FAITHFUL SERVANT REMEMBERED

 

The canonization cause for our friend, Jesuit FATHER WALTER CISZEK, has been terminated, although the Vatican's decision does not "diminish the enduring spiritual value" of his witness, said a leading advocate for the cause (see Blogs: 3/15/2012, 4/28/2020).

"This development comes after years of careful study and discernment at the level of the Holy See, which bears the responsibility of evaluating each Cause with thoroughness, integrity, and fidelity to the Church's norms," said the diocese, which assumed responsibility for the cause following its initiation by the New Jersey-based Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Passaic.

Father Ciszek was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1937, becoming the first American in the order in the Byzantine Catholic rite, one of the 23 Eastern Catholic churches that, along with the Roman Catholic Church, comprise the universal Catholic Church.

As a seminarian, he studied in Rome as part of an initiative under Pope Pius XI to equip priests for ministry in Russia. Originally assigned to Poland, he was able to enter Russia on false papers after World War II broke out in 1939 to minister in secret.

 Working as an unskilled laborer, he was arrested in 1941 by the secret police as a suspected spy and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in Siberia. While in various prison camps, he managed to celebrate Mass and hear confessions.

 After his sentence ended in 1955, he was forced to reside in Russia, and worked in a chemical factory. After decades of no communication, he was at last able to write to his American family, who had presumed him dead.

 In 1963, President John F. Kennedy secured his release and that of an American student, exchanging them for two Soviet agents. Until his death in 1984, Father Ciszek worked at the John XXIII Center at Fordham University, which is now the Center for Eastern Christian Studies at the Jesuit-run University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.

 Father Ciszek recounted his experiences in the books He Leadeth Me and With God in Russia, co-written with fellow Jesuit Fr. Daniel Flaherty.

 Even as his canonization cause has been halted, Father Ciszek's impact lives on, said the diocese.

"While this news may understandably bring disappointment to the many who have been inspired by Father Ciszek's example of heroic faith, it does not diminish the enduring spiritual value of his life, witness, and legacy," the diocese said in its statement.

 "We are deeply grateful for the many years of prayer, devotion, and support from the faithful. Father Ciszek's courage, perseverance, and unwavering trust in God amidst extraordinary suffering has led many souls to God and will continue to touch countless lives," said the diocese. "Even as the formal canonization process has been stopped, the grace flowing from his witness remains alive."

The prayer league will now become the Father Walter J. Ciszek Society and "remain committed to honoring his memory, sharing his message, and encouraging devotion to the profound spiritual insights he left to the Church.

His beautiful prayer of surrender:

 Lord, Jesus Christ, I ask the grace to accept the sadness in my heart, as your will for me, in this moment. I offer it up, in union with your sufferings, for those who are in deepest need of your redeeming grace. I surrender myself to your Father’s will and I ask you to help me to move on to the next task that you have set for me.

Spirit of Christ, help me to enter into a deeper union with you. Lead me away from dwelling on the hurt I feel: to thoughts of charity for those who need my love, to thoughts of compassion for those who need my care, and to thoughts of giving to those who need my help.

As I give myself to you, help me to provide for the salvation of those who come to me in need. May I find my healing in this giving. May I always accept God’s will. May I find my true self by living for others in a spirit of sacrifice and suffering.

May I die more fully to myself, and live more fully in you. As I seek to surrender to the Father’s will, may I come to trust that he will do everything for me.

THANKS FOR BIRDS

 

                       Birds

That God made birds is surely in His favor.
I write them as His courtesies of love.
Hidden in leaves, they offer me sweet savor
of lightsome music; when they streak above

my garden wall they brush my scene with color.
They are embroideries upon the grass.
I write the gayest stitched-in blossoms duller
than birds which change their patterns as I pass.

I nurse a holy envy of St. Francis
who lured the birds to nestle at his breast.
Yet I am grateful for this one which dances
across my lawn, a reckless anapest.

Subjects for gratitude push up my living
praise to a sum that tempts the infinite;
but birds deserve one whole psalm of thanksgiving
and these words are my antiphon for it.

Jessica Powers (1956) (See Blog: June 23, 2022) 

Painting:   “Concert of Birds”,  Frans Snyders (1601), Flemish

MERCY FOR THE WORLD

 

Lord, You have passed over into new life, and You now invite us to pass over also.  In these past days we have grieved at Your suffering and mourned at Your death.  We have given ourselves over to repentance and prayer, to abstinence and gravity.  Now at Easter You tell us that we have died to sin.  Yet, if this is true, how can we remain on Earth?  How can we pass over to Your risen life, while we are still in this world?  Will we not be just as meddlesome, just as lazy, just as selfish as before?  Will we not still be bad-tempered and stubborn, enmeshed in all the vices of the past?  We pray that as we pass over with You, our faces will never look back.  Instead, let us, like You, make Heaven on Earth.   (St. Bernard of Clairvaux)

Eternal God, in Whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion — inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.

Art: Divine Mercy for the World, Stephen Whatley, England

THE MARYS

St.  John’s Gospel tells us, “Standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala” (Jn 19:25). These three Marys were special witnesses of the Lord’s death.

Because of their faithfulness, each of the three Marys were the first  witnesses of the Risen Christ. They symbolize, faith, hope, and love,  the theological virtues present in the Easter mystery.

In various Catholic countries, particularly in the Kingdom of Spain, the Philippines and Latin American countries, images of the three Marys (in Spanish Tres Marías) associated with the tomb are carried in Good Friday processions referred to by the word Penitencia (Spanish) or Panatà (Filipino for an act performed in fulfilment of a vow). They carry attributes or iconic accessories, chiefly enumerated as follows:

Santa Maria Jacobe (2024 Good Friday processions, Philippines)

Mary Cleopas (sometimes alternated with Mary Jacob) – holding a broom

Mary Salome – holding a thurible or censer

Mary Magdalene – holding an alabaster chalice or jar.

The Blessed Virgin Mary is not part of this group, as her title as Mater Dolorosa is reserved to a singular privilege in the procession.

A common pious practice sometimes alternates Mary Salome with Jacob, due to a popular belief that Salome, an elderly person at this time would not have had the energy to reach the tomb of Christ at the morning of resurrection, though she was present at the Crucifixion.

Art:   “The Marys at the Tomb;  Colin McChan, 1950

ON THE ROAD

 

Who are these disciples  on the road to Emaus? (Luke 24:13-35) Cleopas is named  in the Gospel, but the other remains a mystery. Tradition and scholars often identify her as Cleopas' wife, Mary.They most probably were traveling together, sorrowing, after the death of Jesus. It could also be another male disciple, such as Simon or Luke. 

The main message of this story after the resurrection of Jesus is twofold:   One never knows when and where the Lord will turn up and secondly, the risen Jesus is present with us even in times of doubt or disappointment. Even when we are blind to His presence, He stays with us. 

As with us, Jesus does not force Himself upon the disciples, but He waits to be invited to stay and share a meal, highlighting the importance of inviting Him into our own lives, especially as we receive Him in the Eucharist..

                                                   

Art: Amanda O Mcconnell  (USA)

THE GARDENER

 

“Tell Them” 

Breaking through the powers of darkness
bursting from the stifling tomb
he slipped into the graveyard garden
to smell the blossomed air.

Tell them, Mary, Jesus said,
that I have journeyed far
into the darkest deeps I’ve been
in nights without a star.

Tell them Mary, Jesus said,
that fear will flee my light
that though the ground will tremble
and despair will stalk the earth
I hold them firmly by the hand
through terror to new birth.

Tell them, Mary, Jesus said,
the globe and all that’s made
is clasped to God’s great bosom
they must not be afraid
for though they fall and die, he said,
and the black earth wrap them tight
they will know the warmth
of God’s healing hands
in the early morning light.

Tell them, Mary, Jesus said,
smelling the blossomed air,
tell my people to rise with me
to heal the Earth’s despair.

                            Edwina Gateley (USA)

Art:  "New Gardener",   Janpeter Muilwijk (Dutch, 1960–)  2017.

HE IS RISEN

 

“I who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth day of life and love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth.”  e. e. cummings

If in that Syrian garden, ages slain,
You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,
Nor even in dreams behold how dark and bright
Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night
The hate you died to quench and could but fan,
Sleep well and see no morning, son of man.

But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by,
At the right hand of majesty on high
You sit, and sitting so remember yet
Your tears, your agony and bloody sweat,
Your cross and passion and the life you gave,
Bow hither out of Heaven and see and save.

A.E. Housman

 

Art: Julia Stankova, Bulgaria, 2014 

ENTOMBED

"Jesus, lying in the borrowed tomb, was at peace – His suffering was over, His love was consummated, every hour of darkness moved closer to the light, closer to the morning of resurrection, closer to the time when He would rise from the dead to live forever.  

In every life of every Christian there are countless resurrections – just as there are always many times when every Christian is buried with Christ.

In the soul of the sinner Christ dies many deaths and knows the glory of many resurrections

In the souls that have served Him faithfully, too, there are long periods that seem like death, periods of dryness of spirit when all the spiritual things that once interested them have become insufferably tedious and boring, when it is very difficult, even sometimes impossible, to say a prayer; when the sweetness has gone out of the love of God, when the soul seems bound in the iron bondage of the winter of the spirit like the seed held in iron of the black frozen earth in the wintertime.

 These are the winters of the spirit indeed!  But just as Christ suffered everything that all those who were to follow Him would suffer, all those “other Christs” who have come after Him have suffered, and will suffer in a spiritual sense, everything that He suffered in His human life on Earth.

One of these things is lying in the tomb, bound and restricted in the burial bands.  There come times in every life when the soul seems to be shut down, frostbound in the hard, ironbound winter of the spirit; times when it seems to be impossible to pray, impossible even to want to pray; when there seems to be only cold and darkness numbing the mind.

These indeed are the times when Christ is growing towards His flowering, towards His spring breaking in the soul – towards His ever-recurring resurrection in the world, towards His glorious resurrection in the hearts of men.

Again and again He has referred to Himself and to His divine life in us as seed buried in the earth, and so it is.  There are times when we experience no sweetness, no consolation, no visible sign of the presence and the growth of Christ in us; these above all other times are those in which Christ does in fact grow to His flowering in us.

There seems to be nothing that we can do in these times to honor God, but by ourselves there is nothing that we can do at any time.  In Christ we can do just what He did, remain quietly in the tomb, rest, and be at peace, trusting God to awaken us in His own good time to a springtime of Christ, to a sudden quickening and flowering and new realization of Christ-life in us.

 There are many deaths before the death of the body.  There are many, many resurrections, before that last eternal resurrection that will reunite our bodies and souls forever, to live forever full lives of love and endless bliss that will never be interrupted again.

All those little deaths of the spirit show us the mystery of that last death and that endless rising from the dead.

Death is not something to fear.  Fear will be over and done with when it comes.  Then the possibility of sin will be over, the danger of ever again being parted from Christ will be over, the pains and the desolations of body and soul on Earth will be over… We have nothing to fear. Christ has died each of our deaths for us.  He will be with us all, saint and sinner alike, in our rising from the dead. 

It is to each one of us that He spoke on the night before He died, saying, “Peace is my bequest to you, and the peace which I give you is mine to give; I do not give peace as the world gives it.  Do not let your heart be distressed, or play the coward,” (John 14:27). (Caryll Houselander)

Art: Andrea Mantegna (d. 1506), The Lamentatiom over the Dead Christ", Italian 

RELEASED

" They took His body down from the cross and laid it in His mother’s arms, and she held it upon her heart; and in it, all those Christs to come to whom she was mother now.

That first birth of Christ in Bethlehem was painless, because Mary, his mother, was sinless and He was the Son of God.  But this mysterious birth of Christ on Calvary began in the travail and agony of the whole world borne by one man and one woman, God-made-man and Mary, His mother: because this was the birth of Christ in us, Christ the redeemer born in the souls of sinners; and every sinner who would receive Him in all time became Mary’s child, even her only child; every sinner who would be indwelt by Christ was laid in Mary’s arms, and she received them all.

Mankind was born again.

 Already even in the agony of that night of sorrow, Mary, who had shared Christ’s passion shared His peace.  In the consummation of His pain, and her pain and suffering, she knew the beginning of the joy that would never end; she knew the birth of life in the souls of men that would be immortal life, never ending.  She knew the utter joy of experiencing the consummation of His love for men, and of loving them with all His love.

 She herself was indwelt by Him now as really as her body had been indwelt by His advent.  Now she who had given Him life would live His life forever; her life would be His, her words His words, her acts His acts; her heart beating, the beating of His heart 

She who had said long ago in Nazareth, “Let it be unto me according to thy word,” was the first of all human creatures since Christ was conceived to be one with Him.  She gave Him her life, and He gave her back her life in His forever.  He gave His life, too, to all those who would receive Him through the ages: “And I have given them the privilege which thou gavest to me, that they should all be one, as we are one; that while thou art in me, I may be in them, and so they may be perfectly made one,” (JohnJohn 17:22-23).

 As the dead Christ lay in His mother’s arms she laid to her heart all those sinners to whom He would give not only life but His own life: in baptism, that first stream of the waters of birth, cleansing and irrigating the souls; in the sacrament of penance, restoring the soul of the sinner to its primal innocence.  She saw them as God sees them.  No matter how battered and bruised they had been by sin, the innocence of Christ was restored to them, they were restored to His beauty; no matter how darkened their minds and hearts had been by evil and by the oppressive sadness that follows upon evil, they shone now with the purity, the glory, of Christ of Tabor, clothed in His loveliness that burns with the splendor of a fire of snow.  No matter how cynical and faded and old their sins had made them, they were restored to their childhood now, to Christ’s childhood.  Now they could possess the Kingdom of Heaven in a wild flower, a stream of water, or a star, and now in the body of Christ Mary took them, each of them as her only child, to her sinless heart.

And there from the summit of Calvary, at the foot of the cross with her dead child in her arms, Mary saw how in all the centuries to come Christ would be born again day after day, hour after hour, in the sacred Host.  She heard the multitudinous whisper of the words of consecration coming to her on Calvary from every part of the world, from every place on Earth: from the great cathedrals of the world; from the little village huts that are makeshift for churches; from the churches themselves, whether they were beautiful or cheap and tawdry; from the chapels and wards of hospitals; from prisons and from concentration camps; from the frozen forests of Siberia – from dawn till dusk, and from dusk till dawn, the words of consecration on the breath of men, and Jesus lifted up, as he had been lifted up on the cross, in the Sacred Host.

 And she saw, through the darkness that covered Calvary, how at all those Masses those who were to be her children and the children of God would flock to the altars to receive her son in the Host – little children clothed in the white muslin and gossamer of their First Communion clothes, old people leaning upon their sticks, young men and women who would carry Christ in their hearts to face and conquer the workaday world.

She saw, too, how he would be carried into prisons and hospitals and concentration camps, to be given to the lonely and the sick and the dying.  And how in all these people, in every one of them, sinners as well as saints, Christ, her son, would live again and overcome the world.

So it was that when Jesus was taken down from the cross, Mary received her dead son into her arms and took the whole world to her heart."  (Caryll Houselander)