ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

I only appreciate fully that God is my "highest good" when I learn (in the Son) that I am a "good" to him, affirmed by him; this is what guarantees my being and my freedom. And it is only when I learn that I represent a "good" and a "thou" to God that I can fully trust in the imparted gift of being and freedom and so, affirmed from and by eternity, really affirm myself too. HANS URS VON BALTHASAR Theo-Drama II: The Dramatis Personae: Man in God , 287

There is no question that the spirit, when it begins to be frequently under the influence of the divine light becomes wholly translucent, to the point of itself seeing the fullness of its own light… But Saint Paul clearly teaches that everything which appears to it in bodily shape…comes from the malice of the enemy, when he says that the enemy disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11.14). The ascetic life must not therefore be undertaken with such a hope in mind… It's sole purpose is to come to love God with a sensation in the heart of total certainty, which means ‘with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind’ (Luke 10.27). DIADOCHUS OF PHOTIKE Gnostic Chapters , 40  

We are said to drink the blood of Christ not only when we receive it according to the right of the mysteries, but also when we receive his words, in which life dwells, as he said himself: ‘The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life’ (John 6.63). ORIGEN Homilies on Numbers , 16,9 In truth, before Jesus, Scripture was like water, but since Jesus it has become for us the wine into which Jesus changed the water. ORIGEN C ommentary on St. John’s Gospel , 13,60

It can happen that when we are at prayer some brothers come to see us. Then we have to choose, either to interrupt our prayer or to sadden our brother by refusing to answer him. But love is greater than prayer. Prayer is one virtue amongst others, whereas love contains them all. JOHN CLIMACUS The Ladder of Divine Ascent , 26th Step 43(52)

With God there are never halfway measures, and when with loving compassion he descends into the womb of Mary, he takes on our flesh, all of it. God loses himself in love for his own creation. This exquisite loving “lostness” of God is who Jesus is. And i n today’s Gospel this compassionate “lostness” of Jesus is given new pitch and poignancy as he identifies himself completely with those who are hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, imprisoned or strangers: “ ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.’ ” These words of the Lord were in the first place directed to all those who cared for his first disciples. Nonetheless, in the prayer and pondering of countless generations, Jesus’ words have been amplified, broadened and understood to include any and all “least ones;” who are to be esteemed as sacraments of his presence among us. How many saints and holy founders, and brave missionaries have heard these words of Jesus and put everything else asi...

The body is subject to various sorts of illness. Some are easy to treat, others are not, and for the latter, recourse is had to incisions, cauterization, bitter medicine… We are told something of the same sort about the judgment in the next world, the healing of the soul’s infirmities. If we are superficial people, that amounts to a threat and a process of severe correction, so that the fear of a painful expiation may lead us to fly from wrongdoing and become wiser people. But the faith of deeper minds regards it as a process of healing and a therapy applied by God in such a way as to bring back the being he created to its original grace. In fact those who by incisions or cauterization remove boils or warts that have formed contrary to nature on the surface of the body, do not bring about the healing without pain; but it is not to do harm to the patient that they carry out the incision. It is the same with the ‘warts’ that have formed on our souls…at the moment of judgment they are cut...

If it happens that in seeing God one understands what is seen, that means it is not God himself who is seen but one of those knowable things that owe their being to him. For in himself he transcends all intelligence and all essence. He exists in a superessential mode and is known beyond all understanding only in so far as he is utterly unknown and does not exist at all. And it is that perfect unknowing, taken in the best sense of the word, the constitutes the true knowing of him who transcends all knowing. DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE Mystical Theology , II The infinite is without doubt something of God, but not God himself, who is infinitely beyond even that. MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR Ambigua The mystery that is beyond God himself, the Ineffable, that gives its name to everything, is complete affirmation, complete negation, beyond all affirmation and all negation. DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE Divine Names , II,4

“Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?” Then he said to him, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.”   Luke 17:17–19 He was saved by faith through the expression of gratitude! What a wonderful story to ponder today as we celebrate the national holiday of Thanksgiving! Though Thanksgiving Day is not specifically a Church holy day, gratitude is certainly central to our Christian faith, as is illustrated by today’s Gospel in which ten lepers were healed by Jesus. And their communal reaction is something of which to take note. Nine of them were healed and went about their business, not returning to the source of their healing to thank Him. But one did. This one leper, who was suddenly no longer a leper, returned to Jesus, glorified Him, fell at His feet and thanked Him. This one leper was a foreigner, a Samaritan, but he manifested a faith that we must all strive to imitate. The faith of this Samarit...

For your part then apply all your zeal to the reading of Scripture, with faith and the goodwill that are pleasing to God. It is not enough for you to knock and seek. What is needed above all in order to obtain the understanding of divine matters is prayer. ORIGEN Letter to Gregory Thaumaturgus , 3 If you wish to attain to true knowledge of the Scriptures, hasten to acquire first an unshakable humility of heart. That alone will lead you, not to the knowledge that puffs up, but to that which enlightens, by the perfecting of love. JOHN CASSIAN Conferences , XIV, 10 Never approach the words of the mysteries that are in the Scriptures without praying and asking for God's help. Say, ‘Lord, grant me to feel the power that is in them’. Reckon prayer to be the key that opens the true meaning of the Scriptures. ISAAC OF NINEVEH Ascetic Treatises , 73

And the child was three years old, and Joachim said: Invite the daughters of the Hebrews that are undefiled, and let them take each a lamp, and let them stand with the lamps burning, that the child may not turn back, and her heart be captivated from the temple of the Lord. And they did so until they went up into the temple of the Lord. And the priest received her, and kissed her, and blessed her, saying: The Lord has magnified your name in all generations. In you, on the last of the days, the Lord will manifest His redemption to the sons of Israel. And he set her down upon the third step of the altar, and the Lord God sent grace upon her; and she danced with her feet, and all the house of Israel loved her. And her parents went down marveling, and praising the Lord God, because the child had not turned back. And Mary was in the temple of the Lord as if she were a dove that dwelt there, and she received food from the hand of an angel. ~  Protoevangelium of James There are three “gosp...

As Jesus approached Jericho a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging, and hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what was happening. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” He shouted, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!” The people walking in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent, but he kept calling out all the more, “Son of David, have pity on me!”   Luke 18:35–39 This story of the healing of this blind man, named Bartimaeus in the Gospel of Mark, sets for us a model of how we must come to Jesus in prayer.  To begin, this “blind man was sitting by the roadside begging.” We must see this as an ideal image of how to begin our prayer. We come to God with nothing. Unable to see. A beggar. And one who is incapable of meeting our own spiritual needs. This is Bartimaeus, and this must be the way we come to our Lord in prayer. Sometimes we can fall into the illusion that our prayers are so elevated and pious that God must be very impressed. If that’s your s...

In today’s parable one servant is entrusted with five talents, another two, and another one. In it we are confronted with the mystery of difference in the divine plan. Different ‘talents’ and different amounts of ‘talents’ are bestowed on different people.   On one level we find natural differences. There are differences of age, physical abilities, differences in intellectual or moral aptitudes, differences in benefits according to the social setting in which one finds oneself, family, whether one lives in the city or country, differences in the distribution of wealth.   The Catechism speaks of these differences in the article on Social Justice: “On coming into the world, it says, man is not equipped with everything he needs for developing his bodily and spiritual life. He needs others… These differences belong to God’s plan, who wills that each receive what he needs from other, and that those endowed with particular “talents” share the benefits with those who need them. These...

Faith is the doorway to the mysteries. What the eyes of the body are for physical objects, faith is for the hidden eyes of the soul. Just as we have two bodily eyes, so we have two spiritual eyes, and each has its own way of seeing. With one we see the glory of God hidden in creatures: with the other we contemplate the glory of God's holy nature when he deigns to give us access to the mysteries. ISAAC OF NINEVEH Ascetic Treatises , 72

We have to take particular care to follow the Gospel precept that bids us go into our inner room and shut the door to pray to our Father. This is how to do it. We are praying in our inner room when we withdraw our heart completely from the clamor of our thoughts and preoccupations, and in a kind of secret dialogue, as between intimate friends, we lay bare our desires before the Lord. We are praying with our door shut when, without opening our mouth we call on the One who takes no account of words but considers the heart. We are praying in secret when we speak to God with the heart alone and with concentration of the soul, and make known our state of mind to him alone, in such a way that even the enemy powers themselves cannot guess their nature. Such is the reason for the deep silence that it behooves us to keep in prayer… Thus our prayers should be frequent but short, for fear that if they are prolonged the enemy might have an opportunity to insinuate distraction into them. This is tr...

One day a soldier asked an elder whether God grants pardon to sinners. The elder answered, ‘Tell me, my good friend, if your cloak is torn, do you throw it away?’ The soldier replied, ‘No. I mend it and continue to use it.’ The elder continued, ‘ If you take good care of your cloak, will not God be merciful to his own image?’ Sayings of the Desert Fathers (In T. Merton, p. 113) God in his love punishes, not to take revenge, far from it. He seeks the restoration of his own image and does not prolong his anger. ISAAC OF NINEVEH Ascetic Treatises , 73  

By prayer I mean not that which is only in the mouth, but that which springs up from the bottom of the heart. In fact, just as trees with deep roots are not shattered or uprooted by storms…in the same way prayers that come from the bottom of the heart, having their roots there, rise to heaven with complete assurance and are not knocked off course by the assault of any thought. That is why the psalm says: ‘Out of the deep have I called onto thee, O Lord’ (Psalm 130.1). JOHN CHRYSOSTOM   On the Incomprehensibility of God , Sermon 5 If you want to pray, you need God, who gives prayer to one who prays. EVAGRIUS OF PONTUS On Prayer, 59 (Philokalia I,181)

Two men who wanted to see the sunrise would be very foolish to argue about the place where it will appear and their means of looking at it, then to let their argument degenerate into a quarrel, from that to come to blows and in the heat of the conflict to gouge out each others eyes. There would no longer be any question then of contemplating the dawn…  Let us who wish to contemplate God purify our hearts by faith and heal them by means of peace; for the effort we make to love one another is already a gift from him to whom we raise our eyes. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO   Sermons , 23,18 An elder replied, ‘I tell you, many have ruined their bodies with no discernment and gone away without finding anything. We may have evil smelling breath because of our fasting, we may know the Scriptures by heart, we may recite all the psalms… and still lack what God is looking for—love and humility. Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers , 90

Year A, November 12, 2023   1 st Wis. 6:13-16, Ps. 63, 2 nd 1Thes. 4:13-18 Gospel Mt. 25:1-13.        It's November, and we are coming to the end of the liturgical year with the Solemn Feast of Christ, the King of the Universe, which occurs this year two weeks from now on November 26.   The Sunday gospels in these weeks are concerned with the end of all time in the glorious coming of the Son of Man, our Lord Jesus Christ the King of Kings.   In today's gospel parable or allegory, Jesus depicts himself as the Bridegroom coming from the home of his bride to take her to his own home to celebrate for all to see his marriage to his Bride.   In the the parable, however, the Bride who would, of course, represent the Church, all believers, is not mentioned.   Rather, in this case the 10 virgins who carry their lamps in the darkness represent the early Church and all of us through the course of the Church's history who also intend, who hope at least...

St. Martin of Tours was born in the year 316 in Sabaria, Pannonia (now   Szombathely, Hungary) and died November 8, 397 in Candes, Gaul (France). He is the patron saint   of   France, father of   monasticism   in Gaul, and the first great leader of Western monasticism. Of pagan parentage, Martin chose   Christianity   at age 10. As a youth, he was forced into the Roman army, but later—according to his   disciple   and biographer   Sulpicius Severus—he petitioned the Roman emperor   Julian the Apostate   to be released from the army because “I am Christ’s soldier: I am not allowed to fight.” When charged with cowardice, he is said to have offered to stand in front of the battle line armed only with the   sign of the cross. He was imprisoned but was soon discharged. Legend   holds that while he was still in the military and a   catechumen   of the faith, Martin cut his cloak in half to share it with a beggar. ...

When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected pope, taking the name Benedict XVI, the first words he spoke from the balcony of Saint Peter’s Basilica referred to his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, whom he referred to as “the great pope.” Since then, many have referred to him as “John Paul the Great.” Prior to that, only three popes came to be universally called “the Great”—Saint Gregory the Great (590–604), Saint Nicholas the Great (858–867), and the pope we honor today, Saint Leo the Great (440–461), who was the first pope to receive that title. Leo was born in Tuscany, within the Western Roman Empire, at a time when the empire was experiencing decline due to ongoing threats of barbarian invasions, internal administrative disputes, and a difficult economic situation. Leo considered himself a Roman, since he spent his early years in the city. While still young, he was ordained a deacon in Rome under Pope Celestine and served him and his successor, Pope Sixtus III, in this capacity from 430–439....