VERBUM SERAPHICUM

PAX ET BONUM !

FEBRUARY  +  2007 A. D.

AVE MARIA !

"If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell what thou hast, and give to the poor,
. . . and come follow Me." Matthew 19:21

Measuring Out Your Life The Scripture which the Franciscan Breviary placed before friars to meditate upon for the Office of Matins today, Septuagesima Sunday, is striking. In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth. (Gen. 1:1)  The Catholic Church, unlike the Gnostics or Manicheans of the early centuries, has ever held and professed the unity between Christ and Creation: confessing that the Same Lord who brought this world into being out of absolutely nothing, Redeemed this world, by His Blood upon the Wood of the Cross. This profound and awesome truth is the underlying tone for the Office of Matins at the beginning of February in this 2007th year of Our Lord.  We Franciscans traditionally rose to say this office in the middle of the night, and in the stark silence of a winter night, when all was bleak and forlorn by Nature, to meditate upon the most fundamental truth of the world in which we live, and of which we are a tiny part. In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth.  For us then who profess faith in Jesus Christ we must draw out our thought to the ultimate conclusion of this profound truth, that Our Redeemer is Our Creator. If this were not so, then there could be some reasonable argument to say that although Jesus Christ was and is a most wonderful Redeemer, yet the goodness of the natural world is such that we ought never reject it, and that we should regard the Evangelical Counsels which Christ left us as a sort of it-does-not-really-matter-for-me-personally-in-the-end advice. The authentic message of Our Holy Faith could not be further from the truth. The truth, rather, is that the One who counsels all Christians to be poor, chaste, and obedient, is the same One who made all things, who, as it says in Sacred Scripture has loved us before the foundation of the world in Christ Jesus. What then should we draw from this consideration?  Namely this:  that that seemingly extraordinary and heroic love which St. Francis pursued so much that he forsook all, is not some goal for the few elite, but a goal to which Christ counsels us all, and which He invites us, as it were, begging and enticing all of us. And if the One inviting us to the living of the Evangelical Counsels is the very One who created us, and all things, what magnitude of reward must there be for heeding this advice, and following Jesus Christ as a religious, seeing that His Magnificence is Infinite, Eternal and Everlasting?

A Note to the Readers of The Fransican Archive Due to the consistent interest in past issues of the Verbum Seraphicum:  a newsletter for those discerning a Franciscan vocation, the front page of the Franciscan Archive, which was previously dedicated to general meditations, will be featuring from now on, the current issues of the Verbum Seraphicum. In a way this is very appropriate, and something of which I believe St. Francis of Assisi would much approve.  For he made it the entire focus of his religious life to call men and women, of whatever level of education or occupation in life, to consider more attentively the Gospel of Our Most High Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and this, not just to be edifying by an appealing sermon, but so that they might take to heart in a singularly profound and effective manner the literal truth of the Eternal Gospel, and reform their lives. This first issue of the 2007 year, will focus on this fundamental truth, that Christ did not counsel small measures, but a revolutionary change of heart and life.

Week II

Taking Flight from the World One of the most ancient and consistent themes in the history and tradition of religious life is that of the necessity of taking flight from the world. This theme is the reason monks found monasteries in solitary places, why we go on “retreat”, and why the eremitical convents of the Franciscan Order were called Ritiros. Our Lord commanded us not to have love for the world, that is, for the corrupt society of carnal men; and since this corruption is like leaven that ensnares and defiles so, so many, even those of good will, it is necessary for souls who would sincerely and truly and resolutely wish to follow the Lord and make loyalty to Him first and foremost, to take refuge from this corruption. And this can only be done by going to some place wherein only the teachings of Our Lord Jesus Christ are the rule and foundation of daily life and daily customs. It is in a monastery alone, for most men and women, that Christian life can be lived in earnest regularity. In a monastery alone, that one is free from the noise and distraction of secular life.  Without secular newspapers, magazines, television, radio, blackberries, cell-phones, telephones, I-Pods, the internet, video games, X-boxes, Play-stations, etc., one can begin to focus on Christ in prayer, in study and in the practice of virtue.  Without the daily demands of secular work alongside those who deny or hate Jesus Christ, and who would not be reformed, one can devote oneself to one’s first spiritual duty, that of saving one’s own soul. In a monastery alone one can begin to lay a firm foundation for virtue:  firm, because there is a magnitude and level and quality of virtue which cannot be had in the world without a dire and strong and resolute hatred for the world and all its corruption, and such a supernatural hatred of evil cannot be had in the soul without an external rejection of such secular society. With such a rejection, which requires the physical relocation of the individual out of all that is common à

and ordinary, to someplace special and consecrated to God alone, one lives in the appearances of virtue and of conviction, without any real means for fleeing occasions. So, so many laymen and women loose their souls for all eternity, simply because they never detached themselves physically from the occasions of sins, of lusts, of avarice, of power-mongering, of idle words, of controversies. This is not to say that a simple physical distance can cure a soul; but a great physical distance chosen and undertaken out of hatred for the evils of the world, and a desire to put to death one’ own vicious habits, is a choice for virtue which the Lord delights in and rewards with greater graces, not the least of which is the clarity of mind and the peace of heart that one has taken the first step toward really and truly being faithful in all things to Our Lord and Master. Christian prudence is at its height in taking flight from the world.  It is said of the soldier, “Discretion is the better part of valor”, and “Better to live and fight another day”. For the Christian soldier, who in dying in mortal sin has no promise that God will ever give him the grace to repent, it is eminently prudent to avoid occasions of mortal sin, to which one has but little virtue.  And since the greatest saints, such as Padre Pio, who worked 1,000’s of miracles and converted the hardest sinners, and wrestled with Satan himself, in corporal form, took flight from the world and hid in a monastery throughout their life, what kind of prudence has he, who without such virtue, strength and gifts of grace, exposes himself to the many devils and temptations of modern, godless living? For the carnal man it is sufficient to see a billionaire, and to henceforth devote himself to avarice for money for the entirely of his life, in which goal he merits only a worse damnation. But if we as Christians do not find it sufficient to contemplate the life of Christ or that of His Immaculate Mother, or of any Saint, and not to desire to devote our entire life to the pursuit of holiness and the salvation of souls, what does that say about our attentiveness to what is really important in life?  Or the value we place on our own mortal life, which was not given to us to enjoy in this world, but to spend in this world, solely and entirely to obtain eternal life?

Week III

The Trinity vs. the trinities There is One who has made us, and One for whom we have been made; There is One who has thought of us from before the foundation of the world, and One who has predestined us to the end to which we will arrive, either by cooperating with His grace or resisting it.  This One, is God:  and to us Catholics He has revealed His Name:  The Father, and the Son and the Holy Ghost:  the Most Holy Trinity. This One is Three, not in nature nor in substance nor in essence nor appearance, but Three in person, because the Father is as much the One True God as the Son is and the Holy Spirit is, and yet there are not three gods, but only one God in the mystery of the Holy Trinity. It is for this Trinity that we ought to live and move and it is from this Trinity that we have our being, whether we live and move for His sake or not.  He alone is our Alpha and Omega, our Beginning and our End, The One from whom we have come, and the One before whom we shall stand in the hour of judgment, at our death, and at the End of the world when He raises us up, body and soul, with all mankind, to be judged.  The Most Holy Trinity is the God of Christians, the God of the Catholic Religion. But our age has other gods, devilish and deviant. The first unholy trinity, which is not so often talked about, except in Scripture and by the Saints, is that which took hold of mankind when Adam fell, seduced by Eve:  the world, the flesh and the Devil. The world, in the sense of “world” used here and in Sacred Scripture, is the term for the corruption of human society, the corrupt human society, the worldly way of thinking, willing, living, acting, which prevails among carnal men:  their values and their goals, what is important to them and what they think out to be done and ought not to be done, inasmuch as they think it ought to be done and not be done. The world then is at enmity with God:  it hates all that is of God, because it is nothing more than the consequence of the deviation brought about by Original Sin in the soul, the mind, the heart of man. à

As Our Lord Jesus Christ says, there is nothing more hateful to God than that which the world prizes most:  “What men highly regard, God despises.” The second member of this first unholy trinity is the flesh.  Once again “the flesh” is a term used by Our Lord and the Apostles to mean the disordered desires of man’s nature.  It, to be precise, does not mean the disorders only in the body, in the sense appetite, which often desires beyond what is right, or reasonable, but also the disordered desires in our hearts and mind, which are begotten by these movements and feelings, when our heart and mind submit and accept these as our will and thought. The third member of this first unholy trinity is the Devil, or to be more specific, Satan and all the fallen, evil Angels.  It is because of the dominion which Satan obtained over mankind when Adam fell, that all who are his progeny are under the influences of the world and the flesh, from the first moment of their conception. The second unholy trinity is one often talked about: it is the I, the Me, and the Myself. On account of the wretched deviation of our fallen nature, and the gradual process whereby we come to have the use of the power of reason and learn and experience the world about us, the effects of original sin tend to make us not only define our world from our own personal point of view, but to understand that the world is and should be just as we would want it and know it to be, and not only the world, but God, the Angels, the Saints, the Church, etc., in a word all things. The first fruit of this unholy trinity is a dominating pride — so subtle because it is too close to be seen by our senses or our thought which look out upon the world — which causes each man to think that he is important in and of himself.  The sober truth is that none of us is important.  Even from a natural point of view a sane man can realize that with the passing of years and decades and centuries and ages, no single human being has of himself ever done or thought or wrote or achieved anything really important or significant.  In the tides of time and of humanity, the memory of nearly everyone and nearly everything anyone has ever done, fade and dissolve away. Thinking that you are or have to be important, is thus the greatest self-deception, and the way to the idolatrous worship of the unholy trinity of the I, the Me, and the Myself.

Ash Wednesday:  Week IV

Why is he who fasts saved? And he who fasts not damned? One of the more sobering truths is that teaching of Our Lord Jesus Christ:  “Without Me you can do nothing”.  And since Christ’s power in us is His grace at work in us, which grace we cannot receive without accepting it, and we cannot accept it without prayer, St. Alphonsus draws out another further conclusion from this teaching of Christ, “Without Me you can do nothing”, saying “He who prays is saved, he who prays not is damned.”  Another equally valid conclusion is this:  “He who fasts is saved, he who fasts not is damned.”  And this is really but the application of what Our Lord Jesus Christ said in more general terms, when speaking of the Jews who died suddenly when a tower in Siloam fell upon them, killing them all suddenly, He said to the Jews who had gathered to hear Him, “Unless you do penance, you will all perish likewise!” Fasting is one form of penance.  As has been explained in previous issues of the Verbum Seraphicum (for those of you reading online, you will find them listed on the Articles Page at the Franciscan Archive), penance is anything difficult or sacrificial or painful, done in reparation for one’s personal sins. Penance is absolutely necessary for the Christian, because the salvation offered to us by Christ is nothing short of an invitation to enter into a state of perfect justice.  And justice requires that we make up for the offenses we commit.  God’s justice requires this for grave offenses before we die, otherwise we shall be damned.  For lighter offenses God requires that we make reparation here and merit more in this life, or make reparation in Purgatory, if we arrive there rather than being damned, in the next life.  Penance therefore is the spiritual and supernatural way of paying our spiritual and supernatural debts to God, to Our Lady, to the Angels or Saints, or our neighbors which we have offended in any manner. We offend God by any sin.  We offend Our Lady by not keeping our promises to Her or by offending Her good name or honor; Likewise with the Saints.  But we offend Christ, Our Lady and St. Francis, if they have given us a vocation and we do not act upon it, or act upon it with sloth, negligence, or a lack of generosity, or by mixing it up with and watering it down with worldly, carnal prudence (when men nowadays call “being practical”). But he who does not fast is surely damned, not only because by fasting we can do much penance, but  because the major effect of Original Sin in our nature are the many disorders of our body.

Now to successfully do penance we must do so consciously out of faith and to make reparation for our sin:  penance can be done to a certain extent even in the state of mortal sin, because though we cannot merit anything eternal by such penance, being bereft of the state of grace, we can dispose ourselves to receiving the grace of repentance and of making a good confession, if by this penance we cleanse our heart and souls of those attachments to sin which are preventing the reception of this grace.  But penance is properly effective only in the state of grace, wherefore those who wish to start paying their debts, ought first to make a good confession and cleanse their soul of all mortal sins by confessing them and resolving firmly to avoid the near occasions of sin. No mortal sin is actually forgiven in confession IF we make a bad confession:  that is if we are not sorry, and only say we are; or if we are not resolute to avoid this or that mortal sin such that we would prefer death, rather than commit it again, or prefer the loss of our liberty, job, wealth, or good name, to committing that sin again.  But a confession is also bad if we do not resolve to avoid the near occasions of sin. For all of us sons of Adam, our chief disorder of nature is impurity; and this leads always and eventually to mortal sin, whether in an action or thought, to which we consent, because without grace it is morally impossible to remain chaste.  Which is why the Saints and Our Lady of Fatima tell that so, so many souls are damned for impurity alone.    But the key to living a pure life, to ridding one’s self of impurity, and of making a good confession of all such mortal sins, by a good resoluteness to avoid occasions, is this:  to fast.  Fasting is absolutely necessary for purity, and purity for salvation.  But Fasting is necessary for purity, because the body is inclined to sensual movements because of its natural ability to have them; and its natural ability to have sensual movement is directly proportional to the abundance of nutrition which it is given.  Like a tree which does not bear fruit, unless it is watered and fertilized, so the body, when given too much meat or drink or other such food, is so impure. Therefore, let us do penance this Lent, making ourselves chaste, by abstaining from meat, from too much food and drink, from alcohol, sweats or pastries, from snacking, from vitamins and supplements (chief enemies of purity), and other such vain foods.  And continue doing this after Lent, until we establish an insensitivity in our body which is appropriate for the practice of the Christian Life, which Life obliges all to purity, whether priests, religious or lay persons, married or single.