Thursday 13 May 2021
Thursday before Ascension Sunday
or Our Lady of Fátima
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Thursday before Ascension Sunday
From a sermon of Saint Leo the Great, pope
Our faith is increased by the Lord's ascension
At Easter, beloved brethren, it was the Lord’s resurrection which was the cause of our joy; our present rejoicing is on account of his ascension into heaven. With all due solemnity we are commemorating that day on which our poor human nature was carried up, in Christ, above all the hosts of heaven, above all the ranks of angels, beyond the highest heavenly powers to the very throne of God the Father. It is upon this ordered structure of divine acts that we have been firmly established, so that the grace of God may show itself still more marvellous when, in spite of the withdrawal from men’s sight of everything that is rightly felt to command their reverence, faith does not fail, hope is not shaken, charity does not grow cold.
For such is the power of great minds, such is the light of truly believing souls, that they put unhesitating faith in what is not seen with the bodily eye; they fix their desires on what is beyond sight. Such fidelity could never be born in our hearts, nor could anyone be justified by faith, if our salvation lay only in what was visible.
And so our Redeemer’s visible presence has passed into the sacraments. Our faith is nobler and stronger because sight has been replaced by a doctrine whose authority is accepted by believing hearts, enlightened from on high. This faith was increased by the Lord’s ascension and strengthened by the gift of the Spirit; it would remain unshaken by fetters and imprisonment, exile and hunger, fire and ravening beasts, and the most refined tortures ever devised by brutal persecutors. Throughout the world women no less than men, tender girls as well as boys, have given their life’s blood in the struggle for this faith. It is a faith that has driven out devils, healed the sick and raised the dead.
Even the blessed apostles, though they had been strengthened by so many miracles and instructed by so much teaching, took fright at the cruel suffering of the Lord’s passion and could not accept his resurrection without hesitation. Yet they made such progress through his ascension that they now found joy in what had terrified them before. They were able to fix their minds on Christ’s divinity as he sat at the right hand of his Father, since what was presented to their bodily eyes no longer hindered them from turning all their attention to the realisation that he had not left his Father when he came down to earth, nor had he abandoned his disciples when he ascended into heaven.
The truth is that the Son of Man was revealed as Son of God in a more perfect and transcendent way once he had entered into his Father’s glory; he now began to be indescribably more present in his divinity to those from whom he was further removed in his humanity. A more mature faith enabled their minds to stretch upward to the Son in his equality with the Father; it no longer needed contact with Christ’s tangible body, in which as man he is inferior to the Father. For while his glorified body retained the same nature, the faith of those who believed in him was now summoned to heights where, as the Father’s equal, the only-begotten Son is reached not by physical handling but by spiritual discernment.
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Other choices for today:
Our Lady of Fátima
The canonically crowned image enshrined within the Chapel of the Apparitions at Fátima. Photographer: © Manuel González Olaechea y Franco. 15/04/2004.
From a sermon by Saint Ephraem, deacon
He whom the whole world cannot contain, Mary alone embraces
Mary was made heaven on our behalf by bearing the divinity which Christ, without leaving the glory of the Father, enclosed in the narrow confines of her womb so as to lead men to greater dignity. He chose her alone from the whole assembly of virgins to be an instrument of our salvation.
In her the oracles of all just men and prophets found their fulfilment. From her was born that brilliant star under whose guidance the people who walked in darkness saw a great light.
Mary can be called very appropriately by different names. She is the temple of the Son of God, who came forth from her in a different way from which he had entered; for he had entered her womb without a body, and came forth clothed in one.
She is the mystical new heaven, in which the King of kings dwelt as in his abode, and from which he came down to earth in an earthly form and likeness.
She is the fruitful vine of gentle fragrance. Her fruit, though absolutely differing in nature from the stock, was necessarily changed by the stock to be like it.
She is the fountain springing from the house of the Lord, from which flowed living waters to the thirsty who, even just tasting them with the lips, would never thirst.
Is it wrong, beloved, to think that the day of Mary’s reparation can be compared with another day of creation? In the beginning the earth was created; through her it is renewed. In the beginning its activity was cursed by the deed of Adam; through her peace and security is restored. In the beginning, death entered all through the sin of their first parents, but now we have been transferred from death to life. In the beginning, the serpent through the attention of Eve’s ears, spread poison to the whole body; now Mary receives through her ears the author of perpetual happiness. What was an instrument of death, now stands as an instrument of life.
He who sits above the Cherubim is now held in a woman’s arms. He whom the whole world cannot contain, Mary alone embraces. He whom Thrones and Dominations fear, a young girl protects. He whose dwelling is eternal, sits on the lap of a virgin. He who has the earth for a footstool, steps on it with the feet of a child.
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In other parts of the world and other calendars:
Saint Erconwald, Bishop
St Erkenwald instructing monks. A historiated initial from the Chertsey Breviary. Circa 1300.
From the Ecclesiastical History of the English People by St Bede the Venerable
Archbishop Theodore appointed Erconwald bishop in London, for the East Saxons. Sebbi and Sighere were the reigning monarchs. Both before and after his consecration, Erconwald lived so holy a life that even now miracles bear witness to it. To this day the horse-litter in which he used to be carried when ill is preserved by his followers and continues to cure many people afflicted with fevers and other complaints. Not only are people cured who are placed in or near the litter but splinters cut from it and taken to the sick bring speedy relief.
Before he was made bishop, he founded two famous monasteries, one for himself and the other for his sister Æthelburh, and established an excellent form of monastic Rule and discipline in both. His own was in the kingdom of Surrey near the river Thames at a place called Chertsey, that is, the island of Ceorot. His sister’s monastery he established at a place called Barking in the kingdom of the East Saxons where she was to live as mother and nurse of a company of women devoted to God. When she had undertaken the rule of this monastery, she proved herself worthy in all things of her brother the bishop, both by her own holy life and by her sound and devoted care for those who were under her rule; and of this heavenly miracles were the witness.
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.