God has revealed his love through the Son

An exceript from A Letter to Diognetus

Fourth Sunday of Advent, 18 December

No man has ever seen God or known him, but God has revealed himself to us through faith, by which alone it is possible to see him. God, the Lord and maker of all things, who created the world and set it in order, not only loved man but was also patient with him. So he has always been, and is, and will be: kind, good, free from anger, truthful; indeed, he and he alone is good.

He devised a plan, a great and wonderful plan, and shared it only with his Son. As long as he preserved this secrecy and kept his own wise counsel he seemed to be neglecting us, to have no concern for us. But when through his beloved Son he revealed and made public what he had prepared from the very beginning, he gave us all at once gifts such as we could never have dreamt of, even sight and knowledge of himself.

When God had made all his plans in consultation with his Son, he waited until a later time, allowing us to follow our own whim, to be swept along by unruly passions, to be led astray by pleasure and desire. Not that he was pleased by our sins: he only tolerated them. Not that he approved of that time of sin: he was planning this era of holiness. When we had been shown to be undeserving of life, his goodness was to make us worthy of it. When we had made it clear that we could not enter God’s kingdom by our own power, we were to be enabled to do so by the power of God.

When our wickedness had reached its culmination, it became clear that retribution was at hand in the shape of suffering and death. The time came then for God to make known his kindness and power (how immeasurable is God’s generosity and love!). He did not show hatred for us or reject us or take vengeance; instead, he was patient with us, bore with us, and in compassion took our sins upon himself; he gave his own Son as the price of our redemption, the holy one to redeem the wicked, the sinless one to redeem sinners, the just one to redeem the unjust, the incorruptible one to redeem the corruptible, the immortal one to redeem mortals. For what else could have covered our sins but his sinlessness? Where else could we—wicked and sinful as we were—have found the means of holiness except in the Son of God alone?

How wonderful a transformation, how mysterious a design, how inconceivable a blessing! The wickedness of the many is covered up in the holy One, and the holiness of One sanctifies many sinners.

Is Ahaz crazy? A reflection on this Sunday’s First Reading.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

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17 December — O Wisdom ...

O Wisdom,
O holy Word of God, You govern all creation with Your strong yet gentle care. Come and show Your people the way to salvation.

“You, Judah, shall your brothers praise your hand on the neck of your enemies; the sons of your father shall bow down to you.” (Genesis 49:8.)

Saint Ambrose of Milan offers the following insight on this verse from today’s First Reading:

“This text appears to be directed to the patriarch Judah, indeed, but more so that later Judah is meant, the true confessor who was born of that tribe and who alone is praised by his brothers; of them he says, “I will declare your name to my brothers.” He is the Lord by nature but a brother by grace; his hands, which he stretched out to an unbelieving people, are on the back of his enemies. For with those same hands and by that same passion Christ protected his own, subjugated hostile powers, and made subject to himself all people who were without faith and devotion. Of these the Father says to his Son, “And you will rule in the midst of your enemies.” It was their own wickedness that made them enemies, not Christ’s will. In this there is a great gift of the Lord. Previously, spiritual wickedness generally used to make our neck bend to the yoke of captivity. Thus even David wrote that he felt in some way the hands of those who triumphed over him, for he said, “Upon my back sinners have wrought.” But now spiritual wickedness is subject to the triumph of Christ and to his hands, as it were; that is, wickedness undergoes the affliction of captivity, being subject forever in deeds and in works. And it is he indeed to whom the sons of his Father bow down, when we bow down to him; for he has permitted us to call upon the Father, and to be subject to the Father is to be subject to virtue.” (The Patriarchs, 4)

Collect

O God,
Creator and Redeemer of human nature,
Who willed
that Your Word should take flesh
in an ever-virgin womb,
look with favor on our prayers,
that Your only Begotten Son,
having taken to Himself our humanity,
may be pleased to grant us
a share in his divinity.
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

The mystery of our reconciliation with God

Pope Saint Leo the Great

Bishop of Rome and Father of the Church

An excerpt from Letter 31

The Weekdays of Advent, 17 December

To speak of our Lord, the son of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as true and perfect man is of no value to us if we do not believe that he is descended from the line of ancestors set out in the Gospel. Matthew’s gospel begins by setting out the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham, and then traces his human descent by bringing his ancestral line down to his mother’s husband, Joseph. On the other hand, Luke traces his parentage backward step by step to the actual father of mankind, to show that both the first and the last Adam share the same nature.

No doubt the Son of God in his omnipotence could have taught and sanctified men by appearing to them in a semblance of human form as he did to the patriarchs and prophets, when for instance he engaged in a wrestling contest or entered into conversation with them, or when he accepted their hospitality and even ate the food they set before him. But these appearances were only types, signs that mysteriously foretold the coming of one who would take a true human nature from the stock of the patriarchs who had gone before him. No mere figure, then, fulfilled the mystery of our reconciliation with God, ordained from all eternity. The Holy Spirit had not yet come upon the Virgin nor had the power of the Most High overshadowed her, so that within her spotless womb Wisdom might build itself a house and the Word become flesh. The divine nature and the nature of a servant were to be united in one person so that the Creator of time might be born in time, and he through whom all things were made might be brought forth in their midst.

For unless the new man, by being made in the likeness of sinful flesh, had taken on himself the nature of our first parents, unless he had stooped to be one in substance with his mother while sharing the Father’s substance and, being alone free from sin, united our nature to his, the whole human race would still be held captive under the dominion of Satan. The Conqueror’s victory would have profited us nothing if the battle had been fought outside our human condition. But through this wonderful blending the mystery of new birth shone upon us, so that through the same Spirit by whom Christ was conceived and brought forth we too might be born again in a spiritual birth; and in consequence the evangelist declares the faithful to have been born not of blood, nor of the desire of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

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Friday of the Third Week of Advent

“Them I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer; Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” (Isaiah 56:7.)

Saint Jerome offers the following insight on this verses from today’s First Reading:

“Is it not written, “He says, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’”? We read this in Isaiah: “But you have made it a den of thieves.” Where we read, “You have made it a den of thieves,” John’s Gospel had instead, “You have made it a house of business.” Wherever there are thieves, there is a house of trafficking. Would that it were applied only to the Jews and not the Christians! We would, indeed, weep for them but rejoice for ourselves. But now, in many places, the house of God, the house of the Father, has become a place of business. I who am speaking and each one of you, priest, deacon or bishop, who yesterday was a poor man, who today is a rich man in the house of God!” (Homilies on Mark, 83.)

Collect

May Your grace, Almighty God,
always go before us and follow after,
so that we, who await with heartfelt desire
the coming of Your Only Begotten Son,
may receive Your help
both now and in the life to come. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

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The desire of your heart constitutes your prayer

Saint Augustine of Hippo

Bishop and Great Western Father of the Church

An excerpt from A Discourse on the Psalms (Psalm 37)

Friday of the Third Week of Advent

In the anguish of my heart I groaned aloud. There is a hidden anguish which is inaudible to men. Yet when a man’s heart is so taken up with some particular concern that the hurt inside finds vocal expression, one looks for the reason. And one will say to oneself: perhaps this is what causes his anguish, or perhaps such and such had happened to him. But who can be certain of the cause except God, who hears and sees his anguish? Therefore the psalmist says: In the anguish of my heart I groaned aloud. For if men hear at all, they usually hear only bodily groaning and know nothing of the anguish of the heart from which it issues.

Who then knows the cause of man’s groaning? All my desire is before you. No, it is not open before other men, for they cannot understand the heart; but before you is all my desire. If your desire lies open to him who is your Father and who sees in secret, he will answer you.

For the desire of your heart is itself your prayer. And if the desire is constant, so is your prayer. The Apostle Paul had a purpose in saying: Pray without ceasing. Are we then ceaselessly to bend our knees, to lie prostrate, or to lift up our hands? Is this what is meant in saying: Pray without ceasing? Even if we admit that we pray in this fashion, I do not believe that we can do so all the time.

Yet there is another, interior kind of prayer without ceasing, namely, the desire of the heart. Whatever else you may be doing, if you but fix your desire on God’s Sabbath rest, your prayer will be ceaseless. Therefore, if you wish to pray without ceasing, do not cease to desire.

The constancy of your desire will itself be the ceaseless voice of your prayer. And that voice of your prayer will be silent only when your love ceases. For who are silent? Those of whom it is said: Because evil has abounded, the love of many will grow cold.

The chilling of love means that the heart is silent; while burning love is the outcry of the heart. If your love is without ceasing, you are crying out always; if you always cry out, you are always desiring; and if you desire, you are calling to mind your eternal rest in the Lord.

And all my desire is before you. What if the desire of our heart is before him, but not our groaning? But how is that possible, since the groaning is the voice of our desire? And therefore it is said: My groaning is not concealed from you. It may be concealed from men, but it is not concealed from you. Sometimes God’s servant seems to be saying in his humility: My anguish is not concealed from you. At other times he seems to be laughing. Does that mean that the desire of his heart has died within him? If the desire is there, then the groaning is there as well. Even if men fail to hear it, it never ceases to sound in the hearing of God.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

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Thursday of the Third Week of Advent

“This is for me like the days of Noah: As I swore then that the waters of Noah should never again flood the earth, So I have sworn now not to be angry with you, or to rebuke you.” (Isaiah 54:9.)

Saint Jerome offers the following insight on this verses from today’s First Reading:

“The sense that the Septuagint gives is confused and all things are disordered, so that what is said is hard to understand. It is not that I do not know what that very wise man has said on this chapter but rather that it does not satisfy my mind. For he takes it to be about a figurative flood that means the Savior’s baptism that in baptism he removed all sins. In this figure the water cleanses us, not washing away the dirtiness of flesh but by the appeal of a good conscience to God. The mountains and the hills are those saints who were not moved in the flood of this sort, having accepted the eternal covenant, although in the previous flood they were moved, but they left their weakness behind.” (Commentary on Isaiah, 15.)

Collect

Unworthy servants that we are, O Lord,
grieved by the guilt of our deeds,
we pray that You may gladden us
by the saving advent
of Your Only Begotten Son.
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

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Christ brings all revelation to perfection

Second Vatican Council

An excerpt from Dei Verbum, 3-4.

Thursday of the Third Week of Advent

God, who through the Word creates all things and keeps them in being, provides men with unfailing testimony to himself in creation. With the intention of opening up the way of salvation from above, he also revealed himself to our first parents from the very beginning.

After their fall, he lifted them up to hope for salvation by the promise of redemption, and watched over mankind with unceasing care, in order that he might give eternal life to all who in persevering in good works seek out salvation.

In his own good time God called Abraham, to make of him a mighty nation. After the patriarchs, he taught this nation through Moses and the prophets to acknowledge himself alone as the living and true God, a provident father and just judge, and to look forward to the promised Savior. So, through the ages, he prepared a way for the Gospel. After speaking at various times and in different ways through the prophets, God has finally spoken to us in these days through the Son.

He sent his Son, the eternal Word who enlightens all men, to dwell among men and make known to them the innermost things of God. Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, sent as a man to men, speaks the words of God, and brings to perfection the saving work that the Father gave him to do.

To see him is to see the Father also. By his whole presence and self-revelation, by words and actions, by signs and miracles, especially by his death and glorious resurrection from the dead, and finally by sending the Spirit of truth, he completes revelation and brings it to perfection, sealing by divine testimony its message that God is with us to free us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to eternal life.

The Christian dispensation, because it is the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away, and no new public revelation is any longer to be looked for before the manifestation in glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

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The knowledge of the mystery hidden in Christ Jesus

Saint John of the Cross

Priest and Doctor of the Church

An excerpt from his Spiritual Canticle

Memorial of Saint John of the Cross, Priest and Doctor of the Church

Though holy doctors have uncovered many mysteries and wonders, and devout souls have understood them in this earthly condition of ours, yet the greater part still remains to be unfolded by them, and even to be understood by them.

We must then dig deeply in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many pockets containing treasures: however deep we dig we will never find their end or their limit. Indeed, in every pocket new seams of fresh riches are discovered on all sides.

For this reason the apostle Paul said of Christ: In him are hidden all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God. The soul cannot enter into these treasures, nor attain them, unless it first crosses into and enters the thicket of suffering, enduring interior and exterior labors, and unless it first receives from God very many blessings in the intellect and in the senses, and has undergone long spiritual training.

All these are lesser things, disposing the soul for the lofty sanctuary of the knowledge of the mysteries of Christ: this is the highest wisdom attainable in this life.

Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire. The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross.

Saint Paul therefore urges the Ephesians not to grow weary in the midst of tribulations, but to be steadfast and rooted and grounded in love, so that they may know with all the saints the breadth, the length, the height and the depth—to know what is beyond knowledge, the love of Christ, so as to be filled with all the fullness of God.

The gate that gives entry into these riches of his wisdom is the cross; because it is a narrow gate, while many seek the joys that can be gained through it, it is given to few to desire to pass through it.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

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Memorial of Saint Lucy, Virgin and Martyr

““What is your opinion? A man had two sons. He came to the first and said, ‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.’ He said in reply, ‘I will not,’ but afterwards he changed his mind and went...” (Matthew 21:28-29)

In an ancient work known as the Incomplete Work on Matthew, an anonymous Ancient Christian Writer (ACW) offers the following insight on these verses from today’s Gospel:

“What does it mean to work in the vineyard? To work in the vineyard is to do justice. We noted above that the vineyard is the justice that God has planted generally in the nature of all people but more particularly in the Jewish Scriptures. Each vine in the vineyard represents a different type of justice, and each person, according to his individual virtues, produces either more or fewer vines. I do not know of anyone, however, who is sufficient to work the entire vineyard.

“And he said, ‘I will not.’” How did he say, “I will not”? He said it in his thoughts, for whoever understands the difference between good and evil and abandons the good to follow evil seems to be rebelling against the Lord in his thoughts; for “I will not” is spoken against the faculty of the intellect, which was created by God for himself. No one would ever have been able to sin unless he had first said in his heart “I will not,” as the prophet indicates: “Injustice speaks within him that he might sin.”3 The pagans, who abandoned God and his justice from the beginning and converted to the worship of idols and to a life of sin, seem to have rebelled in their thoughts, as though they had said, “We will not do the justice which we learned from you.”

“Approaching the other,” Jesus asked the same thing, and he replied, “‘I will go,’ but he did not go.” When the Jewish people, represented here by the younger son, were asked both by Moses and by John the Baptist, as though God were speaking through each of them, they promised that they would do everything the Lord commanded. Afterwards, however, they turned away and lied to God, as the prophet had foretold: “Foreign sons deceived me.”

“Which of these two did the will of the Father? They replied, ‘the first.’” Notice how, as we have already said above, attracted by the truth of the parable, they turned its meaning against themselves when they said that the first son, who represented the pagan Gentiles, had done the will of the father. It is better to do the righteousness of God without promising to do so than it is to promise and then to renege.” (Incomplete Work on Matthew, «Homily 40»)

Collect

May the glorious intercession
of the Virgin and Martyr Saint Lucy
give us new heart, we pray, O Lord,
so that we may celebrate her heavenly birthday
in this present age
and so behold things eternal.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

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Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent

Saint Augustine of Hippo

Bishop and Great Western Father of the Church

An excerpt his On the Psalms

Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent

God established a time for his promises and a time for their fulfillment.

The time for promises was in the time of the prophets, until John the Baptist; from John until the end is the time of fulfillment.

God, who is faithful, put himself in our debt, not by receiving anything but by promising so much. A promise was not sufficient for him; he chose to commit himself in writing as well, as it were making a contract of his promises. He wanted us to be able to see the way in which his promises were redeemed when he began to discharge them. And so the time of the prophets was, as we have often said, the foretelling of the promises.

He promised eternal salvation, everlasting happiness with the angels, an immortal inheritance, endless glory, the joyful vision of his face, his holy dwelling in heaven, and after resurrection from the dead no further fear of dying. This is as it were his final promise, the goal of all our striving. When we reach it, we shall ask for nothing more. But as to the way in which we are to arrive at our final goal, he has revealed this also, by promise and prophecy.

He has promised men divinity, mortals immortality, sinners justification, the poor a rising to glory.

But, brethren, because God’s promises seemed impossible to men — equality with the angels in exchange for mortality, corruption, poverty, weakness, dust and ashes — God not only made a written contract with men, to win their belief but also established a mediator of his good faith, not a prince or angel or archangel, but his only Son. He wanted, through his Son, to show us and give us the way he would lead us to the goal he has promised.

It was not enough for God to make his Son our guide to the way; he made him the way itself, that you might travel with him as leader, and by him as the way.

Therefore, the only Son of God was to come among men, to take the nature of men, and in this nature to be born as a man. He was to die, to rise again, to ascend into heaven, to sit at the right hand of the Father, and to fulfill his promises among the nations, and after that to come again, to exact now what he had asked for before, to separate those deserving his anger from those deserving his mercy, to execute his threats against the wicked, and to reward the just as he had promised.

All this had therefore to be prophesied, foretold, and impressed on us as an event in the future, in order that we might wait for it in faith, not find it a sudden and dreadful reality.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

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