DO NOT BE SATISFIED WITH MEDIOCRITY

Pater Johannes Paul, who was ordained to the priesthood last Sunday, entered the monastery at the same time as I did. Watching him be ordained, and then next day celebrate his first Mass, was extraordinarily moving. Pater Damian, who was also in our novitiate, preached at the first Mass, and recalled the our entry into the monastery, when we had lain on the floor of the Church (in the same place where later we were to lie for the Litany of Saints at our ordinations) and how the Abbot had asked “What do you want?” and we had answered “The mercy of God and the Order.”

Pater Johannes Paul has always been a great example to me of the monastic life as a passionate response to the question “What do you want?” He has often recalled how his own path into the monastery began when he was listening to a CD with quotes from Pope John Paul II. At one point Pope John Paul said: “Do not be satisfied with mediocrity!” The future Pater Johannes Paul says that he realized that his life was mediocre–that he did and thought whatever happened to be fashionable, and wasted his time on mediocre joys–he decided to try to find life in its fullness.

And that is the promise of the monastic life: fullness of life, a life directed entirely toward the infinite good, that tries as far as possible to resist resting in the second best. As St Benedict puts it in the Prologue of the Rule:

And the Lord, seeking his laborer in the multitude to whom He thus cries out, says again, “Who is the one who will have life, and desires to see good days” (Ps. 33[34]:13)? And if, hearing Him, you answer, “I am the one,” God says to you, “If you will have true and everlasting life, keep your tongue from evil and your lips that they speak no guile. Turn away from evil and do good; seek after peace and pursue it” (Ps. 33[34]:14-15). And when you have done these things, My eyes shall be upon you and My ears open to your prayers; and before you call upon Me, I will say to you, ‘Behold, here I am’” (Ps. 33[34]:16; Is. 65:24; 58:9). What can be sweeter to us, dear ones, than this voice of the Lord inviting us? Behold, in His loving kindness the Lord shows us the way of life.

Ordinations

Today, His Eminence Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna ordained my confrères Pater Kilian and Pater Johannes Paul to the diaconate and the priesthood respectively. Please say a prayer for them. Here are some pictures from PKW and http://www.stift-heiligenkreuz.org/:

The laying on of hands

The Cardinal arrives

The laying on of hands

The Canon

P. Johannes Paul thanks the Cardinal after Mass

Cardinal Schönborn consecrates a chalice for P. Johannes Paul

In the Sacristy

First Blessings

Easter and Spiritual Freedom

The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them, and said, “Peace be with you.” (John 20:26)

The Risen Lord shows a remarkable freedom with respect to earthly things. Not only is he entirely free from all weakness and suffering, but not even locked doors are no barrier to him, His body is full of intese and perfect life, and everything is easy to Him. Having conquered sin and death He has won for Himself the perfect peace of victory.

“Peace be with you.” The peace that He has won for Himself He gives to us. Perfect freedom from all mortality and suffering will come to us only after our own bodily resurrection, but even now we share in Christ’s freedom through the holiness given us in Baptism.  Blessed Columba Marmion teaches (Christ in His Mysteries, ch. 15) that holiness consists in two elements: first perfect freedom from sin and detachment from all creatures, and second belonging totally to God. Both elements are luminously manifest in the Resurrected Christ: For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God

The readings for this season emphasize again and again that we, having died to sin with Christ, must now live entirely “to God.” If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. (Col 3:1-2) The joy of the Resurrection should enable us to delight in God alone and to achieve a total freedom from all attachment to creatures. “Get rid of the old leaven.” (cf. Col 3:1) Put away all the disordered desires and attachments that are the roots of sin and death, and rejoice only in God. This is what St Ignatius calls “indifference.”

St Bernard of Clairvaux in a remarkably stern Easter Sermon warns his monks, that having passed through the Red Sea with with Christ, they must take care not to look back to the carnal consolations of Egypt:

Woe to you, whoever you are, if like a dog you turn back  back to your own vomit, and like a pig you wash only to wallow again in the mire! (cf 2 Pet 2:22) I speak not only of those who bodily return to Egypt, but also those who return in their hearts, who seek after the joys of this world, and so lose the life of faith, which is love (caritas). For, “if any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him.” (1 Joh 2:15)

In another sermon he warns his monks not to abandon the freedom they have won through the hard fast of Lent:

Nothing of the spiritual exercises [of Lent] should be lost or diminished at the coming of the Holy Feast of the Resurrection. Let us rather strive to pass over to a better life. For any one who, after the tears of penance, does not return to the consolations of the flesh, but advances to trust in the Divine Mercy and enters into a new devotion and joy in the Holy Spirit; any one who is not so much tormented by the memory of past sins, as he is full of delight and inflamed with desire for the eternal rewards; such a one is he who rises with Christ, who celebrates the Pasch, who hastens to Galilee. You therefore, dearly beloved, if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God; set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. (Col 3:1-2) Just as Christ rose from death through the glory of the Father, so might you too walk in the newness of life. (cf. Rom 6:4) You should pass from temporal joy (saeculari laetitia) and the consolations of this world by compunction and godly sorrow, to holy and spiritual devotion passing over with rejoicing and exulting. May He grant this to you who has passed over from this world to the Father, who draws us after Himself, and deigns to call us to Galilee to show us Himself, who is over all things, God, blessed for ever. Amen.

Formal and material heresy

Reblogged from Laodicea:

I've discussed before the question of the criteria by which to judge whether a person is truly a heretic or simply in error about revealed truths. I quoted three criteria, any one of which, according to an 'approved author', was by itself a sign of an error being simply an error, not a heresy.

None of the three criteria mentioned seems entirely satisfactory.

Read more… 1,042 more words

This is something that I have always wondered about.

Solemn Professions of French Dominican Sisters with Bishop Athanasius Schneider

An acquaintance of mine from southern Austria is a postulant with the „Dominicaines du Saint-Esprit“ an “Ecclesia Dei” community of Dominican sisters, who teach in schools. She sent me some pictures of the solemn profession of some sisters. The the auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan Msgr. Athanasius Schneider, O.R.C. celebrated the Mass of Profession. Among the sisters professing vows were two Austrians – Mère Marie Barbara and Mère Maria Lucia. There is a long tradition of Austrians going to France in search of a particularly fervant religious life– Bl. Otto of Freising the son of St Leopold of Austria, for instance, went to Morimond Abbey. What is it with France and religious communities? Even in these days there is an extraordinary flourishing of various communities that have returned to the sources of religious life.

The history of France is so frustrating because France has such authentic greatness, and corruptio optimi pessima. As Thomas Merton remarks in The Seven Storey Mountain. 

And yet it was France that grew the finest flowers of delicacy and grace and intelligence and wit and understanding and proportion and taste. Even the countryside, even the landscape of France, whether in the low hills and lush meadows and apple orchards of Normandy or in the sharp and arid and vivid outline of the mountains of Provence, or in the vast, rolling red vineyards of Languedoc, seems to have been made full of a special perfection, as a setting for the best of the cathedrals, the most interesting towns, the most fervent monasteries, and the greatest universities.
But the wonderful thing about France is how all her perfections harmonize so fully together. She has possessed all the skills, from cooking to logic and theology, from bridge-building to contemplation, from vine-growing to sculpture, from cattle-breeding to prayer: and possessed them more perfectly, separately and together, than any other nation. Why is it that the songs of the little French children are more graceful, their speech more intelligent and sober, their eyes calmer and more profound than those of the children of other nations? Who can explain these things?

The Two Angels and the Linen Cloths

“Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself.  Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed;  for as yet they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.  Then the disciples went back to their homes.  But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet.” (John 20:6-12)

“When the Ark was placed definitively in the Temple of Jerusalem, that empty space became the place of God’s glory, power and presence. And on the Feast of Atonement (Yom Kippur), when the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies to perform the rite of atonement, that empty space between the two cherubim (in Greek, hilasterion: instrument of atonement) was transformed into the place where God cancelled all the sins of his people (cf. Ex. 25:22; Lv. 16:15-16). Emptiness, therefore, is the space God needs in order to continue to meet, speak with and forgive his children. In the light of Easter morning, between the angels in the empty tomb, Mary met the risen Lord: the eternal sacrifice of atonement of the New Covenant (cf. Rm. 3:25-26), the “place” where the loving mercy of God is present until the end of time.”  (Fr. Renato D’Auria)

“Later on the Day of Atonement, once the various rituals involving the sacrifice of the sin offerings and the application of blood to the mercy seat had been performed, the high priest then removed the plain linen garments. These were to be left in the sanctuary (Lev 16:23), and the regular garments put back on. Aaron then emerged from the tabernacle newly clothed to turn his attention to the matter of burnt offering (v. 24), that is, the עוֹלָה, the offering that “ascends.” This sequence of events may be compared in the Gospel to the removal of the linen grave clothes, neatly left in the burial chamber (John 20:5–7), the implicit emergence of Jesus, now reclothed, and his speaking to Mary of the issue of his “ascending” (v. 17). Furthermore, there is a correspondence between the goal of the burnt offering and the ascending of Christ. The Lord specified to Mary that his ascension had a twofold aspect: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” The possessive pronoun “your” is not restricted to Mary, but is plural [...] apparently referring to Mary and those that Jesus termed “my brothers,” that is, the disciples [...] the dual aspect of this “ascending” is matched by a similar duality in the final burnt offering ritual of the Day of Atonement. The high priest was to present “the burnt-offering for himself and the burnt-offering for the people, to make atonement for himself and for the people” (Lev 16:24).” (Nicholas P. Lunn)

Modesty and the Washing of the Feet

Having read a fraction of the things written about Pope Francis’s decision to disregard the Roman rubrics for the Mandatum by washing the feet of women as well as men (see: Vatican Press Office; Rorate Caeli; Caelum et Terra; Pius Pietrzyk, O.P.; Stratford Caldecott), I was struck by the fact that hardly anyone one mentioned what seems to me the obvious reason for the rubric.

In the Middle Ages it was customary in many places for the king to wash the feet of poor men on Holy Thursday, but when a Queen was regnant she would wash the feet of poor women. It seems to have never occurred to any one that a king might wash women’s feet or a queen men’s. The reason seems to be that there was a culture of what I suppose one would call “modesty.” That is, the recognition that the relation between men and women has been rendered fragile through disordered, post-lapsarian concupiscence. “Modesty” in dress and manners is a way of protecting that fragile relation.

It has often been noted that one of the reasons why people were so scandalized by the woman (or women) who anointed Our Lord’s feet (an action with interesting parallels to the washing of the feet at the Last Supper) is precisely a feeling that it violates modesty. In His whole Umgang with women– not only Mary of Bethany, but also the Samaritan woman at the well et al.– Our Lord gives a kind of preview of a redeemed creation in which the relation of men and women is no-longer strained by disorder. He shows an astonishing freedom.

Now, I think the reason why the whole discussion of Pope Francis’s Madatum has tended to ignore the question of modesty is because of the cultural gulf which separates us from past generations. So-called “sexual liberation” has had the effect of making things which once seemed immodest seem totally modest. One could say that there has been a kind of de-sensitization. This means that certain things that would have given scandal in another age simply don’t in ours. Modesty and immodesty are not wholly ”objective” predicates. I suppose, for instance, that while it would have been immodest for a woman to wear trousers in the 19th century, it simply isn’t now. People are so used to women wearing trousers, that it doesn’t give any special occasion to disordered concupiscence. Whether on deplores or applauds this, it seems to be a fact.

The Eyes of Christ

The cross above the altar in Heiligenkreuz (a copy of a Romanesque cross in Sarzano, Italy) show the Lord with wounded side, but with His eyes open– that is, it is a depiction of the Risen Lord. The video embeded above shows the cross being unveiled during Gloria of the Easter Vigil, last night.

In his address in Heiligenkreuz,  in 2007, Pope Benedict XVI (sitting under the cross) referred to the open eyes of the crucified:

Our light, our truth, our goal, our fulfilment, our life – all this is not a religious doctrine but a person: Jesus Christ. Over and above any ability of our own to seek and to desire God, we ourselves were already sought and desired, and indeed, found and redeemed by him! The gaze of people of every time and nation, of all the philosophies, religions and cultures, ultimately encounters the wide open eyes of the crucified and risen Son of God; his open heart is the fullness of love. The eyes of Christ are the eyes of a loving God. The image of the Crucified Lord above the altar, whose romanesque original is found in the Cathedral of Sarzano, shows that this gaze is turned to every man and woman. The Lord, in truth, looks into the hearts of each of us.

More Pictures of the Easter Vigil in Heiligenkreuz

Herr and Frau Ingenieur Franz and Franziska Besau kindly sent me the photos they made during the Easter Vigil:

The Gloria

Baptism

Confirmation

The Sanctus

The Pax

Easter Sunday

The Gospel; photo: pkw

On account of the snow the Easter Procession, in which the Risen Lord, “really, truly, and substantially present” in the Monstrance,   is carried under a golden canopy, and which usually takes place out of doors, took place in the cloisters.

The Procession; photo: http://www.stift-heiligenkreuz.org/

Since the Easter Mass is celebrated together with the Parish of Heiligenkreuz, the brass band of the village of Heiligenkreuz played for the procession. They played the greatest of all German Easter Hymns, “Der Heiland ist Erstanden”– a march of  tremendous triumph, with such heroic majesty, and with such Germanic seriousness, violence almost.