St. Matthew, Venerable Bede, and Uncommon Commons

Another re-run. But I like it.

Call of St. Matthew  (Caravaggio)

We use the Common of Apostles 12, no, 13 times a year. (Don't forget Paul).Well, now that I'm thinking about it,maybe 14, because Peter&Paul share a feast, but then there's Chair of Peter and Conversion of Paul. Whatever. 

 It's nice to use Commons because we don't have them half-memorized the way we do the weekdays of the 4-week psalter. Unfamiliar elements will jump out at you.  For instance, the intercessions in Morning Prayer are not really intercessions, if intercessions = petitions. They are Praises.  The intercessions do return to their normal petionary tone at Evening Prayer.

Then, antiphon I of Evening Prayer , You are the men who have stood by me in my time of trial, strikes one on first reading as the height of irony. I mean, the apostles most certainly did not stand by Our Lord in His time of trial, right?   So then, you have to think this over.....oh, right. If we think of "me" as the Church, the body of Christ, then the apostles really did have a chance to make up for what they did in Gethsemane, not only standing by, but giving their lives.

Although the apostles share a common, they get proper gospel canticle antiphons, concluding prayers,and, their own second readings in the Office of Readings. Matthew's reading comes from St. Bede the Venerable--aka  the Venerable Bede.  It opens with this verse from today's Gospel: Jesus saw a man called Matthew, sitting at the tax office, and he said to him: Follow me.  Bede then rivets our attention on the verb saw. Jesus saw Matthew. Really saw him. "Jesus saw Matthew not merely in the usual sense, but more significantly with his merciful understanding of men. He saw the tax collector and, because he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him, he said to him: Follow me.

There's plenty more to the reading, but this is enough to take away for the day. Because, just as Jesus saw Matthew, he saw me. And sees me. With the eyes of mercy. It's not in spite of, but because of my being a poor, pathetic slob, attached to slingback pumps and snickers bars and many, many dumb things, that he calls me to follow him. In my better moments I want nothing more than to be lost in that merciful gaze.  Then I put away the breviary and with typical spiritual ADHD begin obsessing about whether I'm using the right facial moisturizer, or whether the living room needs new window treatments.

But he still sees me.

With mercy.

Thank God.

It's Still Easter

  There are only six weeks of lent, and it is great that most practicing Catholics make some kind of effort to observe these. Too bad so few go out of their way to observe the seven weeks of rejoicing after the six weeks of penance.  This is the time of year to let the kids stay up a tad later some nights,  to take them out to dairy queen, visit the zoo, or whatever strikes the family as fun and out of the ordinary, saying, "since it's Easter time, let's do X."

In the same vein, it's a great season for husbands and wives to go out on a few dates, buy and share a bottle of really fine wine, or go by themselves to a gorgeous state park or other Beautiful place and enjoy the scenery and have a picnic lunch.  It's Easter after all. He is risen. So act that way.

Keeping  up with the Divine Office will help preserve your Easter mood. Every day there are readings and antiphons reminding you that there is reason to rejoice. For example,Monday's Office of Readings has a nice second reading comparing Easter to Passover, by Pseudo-Chrysostom. First pause to wonder about this name. You get the initial impression of some impostor posing as St. John C., passing off his sermons as those of the golden-tongued orator of Constantinople. Would be very interesting if such a rascal had made it into the Church's liturgical books. Unfortunately, the truth is more prosaic. Pseudo-Chrysostom is really Anonymous, whose work has been mistakenly attributed to the real Chrysostom before the scholars figured things out. I wonder what Pseudo-Chrysostom and real-Chrysostom remark  to one another in heaven  about this little mix up.

So here's what Pseudo-C. says  about Old Testament types and figures of salvation: the presence of the reality makes the symbol obsolete: when the king appears in person no one pays any attention to his statue.  As a Catholic with a collection of graven images, I really enjoy this analogy. We certainly aren't staring at the Sacred Heart statue or the crucifix in church during the consecration, right?

And although this analogy seems at first glance pretty dismissive of our Jewish brothers and sisters, there's another way to look at it. If an entire people doesn't realize that the King has appeared in person, but continued through the centuries to honor the symbols of him, the rest of us who know better  would (should) respect and honor those people for their attachment to the symbols, even while feeling sorry that they missed the main event.  Correct?

The real King has come, defeated the enemy, and invited us to His banquet. Rejoice.

Why our Suffering has Meaning

Yesterday, for Our Lady's feast, the Office of Readings had an excerpt from St. Athanasius on the Incarnation. Definitely worth looking up if you didn't get around to it. Every line was a jewel of Incarnational theology. This one jumped out at me:


Man’s body has acquired something great through its communion and union with the Word. 


In a nutshell, this is why human suffering now has profound meaning, and is what St. Paul meant about making up in our own bodies what is "lacking" in the sufferings of Jesus, and what Catholic tradition means by the custom of "offering up" our sufferings for the conversion of sinners.


  Just the fact of our Lord taking a body (not just wearing one like a costume, but joining it to His person) from the body of Mary, ("our sister" as Athanasius points out so sweetly), gives our bodies a significance they did not have before the Annuniciation.  Beyond that, the union among Christ and the members of His mystical body makes our sufferings His sufferings. 

And our prayers, especially when praying in the name of the Church, His prayers. Which is why praying the Liturgy of the Hours is such an incredible privilege.

Sing but Keep Going, says Augustine

Augustine talks about singing so much that he makes me think that maybe I ought to sing the hymns at the start of each liturgical hour, even if I'm by myself. Augustine is the one who came up with He who sings prays twice, a line used frequently by frustrated choir directors to browbeat non-musical catholics  into singing.

But this sermon of Augustine, "Alleluia versus Anxiety", is wonderful. Especially the bit about singing on a journey, and the bit about us being pottery in the oven. If you don't have a 4-volume breviary, it's on the ibreviary widget to the left on today's Office of Readings. If you read this after 6pm EST, ibreviary will have changed over to Sunday, so here are a few excerpts. If you are intrigued, you can go over to divineoffice.org and read the whole thing.






Let us sing alleluia here on earth, while we still live in anxiety, so that we may sing it one day in heaven in full security.


How can all be well with people who are crying out with me: Deliver us from evil? And yet, brothers, while we are still in the midst of this evil, let us sing alleluia to the good God who delivers us from evil.
Even here amidst trials and temptations let us, let all men, sing alleluia. God is faithful, says holy Scripture, and he will not allow you to be tried beyond your strength.
You are like a piece of pottery, shaped by instruction, fired by tribulation. When you are put into the oven therefore, keep your thoughts on the time when you will be taken out again; for God is faithful, and he will guard both your going in and your coming out.


O the happiness of the heavenly alleluia, sung in security, in fear of no adversity! We shall have no enemies in heaven, we shall never lose a friend. God’s praises are sung both there and here, but here they are sung by those destined to die, there, by those destined to live for ever; here they are sung in hope, there, in hope’s fulfillment; here they are sung by wayfarers, there, by those living in their own country.


So, then, my brothers, let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labors. You should sing as wayfarers do—sing, but continue your journey. Do not be lazy, but sing to make your journey more enjoyable. Sing, but keep going. What do I mean by keep going? Keep on making progress.... If you make progress, you will be continuing your journey, but be sure that your progress is in virtue, true faith and right living.         


Sing then, but keep going.

Augustine was one a Smart Guy

We already knew that. But in today's Office of Readings, there's one more proof.

Have you ever thought it would be easier to be holy and/or happy living in some simpler, bygone era?

Fuggeddaboudit, says the Bishop of Hippo:

Is there any affliction now endured by mankind that was not endured by our fathers before us? What sufferings of ours even bears comparison with what we know of their sufferings? And yet you hear people complaining about this present day and age because things were so much better in former times. I wonder what would happen if they could be taken back to the days of their ancestors--would we not still hear them complaining?  You may think past ages were good, but it is only because you are not living in them...

From the time of Adam to the time of his descendants today, mans lot has been labor and sweat, thorns and thistles.  Have we forgotten the flood and the calamitous times of famine and war whose history has been recorded precisely in order to keep us from complaining to God on account of our own times? Just think what those past ages were like! Is there one of us who does not shudder to hear or read of them? Far from justifying complaints about our own time, they teach us how much we have to be thankful for. 

Facing God

I am p.o.'d at Blogger I am offering up Blogger today because as I hit "publish" the text of my long post vanished. Irretrievably.

Here's the short version:

Don't miss today's Office of Readings. It illustrates why this hour of the Liturgy is so worth doing if you can find time.

Wait, no! Don't try to find time. Ask God to Give you the time as Melanie at Wine Dark Sea so eloquently explains.

Anyway, today's OOR is a mini-Bible study on the notion of The Face Of God. The psalms, antiphons, and prayers have lots of lovely statements like, "let t"he light of your face shine on us" and "Why do you hide your face" and "the glory of God shining on the face of Christ." (I'm not going to list references again. Too much work.)  Then there's a marvellous commentary on  this whole  concept by St. Ambrose. 

If you don't own a 4-volume breviary, just use the ibreviary gadget on the left, or divineoffice.org. Keep in mind that Ibreviary changes to tomorrow's office by around 6pm, so if it's evening when you read this, click on "more" on the tab bar and change the date back.

My book is coming along pretty well, so I will be back here more often. Probably not too consistently, however, until summer is over. Summer being what it is.

St. Iraneus, the Holy Sprit and the old SAT

In today's Office of Readings there's a passage from St. Iraneus' treatise against heresy that is naturally, all about the Holy Spirit. If you haven't already seen it, check it out here,clicking office of Readings tab. My favorite part of this teaching is where he references--without naming it--the parable of the Good Samaritan:

And so the Lord in his pity for man who had fallen into the hands of brigands, having himself bound up his wounds and left for his care two coins...entrusted him to the Holy Spirit.
So Jesus is the Good Samaritan in relation to humanity, and --this is what I've never heard before--the Holy Spirit is the Innkeeper who takes care of us until Jesus returns!  And--I'm leaving Iraneus behind now and just running with the analogy--the Inn is the Church!  The wine and oil used to tend the wounds of the man are, of course, the sacraments.

I just love analogies. Even in high school, that was the only part of the SAT I enjoyed doing. They have since removed analogies from the SAT, having decided, I guess, that obsessive word geeks like me were having too much fun with this section, making it unfair to the others. Instead they increased the length and  boredom level of the comprehension readings to level the playing field.

Sorry, I digress.  I just meant to say that that parables are beautiful analogies between the physical world and the spiritual. And Iraneus was brilliant to find the Holy Spirit there with the Good Samaritan.

What has a Cute Chipmunk got to do with the Divine Office?

Not much, unless you count the verse from the Canticle of Daniel (Morning Prayer of Sunday Weeks I and III) where it says, All you beasts, wild and tame, bless the Lord.  But it will give you a hint of what  I've been doing  the past week: walking in the woods and fields taking pictures of the glories of springtime.   Hence, not a lot of blogging. But I will be decorating future posts with the results of these spring rambles.

Today's Office of Readings has a sermon by St. Augustine that is not about small animals, but rather on the theme of Sing a New Song to the Lord. St. Augustine must have been a great music enthusiast.  I look forward to hearing his voice in heaven. He is the originator of the phrase he who sings prays twice, a phrase that most Catholics, who do not like singing at mass, are tired of having thrown at them.

Me, I totally get Augustine. I love singing in Church, provoking one of two responses: children  turn around and stare at me, and nice old ladies come up to me after mass and say "you have a lovely voice." In either case, it's rather sad, because if even half of the congregation had been singing, no one would have especially noticed me. We would have all been blending together. I do understand that some of the contemporary hymns are either too difficult or too stupid to sing. But if only  people would sing the old ones, which are easy and doctrinal. Oh well.

Luckily, Augustine's sermon is about more than literal singing. So there is hope  for the rest of you. He says sing with your voices, your hearts, your lips and your lives. See? Our lives should the song. And not in the movie musical sense, thank heaven. Augustine continues, ...you ask me how to sing his praises...you wish to know what praises to sing. The answer is His praise is in the assembly of the saints; it is in the singers themselves...live good lives, and you yourselves will be his praise.

So fear not, all ye Catholics who can't sing. You don't  have to sing (literally) in order to sing (spiritually)  a new song to the Lord. Your daily holiness is a heavenly melody.

But couldn't you just once try belting out "Alleluia the Strife of O'er" or "Holy God We praise Thy Name"?  You might get to like it.