Thursday 26 August 2021
Thursday of week 21 in Ordinary Time
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Thursday of week 21 in Ordinary Time
From the Instructions of St Columbanus, abbot
You, God, are everything to us
My brethren, let us follow this call. We are called to the source and fountain of life, by the Life who is not just the fountain of living water but also the fountain of eternal life, the fountain of light, the fountain and source of glory. From this Life comes everything: wisdom, life, eternal light. The Creator of life is the fountain from which life springs; the Creator of light is the fountain of light. So let us leave this world of visible things. Let us leave this world of time and head for the heavens. Like fish seeking water, like wise and rational fish let us seek the fountain of light, the fountain of life, the fountain of living water. Let us swim in, let us drink from the water of the spring welling up into eternal life.
Merciful God, righteous Lord, grant that I may reach that fountain. There let me join the others who thirst for you, drinking living water from the living stream that flows from the fountain of life. Overwhelmed by its sweetness let me cling close to it and say “How sweet is the spring of living water that never runs dry, the spring that wells up into eternal life!”
O Lord, you yourself are that spring, always and for ever to be desired, always and for ever to be drunk from. Christ our Lord, give us this water as the Samarian woman once asked you, so that in us also it can be a spring of living water welling up into eternal life. It is an enormous gift I am asking – everyone knows that – but you, King of glory, have given great gifts in the past and made great promises. Nothing, after all, is greater than you; and yet you have given yourself to us and given yourself for us.
Therefore we beg you that we should come to full knowledge of the thing that we love; for we pray to be given nothing other than you yourself. You are everything to us, our life, our light, our health and strength, our food, our drink, our God. Jesus, our Jesus, I beg you to fill our hearts with the breath of your Spirit. Pierce our souls with the sword of your love so that each of us can say truthfully in his heart, “Show me the one with whom my soul is in love, for by love I am wounded.”
Lord, let me bear such wounds in my soul. Blessed is the soul that is wounded by such love and, thus wounded, seeks the fountain and drinks, thirsts even while it drinks: it seeks by loving, and the very wound of love brings it healing. May Jesus Christ, our righteous God and Lord, our true and healing doctor, deign to wound our innermost hearts with that healing wound. With the Father and the Holy Spirit he is one, for ever and for ever. Amen.
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In other parts of the world and other calendars:
Blessed Dominic of the Mother of God (Dominic Barberi), Priest
A painting (c.1900) in the Passionist archives in Rome.
A sermon of Pope Paul VI
He had a great love for England
The fact which makes us remember Father Dominic is well known and was his principal claim to fame. It is the fact of Newman’s conversion. At Littlemore on the evening of 8 October, 1845, it was Father Dominic who received from that most remarkable spirit his decisive profession of the Catholic Faith.
Newman later wrote: ‘Father Dominic was a marvellous missioner and a preacher filled with zeal. He had a great part in my own conversion and in that of others. His very look had about it something holy. When his form came within sight, I was moved to the depths in the strangest way. The gaiety and affability of his manner in the midst of all his sanctity was in itself a holy sermon. No wonder that I became his convert and his penitent. He had a great love for England.’
‘He had a great love for England.’ – This phrase would seem to define this humble but great follower of the gospel of Christ; it seems to sum up the historical current of the sentiments of the Church of Rome, towards that island of high destiny; it seems to give expression to this present spiritual moment of the Apostolic See, which now raises to the glory of the Blessed this generous missionary, whose arms are open wide towards all that is most venerable and most significant in that blessed country’s present portion of its magnificent Christian heritage; and it seems today to rise up from the heart of the Ecumenical Council, being celebrated in this basilica, like a sign of still suffering, but always confident, Catholic brotherhood.
‘He had a great love for England.’ Newman’s phrase, if properly meditated upon, means that the love of the pious religious, the Roman missionary, was directed to Newman himself, the promoter and representative of the Oxford movement, which raised so many religious questions, and excited such great spiritual energies; to him who, in full consciousness of his mission — ‘I have a work to do’ — and guided solely by love of the truth and fidelity to Christ, traced an itinerary, the most toilsome, but also the greatest, the most meaningful, the most conclusive, that human thought ever travelled during the last century, indeed one might say during the modern era, to arrive at the fullness of wisdom and of peace.
And if that phrase was true and salutary for so distinguished a representative of a great people, so high an authority of a time like ours, will it not be still true and salutary today, in heaven, in the hearts of this beloved Beatus, and here below, in the hearts of all those who celebrate his glory, and wish to imitate his example?
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Blessed Jacques Retouret, Priest, Martyr
From the Resolutions drawn up by the Priests imprisoned on the ship 'Les Deux Associés'
They bore their cross without complaint
They will not surrender to useless anxiety about their release; rather, they will try to profit from their time of detention, meditating on their past lives, making holy resolutions for the future, so that even during their physical imprisonment, they may find freedom of spirit.
Should God permit them to recover, in whole or in part, that freedom for which nature yearns, they will avoid giving themselves over to an excessive joy when they are informed of it. Preserving their peace of soul, they will demonstrate that they have borne the cross imposed on them without complaint, and that they were ready to continue to carry it for a long time with the courage of true Christians who do not permit themselves be overcome by adversity.
If given the possibility of recovering their belongings, they will show no eagerness to reclaim them; rather, they will respond humbly and truthfully to whatever they are asked. They will accept whatever is given them without complaint, accustomed, as they should be, to put little stock in the things of this world and to be content with little, following the example of the Apostles.
They will not satisfy the curiosity of those whom they meet on their way, and they will not respond to useless questions about their experiences. Rather, without going into detail and without showing resentment either towards those responsible or toward those who were their agents, they will let it be known that they endured their suffering patiently.
They will observe strict and absolute silence about the failings of their confreres and about the defects into which their sorry condition, the sad state of their health, and the length of their suffering may have led them. They will exercise charity towards those whose opinions are different from their own. They will avoid feeling bitterness or animosity toward them, keep their resentment to themselves, and seek to bring them back to the way of truth by their own kindness and moderation.
They will show no regret over the loss of their belongings, no anxiety to recover them, no bitterness toward those who are in possession of them.
From the present moment on, they will be of one heart and one spirit, excluding no one, and without distancing themselves from any of their brothers for any reason whatsoever. They will not interest themselves in news of current politics, but will be content to pray for the welfare of their country and to prepare themselves, should God permit them to return to their families, for a new life in which they will become good examples and models of virtue for their people through their detachment from the world, their fidelity to prayer, and their love of recollection and godliness.
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Saint Teresa of Jesus' Transverberation
From 'The Living Flame of Love' by St John of the Cross
You have wounded my heart
Moses declares in Deuteronomy, Our Lord God is a consuming fire, that is, a fire of love, which being of infinite power, can inestimably consume and transform into itself the soul it touches. Yet he burns each soul according to its preparation: he will burn one more, another less, and this he does insofar as he desires, and how and when he desires. When he wills to touch somewhat vehemently, the soul’s burning reaches such a high degree of love that it seems to surpass that of all the fires of the world, for he is an infinite fire of love. Because the soul in this case is entirely transformed by the divine flame, it not only feels a cautery, but has become a cautery of blazing fire.
It is a wonderful thing and worth relating that, since this fire of God is so mighty it would consume a thousand worlds more easily than the fire of this earth would burn up a straw, it does not consume and destroy the soul in which it so burns. And it does not afflict it, rather, commensurate with the strength of the love, it divinizes and delights it, burning gently. Since God’s purpose in granting these communications is to exalt the soul, he does not weary and restrict it, but enlarges and delights it, brightens and enriches it. The happy soul that by great fortune reaches this cautery knows all things, tastes all things, does all it wishes, and prospers; no one prevails before it and nothing touches it. This is the soul of which the Apostle speaks: The spiritual one judges all things and he is judged by no one. And again: The spirit searches out all things, unto the deep things of God.
It will happen that while the soul is inflamed with the love of God, it will feel that a seraphim is assailing it by means of an arrow or dart which is all afire with love. And the seraphim pierces and cauterizes this soul which, like a red-hot coal, or better, a flame, is already enkindled. For the soul is converted into the immense fire of love.
Few persons have reached these heights. Some have, however, especially those whose virtue and spirit was to be diffused among their children. For God accords to founders, with respect to the first fruits of the spirit, wealth and value commensurate with the greater or lesser following they will have in their doctrine and spirituality.
O happy wound, wrought by one who knows only how to heal! O fortunate and choicest wound; you were made only for delight, and the quality of your affliction is delight and gratification for the wounded soul! You are great, O delightful wound, because he who caused you is great! And your delight is great, because the fire of love is infinite and makes you delightful according to your capacity and greatness. O, then, delightful wound, so much more sublimely delightful the more the cautery touched the intimate centre of the substance of the soul, burning all that was burnable in order to give delight to all that could be delighted!
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.