The Meditation Good Shepherd Sunday - A.D. 2016 The Second Sunday After Easter April 10 th mmosaic of the Good Shepherd Mausoleum of Galla Placidia Ravenna, Italy Late Roman building of the 5 th cent. Considered one of the finest remaining buildings of its type and best preserved. Unique in that it presents Christ in a more regal setting as the Good Shepherd. Previous depictions were always more pastoral.
2. The Collect for the Second Sunday After Easter lmighty God, who hast given thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin, and also an ensample* of godly life; Give us grace that we may always most thankfully receive that his inestimable benefit, and also daily endeavor ourselves to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. * (Example) We live in Easter and Easter Lives in Us. We find these words in the song of Wisdom: From me comes every grace of faithful observance, from me all promise of life and vigor ( Ecclesiasticus; Ch. 24, Vs. 25 from the Latin Vulgate edition for clarity). Jesus Christ, (Who is Wisdom Incarnate) says; I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. All our hopes should be fixed on Christ, the knowledge of the Father. We can trust ourselves to Him from whom all true love comes. He, eternal Wisdom, beauty of truth, has come to be our Way. I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. ( St. John; Ch. 10, Vss. 10 & 11.) We are still in Eastertide, and the spirit of this great feast remains with us. Our hearts and minds are permeated by the thought of the central mystery of Jesus Christ the mystery of the Resurrection. It becomes clearer to us that Christ, by rising again, fulfilled himself. He who is life shows by his resurrection that he is God Truth itself. God is Truth. He who says I am that I am is one Being, true, beautiful, and good. He is the end of all our seeking, for those who seek Him in sincerity. The wisdom of this world never found God, and even when divine Wisdom became man, the world received him not. And yet, one who knows Him, knows the Father; one who sees Him, sees the Father. One knows Him as the Good Shepherd is known to the Father, and in turn, knows them. This is eternal life: to know Him, and through Him, is to know the Father. To know Him is eternal life. When a person knows something, they have in a certain sense, a share in that which they know. This person then has taken it in to phrase it best. It is no longer outside that person as a problem, or a thing that was strange to them; it now lives in them, becomes one with them. This is an explanation of Christ s word to know him is eternal life. According to our degree of grace, we take God unto ourselves. To know God is to possess Him. The words of the Psalmist come to mind: ( Glory ye in his holy Name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord (Psalm 105; Vs. 3 ). The person that seeks the Lord will find Him; he (or she) who finds Him will know Him ; and those that know Him will praise Him for all eternity. Jesus Christ is the Eternal Truth. He came to all mankind in the form of incarnate Wisdom in the frame of a man. We must surrender ourselves to Him Whom God the Father and Creator of the Universe has sent, if we really believe in Him. Jesus is the Word (the Logos). Jesus is the expression of God s Truth, and what the Son teaches us, is what He was given from the Father: that God is all Truth and in that Truth Christ lives and loves. Christians believe in Christ completely, because they know that His witness is true, and we know that Christ speaks the truth.
3. God is the living God. Psalm 36 declares: For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy Light shall we see Light. (Ps. 36; Vs. 9). Christ is God; He is in the Father and the Father in him, and they make One. The Father Who sent him lives, and He lives by the Father. In him there was life. (St. John; Ch. 1, Vs. 4) The words of Holy Scripture apply to Him: free among the dead, like the slain in the grave (1) - - - I shall not die, but live (2) and the verses out of the prayer of Jonah while held captive in the belly of the great fish: I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me forever: yet hast thou brought me up, my life from corruption, O Lord, my God. (Jonah: Ch. 2, Vs.6.) He is the resurrection and the life. And the Good News proclaims to all:... because I live, ye shall live also. ( St. John; Ch. 14, Vs. 19). Jesus died once and for all for our sins, and he rose again for our justification. This certainly is a lot to take in, but it s something that is important to understand if we seek to deepen our Easter experience and understanding of this great event, beyond where we ve always ended up with it... especially in Eastertide, a period that is just right for doing such things. Soon enough, Ascension-tide and Trinity-tide will be upon us, and we ll move along with the Church as its year continues to unfold! Frey Louis de Leon (1527 1591), was a Spanish Augustinian friar. He was a lyric poet, theologian, and academic. He was a smart guy, no question. He even sparred with the fellows running the Inquisition in Spain, until they figured out that what he was writing was in keeping with the Church s teachings they just couldn t understand it at first. Probably a fun but dangerous brother to hang around with! He wrote a tome entitled: Faces o Cara de Dios (Face or Faces of God), and an excerpt from that work may help better understand what has just been presented in this Meditation: Through Christ we know God: We say that Christ made man is the Face of God, because as each of us is known by his features, so God reveals Himself to us in Christ, showing us clearly what he is. So true is this that no single creature, not even all of them taken together, can reveal to us such sharpness of image or with so much light, the Nature of God as does Christ. This he does through his soul, his body, his instincts, thoughts, words and deeds all, in fact that belongs to his office. The soul of Christ, image of God: Because God knows and has before His eyes all that is or could be. The soul of Christ also sees all that was, is and will be. In God s knowledge lies the reason for all things, and in his soul the knowledge of all arts and sciences. God is the fount of all being; and the soul of Christ is the source of all good being; I mean all the good things of grace and justice, for it is his grace which is poured out on us. He is not merely full of grace in God s sight for his own benefit, but for ours also. He possesses the fullness of justice by which all can be made just. Of his fullness we have all received (St. John: Ch. 1, Vs. 16). Finally, God creates and sustains the universe, guiding it and deriving honor from it. The soul of Christ re-creates, defends and repairs, inspires and encourages towards all good men, as far as in him lies.
4. In meekness: He says of himself that he is meek and humble and invites us to learn of him, that we may have the same qualities... And we must not think that Christ is meek and humble merely because of the grace which is in him. Just as by natural inclination men tend towards virtue, some towards one, some towards another, so the human nature of Christ by its very make up is full of meekness and humility. However, although Christ was by nature and by grace perfectly humble and meek, on the other hand He possessed such greatness of soul that He is also the King of men, Lord of the angels, Head of all things, to be adored by all, to be at God s right hand, united with Him and one Person with Him. Surely this is nothing else but the perfect image of God? In his love: What shall I say of the love God has for us and the charity towards us which burns in the soul of Christ? What things God does for men and what the humanity of Christ has suffered for them!... So that we might not suffer the pains of hell and that we might enjoy the rewards of heaven, Christ suffered prison, blows and a dreadful death. And to the same end God, to whom such suffering in his own nature was impossible, sought for, and found a way of suffering in his own person. That burning and ardent will Christ had to die for men was but a flame which was lighted from that fire of love and desire which burns in the will of God, who became man for us. Excerpt from; Fr. Luis De Leon; The Face orfaces of God... The Complete works 2 nd Edit. Pp. 422-3 St. Paul could truthfully say: I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. (Gal.; Ch. 2, Vs. 20). We can say after him; Christ is my life. Not merely in the sense that he is our ideal, the good that we seek. He is the life by which we live, he by Whom we live at this very moment. He decides every detail of our present existence; Christ is my life my actual everyday life! He is in every circumstance of it, and I / we meet him in each one. If we try to arrange things for ourselves, then it is no longer Christ who lives in us, it is just we who live... for ourselves. Indeed, there is but one Way; the Way in which We walk with Jesus. Christ in me, and I in Him, without Whom there is no salvation. Jesus said it Himself; No man cometh to the Father except by Me -(St. John; Ch. 14, Vs. 6 ). Present-day society may try to deny these words, claiming they are not all-inclusive, but it doesn t change the reality of their Truth, for if it were not the Truth, Jesus Christ would not have said it, for in Christ is the Truth. Christ, the Son of God... the Father Who is the Fountain of all Truth. Humanity, being what it is, will never be sufficiently convinced that Christ is the center of all things. His Person is the center of the world; of history, of the Liturgy, of the life of each one of us. There are times when at least something of this mystery seems to become closer to us, for example, when we sing the Gloria, Agnus Dei, or the Kyrie eleison, in the Mass, and never more than at Easter tide when, full of jubilation at the Lord s great triumph, we pray: Lord, have mercy upon us. No other Christe eleison is sung with such full trust, and even tenderness. Truly, Thou art the Way, O only-begotten Son of the Father, Christ Jesus, Lord God, Lamb of God. Thou, that takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us! Thou, who takest away the sins of the world, hear our prayer!
5. Thou that sittest at the right hand of the Father, have mercy upon us! For, Thou only art holy, Thou only art the Lord; thou only art God most high. O Jesus Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father! Amen. (1) Psalm 88; Vs. 5 (2) - Psalm 118; Vs. 17 From the Fathers of the Church Council for Clergy on Good shepherd Sunday Hard Work... Do not go to a corner in the cemetery to weep for the souls of the dead! Instead, hurry forth to seek them and abhor routine. Youths ( young clerics k.l.l.) are inclined to be hard working to the point of temerity ( rashness ), while older priests are prudent to the point of doing very little. Happy is the parish which has an older parish priest and a young curate united in brotherly harmony! Let both get together to make plans and take measures to deal with the parish, one acting as a goad and the other as a brake! Young priests are accustomed to confuse novelty with progress; they must learn that projects which have no roots, except in the heart and imagination, are not usually fertile. On the other hand, parish priests who have to hold the reins must remember that prudence does not consist in putting on the brake, but in directing, and thus they should act without presumption or fear. Patient Labor... Act always with patience, especially with children, with penitents, and those who must be attended at the time most convenient to them, not that which is less troublesome to us; with those who are importunate (annoying), remembering that the penance which is most pleasing to God is that which He sends; with the uneducated, remembering that if we have more culture than they, it is because it was given to us ; and with the ungrateful, those who are hostile, that we may be more like our Lord.
6. Hidden work... Many curates are enthusiastic as soon as they hear the word: movement guilds, associations, liturgical movements, confraternities, pilgrimages, etc. ; but they are more lazy when it comes to work which does not feed their self-esteem. Our Lord left us an inheritance of prayer, patience, care for the sick, visiting the home-bound, and catechizing the children; a treasure which is not praised by men but glorified by the Father who knows all secrets. Persevering work: Who is not capable of a burst of energy? There are some who cannot live with such outbursts, but the truth is that real virtue lies in constancy. The two fundamental conditions for success are lack of confidence in oneself and a perfect confidence in God. Work with the support of these two pillars and you will not tire because of the effort required nor because of the lack of results Charity in Action: In Temporal Matters: The money which the faithful give to the priest is not his ; it belongs to the service of God and the poor. Inordinate affection for money is one vice which the faithful will never pardon in their priests... Be poor and love it! Arrange matters in such a way that you die poor. In the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, who being rich, became poor for our sakes (2 Cor.; Ch. 8, Vs. 9.) In the name of our glorious predecessors from St. Paul to the Cure of Ars ( and John Henry Newman): in the name of the liturgy, which causes us to pray ; Blessed is the man who does not run after gold or put his hope in riches... I beg of you to strip yourselves of all that is superfluous in the manner of furniture, food, and all that you possess. In Spiritual Matters: You are mediators between God and man, therefore you should exercise this spiritual mediation in word, example, the sacraments and spiritual direction. Wherever you are, be priests! You are also mediators between the faithful and God. Let your sacerdotal mediation be intercession. Pray and do penance, and thus you will draw nearer to God. Our house is the Church, and the church is a house of prayer. Hand over your liberty and your person: All this would seem to be so little if I did not exhort you: Give yourself as our Lord did, who loved me and delivered Himself for me (Gal.; Ch. 2, Vs. 20). Understand what you are doing, and imitate what you are handling. (i.e. Jesus Christ) - translated from the Latin Abbe (Father) Chevrier used to pray three times; once before the Crib, again before the crucifix, and finally before the Blessed Sacrament in the Tabernacle. His meditation was: I am a priest who has nothing; I am a crucified priest; I am a priest who is food for the faithful.
7. Final exhortation: Let us carry always in our hearts this final exhortation: Follow me (says our Lord), love me more than my faithful people, love me to the point where you are ready to lay down your life for me and be crucified for me. Then you will be a good shepherd. I hand over to you my priesthood: you are a shepherd, but the flock is mine. Woe to you should you rob me of my sheep and use them for the benefit of your own sensuality, vanity, pride in command or lowly interests! Happy are you, blessed in your person and in your ministry, if you remain united to me by faith, by desire to imitate me and my love. I myself will complete and make fruitful your labors. Fear nothing and nobody! If God be with you then who can stand against you? Simon Peter trusted in himself and denied me three times before a serving maid. Later he relied on faith in my divinity, was fortified by my love and thus participated in my cross and in my glory. Excerpted from a series of retreats for priests given by Cardinal Joseph Mercier (1851 1926) to the clergy of his diocese in Belgium in 1918. Although Cardinal Mercier s discourse was tailored for priests, it s good to remember that every Bishop, Priest, and Deacon, serves God s Holy Catholic Church as a shepherd in one form or another as circumstances direct. We present this week s offering in that spirit to all our clergy readers! - Fr. k.l.l. My Jesus! My Lord, and my All! The Meditation is an on line apostolate of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Priory in Raymond, Maine. We are Anglo-Catholic Benedictine contemplative community that follows the Holy Rule of St. Benedict, the Father of Western monasticism. We are affiliated within the Diocese of the Northeast of the Anglican Church in America (ACA), a member of the worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion.
8. The Meditation is a weekly on line offering sent out free of charge to anyone who desires to receive it. Subscribers may copy and pass along the Meditation to their friends, or send us their e-addresses (with their permission) to add to our subscription list. Each edition is sent out as a BCC (Blank Copy) in respect to subscriber privacy. Contact Fr. Kevin at klamarre@maine.rr.com to subscribe. In respect to our contemplative vocation and the animals in our rescue and rehab center, we do not have guest facilities and do not receive visitors during the winter months. Visit our Webpage at: www.ourladyofsevensorrows.org Priory Kalendar For the week of April 10 th to April 17 th A. D. 2016 In Eastertide Sunday April 10 th... Second Sunday After Easter Good Shepherd Sunday Monday, April 11 th..... St.Leo the Great; Po. C. & Doct. 5 th cent. Italy Tuesday, April 12 th..... feria in Easter tide. Wednesday, April 13 th.. Patronage of St. Joseph Thursday April 14 th.... St. Justin Martyr; C. & Myr. Palestine & Rome, 2 nd cent. Friday, April 15th........................................... keys of the Rogation Days Saturday, April 16 th... Saturday of the Blessed Virgin Mary; Mass & Office of the BVM. Sunday, April 17 th.....third Sunday After Easter Kalendar Key Ab. = Abbot, Abs. = Abbess, Abp. = Archbishop, Anc. = Anchorite, Ancs. = Anchoress, Ap. = Apostle, Bl. = Blessed, Br. = Brother, Bp. = Bishop, Card. = Cardinal, C. or Conf. = Confessor, Comm. = Commemoration, Dcn. = Deacon, Doct. = Doctor of the Church, Ev. = Evangelist, H. = Hermit, LBr. = Laybrother, LSr. = Laysister, K. = King, Mat. = Matron, M. = Monk, M.M. = Month s Mind ( 30 day requiem for the recently departed ), Myr. = Martyr, N. Nun, Obl. = Oblate, P. = Priest, Po. = Pope, Pr. = Prior, Prs. = Prioress, R. = Recluse, RM = Requiem Mortorum, ( monthly requiem of the departed), Q. = Queen, Ven. = Venerable, Vir. = Virgin, W. = Widow. FASTING Key:.. A = Abstinence, F = Fast, F & A = Fast and Abstinence RELIGIOUS ORDERS: C.O. = Congregation of the Oratory Oratorians, C.P = Congregation of the Passion Passionists, C.S.J. = Congregation of the Society of Jesus Jesuits, Er. Cam. = Camaldolese Hermits, F.P.O. = Franciscans of the Primitive Observance, O. Car. = Carmelite Order, O. Cart. = Carthusian Order, O.C.D. = Order of Discalced Friars = Carmelites, O.F.A. = Augustinian Order, O.F.M. = Order of Friars Minor Franciscans, O.F.M. Cap. = Capuchins, O.P. = Order of Preachers = Dominicans (Blackfriars), O. Praem. = Order of Cannons Regular Norbertines ( White Monks), OS.B. = Order of St. Benedict Benedictines, O.S.U = Ursulines, O.C.O. = Order of the Cistercian Observance Trappists, O.C.S.O. = Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance = Trappists.
9. nnnicholas enjoying the morning sun! Nicholas is one of five Chihuahua that were brought to us 13 years ago with some of his sisters. Each one had birth deformaties and some had broken bones from an over enthusiastic grandchild in the home. Nick has a severe under bite and canines that look more like tusks. He is also deaf, has foot issues and has a serious heart murmur. He has always been very smart and a challenge to groom due to his past abuse. As a baby he would watch all of his brothers and sisters go to the front of the whelping pen when people came to pick a puppy. Once the puppies were held, they never came back. He learned that if he went to the back of the pen and made himself as flat as he possibly could and laid very still by the crate, becoming invisible in his mind, no one would touch him and therefore he did not leave home. He was quite literally, the last man standing until the day that the breeder showed up at our door with a surprise in his coat. Nick was as surprised as we were and thrilled to be reunited with some of his sisters. His favorite thing to do in his old age is to lie in any spot where there is sun. He especially loves the back door in the kitchen where he can get a tan AND watch the horses. Any day that the sun shines is a good day for Nicholas and on cloudy ones he snuggles up to the wood stove and smiles. P A X