JESUIT MUSICIAN

Those of us who were fortunate enough to have  a real Jesuit education learned more than just the basics. We learned the Jesuit disciplines of prayer and a life-long love of learning. For me part of this love is in the search for things new that stimulate the mind and the soul. Readers of this Blog know how I like to discover and write about Jesuits, and here is a new one even for me.

DOMENICO ZIPOLI (October 1688 - January 1726) was an Italian Baroque composer who worked and died in Córdoba, in the Viceroyalty of Peru, Spanish Empire, (presently in Argentina). He became a Jesuit in order to work in the Reductions of Paraguay where he taught music among the Guaraní people. He is remembered as the most accomplished musician among Jesuit missionaries. 

Domenico Zipoli was born in Prato, Italy, where he received elementary musical training. In 1707, and with the patronage of Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, he was a pupil of the organist Giovani Maria Casini in Florence. In 1708 he briefly studied under Alessandro Scarlatti in Naples, then Bologna and finally in Rome under Bernardo Pasquini. Two of his oratorios date to this early period: San Antonio di Padova (1712) and Santa Caterina, Virgine e martire (1714). Around 1715 he was made the organist of the Church of the Gesù (a Jesuit parish, the mother church for The Society of Jesus), in Rome, a prestigious post. At the very beginning of the following year, he finished his best known work, a collection of keyboard pieces titled Sonate d'intavolatura per organo e cimbalo.

For reasons that are not clear, Domenico  traveled to Sevilla, Spain, in 1716, where he joined the Society of Jesus with the desire to be sent to the Reductions of Paraguay in Spanish Colonial America. Still a novice, he left Spain with a group of 53 missionaries who reached Buenos Aires on 13 July 1717.

He completed his formation and sacerdotal studies in Córdoba (in contemporary Argentina)  though, for the lack of an available bishop, he could not be ordained priest.

All through these few years he served as music director for the local Jesuit church. Soon his works came to be known in Lima, Peru. Struck by an unknown infectious disease, Domenico Zipoli died in the Jesuit house of Córdoba, on 2 January 1726. His burial place has never been found.

Domenico Zipoli continues to be well known today for his keyboard music; many of them are well within the abilities of beginning to intermediate players, and appear in most standard anthologies. 

His Italian compositions have always been known but recently some of his South American church music was discovered in Chiquitos, Bolivia: two Masses, two psalm settings, three Office hymns, a Te Deum laudamus and other pieces.

SACRED HEART, OUR REFUGE

Georges Desvalliers, 1905   (France, d. 1950) *

O most holy HEART OF JESUS, fountain of every blessing, I adore You, I love You.

O Jesus, we know You are gentle and that You gave Your Heart for us. It was crowned with thorns through our sins.

Through Your most Sacred Heart, make us all love one another. Cause hatred to disappear among men. Come into each heart.  Be patient and persistent with us. O Jesus, make our hearts open to You, in remembering the Passion You have suffered for us.

O Sacred Heart of Jesus, Your are our refuge, our strength, our hope, and our salvation. You are the inexhaustible source of light, of perseverance, peace, and consolation.

Have mercy on us, O Heart of Jesus, and on all that we recommend to You according to Your mercy. We abandon ourselves to You with the confidence and conviction that You will never abandon us either in time or eternity. 

Amen

I love this art work, as it does not convey the insipid piety of so many depictions of the Sacred Heart. Here we have raw emotion, Jesus literally tearing His Heart out for us. What more can we say?

* From 1905 on, Georges Desvallières’ return to the Christian faith was progressively confirmed by his own personal reflections, and brought about a radical change in his life. He perceived Christ Incarnate sharing the sufferings of humanity. Perhaps he was iinfluenced by Léon Bloy or perhaps the simple piety of the faithful in the silence of a church, that brought about his conversion?

He painted more and more religious subjects in the framework of his family, and of his daily life. He became a Dominican Tertiary in 1926, while his daughter Sabine was to become, a Poor Clare nun at Mazamet, taking the name of Sœur Marie de la Grâce.

A JESUIT & THE SACRED HEART

When I was in college I was fortunate to have a wonderful academic counselor (mandatory for all students in my era) who later became my spiritual advisor.  It was he who really brought me to a love of the SACRED HEART of JESUS.  Little did I know at the time that he had just written and published a book  (1959) on the encyclical "Haurietis Aquas”  (You Will Draw Waters"),  the landmark encyclical of Pope Pius XII on devotion to the Sacred Heart written on May 15, 1956.

Father Dachauer, who himself had a great devotion to the Sacred Heart, gave a simple and clear commentary in order “to help the reader better understand the significance of the Holy Father’s message, and to appreciate the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”

One is struck by the beautiful insight of Father Dachauer into the threefold love of the Heart of Christ. This book gives a little more of the scriptural, traditional, theological, ascetical and historical background of this most important document on the Sacred Heart.

I know very little about Father Alban J. Dachauer, SJ, except he was from Milwaukee and entered the Society of Jesus in 1931. He received his BA from St. Louis University in 1936 and his MA in German three years later. He was ordained in 1944 and began teaching at Marquette in 1946.

In March, 1956, he was named assistant to the director general of the Apostleship of Prayer in Rome. He retired from that post and returned from Rome in 1958. He had a gift for modern languages, a talent that earned him a post at Creighton University in the language department.

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When I lived in Europe in the late 60s, Father had moved back to Rome, so I would visit him.

Being a true German, he was at times stern, but always had a twinkle in his eye, as if he had some  marvelous secret waiting to be told.

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In 1956  he was recruited to organize a prayer book published under the title  "With the Blessings of the Church" (later updated & titled  "The Rural Prayer Book" ) - literally, a book granted special permissions by Pope Pius XII to translate the published collection of prayers and blessings from their original Latin to English.

The prayer book written in cooperation with the National Rural Life Conference, included a plethora of blessings, prayers and devotions to mark specific seasons, feast days, holidays and holy days along with events of significance in the lives of simple country people.

The book includes prayers for blessing everything from houses to bacon.  “Even in a world where farmers are fewer and those still in the profession are guided more by computers than tradition we can gather for ourselves a simple guide to what Jesus knew when he commended his spirit into the hands of his Father.”                                                                                               Bishop Thomas G. Doran, Rockford, Ill.

JESUIT APOSTLE OF THE SACRED HEART

This week we celebrate the great feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  Here is a saint, new to me,  who dedicated his life to fostering this devotion.

BL. BERNARDO FRANCISCO de HOYOS was born in Torrelobatón, in the province of Valladolid in Spain in 1711. He studied in the Jesuit school in Medina del Campo and entered the Jesuits in 1726. He studied theology in Valladolid at the Jesuit College of Saint Ambrose. This was a decisive turning point in his life.

On August 10, 1729, the Savior, covered with His Precious Blood, appeared to Bernardo, and showing him the wound in His Side, said, “Rejected by humanity, I come to find my consolation with chosen souls.” Bernardo’s experience closely resembles that of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque fifty-three years earlier in the Visitation Monastery of Paray-le-Monial in France.

Jesus told him on May 4th, 1733: "I wish for you to spread the devotion to My Sacred Heart throughout all of Spain." From then on, Bernardo did not live for anything else. On May 14th of the same year, he received what is known as the "Great Promise" from the Sacred Heart of Jesus: "This will always be my place of rest. I will make my home here—the place where I have desired and chosen to be. I will reign in Spain with more veneration than in other places."

"I had great confidence in my prayers and petitions, depending on the intercession of the Heart of Jesus; at present I have no doubt about obtaining whatsoever I ask, if it is for the greater glory of God. I am convinced that at the altar the Eternal Father can refuse me nothing."

The Vision

Bl. Bernardo formed a group of devoted collaborators to communicate the essence of the devotion to the Sacred Heart to others. Bl. Bernardo himself would distribute prayer cards and leaflets and founded many confraternities and associations in honor of the Sacred Heart. His book, “The Hidden Treasure”, was the first book published in Spain on the Sacred Heart. But the best way he spread this devotion was through his own holiness, piety, and personal witness to the love of Christ.

On January 2, 1735, Bernardo was ordained a priest, but within the year, on November 29, he died after contracting typhus. He was beatified in Valladolid 18 April 2010. He is considered  the “First Apostle of the Sacred Heart of Jesus” in Spain.

GROWTH IN THE HOLY SPIRIT

Having had a very holy Irish priest with us the past ten days (he is stationed in southern California), I am reminded of my favorite monks (well, I can have favorites even though an ocean divides us).  These monks  have a problem with attracting vocations, but unlike much of the Western world, theirs is they have far too many men interested in their form of monastic life.  (See Blog  3/25/2017)

They are traditional Benedictines, but also have added adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament to their daily mission. This is in a spirit of reparation and intercession for the sanctification of priests.

Their life, as ours on Shaw Island, does not involve outside works. They have kept the Latin and Gregorian Chant as we have, as well as Lectio Divina. “It is a sacramental configuration to Christ, Priest and Victim, in his oblation to the Father; and this, in the context of a hidden life, marked by silence and in effective separation from the world.”  

As you can see from the recent photo they have grown from just a handful to 13 in only a few years.

CORPUS CHRISTI SAINT

BL. JULIANA of MONT CORNILLON , born in 1192 at Retinnes, Flanders, Belgium,  was orphaned at age 5. She and her sister Agnes were raised by the nuns at the convent of Mount Cornillon. The canonry seems to have been established on the model of a double monastery, with both canons and canonesses, each living in their own wing of the monastery.

The two girls were initially placed on a small farm next to the canonry. Juliana, after entering the Order at the age of 13, worked for many years in its leprosarium. Agnes seems to have died young, as there is no further mention of her in the archives.

She became an Augustinian nun at Liege, Belgium in 1206 working with the sick, in the convent‘s hospital. She became Prioress in 1225.

From her early youth, Juliana had great veneration for the Eucharist (as did many of the women of Liège) and longed for a special feast day in its honor. When she was 16 she had her first vision. She received visions from Christ, who pointed out that there was no feast in honor of the Blessed Sacrament.

Not having any way to bring about such a feast, she kept her thoughts to herself, except for sharing them with an anchoress, Blessed Eve of Liège, who lived in a cell adjacent to the Basilica of St. Martin, and a few other trusted sisters in her monastery.

The messages she received led to being branded a visionary, and accused of mismanagement of hospital funds. An investigation by the bishop exonerated her so she was returned to her position as prioress. She introduced the feast of Corpus Christi in Liege in 1246.

On the bishop‘s death in 1248, Juliana was driven from Mount Cornillon. Nun at the Cistercian house at Salzinnes until it was burned by Henry II of Luxembourg. Anchoress at Fosses.

She died in 1258 of natural causes and was buried at Villiers, France.

She was beatified in  1869 by Pope Blessed Pius IX.

The office for the feast was later written by Saint Thomas Aquinas, and was sanctioned for the whole Church by Pope Urban IV in 1264. The feast became mandatory in the Roman Church in 1312.

RADIANT BODY OF CHRIST

Last month (May) Magnificat Magazine gave us an exquisite piece of art in William Congdon’s EUCHARISTIA. It was painted in 1960, one year after he came into the Catholic Church. In a past Blog in Lent (2/28/15), I featured William Congdon’s very powerful crucifixions.  

This piece of art gives us an all together different feeling.  Here we rejoice, here we have hope!

Note the only real color is the bright red altar, which gives us the Holy Sacrifice. There are some gashes of blue at the side of the monstrance, which perhaps separate earth from heaven?.  Choirs of angels fill half of the painting floating upward, while below crowds of faithful worshipers give praise. At first glance it is almost as if they are holding weapons- perhaps a reminder we are the Church Militant?

But the predominant figure is the Eucharist, the center of our faith, our hope and our Savior, His Body given for us.