St. Augustine, Doctor, Bishop, Writer, and All Around Big Guy

I'm sure that if I scrounge around in my archives I can find the nonsense I wrote about St. Augustine as a DOCTOR of the church. Those were the days of trying to find my niche. It seems the Rule of Benedict is my nice. The more I do it, the more I like it. But, today belongs to Augustine, so let's have a go at him.

The picture is by Sandro Botticelli, and I lifted it off the Wikipedia article on St. Augustine. There are some 900 extant sermons by Augustine. Lord knows he wrote enough other letters and refutations of heresy, that one wonders if perhaps the divine was indeed in his writing hand -- just to keep up with the writers cramp!

In the meantime of course he was living in a sinful, confused, chaotic world, rather like our own. They all feared invasion, which of course came. They all feared other Catholic Christians, which of course in those days, was serious enough to get you killed if you were not very, very careful, indeed. He had to take care of the influx of refugees from Italy as the barbarians were making life in Italy ever more unpleasant. And he still found time to write all that he wrote, plus 900 sermons!!!!!!!

So out of all of that, why did certain aspects of the church hierarchy of the past (or is it) seize upon a few of his statements that eventually gave rise to Jansenism and Calvinsism? The body is bad -- a perversion of Augustine. We are either damned or saved from the start -- a perversion of Augustine. Yet, tonight in the LOTH the antiphon for the Maginficat says,

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you. You called, you shouted and you shattered my deafness.

Those are not the words of a man who was filled with judgment and ire. Those are the words of a man amazed at the sheer love of God! If we are filled with such love, we will not judge either.

Rule, Rule, and More Rule

When I agreed to write a reflection on the Rule of Benedict I never dreamed that it would become one of the things that defined me in the eyes of others. Apparently it does. Since we've reached one of full of the rule I thought about stopping and letting people just reference as they liked, but enough letters came in through the list and to me personally to convince me to keep going. And, if I'm honest with myself, I need to write the daily reflections, otherwise I will not read the rule at all.

One thing this has inspired me to do is to learn more about the rule, as in academically. I'm too old, and too broke to go to school to learn about it, or I assure you, I'd be doing work in monastic theology at this very moment at some university, but I'm not too old or broke to read like a man-on-fire. I can read 320 pages of fiction in a days time with total comprehension. I can read about 160 pages of meatier stuff in a day with total comprehension. Theology, about 50 pages in a day, with a lot of time spent letting it soak into me. Then, of course, I have to pray about it, do some lectio about it. etc. etc.

Perhaps some mysterious reader will hook me up with some books on the RB that's more than just a series of charming reflections similar to my own. I'm ready for meat and potatoes. This next round of reflections should be meatier, chewier, and less fluffy.

Oh well, God help me in this endeavor. Oh, and by the way, I've stopped trying to please anyone at all in my reflections. While I will continue to be as sensitive as possible to various stances, I am not, as I heard third hand, "dumbing down Catholicism for anyone."

That said, God bless us all.

The Queenship of Mary

I admit, that as a convert to the Roman Church I have come across some feasts that defied my understanding at first. The Queenship of Mary is one of those feasts. It's based upon the angel Gabriel's greeting telling her that her son would rule on the throne of David forever, therefore, that makes her a queen. That is somewhat odd logic, but okay, I can roll with that, especially as the Virgin Mother does have a role in my life, and spirituality.

A very good explanation of this feast can be found here. Naturally, it is a Franciscan site, and they are well known for devotion to Mary. Anyway, Universalis calls it Our Lady, Mother and Queen. If you think about Marian Hymns, many many of them refer to her as queen. I think the problem most people might have with this is the term Queen is somewhat arcane anymore. England has a Queen, as does the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden, but other than that, Queens are hard.

Still, if the reasoning is that Jesus is the King, then it stands to reason that Mary is the Queen. That we need a feast for it seems to be pushing it a bit far. Still.
Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy!
Our life, our sweetness, and our hope!
To thee do we cry, poor banished
children of Eve, to thee do we send
up our sighs, mourning and weeping
in this valley, of tears.
Turn, then, most gracious advocate,
thine eyes of mercy toward us; and
after this our exile show unto us the
blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus;
O clement, O loving, O sweet virgin Mary.

Pray for us, O holy Mother of God

That we may be made worthy of the
promises of Christ.

Many Daughter Houses

Some people are not going to like this but I can be silent no more. The LCG membership list is overblown, encomapssing far too many people. We are not a community, we are ten or so communities under one monastery. The church is ethereal enough, must we also complicate matters by trying to force all 160 members into one community when we don't even know the people who live less that 200 miles from us? It's ludicrous. A lot of time and energy has been wasted on this question of how to make more than a hundred people into one community. The answer is simple: Either we all move in together, or we are daughter communities.

I already know all the people this is going to upset, Jane Endris, Mary Guilbert, probably Bob, too, but I'm sorry. I looked at the pamphlet that came for the September retreat and all I saw was names of people I've never heard of. So I ask, is that a community? No, it's a bunch of people unwilling to admit that we are all united by the charism of Gethsemani, but we are not the same community. We don't even have our meetings in the same ways, or same days.

It's safe to say this here because of my very limited readership. So I've said it. While writing today's rule reflection I was so tempted to refer to our membership as overblown, but that would serve nothing but my own vanity, and to the readership of the rules list I owe more than that. However, I am hereby taking my stand. We are all daughter communities of Gethsemani Abbey, united by the same Charism, but not all one community.

That's all I have to say about that.

Assumption of Mary

This was the only picture of the Assumption of Mary that I could tolerate. First, she looks about the right age for a woman who outlived her son by some decades, second, it's not full of fat angels, and third, she looks dead.

Looks dead you say? Well, yeah. You see there is this big discussion of did she die or not? In the Orthodox church there is a feast of the Falling Asleep of the Virgin. That answers it for me. Mary died. Now, Jesus in heaven had not forgotten his mother, so he brought her body up to heaven. I don't find that so hard to believe.

If you love your mother, and had the power to bring her to heaven with you, would you do it? Would you bring her body too, especially if you didn't the church would have made an idolatry of worshiping her body?

Can you imagine what a mess that would have been, if we had the body of the Virgin Mary to worship? We'd have forgotten all about Christ and just worshiped her. Heck, there is still the danger in some circles of Mary being the redeemer ahead of Christ. I don't buy that at all, and neither does the Church.

The picture came from this site Brigidmarlin.com and I encourage you to visit them.

St. Maximilian Kolbe

Today all I provide are two links. Universalis and another blog which says it all, The Crescat

This is the martyr Hippolytus being dragged by horses through rough and wild places until he was dead. It does not look like a fun way to go. It's not wonder the early church kept these martyrs memories alive generation after generation, these deaths were grotesque and therefore memorable.

Perhaps that is why it is standard believe that if you die a martyr you are instantly going to heaven. Even the most fundamentalist believes that. The martyrs death is the crown of glory. Of course, all Hippolytus did was dare to be a Christian at a time when it very dangerous to be a Christian, and because he was a Christian in a time of great faith, he would not deny his Christ.

I think there is a difference between the early martyrs and those who set out to be martyrs because it was a free ticket into heaven. No matter, none of us shall know until the day someone puts a gun to our head and says, "renounce Christ or you die." I want to think would say, "better kill me." But, then again I'm a sinful mortal who has a lot of fears. However, when I was a kid I used to think he glorious it would be to die a martyr. Then I grew up and realized that people who went off looking to die as martyrs were really just suicidal and not motivated by faith in the least.

Tomorrow we celebrate another martyr. This one is a modern martyr, and his martyrdom was of the kind I call true faith. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow and write about him here, but if I should fail to do so, remember St. Maximillian Kolbe.

In 1941 he was arrested and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where he helped and succoured the inmates. In August of that year a prisoner escaped, and in reprisal the authorities were choosing ten people to die by starvation. One of the men had a family, and Maximilian Kolbe offered to take his place. The offer was accepted, and he spent his last days comforting his fellow prisoners.
The man he saved was present at his canonisation.

The Problem With Publish Buttons

Okay, needless to say for all you who are subscribed by email to my blog, I published something regretable yesterday. It doesn't mean I don't feel that way, but I just wish I hadn't published it. In case you check, it's not there anymore. So you who receive by email what I post are the only ones who actually know about it.

Let's just say it's not wise for me to perceive an insult to a saint dead nearly a thousand years. The people at Old Style Breviary did not write the old breviary and are certainly not dunderheads. What I said about that I am sorry for.

As to this silly longing for a bygone age of Latin mass I am not sorry for at all. Mostly I'm sorry I hit the Publish Post instead of the Save Now.

Oh well, what's done is done. On the plus side, I am sicker than all get out today and considering giving the RB a skip. I slept less than four hours, and those were miserable hours. Today I will not blog, other than this "I'm sorry" blog. Ta Ta, it's back to bed time.

St. Sixtus, Pope and Martyr

It's been a long time since I wrote in this blog. The fault is St. Benedict's because he demands a lot of attention. In fact, the fact that he is read three times a year makes me wonder if he isn't just an attention hound! Haha. That was a joke, for you who have no sense of humor.

Usually I could give a flip about martyrs from the 200s, but today the second reading of the Office of Readings really caught my heart. Go down to read the Letter from St. Cyrpian.
For all of you that won't do that I've put the reading right here so you can't escape from it. Tell me, when you finish this letter, does it not make you feel an sense of immediacy, and fear? Does it make you wonder if your faith could stand up under such a promise of things to come? Do you believe in God and the promises of Christ that much?

Dear brother, the reason why I could not write to you immediately was that all the clergy were embroiled in the heat of the conflict. They could not possibly leave, all of them having prepared themselves for divine and heavenly glory.
But now the messengers have come back, those whom I sent to the City to find out and report the truth of whatever decrees had been made about us – for people have been imagining all sorts of different possibilities. Here, then, is the truth:
Valerian sent a rescript to the Senate, saying that bishops, presbyters, and deacons should all receive immediate punishment; that senators, knights, and other men of importance should lose their rank and their property, and if they still persisted in being Christians, they should lose their heads; and that matrons should be deprived of their property and be sent into exile. Members of Caesar’s own household, whether they had confessed their faith before or were only confessing it now, should be deprived of their property, bound in chains, and sent as slaves to his estates.

To this command, Valerian attached a copy of the letters which he had sent to the governors of the various provinces about us; and we daily await the arrival of these letters, bracing ourselves, each according to the strength of his faith, for the suffering that is to be endured, and looking forward to the help and mercy of the Lord and the crown of eternal life.
You should know, however, that Sixtus was martyred in the cemetery on the sixth of August, and four deacons with him. Moreover, the prefects in the City are daily pushing forward this persecution, and anyone who is presented to them is martyred and all his property confiscated by the state.

I beg you to make these things known to the rest of our colleagues, so that through their encouragement the whole brotherhood may be strengthened and made ready for the spiritual conflict – so that each one of us may think less of death and more of immortality – so that everyone, dedicated to the Lord with full faith and total courage, may rejoice in this confession and not fear it, for they know that the soldiers of God and Christ are not destroyed, but crowned.

Dearest brother, always fare well in the Lord.