Franciscan at Home

This liturgical meditation is take from Guardini's book, Sacred Signs.

It was morning. I had climbed a height and was turning back. Deep below lay the lake, and all round in the early light stood the mountains, great and silent. All was pure – the sky high above, the trees with their nobly formed fresh branches. And in myself, all my being was full of clear joyous force, so that I felt as if innumerable, invisible fountains were springing silently forth and all mounting into the bright wide heavens.

Then I understood how a man’s heart may overflow, as he stands lifting up his face, and, with outstretched hands, as if holding a paten up to endless Goodness, to the Father of Light, to God Who is Love – and offers to Him all that is around and in the world below, welling up, and brightening in the overflowing silence.

It must be to him as if all things rose up clear and holy from the paten in his hands.

Here Lorraine Buckley reflects on a theme that may be far from our minds at Christmas but is nevertheless a reality the Church brings forward for our contemplation in the liturgy of Christ’s birth.

It may seem odd to reflect on the last things at Christmas time, but this is what the Church’s liturgy invites us to do. The Post-Modern philosophy that pervades the current cultural climate in the West rejects all types of universal meta-narratives, fragmenting our world-view and outlook. The seasons of Advent and Christmas offer particular opportunities to help break out of this cultural trend. During Advent we have been preparing ourselves to celebrate the first coming of Christ in Bethlehem and renewing our desire for Christ’s second coming. Christmas is a time when Mother Church invites her children through the liturgy to step back from our day-to-day concerns to take a wider view: one which spans the whole history of salvation from the beginning of time to the eschaton. The Masses for the Nativity are a rich liturgical source for supplementing catechesis on death, judgment, heaven and hell.
The Gospel for Mass during the Day of the Solemnity of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ[i] reminds us that “in the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God”[ii] and then recounts creation, the Incarnation, and the purpose of the Incarnation in bringing light to the world so that all could become children of God who would see His glory. This short little scripture passage encapsulates the whole history of creation and salvation.

This liturgical meditation is taken from Romano Guardini's book, Sacred Signs.

‘And I saw …… and an angel came, and stood before the altar, having a golden censer, and there was given him much incense……. And the smoke of the incense of the prayers of the saints ascended up before God, from the hand of the angel.’ So says St John in the Apocalypse.

There is a grand beauty in this laying of the bright grains on the glowing coal and then the scented smoke rising from the swinging censer. It is like a melody with rhythmic movement and sweet odour. Without any purpose, as clear as a song. Beautiful squandering of costliness. A gift of un-reserving love.

So once, when the Lord sat at table in Bethany, and Mary brought the costly spikenard and poured it over His feet, and dried them with her hair, and the house was filled with odour, narrow minds murmured: ‘To what purpose is this waste?’ The Son of God replied: ‘Let her alone, she hath done it for my burial.’ A mystery of death was here, of love, of odour, of sacrifice.

This liturgical meditation is taken from Romano Guardini's book, Sacred Signs.

It is spread out on the altar; it lies, in the corporal, as a winding cloth, under chalice and Host; the priest, when he performs the sacred service, is vested in the alb, the white linen garment; linen covers the table of the Lord at which the divine bread is distributed…

True linen is a costly thing, clean and fine and strong. When it lies there so white and fresh I can only think of a forest walk in winter, when I came suddenly to an open slope which lay covered with freshly fallen snow spread out spotless between the dark pines. I did not dare to walk over it with my coarse boots – I walked round it most reverently. So lies the linen spread out for the Holy Things.

You go for a walk in the country late on an autumn evening. All around you is dark and cold. The soul feels quite alone in the dead space. Its desires for the living seeks all round, but nothing responds. The leafless tree, the cold hillside, the empty plain – all is dead! The soul is the only living thing in the wilderness. Then, suddenly, at a turn in the road, a light shines forth – Does it not call across to us? As if in answer to the seeking of the soul? As if something expected, something fitting?

Or you sit late in a darkening room. The walls stand grey and indifferent, the furniture is dumb. Then there comes a well-known step; a skilful hand applies a match to the fire; there is a crackling; a flame leaps up; and a red glow fills the room, and a cheerful warmth flows towards you. How everything is transformed! Everything has received a soul – as when a lifeless face suddenly becomes lit up with a friendly life.

Yes, fire is near akin to living. It is the purest symbol of our living soul, an image of all that we experience in our inner life, warm and shining, ever in motion, ever striving upwards.

This liturgical mediation is taken from Romano Guardini's book, Sacred Signs.

Natural space has three directions or dimensions as we know. They signify that we have orderly space and no chaos. The ordering is of things side by side, above and below, before and behind one another. The effects are that life can be built up in a rational way and can move; that we can construct and shape our dwellings, and live in them.

Supernatural space, sacred space, also has its due order. It is founded on mystery.

The Church is built from west to east, looking towards the rising sun; the chord of the sun’s arc, the zodiac, runs through it; it is intended to catch the first rays and the last. Christ is the sun of the sacred world; the direction of His course is the order of sacred space, of all building and shaping that is rightly ordered towards eternal life.

At the edge of a wood stands a larkspur, its deep green leaves characteristically rounded, and with delicately bending, yet firmly formed, slender, stem.  The blossom seems as if cut out of heavy silk, of a blue as deep as a gem, so that the whole air around seems filled with it.  Someone comes and plucks the flower, and then, getting tired of it, throws it on the fire.  In a few moments the whole bright splendour has become a small streak of grey ash.

t was the Associate Pastor’s first Sunday in his new assignment. He was counseled (or cautioned) by the pastor that the congregation was somewhat unenthusiastic during Mass. The idea came to him to begin Mass with a joke or humorous story as a way of engaging them. As the choir concluded what seemed like their Broadway debut, he tapped the microphone to test its sound. Nothing! He panicked and tapped it again this time speaking apologetically to the congregation, ‘Something’s wrong with the mic.’ To which everyone dutifully responded, ‘And also with you, Father!’

Ah, the familiarity of the Mass responses! We could say them with our eyes closed - and perhaps sometimes many of us early risers do! Yet familiarity can be a good thing, for it allows us to concentrate on the symbolic gestures during Mass and to ponder the depth of their meaning. However, come November 27, 2011 when the Church begins to use the revised translation of the 2002 Roman Missal, some of this familiarity will diminish, and for many Catholics this will be a challenge. Even if priests spend the recommended year preparing their congregation for the new texts, it is most certain that for a few Sundays following November 27, 2011, some in the congregation will continue to profess proudly their faith in Christ who is ‘one in being’ with the Father, instead of ‘consubstantial.’ Habits are hard to change - especially prayerful ones.

Often our struggles with change - especially in the area of Church discipline or teaching - result from misunderstandings, which in turn can lead to camps or ‘extremist ideology.’ At one extreme we can find a certain ‘dogmatic fundamentalism’ or ‘traditionalism’ that views change, especially liturgical change, as a ‘rupture from the past.’ At the other extreme lies a kind of ‘enlightened progressivism’ that sees reality in ‘continuous flux’ and theology in a state of ‘process.’

Neither position is true, as Blessed John Henry Cardinal Neman insightfully demonstrates in his magnificent work, The Development of Doctrine. Organic growth in doctrine is always rooted in the unchanging reality of Jesus Christ and His revelation, even as it matures or develops into fuller expression.

This liturgical meditation is take from Guardini's book, Sacred Signs.

We long for union with God, and we must so long, for it is our inmost need. Our soul points out two ways of obtaining this: they are different ways, but both reach the same goal.

The first way to union goes by knowledge and love.

Knowledge is a union: by knowing things we penetrate them and draw them into ourselves; they become our own, a part of our life. So also all love is union – not a mere striving, but in itself a union. So far as a man loves something, so far doe it already belong to him.

This union is, however, of a special kind: we express this by saying that it is ‘spiritual.’

Yet this word does not fully say all, for the other union, of which we shall speak later, is also spiritual. What we mean is that this union is one not of being, but of motion; of consciousness and frame of mind.

Is there any outward form for this – a likeness? Certainly, and a very wonderful one – light and heat.

This liturgical meditation is taken from Romano Guardini's book, Sacred Signs.

The church space within speaks of God. It belongs to the Lord and is quite filled with His holy presence. For it is God’s House, separated off from the world, enclosed in walls and vaulted roof. This space is turned inwards, towards the hidden God. It speaks of the mystery of God.

But what of the space without? The great wide space over the plain, which extends endlessly on all sides? The space on the hills, spread out into the infinite? In the valleys, deep lying, surrounded by mountains? Is all this not connected with sanctity?

Most certainly this also. From the House of God the tower grows up into the free air and, as it were, takes possession of it in God’s name. In the tower, in the belfry hang the bells of heavy brass.