Contemplative Haven

Today’s beautiful feast will be celebrated over at Consecrated to Mary.  Come join us for a little Adrienne von Speyr and J.S. Bach.

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What I’m exploring here today is something I don’t fully understand myself, but I think it might help me if I put some thoughts down “on paper”. 

Jesus told Sister Faustina, “I desire that this image be displayed in public on the first Sunday after Easter.  That Sunday is the Feast of Mercy.” [Diary, Notebook I, No. 88]  Have you ever wondered why Jesus chose the first Sunday after Easter and declared that it was the Feast of Mercy?  This particular Sunday has other names as well, one of which is Low Sunday.  Out of curiosity, I looked up Low Sunday in an old missal, one from prior to Vatican II, to see if there were any significant differences.  One important difference that I found was that the Gospel, prior to Vatican II, opened with a Lesson from the Epistle of St. John the Apostle (First Letter of John, Chapter 5).   I will just quote a small portion of it, to show you what we would have heard back then that we do not hear today:

“This is he that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood.  And it is the Spirit which testifieth that Christ is the truth.  And there are three who give testimony in heaven:  the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one.  And there are three that give testimony on earth; the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three are one.”

Even if you were to look up the First Letter of John, Ch. 5 in a current Bible, you would not find it translated (at least in the versions I looked at) as precisely as it is stated in the old missal.

And so we have Jesus choosing to establish Divine Mercy Sunday on a day in which we were traditionally being taught about water and blood, the Holy Spirit, and the Trinity.  As I was pondering all these things, I took a look at what some bloggers had been saying about Divine Mercy Sunday over the last couple of years.  I noticed some disturbing comments, two in particular - one from a priest who said that Divine Mercy Sunday, “changed nothing liturgically”, and another from someone who said that Divine Mercy Sunday had, “absolutely no effect on the liturgical celebration”, that it was only a devotion with an indulgence attached.  Perhaps it is true that the devotion does not really change the liturgy of the day, but it changes our hearts, and immersion in the Divine Mercy message helps us understand the message of today’s gospel on a deeper level.  Inclusion of the former passage from the First Letter of John would do so to an even greater degree. 

In my post last year for Divine Mercy Sunday, if you had asked me why I included a picture of the Holy Trinity and a link to the beautiful Thrice Holy Hymn, I couldn’t have told you.  I only did what the Spirit moved me to do.  Today, I think I understand a little bit better. 

At the risk of turning this post into a tome, I would just also like to share something with you from The Revelations of St. Gertrude the Great, from the entry for Low Sunday, which reinforces my glimpse of an understanding as to why Jesus chose this day.  The entry opens with the words of Jesus, and continues with St. Gertrude’s understanding of His message:

“If you desire to receive the Holy Ghost…you must touch My Side and My Hands, like My disciples.”  By this she understood that he who desires to receive the Holy Spirit must first touch the Side of Our Lord - that is, he must acknowledge how much the Divine Heart has loved us in having predestinated us from eternity to be His children and heirs of His kingdom, and in pouring forth such benefits upon us daily, notwithstanding our ingratitude…” 

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Divine Mercy.  Jesus, I Trust in You.  It’s also something to cry about - tears of grief, loss and pain; tears of forgiveness, hope and gratitude.

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Divine Mercy.  Jesus, I Trust in You.  It really is something to sing about.  Something to really sing about.

Zaufaj Panu juz dzis - Divine Mercy

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Easter being quite early this year, it is the first time in a very long while that the chaos which is my office every end-of-March/month-of-April will not be affecting me during the Easter season.  I’d like to really take advantage of this gift of time for prayer/reflection this year.

So I will be signing off here until sometime after Divine Mercy Sunday.  I wish you all a blessed Holy Week and a very joyous Easter.

I will keep you in my prayers.

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As I was listening to some lovely Celtic music on YouTube a few days ago, I came across this video taken by a lad here in Ottawa, of St. Patrick’s Basilica.  I’m really excited to show it to you, because it’s the kind of thing I just never think of doing, and now you’ll be able to see my “stomping grounds”, so to speak.  St. Patrick’s Basilica is not my parish, but I work just a few blocks from it, and it has become my downtown sanctuary and more. 

The little door that the filmmaker enters, to the left side of the front of the church as you’re facing it, is the door I usually use too.  No matter what time of the day you go, there are usually people sitting quietly praying or meditating, others making the Stations of the Cross, or simply walking around quietly venerating the many beautiful statues.  Every day at three o’clock there is a holy hour.  I love getting away from the office for Mass and/or confession during lunch hour, and often I am able to stop in after work for a while, just to sit, or to light a candle for someone.

You will see in the video, after showing us the beautiful stainglass window above the altar, the filmmaker scans the large painting of Jesus on the left as you’re viewing, and then quickly scans the one on the right, which is actually a most beautiful painting of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.  Then we see the little alcove with the statue of Mary and all the blue votive candles - that is exactly where I made my consecration on the Feast of the Assumption this past August 15th.  You can even see where I go to confession!  How about that? 

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[Excerpt from:  The Passion from Within, by Adrienne von Speyr. From the Chapter: “Going Forth into the Passion”]

“Taking leave of prayer.  The uninterrupted communion with the Father begins to break off.  Everything recedes now into the light of estrangement.  Humanly it is inexplicable how this estrangement could be ordained by the Father, how the Father holds the spirit of the Son of Man in his hands even before he has received it back expressly at the moment of death…

Until now it seemed that each of his human words was immediately taken up by the Father and even received an answer before a petition was uttered.  Now he knows that it will be different:  he has to ask as never before, inescapably, even if no answer is given.  The word comes back sounding hollow.  Or at least filled with the full sound of sin that the Son increasingly hears, stirring up anguish in him.  All this is waiting outside the door, and the door will open.  There are many doors, but whichever he chooses, it leads into the Passion.” 

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The peace of great doors be for you.
Wait at the knobs, at the panel oblongs;
Wait for the great hinges.
The peace of great churches be for you,
Where the players of loft pipe-organs
Practise old lovely fragments, alone.

The peace of great books be for you,
Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages,
Bleach of the light of years held in leather.

The peace of great prairies be for you.
Listen among windplayers in cornfields,
The wind learning over its oldest music.

The peace of great seas be for you.
Wait on a hook of land, a rock footing
For you, wait in the salt wash.

The peace of great mountains be for you,
The sleep and the eyesight of eagles,
Sheet mist shadows and the long look across.

The peace of great hearts be for you,
Valves of the blood of the sun,
Pumps of the strongest wants we cry.

The peace of great silhouettes be for you,
Shadow dancers alive in your blood now,
Alive and crying, “Let us out, let us out.”

The peace of great changes be for you.
Whispers, oh beginners in the hills.
Tumble, oh cubs - to-morrow belongs to you.

The peace of great loves be for you.
Rain, soak these roots; wind, shatter the dry rot.
Bars of sunlight, grips of the earth; hug these.

The peace of great ghosts be for you,
Phantoms of night-gray eyes, ready to go
To the fog-star dumps, to the fire-white doors.

Yes, the peace of great phantoms be for you,
Phantom iron men, mothers of bronze,
Keepers of the lean clean breeds.

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“In Zen Buddhism, which is definitely not a religion of books, there is a mondo, a kind of basic existential question, that springs out of a dialog between master and disciple and which remains for the disciple to solve by personal struggle.  It goes like this:  the disciple goes to his Master and asks:  “Who is the Buddha?”  The Master replies:  “Who are you?” 

The fact is that a question of this sort is, and must be, fundamental to all authentic religious experience - as well as to any radical metaphysical intuition and to mystical contemplation.  In the first place it is itself an answer to a question.  In the progress toward religious understanding, one does not go from answer to answer but from question to question.  One’s questions are answered, not by clear, definitive answers, but by more pertinent and more crucial questions… 

The same is true of the Bible.  If we approach it with speculative questions, we are apt to find that it confronts us in turn with brutally practical questions.  If we ask it for information about the meaning of life, it answers by asking us when we intend to start living?  Not that it demands that we present suitable credentials, that we prove ourselves in earnest, but more than that:  we are to understand life not by analyzing it but by living it in such a way that we come to a full realization of our own identity.  And this of course means a full realization of our relatedness to those with whom life has brought us into an intimate and personal encounter.”

[Excerpt from:  Opening the Bible, Thomas Merton, pgs. 29-30] 

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A Sadness in Your Soul

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