Monthly Archives: April 2017

Apr142017

Prophet Isaiah glorifying God

See, my servant shall prosper,
He shall be raised high and greatly exalted.
Even as many were amazed at Him
So marred was His look beyond human semblance
And His appearance beyond that of the sons of man
So shall He startle many nations,
Because of Him kings shall stand speechless;
For those who have not been told shall see,
Those who have not heard shall ponder it.

Who would believe what we have heard?
To whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up like a sapling before Him,
Like a shoot from the parched earth;
There was in him no stately bearing to make us look at Him,
Nor appearance that would attract us to him.
He was spurned and avoided by people,
A man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity,
One of those from whom people hide their faces,
Spurned, and we held him in no esteem

Yet it was our infirmities that He bore,
Our sufferings that he endured,
While we thought of Him as stricken,
As one smitten by God and afflicted.
But He was pierced for our offenses,
Crushed for our sins;
Upon Him was the chastisement that makes us whole,
By His stripes we were healed.
We had all gone astray like sheep,
Each following his own way;
But the LORD laid upon him
The guilt of us all.

Though He was harshly treated, He submitted
And opened not His mouth;
Like a lamb led to the slaughter
Or a sheep before the shearers,
He was silent and opened not His mouth.
Oppressed and condemned, He was taken away,
And who would have thought any more of His destiny?
When He was cut off from the land of the living,
And smitten for the sin of His people,
A grave was assigned Him among the wicked
And a burial place with evildoers,
Though He had done no wrong
Nor spoken any falsehood.
But the LORD was pleased
To crush Him in infirmity.

If He gives his life as an offering for sin,
He shall see his descendants in a long life,
And the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through Him.
Because of his affliction
He shall see the light in fullness of days;
Through His suffering, my servant shall justify many,
And their guilt He shall bear.
Therefore I will give Him his portion among the great,
And He shall divide the spoils with the mighty,
Because He surrendered Himself to death
And was counted among the wicked;
And He shall take away the sins of many,
And win pardon for their offenses.

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Apr132017

Maundy Thursday

Easter Triduum
Sacred Heart
The Cross
A reposed Eucharist
Lonely Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration

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Apr132017

Strife in Pursuit

There is among the passions an anger of the intellect, and this anger is in accordance with nature. Without anger a man cannot  attain purity: he has to feel angry with all that is sown in him by the enemy. When Job felt this anger he reviled his enemies, calling them “dishonorable men of no repute, lacking everything good, whom I would not consider fit to live with the dogs that guard my flocks’ (cf Job 30:1, 4. LXX). He who wishes to acquire the anger that is in accordance with nature must uproot all self-will, until he establishes within himself the state natural to the intellect.  –The Philokalia: St Isaiah the Solitary verse I

My eyes are spent with weeping; my soul is in tumult; my heart is poured out in grief because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because infants and babes faint in the streets of the city. [12] They cry to their mothers, “Where is bread and wine?” as they faint like wounded men in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out on their mothers’ bosom. [13] What can I say for you, to what compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem? What can I liken to you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For vast as the sea is your ruin; who can restore you?  —Lamentations

St Isaiah the Solitary

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Apr122017

Tenebrae in Toledo: Rosary Cathedral

“Look, O LORD, and behold, for I am despised.
Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow which was brought upon me,
Which the LORD inflicted on the day of his fierce anger.
From on high he sent fire;
Into my bones He made it descend;
He spread a net for my feet;
He turned me back;
He has left me stunned, faint all the day long.
My transgressions were bound into a yoke;
By his hand they were fastened together;
They were set upon my neck;
He caused my strength to fail;
The Lord gave me into the hands of those whom I cannot withstand.”

Lamentations

A solemn and majestic Catholic tradition exercised in Toledo as I have never experienced it anywhere else; profound and breath taking in the stunning Rosary Cathedral.

Rosary Cathedral Toledo

….One such service celebrated as an introduction to the Sacred Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday) is called “tenebrae”.

The word itself means “darkness” in reference to the darkness held in the heart of the church during the days and hours of our Lord’s passion, death and resurrection. The order of service for Tenebrae takes its form from the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours….

In its classic form dating as far back as the ninth century and earlier in some regions of Western Europe, Tenebrae was celebrated in the early morning hours on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Historical and liturgical sources indicate that the service of Tenebrae commenced at midnight and was comprised of three separate segments called “nocturns”, each having a collection of specific psalm texts, antiphons and readings, followed by the praying of “lauds” (the morning prayer of the Church). Each of the three “nocturns” featured a selection of specific writings: the first nocturn featured passages from the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah; the second from the writings of St. Augustine; the third from the writings of St. Paul.

Rich in symbolism, the service of Tenebrae incorporates the use of light and darkness to evoke the spiritual reality recalled within the prayer. For instance, as the service was celebrated on the morning of Good Friday in its earliest days, the candles used for lighting were successively extinguished so that by the end only one candle was left burning. While the church found itself in darkness, the lone candle, the light of the one who would sacrifice himself for the life of the world, would remain and be seen as the light in darkness. Hope was restored for God’s faithful ones.

Another feature of the Tenebrae Service celebrated at Toledo’s Rosary Cathedral is the use of black vestments. Normally worn for the Requiem Mass during the pre-Vatican II period, the Cathedral’s black vestments are hand-embroidered and depict in episodic progression the passion and suffering events of Christ’s way to Calvary.

While the Office of Tenebrae has been replaced by the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours today, some parish and cathedral communities offer a hybrid form of the service usually on Wednesday evening during Holy Week as an introduction to the mystery of faith recalled during the Sacred Triduum.

BY THE REVEREND CHARLES E. SINGLER, D.MIN. Rector of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Cathedral Director of the Office of Worship, Diocese of Toledo 2008

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Apr122017

Soliloquy

If you find yourself hating your fellow men and resist this hatred, and you see that it grows weak and withdraws, do not rejoice in your heart; for this withdrawal is a trick of the evil spirits. They are preparing a second attack worse than the first; they have left their troops behind the city and ordered them to remain there. If you go out to attack them, they will flee before you in weakness. But if your heart is then elated because you have driven them away, and you leave the city, some of them will attack you from the rear while the rest will stand their ground in front of you; and your wretched soul will be caught between them with no means of escape. The city is prayer. Resistance is rebuttal through Christ Jesus…. The Philokalia: St Isaiah the Solitary verse II

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Apr112017

Holy Week

Facing Evil

Jesus lived a human life as God’s true Son, overcoming the temptations all of us inherit by being born into this world. On Good Friday, Jesus went to his death trusting that his dear Father would bring victory out of what seemed the total defeat of his mission. In the garden on the night before his death, he seems to have faced for the last time the temptation to fear, but he was able to hand over his life in trust to his Father. He went to his death believing that his way of being Messiah was the way to bring about God’s Kingdom, and he absorbed human evil without passing it on. His faith made this possible. —William A. Barry, SJ , Lenten Meditations

The Presence of God

Be still and know that I am God. Lord, may your Spirit guide me to seek your loving presence more and more. For it is there I find rest and refreshment from this busy world.

Freedom

By God’s grace
I was born to live in freedom.
Free to enjoy the pleasures he created for me.
Dear Lord, grant that I may live as you intended,
with complete confidence in your loving care.

Consciousness

In God’s loving presence I unwind the past day, starting from now and looking back, moment by moment. I gather in all the goodness and light, in gratitude. I attend to the shadows and what they say to me, seeking healing, courage, forgiveness.

Conversation

Jesus, you always welcomed little children when you walked on this earth. Teach me to have a childlike trust in you, to live in the knowledge that you will never abandon me.

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Apr102017

Defining while living

Theology as wisdom is at once eminently speculative and eminently practical because the God who is the object of the study of theology is the God who intervenes in human history and calls us to perfection and salvation. Spiritual theology reflects precisely on the mystery of our participation in divine life. It is concerned not only with the construction of a science or theory of the supernatural life, but also with the existential condition of that life in the individual Christian. Consequently, spiritual theology must express itself in both ontological (theory) and psychological (experiential) terms.

Because spiritual theology is part of the one theology, it is closely related to dogmatic and moral theology, from which it derives its principles. And because it is an applied theology, it necessarily contains much that is practical and experiential. Consequently, the method of theologizing must take both of these factors into account; it must, in fact, combine the deductive method and the inductive method and strive to keep a proper balance between the two. –Father Jordan Aumann ‘Spiritual Theology’

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