May 2024 Newsletter & Readings
Greetings,
I hope you have all been enjoying a blessed Eastertide.
With Easter having come early, this year, May is essentially packed with liturgical highlights. So as I did once before, I’m going to turn entirely to Dom Guéranger to let him guide us through the many reasons we have in the month ahead to give continuous thanks to God.
In Domino,
Jeff Rowe
Readings
Excerpt: The Liturgical Year
Very Rev. Dom Prosper Guéranger Abbot of Solesmes, 1833-1875
May 9 – THE ASCENSION OF OUR LORD
The sun of the fortieth day has risen in all his splendour. The earth, which shook with gladness at the Birth of our Emmanuel, (Psalms 95, 96, & 97) now thrills with a strange emotion. The divine series of the mysteries of the Man-God is about to close. Heaven has caught up the joy of earth. The Angelic Choirs are preparing to receive their promised King, and their Princes stand at the Gates, that they may open them when the signal is given of the mighty Conqueror’s approach. (Psalm 23:7) The holy souls, that were liberated from Limbo on the morning of the Resurrection, are hovering round Jerusalem, waiting for the happy moment when Heaven’s gate, closed by Adam’s sin, shall be thrown open, and they shall enter in company with their Redeemer: — a few hours more, and then to Heaven! Meanwhile, our Risen Jesus has to visit his Disciples and bid them farewell, for they are to be left, for some years longer, in this vale of tears.
They are in the Cenacle, impatiently awaiting his coming. Suddenly he appears in their midst. Of the Mother’s joy, who would dare to speak? As to the Disciples and the holy Women, they fall down and affectionately adore the Master, who has come to take his leave of them. He deigns to sit down to table with them; he even condescends to eat with them, not, indeed, to give them proof of his Resurrection, for he knows that they have no further doubts of the mystery; but now that he is about to sit at the right hand of the Father, he would give them this endearing mark of familiarity. O admirable repast! in which Mary, for the last time in this world, is seated side by side with her Jesus, and in which the Church, (represented by the Disciples and the holy Women,) is honored by the visible presidency of her Head and Spouse.
What tongue could describe the respect, the recollected mien, the attention of the guests? With what love must they not have riveted their eyes on the dear Master? They long to hear him speak; his parting words will be so treasured! He does not keep them long in suspense; he speaks, but his language is not what they perhaps expected it to be—all affection. He begins by reminding them of the incredulity wherewith they heard of his Resurrection. (Mark 16:14) He is going to entrust his Apostles with the most sublime mission ever given to man; he would, therefore, prepare them for it by humbling them. A few days hence, and they are to be lights of the world; the world must believe what they preach, believe it on their word, believe it without having seen, believe what the Apostles alone have seen.
May 19 – WHIT SUNDAY: PENTECOST
The great day, which consummates the work that God had undertaken for the human race, has, at last, shone upon the world. The days of Pentecost, as St. Luke says, are accomplished. (Acts 2:1) We have had seven weeks since the Pasch; and now comes the day that opens the mysterious number of Fifty. This day is the Sunday, already made holy by the Creation of the Light, and by the Resurrection of Jesus; it is about to receive its final consecration, and bring us the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:19)
In the Old and figurative Law, God foreshadowed the glory that was to belong, at a future period, to the Fiftieth Day. Israel had passed the waters of the Red Sea, thanks to the protecting power of his Paschal Lamb! Seven weeks were spent in the Desert, which was to lead to the Promised Land; and the very morrow of those seven weeks was the day whereon was made the alliance between God and his people. The Pentecost (the Fiftieth Day) was honored by the promulgation of the ten commandments of the Divine Law; and every following year, the Israelites celebrated the great event by a solemn Festival. But their Pentecost was figurative, like their Pasch: there was to be a second Pentecost for all people, as there was to be a second Pasch for the Redemption of the whole world. The Pasch, with all its triumphant joys, belongs to the Son of God, the Conqueror of death: Pentecost belongs to the Holy Ghost, for it is the day whereon he began his mission into this world, which, henceforward, was to be under his Law. . . .
Suddenly is heard, coming from heaven, the sound of a violent wind: it startles the people in the City, it fills the Cenacle with its mighty breath. A crowd is soon round the house that stands on Mount Sion; the hundred and twenty Disciples that are within the building, feel that mysterious emotion within them, of which their Master once said: The Spirit breatheth where he will, and thou hearest his voice. (John 3:8) Like that strange invisible creature, which probes the very depth of the sea and makes the waves heave mountains high, this Breath from heaven will traverse the world from end to end, breaking down every barrier that would stay its course.
The holy assembly have been days in fervent expectation; the Divine Spirit gives them this warning of his coming, and they, in the passiveness of ecstatic longing, await his will. As to them that are outside the Cenacle, and have responded to the appeal thus given, let us, for the moment, forget them. A silent shower falls in the House; it is a shower of Fire, which, as holy Church says (in the Responsory for the Thursday within the Octave), “burns not, but enlightens—consumes not, but shines.” Flakes of fire, in the shape of tongues, rest on the heads of the hundred and twenty Disciples: it is the Holy Ghost taking possession of all and each. The Church is not not only in Mary, but also in these hundred and twenty Disciples. All belong now to the spirit that has descended upon them; his kingdom is begun, it is manifested, its conquests will be speedy and glorious.
May 26 - Feast of the Most Holy Trinity
On the day of Pentecost the holy Apostles received, as we have seen, the grace of the Holy Ghost. In accordance with the injunction of their Divine Master, (Matthew 28:19) they will soon start on their mission of teaching all nations and baptizing men in the name of the Holy Trinity. It was but right, then, that the solemnity which is intended to honor the mystery of one God in three Persons should immediately follow that of Pentecost, with which it has a mysterious connection. And yet, it was not until after many centuries that it was inserted in the cycle of the liturgical year, whose completion is the work of successive ages.
Every homage paid to God by the Church’s liturgy has the holy Trinity as its object. Time, as well as eternity, belongs to the Trinity. The Trinity is the scope of all religion. Every day, every hour, belongs to It. The feasts instituted in memory of the mysteries of our redemption center in It. The feasts of the blessed Virgin and the Saints are but so many means for leading us to the praise of the God who is One in essence, and Three in Persons. This Sunday’s office, in a very special way, gives us, each week a most explicit expression of adoration and worship of this mystery, which is the foundation of all others, and the source of all grace.
This explains to us how it is that the Church was so long in instituting a special feast in honor of the Holy Trinity. The ordinary motive for the institution of feasts did not exist in this instance. A feast is the memorial of some fact which took place at a certain time, and of which it is well to perpetuate the remembrance and the influence. How could this be applied to the mystery of the Trinity? From all eternity, before any created being existed, God liveth and reigneth, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. If a feast in honor of that mystery were to be instituted, it could only be by fixing some one day in the year, whereon the faithful would assemble for offering a more than usually solemn tribute of worship to the mystery of Unity and Trinity in the one same Divine Nature. . . . Let us, then, begin this day, by giving glory to the one God in three Persons.
May 9 – Saint Gregory Nazianzen, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Side by side with Athanasius, a second Doctor of the Church comes forward, at this glad Season, offering to the Risen Jesus the tribute of his learning and eloquence. It is Gregory of Nazianzen, the friend of Basil; the great orator; the admirable poet, whose style combines energy of thought with a remarkable richness and ease of expression; the one among all the Gregories who has merited and received the glorious name of Theologian, on account of the soundness of his teachings, the sublimity of his ideas, and the magnificence of his diction. Holy Church exults at being able to offer us so grand a Saint during Easter Time, for no one has spoken more eloquently than he on the Mystery of the Pasch. Let us listen to the commencement of his second Sermon for Easter; and then judge for ourselves.
“I will stand upon my watch, says the admirable Prophet Habacuc. (Habakuk 2:1) I, also, on this day, will imitate him; I will stand on the power and knowledge granted me by the favor of the Holy Ghost, that I may consider and know what is to be seen, and what will be told unto me. And I stood and I watched; and lo! a man ascending to the clouds; and he was of exceeding high stature, and his face was the face of an Angel, and his garment was dazzling as a flash of lightning. And he lifted up his hand towards the East, and cried out with a loud voice. His voice was as the voice of a trumpet, and around him stood, as it were, a multitude of the heavenly host, and he said: ‘Today is salvation given to both the visible and the invisible world. Christ hath risen from the dead: do ye also rise. Christ hath returned to himself: do ye also return. Christ hath freed himself from the Tomb: be ye set free from the bonds of sin. The gates of hell are opened, and death is crushed; and old Adam is laid aside, and the new one is created. Oh! if there be a new creature formed in Christ, be ye made new!’
May 27 – Saint Bede the Venerable, Confessor and Doctor of the Church
Bede, a priest, was born at Jarrow, on the borders of England and Scotland. At the age of seven he was placed under the care of St. Bennet Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, to be educated. He became a monk, and so ordered his life that, while devoting himself wholly to the pursuit of learning, he did in no way relax the discipline of his Order. There was no branch of learning in which he was not thoroughly versed, but his chief care was the study of the Holy Scriptures, and in order to understand them better, he learned Greek and Hebrew. At the age of thirty he was ordained priest at the command of his Abbot, and, on the advice of Acca, bishop of Hexham, immediately undertook the work of expounding the Sacred Books. In his interpretations he adhered to the teachings of the holy Fathers so strictly that he advanced nothing which they had not taught, and even made use of their very words. He ever hated sloth, and by habitually passing from reading to prayer and from prayer to reading. He so maintained the fervour of his soul that he was often moved to tears while reading or teaching. He persistently refused the office of Abbot, lest his mind should be distracted by the cares of transitory things.
The name of Bede soon became so famous for learning and piety that Pope St Sergius thought of calling him to Rome so that he might help to solve the difficult questions which had then arisen concerning sacred things. He wrote many books to reform the lives of the faithful, and to defend and propagate the faith. By these he gained such a reputation in all parts that the holy Bishop Boniface, who was later martyred, called him a “light of the Church.” Lanfranc styled him the “teacher of the English,” and the Council of Aix-Ia-Chapelle “the admirable Doctor.” But as his writings were publicly read in the churches during his lifetime. And as it was not yet allowable to call him ‘saint: they named him the “Venerable,” a title which has ever remained peculiarly his. The power of his teaching was the greater because it was confirmed by holiness of life and the observance of religious discipline. Hence his own earnestness and example made his disciples, who were many and distinguished, eminent not only in learning, but also in sanctity.
