(Dedication of Lateran, November 9, 2023)

Jesus went up to Jerusalem. He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the money-changers seated there. He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables, and to those who sold doves he said, "Take these out of here, and stop making my Father's house a marketplace." His disciples recalled the words of Scripture, Zeal for your house will consume me. (excerpt from the day’s Gospel; John 2:13-22)

Fr. Paschal Scotti

We are natural idolaters. We are natural idolaters, at least since The Fall. Since the fall of our first parents, Original Sin. Idolatry in its essence is to put something in the place of God. It might be other gods. It might be us. It might be things like power or wealth. It might be very good things, but not God. It could be all sorts of things. The cleansing of the temple, which Our Lord did in today’s gospel reading, is to show us the holiness and purity which we should give to God in worship, our Fidelity to God, that God is the only reality. “God has no grandchildren”: you have heard that phrase before, I hope. Only children. We are made, each of us, to be friends of God, and sharers of the divine nature, direct children of God, adopted by the power of divine grace. We are not distant realities, that have to meet something else to meet the good God... Today’s feast, the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica, St. John Lateran being the cathedral of the pope, the cathedral of Rome, where the pope has his seat, his true seat as Bishop of Rome, is to show us that the essence of all worship is first the temple itself, that is the worship of the Holy Sacrament, the worship of God through the Mass, the Holy Mass.

But much more than that. We are made to give God total fidelity, total worship in all that we do. All that we can do - if it is good, I should say, not sin and evil, all that is good - can be a channel of divine grace and divine power, all part of our worship of the good God, of which the highest reality is the Mass itself. All of us are called to give God total worship, to be faithful followers of God, in the fullness of that reality, in the fullness of divine grace. To turn everything to be a channel of grace, not just obviously things like the sacraments, like the Mass for example - but all that we do, all the good that we do, all the ordinary things that we do the whole day, to God. Our lives should be one of worship, total fidelity to God, and in giving God everything becoming beacons of God to the world around us. Far too often, we don’t really live for God. We live for lots of things, even sometimes very good things, but not God. And that’s why we are so ineffective, that’s why our power is limited, that’s why the good that we do is so limited. God wants to be the fullness of life; the fullness of fullness. And that can only be reached by God himself, with God himself, in God himself. By true worship, by fidelity. So yes, we have the Holy Sacraments, like the Mass, the great Mass, this reality of worship which God has given directly in something truly holy, because it is the holiness of Christ himself. But all that we do - beyond this reality of worship, the reality of the Mass, the reality of the sacraments – can be sacramentalized, supernaturalized, by our fidelity to God, our offering of all things to God – and we can become true children of God. Not grandchildren, not great-grandchildren, not great-great-grandchildren – but children of God.

(November 15, 2023)
Jesus said in reply, "Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?" Then he said to him, "Stand up and go; your faith has saved you." (excerpt from the day’s Gospel; Luke 17:17-19)

Abbot Matthew Stark

Obviously, today the Gospel is, at least in part, about giving thanks to God for the mercies we receive. And it would seem that He is pleased by our giving thanks, when we acknowledge that. Of course, the great thanks, the great act of thanksgiving, is the Mass, because it is not only our individual thanks that we give, but it is included in the thanksgiving of our Lord Jesus Christ. He took bread and gave thanks. From the early church there is an early document called the Didache, and there is a prayer in that - two prayers actually - which are considered Eucharistic prayers. Eucharist, by the way does mean “thanksgiving.” From these two Eucharistic prayers (some to say they are for other uses, but in any case...), one of them begins: “We give thanks to you, O God, we give thanks.” And that beginning of the prayer in the Didache is incorporated in the Egyptian, ancient Coptic prayer of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, which begins: “We give thanks and offer Thee, Lord God, this spiritual sacrifice,” ...that is the Mass..., “this unbloody worship, offered to Thee by all men, from the rising of the sun until its setting, from the north to the south, for Thy Name is great among all the nations, and everywhere is offered to Thy Name a pure sacrifice, a sacrifice and operation.” That is what we are privileged to honor every time we attend mass, to offer to the Name of God a pure sacrifice, a sacrifice and oblation.
 

(St. Gertrude the Great, November 16, 2023)
“For she is the refulgence of eternal light, the spotless mirror of the power of God, the image of his goodness. And she, who is one, can do all things, and renews everything while herself perduring; And passing into holy souls from age to age, she produces friends of God and prophets.” (excerpt from Wisdom 7:22-8:1)

Fr. Gregory Havill

Our first reading today, from the Book of Wisdom, speaks of wisdom as an effusion of the glory of the Almighty which passes into holy souls from age to age, producing friends of God and prophets. This is certainly the case with the saint we celebrate today, Saint Gertrude of Helfta, who during the 1200’s, along with her spiritual mother, Saint Mechthilde, was first to penetrate the depths of the mystery of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and to right of the wonders of his love for us as both man and God. Her orientation is supremely optimistic, exalting above all else the mercy of God. In her writings, she repeatedly reminds us not to become discouraged by our faults and imperfections, rather we are to abandon ourselves completely to Christ’s infinite love and compassion, which far surpasses our finite capacity for evil. Her visions are all easy to understand. Her writing style is simple, straightforward and very realistic. It’s characteristically Benedictine in its many references to liturgical feasts, the Bible, and the Fathers of the Church. Very few works are left from her time, partly due to events that led to the destruction of the convent at Helfta. Only her Herald of Divine Love, The Revelations, and her Spiritual Exercises are left. The latter, the Spiritual Exercises, is a rare gem of mystical and spiritual literature - a small document with a no-nonsense and strongly down to earth approach. In it she places confidence as the keynote of her spirituality. And that means also abandonment. If they are separated, she writes, confidence can lead to presumption, and abandonment into a kind of fatalism that turns its back on Love. It is for us, she says, to accept the love of Christ‘s Sacred Heart, and in spite of our self-doubts, courageously repay him by our unlimited confidence in him and in the presence of his kingdom which, as he says (in today’s Gospel), is already among us.