Franciscan at Home

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.

He only can bless who has power; he only can bless who can create: God alone can bless.

God looks upon His creature and blesses him.

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

He calls him by name: His almighty love turns towards the heart and life-centre of His creature, and from God’s hand flows the power which gives growth, which gives fertility, health, and goodness: “I will have regard to you, and make you to grow.”

Only God can bless: for a blessing is a decree on what is, and what acts; blessing is a word of power from the Lord of creation, it is a promise and a prophecy from the Lord of providence; blessing is good fortune.

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

We men have become gross; of many profound and delicate things we now know nothing. The word is one of those things: we think of it as superficial, for we no longer realise its inwardness; we think of it as transitory, for we no longer feel its force – it does not hit, it does not strike; it is only a light structure of sounds. But it is a fine body for something spiritual. The essence of some object before us, and what is awakened in our own soul on seeing it – these two meet and find expression in the word.

That is how it should be, and how it surely was with the first man.

In the earliest pages of Holy Writ we are told that God “brought the animals to Adam, to see what he would call them.” With open mind and seeing soul, man looked through the form of the animal and spoke its name, and his soul responded to the creature. Something stirred in him which stood in special relationship to that creature, for man is the summary and union of all creation.

And this essence of the thing outside, and this response within man himself, both in living union, were the twofold source of the name spoken by man.

En una época en que la igualdad y la no discriminación son consideradas por muchos como los más altos e incluso los únicos principios de moralidad, entre las verdades que hoy en día más les cuesta a muchos Católicos (o que podrían ser católicos) comprender, aceptar o justificar, es la reserva del sacerdocio únicamente para varones.

Mi objetivo aquí es dar una clara presentación de lo que la misma Iglesia dice acerca de este tema, con la esperanza de que será útil para aquellos que transmiten la fe de la Iglesia, en especial con aquellos que están involucrados en programas de catecumenado o de RICA, o similares, que se ocupan de personas que pueden muy probablemente influenciados por estos dos “dogmas” modernos de igualdad y no-discriminación. Consideraré sólo los argumentos que se encuentran dentro de los documentos del Magisterio, ya que con ellos viene una cierta seguridad de su validez.

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

How does a man hold himself when he is proud? He stands up straight, lifts his head and spreads out his shoulders and makes the most of himself. Everything about him says ‘I am bigger and greater than you!’ But if a man is humble and ‘feels small,’ he bends his head and, as it were, sinks into himself. He ‘lowers himself.’ And the greater the person before whom he stands, the more does he lower himself, and the smaller he feels in his own eyes.

And when do we feel more clearly our littleness than when we stand before God, the great God, who is the same yesterday as today, the same through all the centuries and thousands of years? It is He Who fills this room, this city and the whole wide world; Who stretches far beyond all the starry heaven, and before Whom it is all but a speck of dust. The holy God, pure and just, and of endless greatness. How great He is – and how little I am! So little, that I cannot measure myself against Him; that before Him I am a mere nothing. It stands to reason that I cannot be proud before Him. I truly feel small and could wish to make myself even smaller, so that it may be more in keeping with His presence.