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The Apostolate for the Faith
Heart of Jesus
June, 2006
The month of Mary concludes by our rejoicing in her festival of Queen of Angels and of men: this led us into the month dedicated to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Mass on this feast opens with the words: “The thoughts of His Heart are to all generations to deliver their souls from death” — rendered more completely in the Douai version, “But the counsel of the Lord standeth for ever; the thoughts of His Heart to all generations.” The Heart of the Lord means the Heart of Him who has absolute dominion over all creation. If we ponder the fullness of the meaning of the psalmist’s words, we should realise how safe we are resting in the love of the Heart of Jesus with the fullest confidence. And we should cry out to Him begging Him to make our hearts like unto His Heart.
The Mass of the Feast of the Sacred Heart celebrates the mercy of God towards all mankind; and we are reminded that while the devil remains a redoubtable foe for ever striving to secure our downfall, God continues untiringly the work of salvation which He has begun in us. In the Epistle, St Peter calls upon us to remain watchful, steadfast in the faith, and to cast all our anxiety upon the Lord, because He cares for us. Every night, the Church in her official night prayer reminds us of this warning: “Brethren be sober and watch because your adversary the devil as a roaring lion goes about seeking whom he may devour; resist him, steadfast in faith.” A warning that is not only timely but necessary. The scriptures tell us that Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light. Therefore we must strive without ceasing to make our hearts one with the Heart of Jesus; the Heart of God in whom there is neither change nor shadow of alteration. And the scriptures again speak to us of “Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, today and for ever.”
If only we each had a heart that loves as the Heart of Jesus loves:
Where love and loving-kindness, God is fain to dwell,
Flock of Christ, who loved us, in one fold contained,
Joy and mirth be ours, for mirth and joy He giveth;
Fear we still and love the God who ever liveth,
Each to other joined by charity unfeigned.
Where love and loving-kindness, God is fain to dwell
Therefore when we meet, the flock of Christ, so loving,
Take we heed lest bitterness be there engendered;
All our spiteful thoughts and quarrels be surrendered,
Seeing Christ is there, divine among us moving.
Where love and loving-kindness, God is fain to dwell,
So may we be gathered once again, beholding
Glorified the glory, Christ, of Thy unveiling,
There, where never ending joys, and never failing
Age succeeds to age eternally unfolding.
Ubi Caritas et Amor: Translated by Mgr R A Knox
FORGOTTEN SAINTS
St Columba, whose feast we celebrate on June 9th, even though he is a secondary patron of Ireland, is becoming one of our forgotten saints; a saint unknown to many of our children. Sometimes known as Columbkill, apostle of the Picts, he was of illustrious Irish decent. He was brought up in the company of many saints in the school of St Finian of Clonard. Being ordained priest, and having founded many churches in Ireland, he went to Scotland with twelve companions, and there converted many of the northern Picts to the faith of Christ. He founded the monastery of Iona which became the nursery of saints and apostles. He also evangelised the northern English. He died at the foot of the Altar, at Iona, whilst blessing his people, on June 9th, 597; and was buried, like St Brigid, beside St Patrick, at Downpatrick, in Ulster. From that brief account of his life we can see why the Mass of his feast begins with the words of psalm 138: v. 9 and 10: “If I take my wings early in the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there also shall Thy hand lead me; {then v.1 and 2} Lord, Thou hast proved me and known me; Thou hast known my sitting down and my rising up.” The Epistle of the Mass is taken from the great prophet Isaias, and begins: “Behold My servant, I will uphold him: My elect, My soul delighteth in him; I have given My Spirit upon him, he shall bring forth judgement to the nations.”
POPE BENEDICT XVI
On Two Crucial Issues Facing the Church: The Liturgy and Priestly Celibacy. That is the title of a recent article by Father Brian W Harrison OS in The Latin Mass –The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, published in the USA. The article treats of the writings of our Holy Father when as Cardinal Ratzinger, he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Referring to his book, The Spirit of the Liturgy, we are reminded of the Cardinal’s “deep interest in and knowledge of Liturgical matters”. In that little book, our attention is drawn to the way in which “Catholic churches manifest the succession between Old and New Covenants: the central Altar as the place of sacrifice inherits and replaces the role of the Temple, while the lectern, pulpit or ambo for the proclamation of God’s word to the assembled people follows naturally from the disposition of the synagogue with its “Shrine of the Torah” honouring the inspired scriptures. In this context the author gives us a fascinating excursion into the origin of worshipping ad orientem. While synagogue worship was oriented toward Jerusalem, the place of the Temple, Christians now look toward Christ, whose future coming in glory is aptly symbolised by the brilliance of the rising sun. As is well known, our present Holy Father “has been among those favouring a return to the traditional position of the priest at Mass, in which both he and the people are turned together towards Christ.” Quoting from the book: “In the early Church, prayer towards the East was regarded as an Apostolic tradition. We cannot date exactly when this turn to the East, the diverting of the gaze from the Temple took place, but it is certain that it goes back to the earliest times and was always regarded as an essential characteristic of Christian liturgy [and indeed of private prayer.]”
Father Harrison writes, “These are strong words. Can something believed to be an ‘Apostolic Tradition’ and indeed, an ‘essential characteristic of Christian liturgy’ be so readily discarded as it has been since the 1960s?” The position “facing the people”, now almost universal in celebrations according to the post-conciliar Roman Missal, was in fact unheard of for fifteen centuries after Christ, and had its origin in the heretical Eucharistic theology of the Protestant Reformers. Cardinal Ratzinger dedicates an entire chapter, “The Altar and the Direction of Liturgical Prayer”, to this question, pointing out that Vatican Council II never even suggested this novel change of position, and exposing the principal arguments in favour of it as being historically unfounded. “The turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community into a self-enclosed circle. In its outward form it no longer opens out on what lies ahead and above, but is closed in on itself.” Cardinal Ratzinger concludes with even stronger words: “A common turning to the East during the Eucharistic Prayer remains essential. This is not a case of something accidental, but of what is essential. Looking at the priest has no importance. What matters is looking together at the Lord.” Perhaps the most interesting part of this discourse comes with the observations on the link between sacred music and the Logos — the Word revealed in Christ. He points out that from the beginning the saving actions of God narrated in Scripture formed the main theme of liturgical music — a fact which has given singing clear priority over merely instrumental music in the liturgy. Since it was the Word which created the Cosmos, Cardinal Ratzinger discerns a link between the beauty of music, whose melodies and harmonies are based on mathematical laws and proportions which are also reflected throughout the universe, and the glory of Creation. If the words of the liturgical song proclaim mainly the work of the Logos for our redemption, the music itself proclaims His might, wisdom and power in the entire cosmos. He goes on to excoriate as a symptom of contemporary Western cultural decline the current popularity of rock music among the young, linking it directly to their alienation from true worship. “Rock is the expression of elemental passions, and at ‘rock’ festivals assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship. People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the experience of being part of a crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise and special lighting effects. However in the ecstasy of having all their defences torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental force of the universe.” What is this other than a new form of idolatry? The folly of trying to attract young people to the Church by integrating “rock” and similarly debased forms of music into her liturgical expressions should be obvious. A final quote:
“The Christian faith can never be separated from the soil of sacred events, from the choice made by God who wanted to speak to us, to become man, to die and rise again, in a particular place and at a particular time … the Church does not pray in some kind of mythical contemporality. She cannot forsake her roots. She recognises the true utterances of God precisely in the concreteness of its history in time and place, to these God ties us, and by these we are all tied together.
“The diachronic aspect, praying with the Fathers and the Apostles, is part of what we mean by rite; but it also includes a local aspect extending from Jerusalem to Antioch, Rome, Alexandria and Constantinople. Rites are not, therefore, just the products of inculturation, however much they may have incorporated elements from different cultures. They are forms of the Apostolic Tradition and of its unfolding in the great places of tradition. [Regarding Rites:] Unspontaneity is of their essence. In these rites I discover that something is approaching me here that I did not produce myself, that I am entering into something greater than myself, which ultimately derives from divine revelation. This is why the Christian East calls the liturgy the ‘Divine Liturgy’, expressing thereby the liturgy’s independence from human control.
“After Vatican II, the impression arose that the Pope could really do anything in liturgical matters. But the Pope is not an absolute monarch; on the contrary, the first Vatican Council presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The Pope’s authority is bound to the Tradition of faith, and that also applies to the liturgy. It is not manufactured by the authorities. Even the Pope can only be a humble servant of its lawful development and abiding integrity and identity.… The authority of the Pope is not unlimited, it is at the service of Sacred Tradition … the greatness of the liturgy depends – we shall have to repeat this frequently – on its unspontaneity.”
I shall return to this theme in the July issue. Meanwhile I leave you with this message of the late Pope John Paul II to the sick, as he prayed with them at Lourdes:
“Dear brothers and sisters who are sick, how I would like to embrace each and every one of you with affection, to tell you how close I am to you, and how much I support you.
I now do so in spirit, entrusting you to the maternal love of the Mother of the Lord and entreating her to obtain for all of us, the blessings and consolations of Jesus, her Son.”
(At Lourdes on 14th August 2004)
THE VENERABLE FRANCIS LIBERMANN
Born the favourite son of a Jewish Rabbi, Jacob Libermann was destined by his father to become a Rabbi like himself. But God destined him to be a Catholic priest and the founder of the Missionary Society of the Most Pure Heart of Mary. He brought about the successful union of his own Society with the Holy Ghost Fathers which we know as one of the great Missionary Congregations in the History of the Church. He had an ardent devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and, in 1831, sent this Act of Consecration to a seminarist at Saint Sulpice:
“Honour, praise, glory and love to the Immaculate Conception of the Most glorious Virgin Mary, our good Mother! Amen!
“O purest, holiest, and most admirable Virgin Mary, Immaculate Mother of my adorable Lord Jesus, my Mother, my Queen, my Happiness, and my Hope, I, the poorest, the most abject, and the most unworthy of all thy servants, prostrate my self before the throne of thy glory, to consecrate to thee all that I am, all that I have, and all that I can. I solemnly declare before the angels and saints, that I wish to belong entirely to thee, during my life, at the hour of my death, and during all eternity. Dispose of me, O my great and amiable Sovereign, as of a thing which is wholly thine; but in return, protect, sustain and strengthen thy servant, against the powers of hell, and against my own weakness and malice, that I may never cease to be thy faithful client. My heart is rent with grief and my soul overflows with sorrow at the thought of my past iniquities. Henceforward I ardently wish to love honour and glorify thee before heaven and earth … and through thee thy well beloved Son Jesus. O Mary, Virgin most holy, and most immaculate in thy admirable conception, look not on the hideousness of my soul, nor on the number of my fidelities, but only consult the maternal kindness of thy Immaculate Heart.”
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