Eamon Duffy on "The Stripping of the Altars" after 30 Years

In March 22, 2022 issue of The Catholic Herald-UK, historian Eamon Duffy offers some background on the publication of his seminal work, The Stripping of the Altars, especially the influence of Mary Douglas:

. . . I absorbed a brilliant anthropological work, which drew some of its most telling material from the recent upheavals in the English Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council. Dame Mary Douglas, herself the product of a Catholic convent education, was also one of the most original cultural anthropologists of the mid-20th century. Douglas’s work was much concerned with the relative claims of form versus formlessness as values in the ordering of human society. In Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology, she deployed this analysis to argue for the vital importance of ritual for social life. Written against the background of the sexual revolution, the social and political unrest of the 1960s and the transformation of the Roman Catholic Church in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, Douglas’s book was an attack on what she saw as a disastrous and culturally and socially naïve abandonment of vital symbolic and ritual structures which made for orderly communal life, both secular and religious. . . . 

Please read the rest there. As the Holy Triduum begins tomorrow on Holy Thursday, when "the stripping of the altars" still occurs after Mass (but without much of the symbolism Duffy highlights) when the Blessed Sacrament is processed to an Altar of Repose for the night as we share in prayer the time of Our Lord's Agony in the Garden, this will be my last post until after Easter. 

Duffy indeed mentions the choice of the title in his piece:

The title, borrowed from one of the now-suppressed but most eloquent ceremonies of the old Latin liturgy for Holy Week, was a manifesto in itself, summarising the overall argument of the book. On Maundy Thursday, after the Mass of the Last Supper and procession with the Host to the Altar of Repose, the other altars in the church were ritually stripped of their altar cloths and ornaments in preparation for the stark liturgy of Good Friday, while the ministers and choir recited Psalm 21, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”, with its anticipation of the incidents of the Passion. The altar here becomes a surrogate for the stripped and scourged Christ – resonances which would of course not have been lost on religious conservatives during the iconoclastic destruction of altars and imagery in the reign of Edward VI.

Please read the rest there. And if you haven't read The Stripping of the Altars, I highly recommend it. This article is abridged from Duffy's introduction to the 2022 edition of the book. I admit that I'm rather tempted to buy the new edition, partially because my old paperback copy is rather worn and the price of the new edition is most favorable!

Best wishes for a Blessed Holy Triduum and a Happy Easter!

The Venerabile 2021 Yearbook

Last week I received the 2021 edition of The Venerabile from the Venerable English College in Rome, shipped to me directly from the publishers, Gangemi Editore International. As you'll see on the sidebar of this blog, I'm a member of the Board of Directors for the North American Friends of the Venerable English College (NAFVEC):

The Venerable English College in Rome has been preparing men for Catholic priestly ministry in England & Wales since 1579. It is the oldest British institution outside the United Kingdom.

North American Friends of the Venerable English College was established in 2020 to promote awareness of the “Venerabile” and the history of the College and its Martyrs. It is committed to fostering material and spiritual support for the VEC as a unique Catholic institution and seminary housing an exceptional archival collection.

As a yearbook for a seminary and an historical foundation, some of the articles are of more interest to those who attend or have attended the Venerable English College and their families and friends, but I also found several articles that coincide with my interests, including:

Saint Thomas of Canterbury: a great College patron
Fr John Flynn

A Reflection for Martyrs' Day
Mgr Mark Langham

A Tudor Quincentenary [Henry VIII's Assertio Septem Sacramentorum]
Maurice Whitehead

Hidden Liturgical Books of the English College
Fr Anthony Fyk

News from the College Archives, 2020-21
Maurice Whitehead

Since 2020 was the 800th anniversary year of the infamous Murder in the Cathedral, the cover art is a photograph of the Martyrdom of Saint Thomas of Canterbury in the Martyrs Chapel of the College.

If you are interested in this very well produced and illustrated book, please find more information about it--and past issues--here.

Best wishes for a Blessed Holy Week and Triduum!

Preview: Newman on the Sufferings of Christ in His Passion

On Monday, April 11 (the Monday of Holy Week), I'll continue the Son Rise Morning Show series of reflections on Lenten sermons by Saint John Henry Newman edited and excerpted in The Tears of Christ. We'll be on the air at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern time. Please listen live on EWTN Radio or on your local EWTN affiliate.

The sermon I've chosen this week is "The Incarnate Son: a Sufferer and Sacrifice" which is divided into two meditations for Palm Sunday and the Monday of Holy Week in The Tears of Christ. According to the Chronology of his sermons, he delivered it on Good Friday,  April 1, 1836 and it is in the sixth volume of his Parochial and Plain Sermons, sermon number 6.

As I've often noted--based on many authorities--one of Newman's great efforts in his Parochial and Plain Sermons was to wake the Christian people of England up to the reality of their faith in God. They were living in a nominally Christian country with an Established Church as part of their governance, yet he saw signs that they did not really know what they believed. Their faith was notional, not real: it did not always affect their lives as English men and women. At the beginning of this sermon, he tells them:

Let us try, what is so very difficult, to put off other thoughts, to clear our minds of things transitory, temporal, and earthly, and to occupy them with the contemplation of the Eternal Priest and His one ever-enduring Sacrifice;—that Sacrifice which, though completed once for all on Calvary, yet ever abideth, and, in its power and its grace, is ever present among us, and is at all times gratefully and awfully to be commemorated, but now especially, when the time of year is come at which it was made. Let us look upon Him who was lifted up that He might draw us to Him; and, by being drawn one and all to Him, let us be drawn to each other, so that we may understand and feel that He has redeemed us one and all, and that, unless we love one another, we cannot really have love to Him who laid down His life for us.

So he's telling them not to think about the Passion of Our Lord like it's something they've heard about dozens of times, with their minds divided between it and what they're going to do after the service, what someone said to them yesterday, what they need to do to get ready for Easter Sunday, etc. Instead: Think about what Jesus has done for us and the effect it should have in our lives, so that we love Him and one another.

Newman hopes to awaken that love by reminding them of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, as they profess in the Nicene Creed!

It would be well if we opened our minds to what is meant by the doctrine of the Son of God dying on the Cross for us. I do not say we shall ever be able to solve the mystery of it, but we may understand in what the Mystery consists; and that is what many men are deficient in. They have no clear views what the truth of the matter is; if they had, it would make them more serious than they are. Let it be understood, then, that the Almighty Son of God, who had been in the bosom of the Father from everlasting, became man; became man as truly as He was always God. He was God from God, as the Creed says; that is, as being the Son of the Father, He had all those infinite perfections from the Father which the Father had. He was of one substance with the Father, and was God, because the Father was God. He was truly God, but He became as truly man. He became man, yet so as not to cease in any respect being what He was before. He added a new nature to Himself, yet so intimately, that it was as if He had actually left His former self, which He did not. "The Word became flesh:" even this would seem mystery and marvel enough, but even this was not all; not only was He "made man," but, as the Creed goes on to state, He "was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, He suffered and was buried." . . .

Think of this, all ye light-hearted, and consider whether with this thought you can read the last chapters of the four Gospels without fear and trembling.

And then to bring images of what was done to Jesus on Good Friday to his congregation's mind's eye, Newman cites verses from the Gospels of John, Matthew, and Luke (John 18:22, Matthew 26:67, Luke 22:63-65, Luke 23:11, John 19:1-5, Luke 23:33), recounting how Jesus was struck, mocked, brutalized, scourged, nailed to a cross, exposed, and pierced.

Then he exhorted them to think about that suffering and Who suffered it:

Now I bid you consider that that Face, so ruthlessly smitten, was the Face of God Himself; the Brows bloody with the thorns, the sacred Body exposed to view and lacerated with the scourge, the Hands nailed to the Cross, and, afterwards, the Side pierced with the spear; it was the Blood, and the sacred Flesh, and the Hands, and the Temples, and the Side, and the Feet of God Himself, which the frenzied multitude then gazed upon. This is so fearful a thought, that when the mind first masters it, surely it will be difficult to think of any thing else; so that, while we think of it, we must pray God to temper it to us, and to give us strength to think of it rightly, lest it be too much for us.

But Newman must also remind us that Christ's sufferings, for which we should feel great compassion, also were the means of our salvation, because He endured these agonies in our human nature through His Incarnation and thus redeemed it and us:

We believe, then, that when Christ suffered on the cross, our nature suffered in Him. . . . The Son of God then took our nature on Him, that in Him it might do and suffer what in itself was impossible to it. What it could not effect of itself, it could effect in Him. He carried it about Him through a life of penance. He carried it forward to agony and death. In Him our sinful nature died and rose again. When it died in Him on the cross, that death was its new creation. In Him it satisfied its old and heavy debt; for the presence of His Divinity gave it transcendent merit. . . And thus, when it had been offered up upon the Cross, and was made perfect by suffering, it became the first-fruits of a new man. It became a Divine leaven of holiness for the new birth and spiritual life of as many as should receive it. And thus, as the Apostle says, "If one died for all, then did all die" (2 Cor. 5:14); "our old man is crucified in Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed" (Romans 6:6); and "he made us alive together with Christ . . . and raised us up with Him in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 2:5-6)

This is great meditation for Holy Week as we remember the Passion of Our Lord through the Holy Triduum. 

Blood of Christ, shed profusely in the Scourging, save us.
Blood of Christ, flowing forth in the Crowning with Thorns, save us.
Blood of Christ, poured out on the Cross, save us.

Best wishes for a holy and blessed Holy Week!

Butley Priory in the News (Newsweek!)

Newsweek posted a story about a young boy in England finding a seal from Butley Priory in Butley, Suffolk:

George Henderson found the seal around 5 inches in the ground shortly after starting a charity dig set up by his father, Paul Henderson, in November 2021. The money will be shared between George Henderson and the farmer who owns the land in Suffolk, East Anglia, where the seal was found.

Used by medieval priests in the 13th century to put wax seals on official letters, the copper-alloy object is inscribed in Latin with the words: "Seal of the Priory and Convent of Butley, of Adam, Canon Regular."

The seal features an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom the Priory was dedicated (a house of Augustinian Canons or Austin Canons). The priory was founded in 1171 and suppressed in 1538.

British History Online provides many details about the bishops' visitations through the years, including the last before its dissolution:

The reformanda of the bishop, consequent on this visitation, ordered that a master was to be provided for instructing the novices and boys in 'priksong' and grammar; that one canon should be sent to the university; that an annual statement of accounts was to be presented in the chapter-house before three or four of the older brethren; that a proper place was to be assigned for an infirmary, with a sufficiency of healthy food and drink and of medical and surgical assistance for the infirm; that the prior was to pay each novice 20s. for clothing according to old custom; that horses and a servant be provided for canons when they seek orders; that the presbytery be at once repaired; that one brother be sacrist and another precentor; that the same drink be supplied to the brethren as to the prior; that warning be given to the servants as to being insolent; that the roof and walls of the chapterhouse be repaired; and that the refectory be supplied with footboards and backs to the benches to lessen the cold in winter. The visitation was adjourned until the ensuing feast of the Purification to see if the various reformations were carried out. (fn. 21)

John Thetford, prior of the Holy Sepulchre, Thetford, was a benefactor to Butley priory about 1534. He gave them two chalices, one for the chapel of All Saints and another for the chapel of St. Sigismond. He also gave them a relic of special value, namely the comb of St. Thomas of Canterbury and a silver box of small relics. (fn. 22)

Thomas Manning alias Sudbury, who had been elected prior in 1528, was appointed suffragan Bishop of Ipswich in March 1536, having been nominated along with George, abbot of Leiston, by the Bishop of Norwich. (fn. 23) In December 1536 the new suffragan bishop got into trouble with Cromwell over some alleged complicity in the escape of a canon of Butley imprisoned on a charge of treason, whereupon he dispatched his servant to the Lord Principal, two days after Christmas, with two fat swans, three pheasant cocks, three pheasant hens, and one dozen partridges:—the weather had been so open and rainy that he could get no wild fowl. In his letter he told Cromwell that divers were busy to get him to resign his house, but that with the king's favour he would never surrender it. (fn. 24)

However, the prior-bishop found it impossible to resist—all pensions would have been forfeited if he had remained obstinate—and on 1 March, 1538, Manning and eight of the canons signed the surrender. (fn. 25)

The Butley Priory website  (it is privately owned and open as a venue for weddings, etc) includes this detail about a Royal Visitor who would probably have been very disappointed at its suppression, the Princess Mary Tudor, Queen of France, Duchess of Suffolk:

Then during the time of Prior Augustine Rivet (1509-28), the Priory became the regular resort of royalty and nobility who came there for the hunting. Mary Tudor, sister of Henry Vlll, was particularly fond of it and visited often, including a visit of two months with her new husband, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, in 1527.

On August 6th that year, as it was very hot, Mary Tudor ordered their supper to be laid out in a shady part of the garden on the east side of the gatehouse. This she so enjoyed that alfresco suppers became a regular feature of her stays at Butley. It is also recorded that in Brother Nicholas’s garden the royal party were overtaken by a violent thunderstorm, and had to rush to the church for shelter.

As the Freelance History Writer notes the former Queen of France would be affected (at least her mortal remains) further by the Dissolution of the Monasteries:

While Mary lived, she was never called the Duchess of Suffolk but “the French Queen”. She spent most of her time at her private home Westhorpe Hall in Suffolk. Mary’s relationship with King Henry was strained in the 1520’s because she didn’t support Henry’s efforts to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon whom Mary had known for many years. She never liked Anne Boleyn. She basically lived a quiet life away from court.

When Mary died at Westhorpe on June 25, 1533, she was buried at the abbey in Bury St. Edmunds. The monastery was destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII when Henry broke with the Catholic Church to marry Anne Boleyn. Mary’s body was then moved to St. Mary’s Church, Bury St. Edmunds.

May she rest in peace.

Studying Margaret More Roper

Last week I received the Center for Thomas More Studies email newsletter in which some important upcoming dates in the life and times of St. Thomas More were listed:

13 April 1534. More is interrogated at Lambeth Palace.
17 April 1534. More is imprisoned in the Tower of London.
18 April 1523. More delivers his petition for free speech in Parliament.
30 April, 1557. Rastell's English Works of Sir Thomas More, Knight is published

16 May 1532. More resigns as Lord Chancellor

Even more exciting, the newsletter announced the publication of a major study of Margaret More Roper, my favorite non-martyr heroine of the English Reformation era:

"In September of 2022, Elizabeth McCutcheon and William Gentrup will publish the book, A Companion to Margaret More Roper Studies."

This volume is an important contribution to the field of Margaret More Roper studies, early modern women's writing, as well as Erasmian piety, Renaissance humanism, and historical and cultural studies more generally.

Margaret More Roper is the learned daughter of St. Thomas More, the Catholic martyr; their lives are closely linked to each other and to early sixteenth-century changes in politics and religion and the social upheaval and crises of conscience that they brought. Specifically, Roper's major works - her translation of Erasmus's commentary on the Lord's Prayer and the long dialogue letter between More and Roper on conscience - highlight two major preoccupations of the period: Erasmian humanism and More's last years, which led to his death and martyrdom.

Roper was one of the most learned women of her time and a prototype of the woman writer in England, and this edited volume is a tribute to her life, writings, and place among early women authors. It combines comprehensive and convenient joining of biographical, textual, historical, and critical components within a single volume for the modern reader. There is no comparable study in print, and it fills a significant gap in studies of early modern women writers.

It's from Catholic University of America Press, so it's expensive: I'm going to start my Margaret More Roper savings account now!

Venantius Fortunatus and Passiontide

Although the current Roman Liturgical Calendar does not directly observe the last two weeks of Lent as Passiontide, some Catholic churches maintain the tradition of veiling their crucifixes and statues starting this Sunday, which in the 1962 Roman Missal begins Passiontide with Passion Sunday. You also might note in the Novus Ordo that the Preface is for the Passion of Our Lord at the daily Masses starting Monday and that there an optional collect on Friday for Our Lady of Sorrows.

Next Sunday will be Palm Sunday in Passiontide. From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, Passiontide is defined as:

The two weeks between Passion Sunday and Easter. The last week is Holy Week, while the first is called by the Latins "Hebdomas Passionis", by the Greeks "Week of the palms" (from the Sunday following). During this time the monks of the East, who had chosen the desert for a severer mode of life, returned to their monasteries (Cyril of Scythopolis in "Life of St. Euthymius", n. 11). The rubrical prescriptions of the Roman Missal, Breviary, and "Caeremoniale Episcoporum" for this time are: before Vespers of Saturday preceding Passion Sunday the crosses, statues, and pictures of Our Lord and of the saints on the altar and throughout the church, with the sole exception of the crosses and pictures of the Way of the Cross, are to be covered with a violet veil, not translucent, nor in any way ornamented. The crosses remain covered until after the solemn denudation of the principal crucifix on Good Friday. The statues and pictures retain their covering, no matter what feast may occur, until the Gloria in Excelsis of Holy Saturday. According to an answer of the S. R. C. of 14 May, 1878, the practice may be tolerated of keeping the statue of St. Joseph, if outside the sanctuary, uncovered during the month of March, which is dedicated to his honour, even during Passiontide. In the Masses de tempore the Psalm Judica is not said; the Gloria Patri is omitted at the Asperges, the Introit, and the Lavabo; only two orations are recited and the Preface is of the Holy Cross. In the Dominical and ferial offices of the Breviary the doxology is omitted in the Invitatorium and in the responses, whether long or short. The crosses are veiled because Christ during this time no longer walked openly among the people, but hid himself. Hence in the papal chapel the veiling formerly took place at the words of the Gospel: "Jesus autem abscondebat se." [Jesus hid Himself] Another reason is added by Durandus, namely that Christ's divinity was hidden when he arrived at the time of His suffering and death. The images of the saints also are covered because it would seem improper for the servants to appear when the Master himself is hidden (Nilles, "Kal.", II, 188).

In some places the crosses were covered on Ash Wednesday; in others on the first Sunday of Lent. In England it was customary on the first Monday of Lent to cover up all the crucifixes, images of every kind, the reliquaries, and even the cup with the Blessed Sacrament. The cloths used were of white linen or silk and marked with a red cross (Rock, infra, IV, 258). The two beautiful hymns of the season, "Vexilla Regis" and "Pange lingua gloriosi", are the work of Venantius Fortunatus (q. v.), Bishop of Poitiers. On the Friday of Passion Week the Church very appropriately honours the Seven Dolours of Our Lady. On Saturday the Greeks commemorate the resuscitation of Lazarus.

John Mason Neale, the Anglo-Catholic Tractarian, translated Vexilla Regis as "The Royal Banners Forward Go", and Pange lingua gloriosi as "Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle".

My late husband Mark took the picture above one afternoon at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Wichita, Kansas--you can see that the Crucifix in the Sanctuary of the church is veiled.

Preview: Newman on Jesus and the Raising of Lazarus

On Monday, April 4, I'll continue the Son Rise Morning Show series of reflections on Lenten sermons by Saint John Henry Newman edited and excerpted in The Tears of Christ. We'll be on the air at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern time. Please listen live on EWTN Radio or on your local EWTN affiliate. 

Last month, our Lovers of Newman group met at the Formation House of the Sisters of the Immaculate of Mary in Colwich, Kansas to read out loud, meditate on, and discuss one of St. John Henry Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons, "Tears of Christ at the Grave of Lazarus". 

You could say that this sermon is Newman's homiletic dissertation on the shortest verse identified in the Gospels, John 11:35: "Jesus Wept", as he explores why Jesus wept and what those tears mean in the Incarnate Son of God, as a Divine Person and in His human nature. Newman also applies the poignant statements of Martha and Mary, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died" (remember that Jesus had delayed returning to Bethany, so close to Jerusalem and danger, after hearing that Lazarus was ill) to his listeners and readers as we face trouble and grief. 

If you attend a Mass this Sunday, April 3 with the final Scrutiny for the Elect who will receive the Sacraments of Initiation at the Easter Vigil, you will hear this Gospel, John 11: 1-45. Otherwise, you'll hear the Gospel for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, also from John, 8:1-11.

In The Tears of Christ, which we are using for our weekly discussions on the Son Rise Morning Show, this sermon is excerpted in two parts for the Sunday and the Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent, and I chose to focus on the second part, because of these two remarkable passages from the third and fourth points Newman makes about why "Jesus wept":

3. . . . Was He not in Joseph's case, who not in grief, but from the very fulness of his soul, and his desolateness in a heathen land, when his brethren stood before him, "sought where to weep," as if his own tears were his best companions, and had in them a sympathy to soothe that pain which none could share? . . . Christ's was a different contemplation; yet attended with its own peculiar emotion. I mean the feeling that He had power to raise up Lazarus. Joseph wept, as having a secret, not only of the past, but of the future;—of good in store as well as of evil done—of good which it was in his own power to confer. And our Lord and Saviour knew that, while all seemed so dreary and hopeless, in spite of the tears and laments of his friends, in spite of the corpse four days old, of the grave and the stone which was upon it, He had the power which could overcome death, and He was about to use it. Is there any time more affecting than when you are about to break good news to a friend who has been stricken down by tidings of ill?

4. Alas! there were other thoughts still to call forth His tears. This marvellous benefit to the forlorn sisters, how was it to be attained? at His own cost. Joseph knew he could bring joy to his brethren, but at no sacrifice of his own. Christ was bringing life to the dead by his own death. 

Joseph, whose brothers had sold him into a slavery, had become the Pharaoh's trusted counselor: he would be able to help his father and brothers with the grain that Egypt had stored based on his advice ot Pharoah.  He was able to give from a huge supply of grain; it cost him nothing personally.

In this next passage, Newman offers us a preview of everything we are going to hear at Mass in the next two weeks, mostly from the Gospel of John:

His disciples would have dissuaded him from going into Judea, lest the Jews should kill Him. Their apprehension was fulfilled. He went to raise Lazarus, and the fame of that miracle was the immediate cause of His seizure and crucifixion. This He knew beforehand, He saw the prospect before Him; He saw Lazarus raised [John 11:43-44]; the supper in Martha's house; Lazarus sitting at table; joy on all sides of Him [John 12:2]; Mary honouring her Lord on this festive occasion by the outpouring of the very costly ointment upon His feet [John 12:3]; the Jews crowding not only to see Him, but Lazarus also [John 12:9]; His triumphant entry into Jerusalem; the multitude shouting Hosanna [John 12:13]; the people testifying to the raising of Lazarus [John 12:17]; the Greeks, who had come up to worship at the feast, earnest to see Him [John 12:20-26]; the children joining in the general joy [Matthew 21:15-16]; and then the Pharisees plotting against Him [John 11:45-53, 57; 12:1], Judas betraying Him [John 13:21-30], His friends deserting Him [Matthew 26:56; Mark 14:50], and the cross receiving Him [John 19:17]. 

Newman then boldly enters into the human feelings of Jesus:

These things doubtless, among a multitude of thoughts unspeakable, passed over His mind. He felt that Lazarus was wakening to life at His own sacrifice; that He was descending into the grave which Lazarus left. He felt that Lazarus was to live and He to die; the appearance of things was to be reversed; the feast was to be kept in Martha's house, but the last passover of sorrow remained for Him. And He knew that this reverse was altogether voluntary with Him. He had come down from His Father's bosom to be an Atonement of blood for all sin, and thereby to raise all believers from the grave, as He was then about to raise Lazarus; and to raise them, not for a time, but for eternity; and now the sharp trial lay before Him, through which He was to "open the kingdom of heaven to all believers." Contemplating then the fulness of His purpose while now going about a single act of mercy, He said to Martha, "I am the Resurrection and the Life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me, shall never die."

Finally, Newman applies these meditations to our own dealings with the illness and death of loved ones, the faith we need to bear them, and the confidence we should have in Jesus:

Wherever faith in Christ is, there is Christ Himself. He said to Martha, "Do you believe this?" Wherever there is a heart to answer, "Lord, I believe," there Christ is present. Blessed be his name! Nothing can rob us of this consolation: we will be as certain, through His grace, that He is standing over us in love, as though we saw Him. We will not, after our experience of Lazarus's history, doubt an instant that He is thoughtful about us. He knows the beginnings of our illness, though He keeps at a distance. He knows when to remain away and when to draw near. He notes down the advances of it, and the stages. He tells truly when His friend Lazarus is sick and when he sleeps. We all have experience of this in the narrative before us, and henceforth, so be it! will never complain at the course of His providence. Only, we will beg of Him an increase of faith;—a more lively perception of the curse under which the world lies, and of our own personal demerits, a more understanding view of the mystery of His Cross, a more devout and implicit reliance on the virtue of it, and a more confident persuasion that He will never put upon us more than we can bear, never afflict His brethren with any woe except for their own highest benefit.

I heartily recommend that even if you don't hear this Gospel passage on Sunday, April 3, you read it and then read the two substantial excerpts from Newman's sermon in The Tears of Christ, or at the Newman Reader website. It is certainly a good meditation for the week before Holy Week as we enter the Passiontide of Our Lord.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!
Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus of Bethany, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Rembrandt's Raising of Lazarus, 1630–1631

Image Credit (Public Domain): The Raising of Lazarus, 1857, Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat

Preview: Mary's "Good Part" and Martha's Due

On Monday, March 28, I'll continue the Son Rise Morning Show series of reflections on Lenten sermons by Saint John Henry Newman edited and excerpted in The Tears of Christ. This week's sermon is "The Good Part of Mary" in which Newman explicates the meaning of the story of Jesus at the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus when Martha asks Jesus to get Mary to help her serve the dinner rather than listen to Him. We'll be on the air at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern time. Please listen live on EWTN Radio or on your local EWTN affiliate. 

Newman juxtaposes this story from the Gospel of St. Luke with what we read about Martha, Mary, and Lazarus (whose shared feast is now celebrated on July 29) in the Gospel of St. John, when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead after four days in the tomb:

Martha and Mary were the sisters of Lazarus, who was afterwards raised from the dead. All three lived together, but Martha was mistress of the house. St. Luke mentions, in a verse preceding the text, that Christ came to a certain village, "and a certain woman, named Martha, received Him into her house." Being then at the head of a family, she had duties which necessarily engaged her time and thoughts. And on the present occasion she was especially busy, from a wish to do honour to her Lord. "Martha was cumbered about much serving." On the other hand, her sister was free from the necessity of worldly business, by being the younger. "She had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard His word." The same distinction, at once of duty and character, appears in the narrative of Lazarus' death and restoration, as contained in St. John's Gospel. "Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him; but Mary sat still in the house." [John xi. 20.] Afterwards Martha "went her way and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee." Again, in the beginning of the following chapter, "There they made Him a supper; and Martha served ... Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair." [John xii. 2, 3.] In these passages the same general difference between the sisters presents itself, though in a different respect;—Martha still directs and acts, while Mary is the retired and modest servant of Christ, who, at liberty from worldly duties, loves to sit at His feet and hear His voice, and silently honours Him with her best, without obtruding herself upon His sacred presence.

To return:—"Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to Him, and said, Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her," in the words of the text, "Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things; but one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken from her."

I appreciated how Newman emphasized Martha's essential role in her household with her brother and sister: she is the head of the family in his view, not Lazarus. She is in charge of many details and she even leads her sister to Jesus before he raises Lazarus from the dead. Nevertheless, Newman focuses in this sermon on Mary's not just good, but better part. Thus, he follows the age-old tradition of highlighting the superiority of the contemplative life over the active life.

(Please remember that England, until some of her Catholic exiles had returned from their monasteries and convents during and after the French Revolution, had not benefited from the presence of contemplative religious praying for her people's intentions for a few hundred years. Since the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Friaries, and Convents during the reign of Henry VIII, that way of life had been absent from England, Wales, and parts of Ireland too (and Scotland under John Knox's "reformation"). The only official religious vocation in England until the 19th century had been the active ministerial life in the Church of England: deacons, priests, and bishops. Vocations to the contemplative community life--and God surely called some to such a life--were thwarted in England in those intervening years.*)

And I think Newman is a little careful about this point--the fact that Anglican Christians in England have not known this contemplative form of life, haven't seen it modeled in their religious life--when he both acknowledges the superiority of Mary's part, the need for his congregations to follow her example, and yet remembers that they have active duties and responsibilities:

Mary's portion is the better of the two. Our Lord does not expressly say so, but He clearly implies it. If His words be taken literally, they might, indeed, even mean that Martha's heart was not right with Him, which, it is plain from other parts of the history, they do not mean. Therefore, what He intimated surely was, that Martha's portion was full of snares, as being one of worldly labor, but that Mary could not easily go wrong in hers; that we may be busy in a wrong way, we cannot well adore Him except in a right one; that to serve God by prayer and praise continually, when we can do so consistently with other duties, is the pursuit of the one thing needful, and the good part which shall not be taken away.

Newman cites several verses from the letters of St. Paul and St. Peter, and even St. James, in support of the need to pray constantly, including

"Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving." (Col 4:2)

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as you teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and as you sing psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God." (Col 3:16) . . .

"[C]ast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you." (1 Peter 5:7) . . .

"Is any one among you suffering? let him pray. Is any cheerful? let him sing praise." (James 5:13)

In passages not included in The Tears of Christ, Newman acknowledges that although he can readily cite the prayers of the Apostles and the Mother of God in the Upper Room between the Ascension and Pentecost as an example of this kind of contemplative prayer life, the early Church, the Apostolic Age, was an era of active ministry, preaching, forming the Christian community, bringing the Jews and the Gentiles to the Way of Jesus. ("Thus Mary's portion was withheld from the Church for many years, while it laboured and suffered.") Once the Church was established, Mary's lot returned:

From that time onwards to the present day, Mary's lot has been offered to vast multitudes of Christians, if they could receive it*. Blessed indeed are they whom Christ calls near to Him to be His own peculiar attendants and familiar friends. Blessed even if they are allowed to seize intervals of such service towards Him; but favoured and honored beyond thought, if they can, without breach of duty, put aside worldly things with full purpose of heart and present themselves as a holy offering, without spot or blemish, to Him who died for them. These are they who "follow the Lamb wherever He goes" (Rev 14:4) and to them He more especially addresses those lessons of faith and resignation which are recorded in His Gospel. [Here Newman cites Luke 12:15-40]

Since most of us listening to EWTN's Son Rise Morning Show on Sacred Heart Radio are living the active Christian life, we are only able to "seize intervals" of time for contemplation and prayer, before the Blessed Sacrament during our hours in Perpetual Adoration chapels, on retreats, during set times of mental prayer and devotion in our homes, at work, at school, etc. Therefore, Saint John Henry Newman's admonition that we seek Mary of Bethany's good part whenever we can, "without breach of duty" applies readily to us.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus of Bethany, pray for us!

Image Credit (public domain); Jesus at the home of Martha and Mary by Johannes Vermeer (c. 1654-56)

Preview: Newman on "Times of Private Prayer"

We know from his works that Saint John Henry Newman, as an Anglican and as a Catholic, was a man of prayer, both liturgical (public) and private. As the French Oratorian, Father Louis Bouyer points out in his introduction to Ignatius Press's volume of Newman's Prayers, Verses, and Devotions, Newman's prayer life may be exemplified by his admiration and translation of Lancelot Andrewes' Preces Privatae from the Greek, which was published as one of the Tracts for the Times. 

Bouyer calls them "spiritual exercises of penance, confession of faith, praise, thanksgiving, and intercession, leading to a fully conscious participation in the eucharistic mysteries and, ultimately, to a whole life in God's presence in Christ." (p. xvii). Newman continued to use these Devotions of the seventeenth century Anglican Bishop throughout his life as a Catholic priest "for his daily preparation and thanksgiving before and after Mass for his most personal meditations." (same page) As Bouyer comments, Newman's prayer was the practice of lectio divina, meditation on Divine Revelation in Scripture and Tradition.

So it's no surprise that he would preach on the need for prayer and devotion in the Christian life, and indeed urge his congregations not only to pray always but to set aside specific times to prayer, as he does in "Times of Private Prayer", which is the meditation for the Saturday of the third week of Lent selected in The Tears of Christ: Meditations for Lent. According to the Newman Reader's chronology of sermons, however, this was an Advent sermon, delivered early in Newman's tenure as a minister in the Church of England in 1829, and preceded by a sermon on "Mental Prayer" and followed by a sermon on "Forms of Mental Prayer".

Nevertheless, on Monday, March 21, we'll continue our discussion of Newman's Lenten sermons/meditations on the Son Rise Morning Show with this sermon. We'll be on the air at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern time. Please listen live on EWTN Radio or on your local EWTN affiliate. 

What makes it appropriate for a Lenten meditation is the verse Newman uses to introduce the sermon: 

"Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." Matt 6:6

which is included in the Gospel for Ash Wednesday when Jesus instructed His disciples on the proper ways to practice fasting, prayer, and almsgiving.

As Newman describes the context of this verse:

The Pharisees were in the practice, when they prayed by themselves, of praying in public, in the corners of the streets. Public private prayer, this was their self-contradictory practice. Warning, then, His disciples against the particular form of hypocrisy in which the self-conceit of human nature at that day showed itself, our Lord promises in the text His Father's blessing on such humble supplications as were really addressed to Him, and not made to gain the praise of men: "when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Matt. 6:6). Those who seek the unseen God (He seems to say), seek Him in their hearts and hidden thoughts, not in loud words, as if He were far off from them. Such men would retire from the world into places where no human eye saw them, there to meet Him humbly and in faith, who is "about their path, and about their bed, and spieth out all their ways." And He, the Searcher of hearts, would reward them openly. Prayers uttered in secret, according to God's will, are treasured up in God's Book of Life. They seem, perhaps, to have sought an answer here, and to have failed. Their memory perishes even in the mind of the petitioner, and the world never knew of them. But God is ever mindful, and in the last day, when the books are opened, they shall be disclosed and rewarded before the whole world.

Newman acknowledges that a Christian should always be praying, raising our minds to think of God; but he asks, should we really set times for ourselves, privately, to pray? Doesn't the public worship of God at set times and places suffice for such structured, on-purpose prayer? 

Then he cites passages of scripture that prove that Jesus prayed at certain times, going off by Himself and that other Biblical heroes did the same:

The practice of good men in Scripture gives us an example in confirmation of it. Even our Saviour had His peculiar seasons of communing with God. His thoughts indeed were one continued sacred service offered up to His Father; nevertheless, we read of His going up "into a mountain apart to pray," and again, of His "continuing all night in prayer to God." (Matt. 14:23; Luke 6:12) St. Peter too, as in the narrative of the conversion of Cornelius, the Roman centurion, in the tenth chapter of the Acts, went up upon the house-top to pray about the sixth hour; then God visited him. . . . . The Psalmist says, "Seven times a day do I praise Thee, because of Thy righteous judgments." (Ps. 119:164) [The inspiration for the Liturgy of the Hours] And Daniel's practice is told us on a memorable occasion: "Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed (the impious decree, forbidding prayer to any but king Darius for thirty days), he went into his house, and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he got down upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously." (Dan. 6:10)

So having established "proof texts" from the Holy Bible to convince those who might think such structured prayer unnecessary, he points out, in passages not included in The Tears of Christ, that neglect of structured private prayer may lead to neglect of Sunday worship and indeed, of the constant raising of our minds and hearts to God throughout the day: Newman always shows that great insight into human habits and psychology. When we say, oh, I can pray anywhere, anytime, he suggests, we'll soon pray nowhere, and at no time. We need to establish habits so we may practice virtue and make it part of our lives. Newman particularly urges his congregation to establish habits of morning and evening prayer:

Be sure, whoever of you is persuaded to disuse his morning and evening prayers, is giving up the armor which is to secure him against the wiles of the Devil.

And he warns them of the distractions that could interfere with this habit:

Beware then of the subtlety of your Enemy, who would willingly rob you of your defence. Do not yield to his bad reasonings. Be on your guard especially, when you get into novel situations or circumstances which interest and delight you, lest they throw you out of your regularity in prayer. Anything new or unexpected is dangerous to you. Going much into mixed society, and seeing many strange persons, taking share in any pleasant amusements, reading interesting books, entering into a new line of life, forming some new acquaintance, the sudden prospect of any worldly advantage, travelling: all these things and such like, innocent as they are in themselves, and capable of a religious use, become means of temptation if we are not on our guard. See that you are not unsettled by them; this is the danger.

We all know the temptation to skip Sunday Mass when on vacation; the scheduling of tours and events may interfere with the times and devotions we've prayed at home.

And he concludes with assurances that these secret prayers, regularly practiced, will have a public effect; although the worldly world won't see, our family and friends will see something different. Our regular prayers and devotions will have an influence:

Do not indulge visions of earthly good, fix your hearts on higher things, let your morning and evening thoughts be points of rest for your mind's eye, and let those thoughts be upon the narrow way, and the blessedness of heaven, and the glory and power of Christ your Saviour. Thus will you be kept from unseemly risings and fallings, and steadied in an equable way. Men in general will know nothing of this. They witness not your private prayers, and they will confuse you with the multitude they fall in with. But your friends and acquaintance will gain a light and a comfort from your example. They will see your good works and be led to trace them to their true secret source, the influences of the Holy Spirit sought and obtained by prayer. Thus they will glorify your heavenly Father, and in imitation of you will seek Him, and He who sees in secret shall at length reward you openly.

That conclusion reminds me of one of Newman's Meditations, composed for the boys of the Oratory School (when Newman was a Catholic priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri) which demonstrates the continuity of prayer and devotion in his life:

Stay with me, and then I shall begin to shine as Thou shinest: so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from Thee. None of it will be mine. No merit to me. It will be Thou who shinest through me upon others. O let me thus praise Thee, in the way which Thou dost love best, by shining on all those around me. Give light to them as well as to me; light them with me, through me. Teach me to show forth Thy praise, Thy truth, Thy will. Make me preach Thee without preaching—not by words, but by my example and by the catching force, the sympathetic influence, of what I do—by my visible resemblance to Thy saints, and the evident fulness of the love which my heart bears to Thee.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

From Insult to Praise: "Hot, Holy Ladies" at Stonyhurst College

From the Jesuits in England:

Jesuit Collections is proud to present an exciting new exhibition that reveals the hidden histories of Britain’s ‘Hot, Holy Ladies’ – the Catholic women who kept their faith alive during the religious turmoil in England and Scotland. The phrase ‘Hot, Holy Ladies’ was first used as a sarcastic insult in 1602, aimed at an impressive and effective group of strong-minded female supporters of the Jesuit Catholic mission. . . .

Related to some of the failed Gunpowder Plotters, Helena defied expectations about the role of women to become a leading figure among those who had to practise their beliefs in secret. In particular, she created several extraordinarily beautiful vestments, to be worn by priests who carried out their ministry in secret. These vestments will be the subject of six short films, released online on 4th April. . . .

The exhibition will also feature high profile relics such as the Mary Queen of Scots’ Thorn. Artistic commissions associated with royal women from the 15th to the 17th centuries including the sumptuous Henry VII Cope, and Elizabeth of York’s Prayer Book will also be on display, alongside a gold, enamelled and pearl crucifix belonging to Thomas More’s wife, Lady Alice, and a series of silver gilt reliquaries commissioned by Anne Vaux, who was instrumental in rescuing the Jesuit missionary, John Gerard, in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot.

Helena's father was Robert Wintour, and her uncle was Thomas Wintour, and both were executed for their involvement in the Gunpowder Plot when she was five years old. Robert was hanged, drawn, and quartered on January 30, 1606; Thomas on the next day. The documentary, linked in the website above, is narrated by Jan Graffius of the Stonyhurst Collection. You may also enter your email address to receive updates, including the short films describing her works and their symbols.

Image Credit: White "Alleluia" Chasuble. A white vestment containing symbolic flowers, and birds, as well as 'IHS' on the back, made in the latter part of Helena's life. By Harriet Magill - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51098828