he is its gateway and its foundation. For this faith is behind all the supernatural enlightenments that we receive while we are still separated from the Lord and on our pilgrimage. It makes our foundation firm, it directs the light of the lamp, it leads us in through the gateway. It is the standard against which the wisdom that God has given us should be measured, so that no-one should exaggerate his real importance, but everyone must judge himself soberly by the standard of the faith God has given him.
The substance and fruit of holy Scripture is very specific: the fullness of eternal happiness. For this is what Scripture is – its words are words of eternal life, and it is written not just so that we should believe, but specially so that we should possess eternal life in which we may see, and love, and have all our desires fulfilled. When they are fulfilled, then we shall know the superabundant love that comes from knowledge, and so we shall be filled with all the fullness of God. God’s Scripture tries to lead us to this fullness, and to the truth of the preaching of the apostles. It is to this end, with this intention, that we should study holy Scripture, and teach it, and hear it.
If we are to follow the direct path of Scripture and come straight to the final destination, then right from the beginning – when simple faith starts to draw us towards the light of the Father – our hearts should kneel down and ask the Father to give us, through his Son and the Holy Spirit, true knowledge of Jesus and of his love. Once we know him and love him like this, we shall be made firm in faith and deeply rooted in love, and we can know the breadth, length, depth and height of holy Scripture. That news can then lead us to the full knowledge and overwhelming love of the most holy Trinity. The desires of the saints draw them towards the Trinity, in which all that is good and true is and finds its completion.
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Other choices for today:
Saint Jerome Emilian
Statue (1767) by Morleiter (1699-1781) at Santa Maria della Salute, Venice. Photograph by José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro.
From a letter to his brothers by Saint Jerome Emiliani
Place your trust in God alone
Sons of the Society of the Servants of the Poor, and dearly beloved brothers in Christ: Greetings from your poor father. I urge you to persevere in your love for Christ and your faithful observance of the law of Christ. In word and work I set an example for you when I was with you. And so the Lord is glorified in you through me.
Our goal is God, the source of all good. As we say in our prayer, we are to place our trust in God and in no one else. In his kindness, our Lord wished to strengthen your faith, for without it, as the evangelist points out, Christ could not have performed many of his miracles. He also wished to listen to your prayer, and so he ordained that you experience poverty, distress, abandonment, weariness and universal scorn. It was also his desire to deprive you of my physical presence, even though I am with you in spirit as your poor, dear, beloved father.
God alone knows the reasons for all this, yet we can recognise three causes. In the first place, our blessed Lord is telling you that he desires to include you among his beloved sons, provided that you remain steadfast in his ways, for this is the way he treats his friends and makes them holy.
The second reason is that he is asking you to grow continually in your confidence in him alone and not in others. For God, as I said before, does not work in those who refuse to place all their confidence and hope in him alone. But he does impart the fullness of his love upon those who possess a deep faith and hope; for them he does great things. So if you have been endowed with faith and hope, he will do great things for you; he will raise up the lowly. In depriving you of myself and everyone else you have loved, he will offer you an opportunity to choose one of these alternatives: either you will forsake your faith and return to the ways of the world, or you will remain steadfast in your faith and pass the test.
Now there is a third reason. God wishes to test you like gold in the furnace. The dross is consumed by the fire, but the pure gold remains and its value increases. It is in this manner that God acts with his good servant, who puts his hope in him and remains unshaken in times of distress. God raises him up and, in return for the things he has left out of love for God, he repays him a hundredfold in this life and with eternal life hereafter.
This is the way God has dealt with all the saints. So it was with his people Israel after their period of trial in Egypt. He not only led them out of Egypt with many miracles and fed them with manna in the desert, he also gave them the promised land. If then you remain constant in faith in the face of trial, the Lord will give you peace and rest for a time in this world, and for ever in the next.
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Saint Josephine Bakhita, Virgin
Portrait of St Josephine Bakhita (artist unknown).
From a sermon by St Augustine
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God
Do not be shy of the contest, if you truly love the prize. Let knowledge of the reward set the mind on fire to accomplish the work. What we desire, and wish for, and seek, will be hereafter; but what we are ordered to do, for the sake of that which will be hereafter, must be now. Begin now, therefore, to recall to mind the divine sayings, and the precepts and rewards of the Gospel.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The kingdom of heaven will be yours hereafter; so be poor in spirit now. Do you want the kingdom of heaven to be yours hereafter? Then look to yourself. Be poor in spirit. You ask me, perhaps, “What is it to be poor in spirit?” No-one who is puffed up is poor in spirit; therefore the one that is lowly is poor in spirit. The kingdom of heaven is exalted; and “he who humbles himself shall be exalted.”
Next, “Blessed are the meek,” he says, “for they shall inherit the earth.” If you wish to possess the earth now, take care, or it will possess you. If you are meek, you will possess it; if you are not, you will be possessed by it. And when you hear what a great reward is offered, do not give way to a desire to possess it right away, by any means, even at your neighbour’s expense. Reject all such deceptions. You will truly possess the earth when you unite yourself with him who made both heaven and earth. Meekness means not resisting God. That means that if things go well for you, you are happy with him rather than with yourself; and on the other hand, if things go badly, you are unhappy not with him, but with yourself. It is an important thing that you should be pleasing to God, even if you are not pleasing to yourself; whereas if you are pleasing to yourself, you are not pleasing to God.
Let us come then to the next saying and the next reward. “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” Do you desire to be filled? Filled with what? If it is the flesh that longs for fullness, then after you have eaten and the food has been digested you will be hungry once more. As he says, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again.” When we treat a wound and it is healed, there is an end to the pain; but when we treat hunger with food, the relief lasts only a little while. Once we are no longer full, the hunger returns. The treatment may be repeated daily but the wound is still not healed.
Let us therefore “hunger and thirst after righteousness, that we may be filled” with that righteousness, for then we can be truly filled with that for which we hunger and thirst. Let our inner man hunger and thirst, for it has its own particular kind of food and drink. “I,” says he, “am the Bread which came down from heaven.” Here is the bread of the hungry. In the same way, let your longing be also for the drink of the thirsty, “For with you is the well of life.”
Consider what comes next: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” This is the end and purpose of our love; an end which perfects us rather than consuming us. Food comes to an end; garments attain their end. But the end of food comes when it is consumed by the eating, while the end of a garment comes when it is perfected in the weaving. Both these things have an end, but for one, it is to be consumed while for the other, it is to be perfected. Whatever we now do, whatever we now do well, whatever we now strive for, or are rightly and properly eager for, or blamelessly desire, when we come to the vision of God, we shall be in need no longer. For what does anyone need to seek for, once God is present? On the other hand, if God is not enough for someone, what could ever be enough?
We wish to see God, we seek him, we are aflame with desire to see him. Who is not? But consider again what is said: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” So provide yourself with what is needed to be able to see him. To use a bodily metaphor, how, if your eyes are weak, can you long for the rising of the sun? If your eyes are sound then that light will be a delight, but if they are unsound, it will be a torment. So, you see, it is not permitted for impure hearts to see sights that are meant only for pure ones. You will be repelled, driven back from such a sight. You will not see it.
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In other parts of the world and other calendars:
Saint Cuthman of Steyning, Hermit
Stained glass window from the church at Steyning.
From the life of St Cuthman by an anonymous author
The building of the first church at Steyning
Cuthman saw that he had arrived at an ideal place to undertake his work. At that time not many people passed that way; the spot was sparsely inhabited. It lay at the foot of a steep hill, then wooded and overgrown with trees and brambles (but now made fertile and fruitful), enclosed between two small streams springing from the hill above. First he built a hut to shelter his mother and himself, and then he set to work to build the church by the labour of his hands and in the sweat of his brow. The good people of the district came to his help generously, providing him with food and materials for the building.
One day Cuthman and his assistants were putting up wooden columns and adjusting rafters, when a principal roof-beam moved out of alignment and brought the whole work of construction to a standstill. The builders were at a loss to know what to do, when a stranger appeared and asked what was the matter. Cuthman showed him what had happened. The stranger said, “Nothing is wanting to those who fear the Lord. Just pull it out, so; now we can move it up and everything will fall into place.” And so it did. Cuthman fell at the stranger’s feet. “Lord,” he said, “I pray you, tell me: who are you?” The stranger replied, “I am he in whose name you are building this church, and in it your name will be remembered with honour for all time.” And immediately he disappeared from their sight.
Copyright © 1996-2021 Universalis Publishing Limited: see www.universalis.com. Scripture readings from the Jerusalem Bible are published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. Text of the Psalms: Copyright © 1963, The Grail (England). Used with permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. All rights reserved.