“They That Are Christ’s Have Crucified Their Flesh with the Vices and Concupiscences”

Monastic authors steeped in lectio divina often bear witness to the “liturgical providence of God.” Experience confirms again and again that the texts offered for us in the sacred liturgy, especially the fixed traditional texts, furnish a key to understanding what is going on in our personal lives at the moment, in our immediate community, in the Church at large, and in the world. The combination of proper antiphons, orations, and readings comes to us from without and presents a message that the attentive preacher or practitioner of lectio divina can tune into. As Dom Mark Kirby writes: “The man who trusts in the liturgical providence of God will never be without a glimmer of light in the night, a spark of fire in the cold, a cup of cold water in the heat, a signpost on the road.”

There are times when the message can be rather subtle, requiring well-trained ears. But there are other times when it seems as if Our Lord is positively whacking us over the head with the obviousness of His message to the Church. One such occasion was surely yesterday’s Mass for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, with readings and orations that the Church has proclaimed on this Sunday for 1,500 years or more — and still does, wherever the Roman Rite endures in its classical form.

The Epistle of the Mass is taken from Galatians, a letter of ever-growing relevance in the ecclesiastical situation in which we find ourselves today (one thinks of such luminous passages as “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema” and “When Cephas [Peter] was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed”), and more particularly, from chapter 5, with its famous contrast between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit:

Brethren: Walk in the spirit, and you shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh: for the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary one to another, so that you do not the things that you would. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, luxury, idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths, quarrels, dissensions, sects, envies, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of the which I foretell you, as I have foretold to you, that they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is: charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity. Against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified their flesh with the vices and concupiscences.

As each day brings with it fresh revelations of clerical corruption in high places — indeed, in the very highest place of all, the seat of Cephas in Rome, whence proceeds a Gospel other than the one Christ and His apostles preached to us — we are comforted and strengthened by hearing these uncompromising words of St. Paul, who assures us that whoever does these works of the flesh, as well as they who approve or support those who do them or fail to take action against them, cannot be acting by the Spirit of Christ. (Indeed, as the Apostle teaches in Romans 1:32, with a nod to the death penalty: “Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them.”)

They that are Christ’s have crucified their flesh with the vices and concupiscences. On the very Sunday of the Viganò revelations, this is the message of liturgical providence for the Church in the United States of America, in the Vatican, and everywhere. They that are truly Christ’s will live a mortified life of battle against disordered concupiscence, striving for holiness in a relentless military campaign against interior vices and against the external manifestations of vice over which they have any control, especially if they have been given positions of authority by God.

And lest we rely on our own strength or on that of any earthly protector, the Collect of the Mass and the Gradual teach us where our victory will come from:

Keep, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy Church with perpetual peace; and because the frailty of man without Thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by Thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation. Through our Lord.

The Gradual of this day’s Mass tells us soberly and simply:

It is good to confide in the Lord, rather than to have confidence in man. V. It is good to trust in the Lord, rather than to trust in princes.

The Introit cries out: “Behold, O God, our protector, and look on the face of Thy Christ”! Many are they who feel like sheep abandoned by their supreme shepherd, abandoned to the wolves. At times like this, we feel and we know that God is our sole protector. Because He is looking on the face of His Christ, His well-beloved Son on whom His favor rests, and seeing us in Him, He loves us and will never abandon us.

In The Saint Andrew Daily Missal from 1945, each Sunday is preceded by a lengthy commentary on the readings and prayers of that day in the Divine Office and in the Mass. I am struck by two things about these commentaries: first, how tough they are (the doctrine is clear, its moral demands are stated with no compromise, and salutary rebukes are offered to the reader as an examination of conscience); second, how apropos they are to the tragic situation of the Church today, since they frequently diagnose the very diseases of intellect, will, and passions that harass us on all sides.

Here is part of the commentary offered for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost:

St. Gregory says: “There are men, all athirst for passing joys, who are ignorant or indifferent where eternal blessings are concerned. Poor wretches! They congratulate themselves on possessing the good things of this life without regretting those of the world above, which they have lost. Fashioned for light and truth, they never lift up the eyes of the soul; never betray the smallest desire or longing for the contemplation of their eternal home. Giving themselves over to the pleasures among which they are thrown, they bestow their affection upon a dreary place of exile as if it were their fatherland; and surrounded by darkness, they are full of rejoicing as if they were illumined by a brilliant light. On the other hand, the elect, in whose eyes fleeting goods are of no value, seek after those for which their souls were made. Kept in this world by the bonds of the flesh, each, none the less, is carried in spirit beyond it while making the wholesome resolve to despise the passing things of time and to desire the things which endure for eternity.”[2]

In a rare instance of alignment of liturgical planets, the readings of yesterday’s Ordinary Form Mass, for the Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B), deliver the same message.

The first reading shows Joshua (Jesus) summoning all the tribes, their elders, their leaders, their judges, and their officers, and asked them whom they will serve — the true God, or the gods of the nations round about. In other words, accommodation to the world, or fidelity to God the revealer? The people respond:

“Far be it from us to forsake the LORD
for the service of other gods.
For it was the LORD, our God,
who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt,
out of a state of slavery.”

This is the state of slavery St. Paul is describing with his “works of the flesh.”

The Sunday psalm declares:

The LORD has eyes for the just,
and ears for their cry.
The LORD confronts the evildoers,
to destroy remembrance of them from the earth.

The second reading, Ephesians 5:21–32, affirms traditional Catholic doctrine on marriage, with a strong emphasis on its heterosexual essence as a reflection of the relationship of Christ and the Church, with the Church being subordinate to Christ, who calls her to be “holy and without blemish.”

The Gospel, from John chapter 6, begins right after the Lord Jesus has finished His discourse about the Eucharist as the true flesh and blood of the Son of Man: “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” This saying is indeed hard — like the sayings of Jesus about divorce, about celibacy, about welcoming the little children, and about the need for chastity and purity if we would enter the kingdom of heaven. In words that uncannily parallel those of the Epistle in the usus antiquior, Jesus says:

It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail.The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.
But there are some of you who do not believe.
Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe
and the one who would betray him.

Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe, and the one who would betray him — the lay people, religious, deacons and priests, and bishops, and the Judas in each generation, in whom the features of the Antichrist yet to appear are glimpsed as in a dark mirror.

May the striking liturgical providence of God, displayed on this Sunday of infamy, August 26, 2018, be an aid for us, a confirmation, a consolation, and a challenge, as we strive to reject Satan and his pomps and the works of the flesh, and cleave ever more to Christ the Head of the Church, the gardener who makes the fruit of the spirit grow within and around us.

Preaching from the Propers of the Mass — An Example from Ireland

(I post the following with the kind permission of Dom Mark Kirby, O.S.B., Prior of the Benedictine Monks of Perpetual Adoration at Silverstream Priory in Ireland. It first appeared at Vultus Christi. Dom Mark has long been a proponent of infusing homilies with the salt and pith of the Propers of the day's Mass, a practice that deserves far more use than it seems to get.—PAK)

LAST THURSDAY, our priest oblates (diocesan priests living in the spirit of the Rule of Saint Benedict, and spiritually anchored in the monastery, whilst labouring in the vineyard of the Lord) met at Silverstream for a day of recollection. I spoke to them of the Propers of the Mass: the Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Tract, Sequence, Offertory, and Communion, as given in the Roman Missal and in the Roman Gradual. Together we reviewed article 65 of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, which text authorises the priest to preach on the Proper of the Mass, something rarely done.

65. The homily is part of the Liturgy and is strongly recommended, for it is necessary for the nurturing of the Christian life. It should be an exposition of some aspect of the readings from Sacred Scripture or of another text from the Ordinary or from the Proper of the Mass of the day and should take into account both the mystery being celebrated and the particular needs of the listeners.

Our oblate, Father John Fisher, who serves in a parish that follows the usus recentior, took up the challenge and preached on the Introit of the Mass of the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Here is his homily.

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Save us, O Lord our God! And gather us from the nations, to give thanks to your holy name, and make it our glory to praise you. (Ps 105: 47)

Before the singing of hymns was permitted at Mass after the Second Vatican Council, the introit (or Entrance Antiphon as it is now called) was sung by the choir as the priest made his way to the altar in the entrance procession. Some of you may well remember Canon Pentony’s famous choir singing those beautiful Latin texts. In the modern liturgy, the introit chant has been shortened to a one-line antiphon that is supposed to be sung but is usually recited by the priest. However, this simplification is no excuse for ignoring the meaning and importance of an integral text of the Mass which the Church, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gives to her children to help them enter more fully into the sacred liturgy they are about to celebrate. Each Mass has its own unique antiphon. It is usually a verse from the psalms, the prayer book which Our Lord himself prayed while he was on earth, or from some other book of the Bible. The antiphon is meant to be a spiritual voice that welcomes us, sets the tone of the Mass of the day and points us in the direction of the deep spiritual meanings that the texts of that particular Mass want to reveal to us. You might sometimes have heard a particular priest welcome people at the start of Mass and say, “The theme of today’s Mass is….”. He needn’t have bothered! The tone or theme has already been set by the Entrance Antiphon.

If the antiphon is a voice, then who is it that is speaking? On rare occasions, on the feasts of saints, it is the voice of the actual saint being commemorated that day. But normally it is one of two voices: either the voice of Christ speaking to the Father, or the voice of the Church (which is the body of Christ) calling to Jesus Christ, her God and spouse. If we look at today’s antiphon it is easy to see that this is the voice of the Church, crying out to her Lord in desperation to save her and to lead her back from her exile so that she can then do what is her very purpose and destiny: to praise and thank her God.

When this psalm was written, the Jewish people experienced the pain of exile and alienation. They were evicted from the Holy Land and had to live for years in exile in Babylon, prisoners of a pagan people who did not share their religion or way of life. This pain has always been felt by the Church throughout her history and is most keenly felt today. The Church, unlike Israel, does not have a country to call her own. Christians must always live and work in a world that does not always accept the teachings of Christ and at times does not even tolerate our beliefs or morals. One of our earliest Christian writings, the Epistle to Diognetus, vividly describes the predicament of Christians in the Roman Empire:

“Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by country, language, or custom. They live in their own countries, but only as aliens; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their homeland, and every homeland is a foreign country. They marry like everyone else, and have children, but they do not leave their unwanted children to die. They share their food but not their wives. … They live on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. … They love everyone, and by everyone they are persecuted. They are unknown, yet they are condemned; they are put to death, yet they are brought to life. … They are dishonoured, yet they are glorified in their dishonour; they are slandered, yet they are proven right. They are cursed, yet they bless; they are insulted, yet they offer respect. When they do good, they are punished as evildoers. Those who hate them are unable to give a reason for their hostility. In a word, what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world.”

Today’s Entrance Antiphon reminds us that the Church has ever lived in this predicament. At certain times and in certain places she feels this alienation more sharply. Catholics here in the north often felt marginalised, aliens in their own country as they endured discrimination and hatred because of their religion. Today, that is the experience of good Catholics throughout the western world as countries that were traditionally Christian become secularised. We increasingly find people with power and the influence of the media not just scorning the gospel but trying to force us to conform to modern values which are profoundly anti-Christian. The ways of the nations, of the ‘modern world’, are not the ways of God. They are not our ways. They leave us hurt and alienated. In a world where liberal capitalism has run amok and over 80% of the world’s profit goes to 1% of its people, Christians can only cry out in the voice of our antiphon: “Save us O Lord! Gather us from the nations.” In our own area, where the fruits of the drug trade which begins with gangs in far off lands, bring only grief and anxiety to families, we can only cry out: “Save us O Lord! Gather us from the nations.” As the right to life of the unborn is threatened throughout Ireland so that the State would no longer “cherish all the children of the nation equally” as the Eighth Amendment currently does, we can only cry out: “Save us O Lord! Gather us from the nations.” And lest we ever become like England where one in five pregnancies now ends in abortion, or like Holland or Belgium where even the vulnerable sick and elderly are also killed, or like Canada where businesses must actually state that they uphold immoral practices including abortion in order to receive government grants, we pray to our Saviour with all our heart: “Save us O Lord! Gather us from the nations.”

In today’s readings God answers this cry. In the first reading he promises to send strong, prophetic leaders to his people who will teach them God’s ways and not the ways of false gods. Please pray at this time for our bishops and for all pro-life workers and politicians that the Lord will strengthen them and help them win the struggle to protect the most basic and precious right to life in Ireland. As Christians it is our duty to pray for this country and all its people and to try to influence it for the good: to be the soul for the body of the country, in the words of the Epistle to Diognetus. Let us not grow weary in this, our sacred duty. Let us pray with the responsorial psalm that our fellow citizens’ hearts will not be hardened but that they will hear the voice of Truth. In the gospel, Jesus defeated the evil spirits. He is the Holy One of God. Against him, the Prince of this world, the devil, cannot stand. As Ven. Fulton Sheen said: “God has his day. The devil has his hour.” Strong in this faith, may we endure our current dark hour in the history of civilisation knowing that soon the day will dawn when Christ the Sun of Justice will once again shine out in all his splendour. If we stay strong in faith and hope and active in charity we will merit some day to reach our true homeland with all the elect gathered from every nation. There will our happiness be complete as we give thanks to God for his mercy and goodness and find our eternal glory in praising Him.

Guest Article: Dom Mark Kirby on Infirmity and Stability in Marriage and Monasticism

NLM is pleased once again to publish a reflection by Dom Mark Kirby, O.S.B., Prior of the Benedictine Monks of Perpetual Adoration of Silverstream Priory in Stamullen, County Meath, Ireland, this time comparing marriage and the monastic vocation from the vantage of the sacrificial commitment to lifelong fidelity, come what may — an urgent matter in an age that finds it difficult to accept either indissoluble marriage or total commitment to religious life.

“Your Bodies a Living Sacrifice”:

Infirmity and Stability in the Rule of Saint Benedict

Dom Mark Daniel Kirby, O.S.B.
Silverstream Priory

Of Matrimony and Monasticism

The marriage vow, such as it has been passed down in the Christian liturgical tradition, takes into account the eventuality, I should even say, the inevitability, of sickness. As early as the fourteenth century, bridegrooms were saying to their brides: I take you to be my wife and my spouse and I pledge to you the faith of my body, that I will be faithful to you and loyal with my body and my goods and that I will keep you in sickness and in health and in whatever condition it will please the Lord to place you, and that I shall not exchange you for better or worse until the end.

Professions: Matrimonial and Monastic

There is a striking similarity between the monastic vow of stability and the marriage vow. The difference lies in the consequences of both commitments: for the life of the monk on the one hand, and for the life of the husband on the other. Monastic profession is made to God in the presence of witnesses:

Let him who is to be received make before all, in the Oratory, a promise of stability, conversion of life, and obedience, in the presence of God and of His saints, so that, if he should ever act otherwise, he may know that he will be condemned by Him Whom he mocketh. Let him draw up this promise in writing, in the name of the saints whose relics are in the altar, and of the Abbot there present. (Rule of Saint Benedict, Chapter 58)

Matrimonial profession is also made in the presence of witnesses, but unlike monastic profession, it is addressed to one’s spouse rather than to God. Whereas a husband gives Himself to God through the mediation of his wife, and a wife through the mediation her husband, the monk gives Himself directly to God. Matrimony is a sacrament because it signifies the union of Christ with the Church; monastic profession is a sacrifice, that is, a consecration, because by it the monk becomes a whole burnt offering to God, a victim laid upon the altar.

Sacrament and Sacrifice

This is not to argue that the sacrificial dimension is absent from holy matrimony, nor that the sacramental dimension is absent from monastic profession. In marriage the sacrificial offering of self is mediated through one’s spouse, just as the offering of Christ and of the Church are interdependent in the sacred liturgy: Christ offering through the Church, and the Church offering through Christ. In the monastic life, Christ’s self-offering — His victimhood — is made visible in the humble fidelity of the monk who, having once placed himself mystically upon the altar, remains there until the consummation of his sacrifice. While marriage is a sacrament bearing within itself a sacrificial quality; the monastic state is a sacrifice — a consecration — bearing within itself a sacramental quality.

In both instances there is the gift of one’s body and goods. In marriage one pledges the faith of one’s body and goods to one’s spouse; this is a sacrament of Christ giving Himself, together will all the merits of His Blessed Passion, to the Church. In monastic profession a man pledges the faith of his body and goods to God; in this way, he unites himself to the sacrifice of Christ, offering Himself to the Father upon the altar of the Cross, for the sake of His Bride, the Church. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that being rich he became poor, for your sakes; that through his poverty you might be rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). The word of the Apostle finds a mystic fulfillment in what Saint Benedict writes: “Whatever property he hath let him first bestow upon the poor, or by a solemn deed of gift make over to the monastery, keeping nothing of it all for himself, as knowing that from that day forward he will have no power even over his own body” (Rule of Saint Benedict, Chapter 58). For Saint Benedict, then, the monk is a man offered, an oblation, a victim made over to God in sacrifice. By monastic profession, a man places himself upon the altar together with the oblations of bread and wine. Doing this, he becomes, according to the teaching of Saint Augustine a sacrificium.

A true sacrifice is every work which is done that we may be united to God in holy fellowship, and which has a reference to that supreme good and end in which alone we can be truly blessed. And therefore even the mercy we show to men, if it is not shown for God’s sake, is not a sacrifice. For, though made or offered by man, sacrifice is a divine thing, as those who called it sacrifice meant to indicate. Thus man himself, consecrated in the name of God, and vowed to God, is a sacrifice in so far as he dies to the world that he may live to God. (The City of God, Book X, Chapter VI)

The Gift of One’s Body

Just as the husband gives his body to his wife, and the wife, her body to her husband, saying, in effect, Suscipe me (Receive me, take me unto thyself), so too does the monk make the offering of his body to God, saying Suscipe me, according to the word of Saint Paul, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God, your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1).

Saint Paul’s injunction is addressed, it is true, to all the baptized. In the case of one married, however, the offering of one’s body to one’s spouse, making of the two one flesh, cannot be dissociated from the offering made to God; the husband does not make his offering to God apart from his wife, nor the wife apart from her husband.

In the case of one consecrated in monastic profession, it is by virtue of sacramental union with Christ in the Most Holy Eucharist, that the offering of one’s body is made, symbolically and really, from the altar, directly to God. This is why Saint Benedict enjoins the monk making profession to place the legal instrument of his self-offering upon the altar. The legal instrument, a document written out by the hand of the novice himself, represents his body and all his goods; it is, for all intents and purposes, an extension of himself.

Let him write it with his own hand; or at least, if he knoweth not how, let another write it at his request, and let the novice put his mark to it, and place it with his own hand upon the altar. When he hath done this, let the novice himself immediately begin this verse: “Receive me, O Lord, according to Thy Word, and I shall live: and let me not be confounded in my expectation. (Rule, ch. 58)

In Sickness and in Health

The marriage vow says explicitly that the reciprocal gift of self in matrimony is irrevocable “in sickness and in health”. Sickness is no less a reality in the monastic state than it is in marriage. Monks fall ill. Monks are, like anyone else, susceptible to suffering every manner of infirmity and sickness of mind and body. Infirmity and sickness do not diminish or dissolve the sacred bond of monastic profession, any more than they do the bond of holy matrimony. Infirmity and sickness are, rather, consecrated by monastic profession; the very suffering by which a monk is brought low becomes part of the offering lifted high above the altar in union with the sacrifice of Christ renewed in Holy Mass. One catches a glimpse of this in the Supplices te rogamus of the Roman Canon:

We humbly beseech thee, almighty God: command these offerings to be brought by the hands of thy holy Angel to thine altar on high, in sight of thy divine majesty: that all we who at this partaking of the altar shall receive the most sacred Body and Blood of thy Son, may be fulfilled with all heavenly benediction and grace. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

A monk brought low by sickness enters into an intimate identification with the suffering Christ. Although he may not feel this, he believes it, repeating as often as necessary the words of the Apostle: “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church” (Colossians 1:24) and, again, “And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me. And that I live now in the flesh: I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

For Saint Benedict, the sick brethren are a real presence of Christ in the monastery:

Before all things and above all things care is to be had of the sick, that they be served in very deed as Christ Himself, for He hath said: “I was sick, and ye visited Me.” And, “What ye have done unto one of these little ones, ye have done unto Me.” And let the sick themselves remember that they are served for the honour of God, and not grieve the brethren who serve them by unnecessary demands. Yet must they be patiently borne with, because from such as these is gained a more abundant reward. Let it be, therefore, the Abbot’s greatest care that they suffer no neglect. And let a cell be set apart by itself for the sick brethren, and one who is God-fearing, diligent and careful, be appointed to serve them (Rule, ch. 36).

The Declarations on the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict of Silverstream Priory are particularly compelling on this point:

The community, for their part, will show their sick brethren the most tender compassion in both word and deed. Believing that, save in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, Our Lord is nowhere more present in the monastery than in the person of a monk brought low by infirmity, the monks will treat him with the greatest charity, making allowance for his weaknesses and bearing his burdens.

Infirmity and sickness are not impediments to fulfilling the monastic vocation, any more than they would be impediments to a married couple’s growth in holiness. Infirmity and sickness can be, in the monastic life as in marriage, the occasion for an exponential growth in charity, that is, in self-sacrificing love.

In Whatever Condition It Will Please the Lord to Place You

To fidelity “in sickness and in health”, the marriage vow adds (in the words of an old French formula) “and in whatever condition it will please the Lord to place you, and that I shall not exchange you for better or worse until the end”. The monk, by vowing stability in a particular monastic family, binds himself in the same way to the community that receives him. He vows to remain faithful to his monastic family “in whatever condition it will please the Lord to place it”, promising that he “shall not exchange it for better or worse until the end”. This means, not only, in sickness, infirmity, and poverty, but also in persecution, exile, war, and famine. The annals of monastic history attest repeatedly to acts of heroic fidelity to the vow of stability. The community, for its part, pledges loyalty to each monk “in whatever condition it will please the Lord to place him”, promising not to exchange him for better or worse until the end”.

Just are there are romantic notions of marriage in which neither spouse never grows sick, or weak, or old, and never loses his or her attractive looks, hearing, memory, and mobility, so too are there romantic notions of monastic life in which the community is fixed in an immutable physical and moral perfection, untouched by illness, weakness, poverty, and persecution. Such romantic notions fail to withstand the message of the verbum Crucis, the message of the Cross. “The word of the cross, to them indeed that perish, is foolishness; but to them that are saved, that is, to us, it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).

In the end, as a monk is confronted with the vicissitudes of life, with his own weaknesses, and with those of his brethren in hac lacrimarum valle, he takes comfort in the words of Christ to the Apostle and makes them, in every way, his own: “My grace is sufficient for thee; for power is made perfect in infirmity” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Chastened and humbled by the experience of his own infirmity, he begins to say in truth, “By the grace of God, I am what I am; and his grace in me hath not been void” (1 Corinthians 15:10), and again, “Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. For which cause I please myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ. For when I am weak, then am I powerful” (2 Corinthians 12:9–10).

Spiritual Fatherhood

The monk, by abiding in the stability of the monastic family, like the husband and wife, abiding in the stability of matrimony, transcends himself and opens himself to the gift of a supernatural generativity. The journey into a mystic — that is, a hidden — fatherhood is rendered possible by the monk’s fidelity to the grace of monastic consecration “in sickness and in health and in whatever condition it will please the Lord to place him”, and this until death, and even into eternity.

Dom Mark Kirby on “Ten Fruits of Summorum Pontificum”

As part of the tenth anniversary celebrations of Summorum Pontificum (which ought to continue throughout the year!), I am happy to share with NLM readers a wonderful reflection on the motu proprio by Dom Mark Kirby, O.S.B., Prior of Silverstream Priory. Dom Mark posted this at Vultus Christi but gave NLM permission to publish it as well.

Ten Fruits of Summorum Pontificum

Dom Mark Kirby, O.S.B.

I consider Summorum Pontificum to be the single greatest gift of Pope Benedict XVI to the Church. It is a gift that some received with immense joy and immediately began to put it to profit. Others, entrenched in old ideological prejudices, looked upon the gift with suspicion and mistrust. Still others, even ten years later, remain unaware of the gift. For me, Summorum Pontificum threw open a door into the vastness and light of a liturgical tradition deeper, and higher, and wider than anything the reformed liturgical books, in use for nearly half a century, were able to offer. I say this as one who, for more than three decades, was committed to the reformed rites and wholeheartedly engaged in the reform of the reform at the academic and pastoral levels. Already, well before July 7th, 2007, I had come to see that even the noblest efforts deployed in the cause of the reform of the reform bore only scant fruit. Just when, battle–worn and weary, I thought that I would have to spend the rest of my life in a kind of post–conciliar liturgical lock–down, a door opened before me. The door was Summorum Pontificum. I crossed the threshold and went forward, never looking back. I discovered for myself the truth of Pope Benedict’s compelling words to the bishops of the Church:

What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place. (Letter to the Bishops, 7 July 2007)

As I pass in review the ten past years, I can identify at least ten fruits of Summorum Pontificum. Others, in their assessment of the past ten years, may point to different fruits. From the perspective of my own garden, however — admittedly a hortus conclusus, given its monastic context — I see the following fruits:

1. A clearer manifestation of the sacred liturgy as the work of Christ the Eternal High Priest and Mediator. I have long argued that the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, has to be read in continuity with and, in some way, through the lens of the Venerable Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Mediator Dei (20 November 1947). The recovery of the Usus Antiquior has effectively recentred the liturgical experience of many clergy and layfolk on the priestly mediation of Jesus Christ between God and men.

2. The opening, for many souls, of a secure bridge between celebration and contemplation. I am not alone in recognising the penetrating quality of what Saint John Paul II called “adoring silence” before, during, and after celebrations in the Usus Antiquior, especially when the richness of its ritual resources — chant, hieratic order, and sacred gesture — are fully deployed.

We must confess that we all have need of this silence, filled with the presence of him who is adored: in theology, so as to exploit fully its own sapiential and spiritual soul; in prayer, so that we may never forget that seeing God means coming down the mountain with a face so radiant that we are obliged to cover it with a veil (cf. Ex 34:33), and that our gatherings may make room for God’s presence and avoid self–celebration; in preaching, so as not to delude ourselves that it is enough to heap word upon word to attract people to the experience of God. (Orientale Lumen, art. 16)

3. A serene and lucid transmission of the doctrine of the faith. The sturdy givenness of the traditional rites (lex orandi) is at once the platform and the articulation of the Church’s life–giving and unchanging doctrine (lex credendi). The Usus Antiquior, not having the panoply of options that characterises the reformed rites, allows the liturgy to be celebrated without having to be subjectively reconstructed, over and over again, by the assemblage of interlocking parts.

4. A renewed appreciation for the link between worship and culture. The past fifty years have often been marked by an alienation from the Church’s cultural heritage, notably in the areas of music and architecture. The Usus Antiquior is increasingly, and especially in communities informed by the classical liturgical movement, a place where, as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger said in 1985, “beauty — and hence truth — is at home” (The Ratzinger Report, p. 129).

5. The affirmation of the primacy of latria in the life of the Church, following the principle of Saint Benedict that “nothing is to be preferred to the work of God” (Rule, Ch. XLIII). It is immediately evident that the Usus Antiquior, like all the ancient rites of the Church in East and West, is theotropically driven. This stands in marked contrast both to the prevalent ars celebrandi of the Usus Recentior and to most Protestant forms of worship. These, by placing the accent on didactic and moralising content, are anthropotropically driven, and this at a moment in history when men and women of the millennial generation restlessly seek to “get out of themselves.” For such souls, weary of a world that seeks to cater to their ever–changing needs and appetites, and this not without exacting an inflated price, the unchanging rites of the Usus Antiquior are a tranquil and restful harbour illumined already by the gleaming shores of eternity. Pope Benedict XVI addresses the question incisively:

In the years following the Second Vatican Council, I became aware again of the priority of God and the divine liturgy. The misunderstanding of the liturgical reform that has spread widely in the Catholic Church has led to more and more emphasis on the aspect of education and its activity and creativity. The doings of men almost completely obscured the presence of God. In such a situation it became increasingly clear that the Church’s existence lives in the proper celebration of the liturgy and that the Church is in danger when the primacy of God no longer appears in the liturgy and so in life. The deepest cause of the crisis that has upset the Church lies in the obscurity of God’s priority in the liturgy. (Pope Benedict XVI, Preface of the Russian edition of his Theology of the Liturgy, 2015)

6. Encouragement given to the recovery and renewal of Benedictine monastic life in the heart of the Church. My own monastery, Silverstream Priory, was founded in the grace of the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI, only one year after the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum. When, early in 2017, Silverstream Priory was canonically erected, its distinctive reference to Summorum Pontificum was recognised and ratified. In the opening paragraphs of the Apostolic Letter itself, Pope Benedict pointed to the distinctively Benedictine import of what he was setting forth:

Eminent among the Popes who showed such proper concern was Saint Gregory the Great, who sought to hand on to the new peoples of Europe both the Catholic faith and the treasures of worship and culture amassed by the Romans in preceding centuries. He ordered that the form of the sacred liturgy, both of the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Divine Office, as celebrated in Rome, should be defined and preserved. He greatly encouraged those monks and nuns who, following the Rule of Saint Benedict, everywhere proclaimed the Gospel and illustrated by their lives the salutary provision of the Rule that “nothing is to be preferred to the work of God.” In this way the sacred liturgy, celebrated according to the Roman usage, enriched the faith and piety, as well as the culture, of numerous peoples. It is well known that in every century of the Christian era the Church’s Latin liturgy in its various forms has inspired countless saints in their spiritual life, confirmed many peoples in the virtue of religion and enriched their devotion. (Summorum Pontificum)

The past ten years have seen a flowering of Benedictine monasteries dedicated exclusively to the celebration of the sacred liturgy in the traditional form. Impressive numbers of God–seeking young men continue to make their way to these monasteries.

7. Joy and beauty brought to Catholic family life. My direct personal experience of this particular fruit of Summorum Pontificum is limited to those young families who frequent Silverstream Priory or who are associated with our community, either because one or both parents are Benedictine Oblates, or by participation in Catholic Scouting, or because the discovery of the Usus Antiquior has infused the piety of the parents and the education of their children with the spirit of the liturgy. It is not unusual to see even the youngest children of these families utterly engaged in the action of Holy Mass and happily familiar with the feasts and seasons of the liturgical year.

8. A renewal of true priestly piety. Silverstream Priory has a heart for priests labouring in the vineyard of the Lord and, consequently, offers hospitality to a steady stream of clergy. The majority of these would be priests under forty–five years of age. Those who do not already offer Holy Mass whenever possible in the Usus Antiquior are eager to be instructed in the traditional rite. The witness of these priests is impressive; access to the Usus Antiquior has awakened them to the mystery of Holy Mass as a true sacrifice and awakened them to their own participation in the mediatorship of Christ, “high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens” (Hebrews 7:26). A renewed attention to the complexus of sacred signs that constitutes the liturgy and, in particular, to the rubrics of the Roman Missal has, in more than one instance, transformed a priest’s understanding of who he is standing at the altar. To me, it is evident that Summorum Pontificum has fostered the implementation of what the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council sought to promote:

Priests, both secular and religious, who are already working in the Lord’s vineyard are to be helped by every suitable means to understand ever more fully what it is that they are doing when they perform sacred rites; they are to be aided to live the liturgical life and to share it with the faithful entrusted to their care. (Sacrosanctum Concilium, art. 18)

9. The birth of new expressions of consecrated life that find their source and summit in the traditional liturgy, Holy Mass and Divine Office. It is beyond the scope of these reflections to compile a catalogue of the Institutes and fledgling communities that attribute their existence in the Church, directly or indirectly, to the horizons opened by Summorum Pontificum. Some of these identify with the tradition of canons regular; others engage in missionary works of evangelisation and mercy after the manner of Societies of Apostolic Life. All of these have in common a life–giving reference to the traditional liturgy made available by the dispositions of Summorum Pontificum.

10. An infusion of hope and, for young people, an experience of a beauty that renders holiness of life enchanting and attractive. Pope Benedict XVI recognised, in his letter to the bishops accompanying Summorum Pontificum that not a few young people find in the traditional liturgy a holy enchantment that draws them deeply into the priestly action of Christ and the life of the Church. Pope Benedict wrote:

Immediately after the Second Vatican Council it was presumed that requests for the use of the 1962 Missal would be limited to the older generation which had grown up with it, but in the meantime it has clearly been demonstrated that young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist particularly suited to them.

The experience of the Usus Antiquior as an habitual form of worship and expression of sacramental life has surprised young Catholics with an encounter not unlike the one that long ago changed the life of Saint Augustine: the discovery of a “Beauty ever ancient, ever new.” I myself am surprised, even now, to hear again on the lips of the rising generation the very words that, with a holy fear and a secret joy, I memorised over sixty years ago: Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui lætificat juventutem meam, “I will go in to the altar of God: to God who giveth joy to my youth” (Ps 42:4).

Silverstream Priory Canonically Established as a Monastery: UPDATE

The following wonderful news comes from the official website of the diocese of Meath, Ireland.

“Bishop Smith presided at the canonical establishment of a new monastery at Silverstream Priory in the Diocese of Meath on Saturday 25 February 2017.

Silverstream is home to a community of eight male religious who follow the Rule of St Benedict. The community came from Tulsa, USA in 2012 and occupies the former residence of the Visitation Sisters in Stamullen, Co. Meath. The monastery is contemplative in nature, with a particular focus on the Liturgy and Eucharistic Adoration. Its constitution and canonical norms were approved by the Holy See earlier this month.

Bishop Michael Smith signed a Decree on 25 February ‘erecting the Benedictine Monks of Perpetual Adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar as a monastic Institute of Consecrated Life of diocesan right in the Diocese of Meath’. This Decree is believed to mark the first formal establishment of a monastic community in the Diocese of Meath since the suppression of the monasteries by Henry VIII in 1536.

‘The history of religious life has seen many developments over the centuries’ Bishop Smith said ‘and I am delighted to recognise the unique presence of this new monastery in the Diocese of Meath. Through their prayer, study and hospitality, the monks are ‘speaking to the heart’ and their quiet witness is a reminder that the Lord continues to provide the Church with new gifts and grace.’

The Bishop of Meath celebrated Mass in Silversteam Priory on 25 February, accompanied by Very Reverend Dom Mark Kirby, Conventual Prior of the Institute.”

NLM offers our heartiest congratulations to Dom Kirby and the entire Silverstream community, and our thanks to Bishop Michael Smith for his efforts on their behalf. Ad multos et laetos annos!

(From an interview with Dom Kirby which we published in 2013; conventual Mass, the chapel and the house. He also has a blog of his spiritual and monastic writings, Vultus Christi.)

UPDATE: Dom Kirby very kindly sent us some photographs of the canonical erection of the monastery.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

“The Sacrifice of Praise and the Ecstatic Orientation of Man” — Lecture at Silverstream Priory

This week my family and I have been visiting Silverstream Priory in Ireland for a time of rest and prayer. At the invitation of the prior, Dom Mark Kirby, I gave a conference to monks, clergy, and seminarians this afternoon, the full text of which is available at Rorate; the audio has also been posted by the monks.

A few excerpts:

We are steeped in a world of pragmatism, utilitarianism, and activism, where we place such a high premium on doing and making, where we ask “what good is it” and “what’s in it for me,” where we look for results, the bottom line, the cash value, the pay-off. ...

In modern times we have lost the sense of sacred liturgy as an activity worth doing for its own sake, as an action whose justification lies in itself rather than in its usefulness as a tool or an instrument. Correctly understood, the liturgy is something we do for God, because He is glorious, deserving of all our love, our adoration, our devotion, our self-forgetful attention. ...

When, and to the extent that, we act as if we were ordering God to ourselves instead [of ordering ourselves to God], He will allow us to suffer the just penalties of restlessness, boredom, dryness, disbelief, and even despair. Nor should we underestimate the perceptiveness of the faithful in the pews, many of whom can readily sense the difference between a liturgy that is done for God’s sake, with His honor and glory as the motivating force, and a liturgy that is designed and conducted for the people, so as to involve, stimulate, affirm, entertain, or otherwise engage them.

Read more here.

Later, I intend to share some photos and impressions of my time at Silverstream. It is a wonderful place, well worth the inquiries of young men who are serious about the Benedictine monastic life, or simply of a visit to share in their richly Eucharistic and Marian liturgical life.

Dom Mark Kirby on “The Liturgical Providence of God”

Many people have noted that the current sessions of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family began on the OF the 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time, on which the Gospel was Mark, 10, 2-16, in which Christ declares, “Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if the wife shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.” On the same day, the Office of Readings has a passage from the Pastoral Rule of St Gregory the Great, in which he writes “Pastors who lack foresight hesitate to say openly what is right because they fear losing the favour of men. As the voice of truth tells us, such leaders are not zealous pastors who protect their flocks, rather they are like mercenaries who flee by taking refuge in silence when the wolf appears.” Two more appropriate texts for the current synod could hardly be found.

In this excellent article on his blog Vultus Christi, Dom Mark Kirby of Silverstream Priory writes about the “liturgical providence of God.” In these days of uncertainty, and, as the Pope himself has said at today’s general audience, days of scandal, the texts of the liturgy seem to be particularly chosen to console and encourage us, even those that have been in their place and, so to speak, scheduled to arrive on these days for centuries.

The XIV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops opens today in an atmosphere of confusion, wrangling, and disquiet that, far from being confined to the New Synod Hall in Rome, seems to have spread throughout the Church, principally, we must admit, through the social media. Before going down to Vespers last evening, I remarked to Father Benedict that I was far more interested in what the Magnificat Antiphon would be than in the latest tweets about the Synod. I was not disappointed. When we opened our antiphonals to the Magnificat Antiphon last evening, what did we see?

Adaperiat Dominus cor vestrum in lege sua, et in praeceptis suis, et faciat pacem Dominus Deus noster.
The Lord open your hearts in His law and commandments, and may the Lord our God send peace. (2 Machabees 1:4)

This antiphon, given us on the eve of the opening of the Synod, is the very prayer that the Holy Ghost would have us say for the Synod and, indeed, for the whole Church: “The Lord open your hearts in His law and commandments, and may the Lord our God send peace”.

There is, I have always believed, a liturgical providence of God. By this I mean that “amidst the changes and chances of this mortal life” we can be certain of finding in the liturgy of the Church the word that casts a divine light over what is happening, the word that makes sense of what to us appears inscrutable and obscure, the word by which we can be certain of praying the prayer that God wants to hear and intends to answer.

Read the rest over there.

Professions at Silverstream Priory

Silverstream Monks with guests visit Old Mellifont Abbey. Left to right: D. Basil McCabe, D. Ildebrando Wehbe, the Rt. Rev. Dom Antoine Beauchef, Abbot of Flavigny, D. Mark Kirby, D. Benedict Andersen, D. Finnian King.

On Thursday, 6 August, feast of the Transfiguration, Dom Benedict Maria Andersen (a native of Denver, Colorado) pronounced his final vows as a Benedictine monk of Silverstream Priory and received the monastic consecration. Father Benedict, 34 years old, holds degrees from the Lateran University, Rome, and from Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary, New York; he is a skilled typesetter and designer of liturgical books.

On Saturday, 15 August, feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, Dom Finnian Joseph King (a native of Bohermeen, Co Meath) and Dom Elijah Maria Carroll (a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma) pronounced their first vows as Benedictine monks of Silverstream Priory. Dom Elijah, 26 years old, is a graduate of the University of Tulsa. He will begin theological studies with the Dominican faculty at St Saviour’s, Dublin, in September. Dom Finnian, 34 years old, worked abroad for several years before entering Silverstream; he is currently studying art under Dony MacManus.

Representatives of the Benedictine family from the Abbey of St Joseph of Flavigny in France, and from the Abbey of San Miniato in Florence Italy were present for the occasion. Silverstream Priory now counts four professed monks, of whom two are priests. The Abbot of Flavigny recently sent Dom Basil M. McCabe, O.S.B. to lend a helping hand to the community at Silverstream during a particularly busy time. A number of men from Ireland and from abroad are currently preparing to come to Silverstream Priory for the initial phase of monastic formation.

Homily on the Feast of the Assumption by Dom Mark Daniel Kirby, O.S.B., Prior of Silverstream

My very dear sons, Dom Finnian and Dom Elijah, today is a festival of passage. The Mother of God passes from this valley of tears to the bridal chamber of heaven, where the King of kings is seated on a throne amidst the stars. She passes from the company of the Beloved Disciple to the that of his Master and Friend, the Bridegroom–King, hidden in God, and returning in glory. She passes from the Jerusalem below to the Jerusalem above; from ceaseless prayer in the heart of the Church on earth to a ceaseless and universal mediation in the sanctuary of heaven. She passes from toil to rest; from desire to possession; from the land of shadows to «the city that hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon, to shine in it. For the glory of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof» (Apocalypse 21:23)

Both of you, as well, are living, with the Blessed Virgin Mary, and in her, a festival of passage. You have completed the first stage of your pilgrimage — not on the way to Chartres, as you have already done twice together – but on the way to the altar where you will pronounce the vows that, for the next three years, will bind you more closely to the Lamb of the Holy Sacrifice.

You are passing from a very short time of apprenticeship to a lifetime of labour; from sparing tears to more abundant tears; from joys to greater joys; and from light to light, for the Apostle says that, «we all beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord» (2 Corinthians 3:18).

You are passing from the hidden life of the noviceship to a life that, sealed by your monastic profession, will become even more hidden, for yours it is to enter, more and more, into the hiddeness of the Host. What is our Benedictine life if not a gradual, almost imperceptible, penetration into the hiddenness of the Host: Christ in the sanctuary of heaven and Christ in the tabernacles of the earth?

With Our Lady, hide yourselves in Christ,

as Christ is hidden in the glory of His Father.

With Our Lady, hide yourselves in Christ,

as He is hidden in the bright cloud of the Holy Spirit.

With Our Lady, hide yourselves in Christ,

as He is hidden in the sacred species.

With Our Lady, hide yourselves in the Heart of the Lamb,

even as He is hidden in the tabernacles of the world,

unseen, unknown, and forgotten by men.

The monk is a man called more to hiddenness than to appearing; more to silence than to discourse; more to the praise of God than to conversation with men. In all of these things the monk participates, here and now, even amidst the shadows and changes of this passing world, in the glorious mystery of the Assumption of the Mother of God.

The traditional Gospel for this festival of the Assumption is, as you know, Saint Luke’s account of the hospitality given Jesus in the house of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus in Bethany. It was, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and following a most luminous theological instinct that the Church, for centuries, proclaimed and meditated this Gospel in reference to the all–pure Mother of God, Mary most holy, seated in quiet repose at the feet of her risen and ascended Son in glory.

«One thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her» (Luke 10:42).

Again, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and following a most luminous theological instinct, holy tradition has long applied this same Gospel passage to the monastic vocation, recognising that in a world and, indeed, even in a Church, where too many souls are burdened with cares and troubled about many things, the monk must remain, on behalf of all and for all, at the Lord’s feet, listening to His Word.

Today, dearest Dom Finnian and Dom Elijah, you are choosing the best part, and it shall not be taken away from you. You are being given three years during which, bound by your vows, you will enter more deeply into the secrets, and trials, and joys of Mary’s part.

In a few moments you will, with Our Lady, enter into the great upward movement of the Suscipe. Might this not have been Our Lady’s own prayer in the hour of her holy dormition: Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum et vivam, «Take me unto thyself, O Lord, and I shall live»? The Virgin Mary was not disappointed in her hope, nor shall you be disappointed in yours. «Know ye that no one hath hoped in the Lord, and hath been confounded. For who hath continued in his commandment, and hath been forsaken? or who hath called upon him, and he despised him?» (Ecclesiasticus 2:11–12).

Dom Finnian and Dom Elijah, you have both made known your desire and your resolve to persevere in the school of the Lord’s service established by our holy Father Benedict. You have both declared yourselves ready to risk a fully Eucharistic life, to fall under the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost so as to become a hostia pura, hostia sancta, hostia immaculata, -- a pure victim, a holy victim, a spotless victim. Now, then, in the radiance of the Assumption of the Mother of God, you may make your profession of triennial vows.

(For more photos, visit this link.)

Liturgy as the Primary Embodiment of Tradition

Walter Cardinal Brandmüller kisses the Gospel during Solemn Mass

In the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council teaches us about the relationship between Scripture and Tradition:

There exists a close connection and communication between Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For Sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, while Sacred Tradition takes the word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and hands it on to their successors in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of truth, they may in proclaiming it preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known. Consequently, it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence. Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church.[1]

When we speak of Scripture, it’s clear (or clear enough) what we are referring to: the contents of the Bible, the canon of writings established by the Church. But when we speak of Tradition, what exactly are we referring to? Where, to put it more concretely, do we meet up with or run into Tradition? When do we find ourselves in its presence? How do we know we’re dealing with “Sacred Tradition”—which the Council says is part of the very word of God!—and not with mere “traditions of men” that may or may not be from Christ the Lord?

Dom Mark Kirby, Prior of Our Lady of the Cenacle Monastery in Ireland, speaks of “the age-old law that grounds and shapes both Catholic doctrine and the Catholic moral life: Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi.”[2] This is a pithy way of saying that “the law of praying” (how we pray) shapes “the law of believing” (what we believe), which in turn informs “the law of living” (how we actually lead our lives).

LEX ORANDI

Dom Mark comments on the first of these components:

The lex orandi is the enactment of the sacred liturgy; it is composed not only of texts, but also of the whole complexus of sacred signs, gestures, and rites by which, through the mediating priesthood of Jesus Christ, men are sanctified and God is glorified. The sacred liturgy itself—being the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the other sacraments, the Divine Office, and the various rites and sacramentals found in the Church’s official liturgical books—is the Church’s theologia prima. ... The Church’s primary theology is not something invented by learned men; it is found in the givenness of the liturgy, the primary organ of the Church’s authentic tradition.

This conclusion is echoed in the eloquent statement of Fr. Louis Bouyer:

It is in the celebration of the liturgy’s mysteries, and in all of the new, mystical, and communal life flowing from it, that the Church maintains in unity the perpetual and perpetually living consciousness of the immutable deposit of faith entrusted to her.

More succinctly still, Pope Pius XI declares: “The liturgy is the principal organ of the Church’s ordinary Magisterium.”[3] A contemporary anonymous writer draws out the implications of this special status:

The liturgy is the primary font or source of our knowledge of revelation. … [I]t is the ordinary, normal context wherein Christian worshipers encounter the divine realities in such a way as to participate in them contemplatively and prayerfully. Encyclicals and councils serve the primarily didactic purpose of informing the intellect of the individual truths of faith—a necessary thing in the Christian life. But the liturgy does this and more. The liturgy is where this formation of the intellect bears its fruit in the living out of faith. The liturgy is faith in practice. It is where Christians receive revelation, believe in it, and act upon that belief by directly worshiping their Creator. … The liturgy, too, is a medium through which revelation is communicated. Indeed, as stated before, it is the definitive and primary context wherein this communication and reception of revelation occurs for Christians, precisely because it is the central act of Christian worship. Worship is the principal act of religion; all other acts are vain unless directed to the act of worship.[4]

Because of this intimate connection between how we pray, what we believe, and how we lead our lives, the saints have always shown a burning love for the liturgy and everything connected with it. Its phrases and gestures fill their imaginations. They feel a sense of awe, reverence, and humility before this holy inheritance and they counsel caution in tampering with it. A learned Benedictine of our time, Dom Bernard Capelle (1884–1961), when asked by a Vatican commission to share his opinion about liturgical reform, wrote in 1949:

Nothing is to be changed unless it is a case of indispensable necessity. This rule is most wise, for the Liturgy is truly a sacred testament and monument—not so much written but living—of Tradition, to be reckoned with as a locus of theology and a most pure font of piety and of the Christian spirit.[5]

Here, too, we can start to see connections between what I argued concerning the Book of Revelation (the cosmic centrality of worship and the heavenly liturgy of the Church Triumphant as paradigmatic for the Church Militant on earth) and what one learns from Romano Guardini’s Sacred Signs on the language of symbols, through which we come to understand and relate with God, and by which we express what is most inward and most exalted in ourselves.

Tying together the preceding points, Dom Daniel Augustine Oppenheimer shows the ethical and spiritual demands placed on the believer by the sacred liturgy:

Before all else … the primary antecedent is humility before the source itself. Already the ascetic principle of faith is operative, understanding that the liturgical traditio is not “some old piece of cloth,” to use a famous phrase of Cardinal Ottaviani, open to free flight or arbitrary incisions and repiecing. The texts, gestures, signs, symbols, music, the full panoply of the liturgical culture, all have together an internal cohesion, sense, depth, and character. The thing itself deserves reverence because it is holy and the principal font of revelation.[6]

LEX CREDENDI & LEX VIVENDI

Coming now to the second and third members of our “age-old law,” Dom Mark writes:

The lex credendi is the articulation of what is already given, contemplated, and celebrated in the lex orandi. The Church’s doctrine emerges in all its shining purity—in the veritatis splendor—from the wellspring of her liturgy. Catholic doctrine, the Church’s theologia secunda, is the fruit of her liturgical experience. … The lex vivendi is the Catholic moral life, a life quickened by the theological virtues, a life in obedience to the divine commandments, characterized by the cardinal virtues, illumined by the Beatitudes, enriched by the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, and displayed in the Holy Spirit’s Twelve Fruits. The lex vivendi pertains to all that teaches men to live rightly, to every ethical and social question, and to the pursuit of that holiness that already we contemplate in the saints set before us by the Church.

The order of the three elements is by no means accidental: as we have seen, the liturgy delivers to us the faith we profess, or put differently, we profess our faith in and through the liturgy. Divine worship, as handed down from the apostles and their successors, comes first, fills our minds and hearts, and shows us the way; the theological articulation and explication of the faith comes second, as an internalization of and reflection upon what we are doing when we celebrate the sacred mysteries. Once we have turned in prayer to the living God, who is Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, giving Him the primacy that is His due (the lex orandi)—and once we have received the truth from His lips and His hands, giving truth the primacy in our souls (the lex credendi)—then we will have our “marching orders” for life in the world, the fulfillment of righteousness in virtuous love of ourselves and of our neighbor (the lex vivendi). Dom Mark captures this order nicely:

The restoration of Catholic doctrine in all its beauty and richness, and the consequent reclaiming of Catholic discipline as something both healing and life-giving, will begin with the restoration of the sacred liturgy.

Another pseudonymous author offers us a powerful meditation on the super-realism of the liturgy, which, by really containing what it represents, puts us in direct, immediate contact with the ultimate realities:

Liturgy does not merely teach belief and transmit grace. It revives and renews the sacred mysteries of Christ in time for the faithful. In doing so, one encounters Christ, the angels and saints, and glimpses the greater spiritual reality of the Lord while remaining on earth, blurring the lines which separate the eternal and the temporal. One leaves the liturgy and the “mystical supper” of Christ not only having learned what to believe, but also how to believe when he returns to the world outside the temple. … How does one orient one’s self to God and away from sin? How does one see the world and God as He wishes? The liturgy shows us this, in conjunction with being the setting for the Sacraments, wherein the Holy Spirit acts and makes the work of Christ immediately accessible to the believer. … The purpose of the liturgy, especially during the great periods of the year, is to unite the faithful to God so that they might know Him and save their souls. He gathers them to Himself and to His new Jerusalem, the Church, and to His Body, again, the Church.[7]

NOTES

[1] Dei Verbum, n. 9.

[2] All the quotations of Dom Mark are from his article “Liturgy, Doctrine, and Discipline: The Right Order." See also Joyce Little's article "Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi: Many Young Catholics Find Liturgy Incomprehensible and Irrelevant. Is It?"

[3] Cited in George Cardinal Pell's "The Translation of Liturgical Texts" (and by many other authors).

[4] The Maestro, "Liturgy, Revelation, and Tradition."

[5] Cited in Paweł Milcarek's excellent article “Balance Instead of Harmony."

[6] Dom Daniel Augustine Oppenheimer, "Asceticism and Tradition."

[7] The Rad Trad, "Liturgy & Tradition: Sensus Fidelium."

Dom Mark Kirby on Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi

Fr. Kirby (right) with a monk and a mascot

Dom Mark Kirby, the Prior of Our Lady of the Cenacle Monastery (a.k.a. Silverstream Priory), has written a brief but magnificent meditation on the unbroken and unbreakable triple cord that binds lex orandi or the law of our praying with the lex credendi or law of belief and the lex vivendi or the law that governs our way of living. He rightly notes that these three are not democratically interchangeable but follow a definite hierarchy.

1. The lex orandi is the enactment of the sacred liturgy; it is composed not only of texts, but also of the whole complexus of sacred signs, gestures, and rites by which, through the mediating priesthood of Jesus Christ, men are sanctified and God is glorified. The sacred liturgy itself (being the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the other sacraments, the Divine Office, and the various rites and sacramentals found in the Church’s official liturgical books) is the Church’s theologia prima. It is in the sacred liturgy and though it that the Church receives her primary theology. The primary theology of the Church is a gift received from above, according to the word of Saint James: “Do not err, therefore, my dearest brethren. Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration” (James 1:16–17). The Church’s primary theology is not something invented by learned men; it is found in the givenness of the liturgy, the primary organ of the Church’s authentic tradition.
          2. The lex credendi is the articulation of what is already given, contemplated, and celebrated in the lex orandi. The Church’s doctrine emerges in all its shining purity — in the veritatis splendor — from the wellspring of her liturgy. Catholic doctrine, the Church’s theologia secunda, is the fruit of her liturgical experience. The sanctuary precedes the aula of theological discourse; the altar confers authority upon the academic chair. A theological discourse at variance with the lex orandi will be flawed and lifeless. I am sure that His Eminence, Cardinal Burke, would agree that when he speaks of the doctrine of the Church, he is referring to the authoritative teaching that is grounded in, and shaped by, the liturgy of the Church, her lex orandi.
          3. The lex vivendi is the Catholic moral life, a life quickened by the theological virtues, a life in obedience to the divine commandments, characterized by the cardinal virtues, illumined by the Beatitudes, enriched by the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, and displayed in the Holy Spirit’s Twelve Fruits. The lex vivendi pertains to all that teaches men to live rightly, to every ethical and social question, and to the pursuit of that holiness that already we contemplate in the saints set before us by the Church.

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Dom Mark Kirby on Paul VI -- and a Note on the Term “Pastoral”

I noticed recently a couple of fine NLM-pertinent posts by Dom Mark Kirby, Prior of Silverstream, whose blog Vultus Christi is an ongoing source of refreshing spiritual wisdom.

In the attention given to Pope Paul VI in the time leading up to his beatification, one notices a deafening silence on those many respects in which this pope either was, or at least seems to have intended to be, a proponent of the “hermeneutic of continuity” avant la lettre. While it’s true that Paul VI is a complex and even at times contradictory figure who contributed to the problems inherited by his successors and all of us (see my earlier article on this very subject), it is only a matter of plain common honesty and justice to paint a fair portrait that includes elements essential to modern-day traditionalism. These would have to include not only Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae and Mysterium Fidei, but also his unambiguous reaffirmation of the Catholic faith in the Credo of the People of God and his 1966 Apostolic Letter Sacrificium Laudis, whose defense of the traditional choral office in Latin deserves to be much more widely known.

Dom Mark offers the complete text of this short Apostolic Letter, along with an introduction. Highly recommended.

Dom Mark also devoted a daily reflection (again, with the complete text of the document) to how important the Credo of the People of God was to him in his personal life as a monk living in a confused and volatile period. Published less than a month before Humanae Vitae, the Credo was perhaps the most quickly buried and forgotten document in the history of the Magisterium. It is nevertheless worth revisiting, and is sure to raise more than a few eyebrows when one sees how the creed Paul VI professed, unambiguously reiterating dogma on faith and morals, has been slowly and consistently undermined in subsequent decades.

While we’re speaking about Paul VI, I would like to recommend to NLM readers a newly posted article by my colleague, Dr. Jeremy Holmes, “Saving ‘Pastoral’ from the Wolves”. We are all rightly disturbed, I think, by the serious abuse that has been made of the term ‘pastoral’, and how many acts of negligence and deviations it has covered since the Second Vatican Council. We might, in fact, be tempted to throw the word away. But we do not do well to let the enemies of the Faith seize hold of vocabulary and claim it as their booty. As the Sensible Bond likes to point out (in league with George Orwell and Josef Pieper), language is power, and abuse of language is abuse of power. Dr. Holmes examines the authentic notion of the pastoral, that which has to do with the shepherd truly taking care of his flock by taking them seriously and yet leading them where they need to go. There are some interesting liturgical and moral examples. Check it out.

The Ironic Outcome of the Benedictine-Jesuit Controversy

Back in July, I drew attention to an excellent series of posts by Fr. Mark Kirby at Vultus Christi on the debate, in the early twentieth century, between the Benedictines and the Jesuits over the centrality of the liturgy in the Christian life (and more particularly, the life of prayer). Once again, I highly recommend reading those posts for the ins and outs of the debate, but the gist of it is that the sons of St. Benedict strongly promoted the line of St. Pius X, later taken by the Second Vatican Council, that the sacred liturgy is the “fount and apex” of the Christian life, the point of departure for all of the Church’s pastoral activity and the goal in which the Church’s entire mission culminates, while the sons of St. Ignatius were presenting the liturgy as one among many tools useful for personal spiritual growth, with private meditation having a certain pride of place.

Illuminating in their frankness, the publications and correspondence associated with this debate deftly expose the principles underlying each side. Fr. Mark also shows how Pope Pius XII attempted to adjudicate this dispute in Mediator Dei by acknowledging the truths held by both schools while fundamentally siding with the Benedictine framework of his predecessor Pius X.

Well and good—the armies engaged one another, the battle was fought, and, at least officially, the Pio-Benedictine vision prevailed. But what about the later history, the post-Mediator Dei period from 1948 to 1970, when the Bugnini liturgy emerged, at first slowly, then more and more rapidly and radically?

This period exhibits a strange irony. Apparently, the Benedictines won across the board because everyone nowadays (beginning with the Consilium reformers themselves) talks about liturgy as if it’s the be-all and end-all of Catholic prayer, almost as if it’s the only kind of prayer that Catholics have—and yet what has triumphed is a “creative,” devotional, sentimental, largely subjective notion of liturgy, a utilitarian and custom-designed approach that is utterly contrary to the Benedictine vision of liturgy as objective, formal, given, stable, and received, an external standard to which we are subject and to which private devotions and personal preferences are to be subordinated.[*Note]

Speaking of the subjectivizing effects of Kantian philosophy, Fr. Chad Ripperger observes:

We often see this immanentization today: people expect the liturgy to conform to their emotional states rather than conforming themselves to an objective cult which in turn conforms itself to God.

A couple of months ago I read an eye-opening interview with a fairly well-known priest who dismissed the Tridentine Mass as a kind of idolatry (!) because of the impersonal ritualism of it, the exalted cultivation of form. Everyone was so focused on the rite that they were idolaters of it, he opined. Evidently, he has become too accustomed to the fabricated and ever-changing “meaningfulness” of modern liturgy, with its “personal touches” and “accessibility” and “relevance,” and hence feels chilled by the objectivity and otherness of formal worship in Latin, and the way its ministers and assistants yield their individuality and idiosyncracies to it.

The searing words of Laszlo Dobszay come to mind:

The turning around of the altars, celebration versus populum, was not commanded by the Council. In practice, however, the new rite and the new position of the altar are closely associated. We may say that changing back to the original direction will have a beneficial effect. Indeed, the very fact that the bulk of the clergy protests with intense emotions against this return shows its serious necessity; the principal motivation behind the protest is not pastoral care of the faithful, but the psychological distress of the priest.

The legacy of the post-conciliar reform is a Benedictine insistence on the primacy of liturgy, fused with a Jesuitized re-conception of liturgy as collective private devotion. It is as if new Jesuit wine has been poured into old Benedictine wineskins, causing them to rupture. The moment of triumph was the moment of disaster, as the very notion of a rite—a formal ritualized act of common worship based on a common orthodox tradition—gave way to a pluralistic, relaxed, malleable, and privatized praxis of variations on a more or less Catholic theme. In short, the Consilium’s exploitation of Sacrosanctum Concilium left us with a volatile mixture that makes genuine reform today much more difficult.

Cardinal Ratzinger when he celebrated the usus antiquior in Wigratzbad

Perhaps the most ironic twist in this still unresolved (and now more complicated) debate is the contrast between the current pope and his predecessor. Although not a Benedictine by profession, Benedict XVI closely identified throughout his career with the monastic vision of the all-pervasive centrality of the sacred liturgy, where God and man can meet most profoundly in praise and in communion, at once expressing and accomplishing the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ. At his first general audience in April 2005, he explained that he had chosen the name Benedict in large part as a homage to the Father of Western Monasticism, co-patron of Europe and architect of Christian civilization. With the first Jesuit and overseas pope, we have a pastor who appears to hold many of those modern Jesuit views that Blessed Columba Marmion and other Benedictines, in the name of fidelity to St. Pius X, so stalwartly resisted in the first half of the twentieth century, and that Ratzinger/Benedict himself patiently opposed in his writings and magisterial acts. We have unexpectedly seen the trajectories of the two schools played out before our very eyes in the magisterium, ars celebrandi, and priorities of each pontificate.

It is for this reason that the original Benedictine-Jesuit controversy remains of lively interest and massive importance for us today, if we would better understand the trials through which the Church is passing in this age.

*            *            *

[*Note]  Even when it comes to our personal prayer, we ought to strive for a maximal harmony with the liturgical feastdays and seasons. It would be strange indeed if our prayer life did not register and resonate with the changing seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Septuagesima, Lent, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, which insert us into the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and the glorious triumph of His saints. As a blogger insightfully put it not long ago: “We should liturgize devotion as far as we can, rather than devotionalize the liturgy, as happened in the last several centuries when low Mass became the norm, public practice of devotions replaced the Office, and some odd feasts crept into the kalendar … Again, let us liturgize our devotion so we do not devotionalize our liturgy.” While I have no problem with a quiet and prayerful Low Mass for weekdays, it does seem regrettable that High Mass is not much more common than it is, although as more clergy are ordained for the usus antiquior, I believe we will see both the Missa cantata and the Missa solemnis more and more as a regular feature of Catholic life.