Ar present and quite by happenstance, I am reading three complementary books. Since I spent formative time during my conversion and immediately after at the now sadly abandoned Our Lady of the Holy Trinity Cistercian Abbey and I am completing my studies at a Benedictine college located at an abbey (Mt Angel), I suppose makes me some kind of distant relative to the Benedictine family, I am reading The Rule of St. Benedict along with Esther de Waal's commentary on the regula: A Life Giving Way. I am also reading Addison Hodges Hart's outstanding The Letter of James: A Pastoral Commentary. I have to say, it's been a long time since I read books that have helped me spiritually, which is to say with my humanity.
The Last Judgment, Giotto, 1306
Today is All Souls day. Because of my inability to participate in yesterday's solemnity, both yesterday and today, instead of Morning Prayer, I prayed the Office of Readings. For the most part, the offices for All Souls are taken from the Office for the Dead. But the second reading for the Office of Readings for the Feast of All Souls is taken from a book St. Ambrose of Milan wrote about the death of his brother, Satyrus. I was paricularly struck by a certain passage from the excerpt. It struck me because it gave some credence to my own preaching on death (i.e., death is not natural- it is the least natural thing) while helping me to develop the backside of this theology a bit more.
Here's the passage:
Death was not part of nature; it became part of nature. God did not decree death from the beginning; he prescribed it as a remedy. Human life was condemned because of sin to unremitting labor and unbearable sorrow and so began to experience the burden of wretchedness. There had to be a limit to its evils; death had to restore what life had forfeited. Without the assistance of grace, immortality is more of a burden than a blessing (International Commission on English in the Liturgy, Liturgy of the Hours, Vol. IV, 1539)Anyone who's ever read any of Anne Rice's vampire novels has at least a passing familiarity with what the Pastoral Doctor means by the last sentence of this paragraph. Once we reject grace, which rejection is part of the pattern of each of our lives, death serves as a remedy to living forever in a graceless state of being. Hence, God made death part of nature not only to spare us the hellishness of a graceless immortality, God permitted death in order to bring creation to completion through resurrection of his Son.
On All Souls, we pray for the souls in Purgatory. An indulgence for a soul in Purgatory can be obtained today by entering a church or a chapel and praying one Our Father, one Hail Mary, and one Glory Be. For the indulgence to be plenary you must be free from attachment to all sin, both venial and mortal (a difficult but presumably not impossible thing). If not, it is a partial indulgence. You need to go to confession 20 days before or 20 days after you pray those prayers in a designated place, and receive communion 20 days before or 20 days after. Another indulgence can be obtained if between now and 8 November you go to a cemetery and mentally pray for the dead. The same conditions with regard to attachment to sin, confession, and Holy Communion apply. It's worth doing for the communio sanctorum.
Our Friday traditio for this Feast of All Souls is Edward Elgar's composition for the Lux æterna, which is the communion antiphon for the great Requiem Mass
Lux æterna luceat eis, Domine:
Cum Sanctis tuis in æternum:
quia pius es.
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine:
et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Cum Sanctis tuis in æternum:
quia pius es.
This translates into English as:
May light eternal shine upon them, O Lord,
with Thy Saints for evermore:
for Thou art gracious.
Eternal rest give to them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them:
With Thy Saints for evermore,
for Thou art gracious.
No comments:
Post a Comment