Ambrosian Epiphany Hymn

 

Ambrosian Epiphany Hymn

 

The Mozarabic version has five additional stanzas, one more on the changing of water into wine, three on the feeding of the 5000, one on the Lord taking our flesh from the Virgin.

 

Illuminans Altissimus
Micantium astrorum globos,
Pax, vita, lumen, veritas,
Jesu, fave precantibus.

Seu mystico baptismate,
Fluenta Jordanis retro
Conversa quondam tertio,
Praesentem sacraris diem.

Seu stella partum Virginis
Coelo micans signaveris,
Et hac adoratum die
Praesepe Magos duxeris.

Vel hydriis plenis aqua
Vini saporem infuderis:
Hausit minister conscius
Quod ipse non impleverat.

Gloria tibi, Domine,
Qui apparuisti hodie,
Cum Patre et Sancto Spiritu,
In sempiterna saecula. Amen.

 

From GUÉRANGER

 

Most High God! thou that enkindles the fires of the shining stars! O Jesus! thou that art peace, and life, and light, and truth, hear and grant our prayers. This present day has been made holy by thy mystic Baptism, whereby thou didst sanctify those waters of the Jordan, which, of old, were thrice turned back. It is holy by the Star shining in the heavens, whereby thou didst announce thy Virginal Mother’s delivery, and didst, on the same day, lead the Magi to adore thee in thy Crib. It is holy, too, by thy changing the water of the pitchers into wine; which the steward of the feast, knowing that he had not so filled them, drew forth for the guests. Glory be to thee, O Lord Jesus! that didst appear on this Day! and to the Father and to the Holy Ghost, for everlasting ages. Amen.

From the Book of Maxims by Saint Isidore, bishop

 

 

From the Book of Maxims by Saint Isidore, bishop

(Lib. 3, 8-10: PL 83, 679-682)

 

Prayer purifies us, reading instructs us. Both are good when both are possible. Otherwise, prayer is better than reading.

 

If a man wants to be always in God’s company, he must pray regularly and read regularly. When we pray, we talk to God; when we read, God talks to us.

 

All spiritual growth comes from reading and reflection. By reading we learn what we did not know; by reflection we retain what we have learned.

 

Reading the holy Scriptures confers two benefits. It trains the mind to understand them; it turns man’s attention from the follies of the world and leads him to the love of God.

 

Two kinds of study are called for here. We must first learn how the Scriptures are to be understood, and then see how to expound them with profit and in a manner worthy of them. A man must first be eager to understand what he is reading before he is fit to proclaim what he has learned.

 

The conscientious reader will be more concerned to carry out what he has read than merely to acquire knowledge of it. For it is less serious fault to be ignorant of an objective than it is to fail to carry out what we do know. In reading we aim at knowing, but we must put into practice what we have learned in our course of study.

 

No one can understand holy Scripture without constant reading, according to the words: Love her and she will exalt you. Embrace her and she will glorify you.

 

The more you devote yourself to a study of the sacred utterances, the richer will be your understanding of them, just as the more the soil is tilled, the richer the harvest.

 

Some people have great mental powers but cannot be bothered with reading; what reading could have taught them is devalued by their neglect. Others have a desire to know but are hampered by their slow mental processes; yet application to reading will teach them things which the clever fail to learn through laziness.

 

The man who is slow to grasp things but really tries hard is rewarded; equally he who does not cultivate his God-given intellectual ability is condemned for despising his gifts and sinning by sloth.

 

Learning unsupported by grace may get into our ears; it never reaches the heart. It makes a great noise outside but serves no inner purpose. But when God’s grace touches our innermost minds to bring understanding, his word which has been received by the ear sinks deep into the heart.

Teresian Prayer

 

 

 

 

Christ and the Virtues. Teresian prayer is characteristically Christ-centered. Christ is the direct object of both the mental and the affective dynamics of Teresian prayer. Teresa prays with, to, and through Jesus Christ. Her Christ is the Christ of the Gospels; Christ as the "Way, the Truth, and the Life " is her constant focus. That focus must be learned by the beginner, retained by those advanced in prayer, and refined into a "loving gaze" by the contemplative (see Life, 12 and 22, and Castle, 6, 7 for Teresa's classic treatment of the essential role of Christ in every stage of the ascent of prayer). Some of her principles in this area are that: 1) meditation's best subject and object is the biblical Christin his life, death, and resurrection; 2) one's prayer is best habitually (though not exclusively) centered on Christ; 3) the sacred humanity of Christ is the most adequate mediation for initial growth in prayer and the best assurance of and preparation for the gift of contemplation; and 4) any other opinion is gravely suspect and harmful.

 

Teresa, our teacher, knows how important the figure of Christ is to the one who prays. Christ is a friend and companion at prayer (see Way, 26, I). Christ addresses the loneliness of the meditator. He fills the void, thus turning loneliness into solitude and access to God. Furthermore, the Christ of Scripture is the model of all the virtues that we desire to learn. After all, Christian perfection lies in the virtues. We pray to be transformed; transformation is brought about in the first instance by the acquisition of the virtues, which then open us up to the further deification of contemplation and the states of union. We need Christ to train us in the theological and cardinal virtues. Unless we strive after the virtues we always be dwarfs" (Castle, 7, 4, 9). And since charity and humility give birth to all the other virtues, we desperately need the living model of Jesus Christ, the humble one, to show us the way. 'This whole building ...has humility as its foundation, " and to build Christian humility we must "fix our eyes on the Crucified" (Castle, 7, 4, 8). With Christ as our friend and teacher we will be drawn all the way into the bosom of the Blessed Trinity (see Castle, 6, 7, 7)

TURNING THE WORLD UPSIDE-DOWN: ST PETER DAMIAN’S THEOLOGY OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE: Gordon Mursell, Former Anglican Bishop of Stratford

 

TURNING THE WORLD UPSIDE-DOWN: ST PETER DAMIAN’S THEOLOGY OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE: Gordon Mursell, Former Anglican Bishop of Stratford

 

 

 

There is a paradox at the heart of Peter Damian’s theology of the spiritual life, which is nowhere clearer than in his view of the world, and of the nature of human beings. On the one hand, he makes it clear that our existence in this world is transitory in the perspective of eternity: “if we were to compare the immense space of time in which God existed before the world was, and that in which he will continue to exist after its end, with the tiny amount of time from the beginning of the world to its end, it would be less than if you were to throw a handful of water into the sea.”  And he accepts St Paul’s sober view of human fallenness: all human beings have sinned, and Christ died for all. As a monk he persistently refers to himself as “Peter the monk and sinner (Petrus peccator monachus)”, even after being made bishop.  Yet, on the other hand, precisely in making this latter point he insists on the universal scope of Christ’s redeeming work: “the blood of Christ is the redemption of all the world (sanguis Christi redemptio totius est mundi).”  Note his wording: Christ died for all the world, not just for the Church, or even for all humanity. And here is one aspect of the paradox: this transitory world, a world from which Damian counsels his audience to flee to the spiritual safety of the monastery (or, better still, the hermitage), is precisely the world for which Christ gave his life. This paradox is not new: it informs the understanding of “the world” to be found in the Johannine writings in the New Testament: in them we find that, whilst Christ prays to the Father to deliver his disciples from the world and warns those disciples of the hostility the world will direct at them,  he also declares that “God so loved the world (not “the people of God”, or even “all humanity”) that he gave his only Son…God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him”; and Christ goes on to pray that his disciples may reproduce in their common life the mutual indwelling and love of the Father and the Son, “so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

 

The world, then, in the sense of the created order, is (for Peter Damian as for the evangelist John) both transitory and hostile - and yet Christ died for it, not just for a small number of the elect or even just for all humanity.  And the paradox is further heightened by Damian’s understanding of the human person: each fragile, sinful individual is at the same time a microcosm of “the world”, in that each person contains the four fundamental elements believed to be constitutive of the created order – and he takes that classical Greek view of the human person further in maintaining that each Christian is a “little church” (quasi quaedam minor ecclesia), since each is capable of receiving all the sacraments by which Christ’s redemptive work becomes efficacious in individual human lives.  Elsewhere he writes of the human person as “a lesser world (minori mundo)”, reproducing within his or her interior life the conflict that Damian believes to exist at the heart of the created order.  

St. Hildegard of Bingen: Symphonia 17: Ave generosa gloriosa et intacta

St. Hildegard of Bingen: Symphonia 17: Ave generosa gloriosa et intacta

 

Ave generosa gloriosa et intacta

puella, tu pupilla castitatis,

tu materia sanctitatis,

que Deo placuit.

 

Nam hec superna infusio in te fuit,

quod supernum Verbum in te carnem induit.

 

Tu candidum lilium quod Deus ante omnem creaturam

inspexit.

 

O pulcherrima et dulcissima,

quam valde Deus in te delectabatur,

cum amplexionem caloris sui in te posuit,

ita quod Filius eius de te lactatus est.

 

Venter enim tuus gaudium habuit

cum omnis celestis symphonia de te sonuit,

quia virgo Filium Dei portasti,

ubi castitas tua in Deo claruit.

 

Viscera tua gaudium habuerunt

sicut gramen super quod ros cadit

cum ei viriditatem infundit, ut et in te factum est,

O mater omnis gaudii.

 

Nunc omnis ecclesia in gaudio rutilet

ac in symphonia sonet

propter dulcissimam Virginem

et laudabilem Mariam,

Dei Genitricem. Amen.

 

Hail, nobly born, glorious and inviolate maiden, you the eye of chastity, you the substance of holiness, who was pleasing to God. For heaven was poured into you, when the heavenly Word put on flesh within you.   You the white lily which God beheld before every creature. Most beautiful and most sweet, in whom God delighted, when he held you in his warm embrace that his son should be nursed by you. For your womb had this joy, when the whole heavenly symphony sounded forth from you. For as a virgin you bore the Son of God, when your chastity was bright in God.  Your tender body had joy, like dew fallen upon the grass, when freshness is poured upon it, so it happened also to you, O Mother of all gladness. Now the whole Church glows with joy and resounds the symphony, on account of the Virgin and praiseworthy Mary, Mother of God. Amen.

St. Bernard: Apologia

 

St. Bernard: Apologia: The Last of the Fathers: M. Basil Pennington: pp. 53-54

 

Balance and Discretion

 

There are people who go clad in tunics and have nothing to do with furs, who nevertheless are lacking in humility. Surely humility in furs is better than pride in tunics. After all, God himself made clothes for the first man out of animal skins, John the Baptist in the desert wore a leather girdle round his waist, and Benedict himself, in his hermit days, wore animal skins instead of a tunic. We condemn rich food as though it were not better to take delicate fare in moderation than to bloat ourselves to the belching point with vegetables. Remember that Esau was censured because of lentils, not meat; Adam was condemned for eating fruit, not meat; and Jonathan was under sentence of death for tasting honey, not meat. On the other hand, Elijah ate meat without coming to grief, Abraham set a delicious meat dish before the angels, and God himself ordered sacrifices of the flesh of animals.

 

Surely it is more satisfactory to take a little wine on account of weakness than to down greedy draughts of water, since Paul counsels Timothy to take a little wine. The Lord himself drank wine and was called a wine bibber because of it. He gave it to his Apostles to drink and from it was established the sacrament of his Blood. On the other hand, he would not countenance the drinking of water at a marriage feast, and it was at the waters of Meribah that he punished the people severely for their complaining. David, too, was afraid to drink the water that he desired, and those of Gideon's men who in their eagerness to drink from the stream, fell on their faces, were considered unworthy of the fight.

 

Manual Work

 

And what have you to boast about in your manual work? Martha worked as you do and was rebuked, whereas Mary remained at rest and was praised. Paul says quite plainly that "bodily work is of some value but spirituality is valuable in every way”.

 

If you think that all those who make profession of the Rule are obliged to keep it literally (ad literam) without any possibility of dispensation, then I dare say you yourself fail as much as the Cluniac. It may be that he is deficient in many points of external observance but even you cannot avoid occasional faults and you know of course that anyone who fails in single point is guilty of everything. If, on the other hand, you admit that some things can be changed by dispensation, then it must be true that both you and the Cluniac are keeping the Rule, though each in his own way. You keep it strictly; he, perhaps, keeps it more reasonably.

 

Not Comprise and Unwarranted Mitigation

 

I would hate to think that the holy Fathers would have commended or allowed the many foolish excesses I have noticed in several monasteries. I am astonished that monks could be so lacking in moderation in matters of food and drink and in respect to clothing and bedding, carriages and buildings. . . . Abstemiousness is accounted miserliness; sobriety, strictness; silence, gloom. On the other hand, laxity is labeled discretion; extravagance, generosity; talkativeness, sociability; and laughter, joy. Fine clothes and costly caparisons are regarded as mere respectability, and being fussy about bedding is hygiene. When we lavish these things on one another we call it love. Such love undermines true love. Such discretion disgraces real discretion. This sort of kindness is full of cruelty, for it so looks after the body that the soul is strangled.

Inviolata, integra, et casta es Maria

 

Inviolata, integra, et casta es Maria

 

Author unknown, not later than the 15^th Century, sung by the Dominicans before the Vesper hymn on the Purification; also used by the Dominicans at Compline (Byrne).

 

 

Inviolata, integra, et casta es Maria,

quae es effecta fulgida caeli porta.

O Mater alma Christi carissima,

suscipe pia laudum praeconia.

Te nunc flagitant devota corda et ora,

nostra ut pura pectora sint et corpora.

Tu per precata dulcisona,

nobis concedas veniam per saecula.

O benigna! O Regina! O Maria,

quae sola inviolata permansisti.

 

Inviolate, whole, and chaste art Thou, Mary,

who art become the gleaming gate of heaven.

O dearest nurturing Mother of Christ,

accept our pious prayers of praise.

 

That our hearts and bodies might be pure

our devout hearts and mouths now entreat.

By Your sweet-sounding prayers,

grant us forgiveness forever.

 

O blessed, O Queen, O Mary,

You alone have remained inviolate.