Daily Gospel Reflection 8/16/17

Your daily Gospel reflection... Wednesday, August 16, 2017 19TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR I MATTHEW 18:15-20 Friends, the Gospel for today addresses an issue of tremendous practical importance, namely, how we ought to engage in fraternal correction. Jesus says, with utter directness and simplicity, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.”   What a world of significance in that little recommendation! It holds off the sinful tendency of running to everyone but the person in question and complaining about him behind his back. This strategy is utterly unproductive and spiritually harmful, for it does nothing to help the person you are criticizing, and it puffs up your already inflated ego.   I know it is exceptionally difficult, but going to the person directly is both productive and spiritually uplifting. It has at least a fighting chance of accomplishing something, and it confirms you in love. But the right thing is, as usual, the hard thing. Notice please that the accuser is encouraged to tell the person in question alone—and no one else. Venting and gossiping are not helpful.

One for the Books!

The Conversion of M. Estrade

     M. Estrade's contempt for these mystic extravagances and these impostures went so far that up to that moment, in spite of his secret curiosity, he had made it a point of honor not to go to the Rocks of Massabielle.  That day, however, he resolved to repair to them―partly to attend a strange spectacle― partly to observe for himself―and partly out of complaisance and to escort his sister and certain other ladies in the neighborhood, who were much touched with these accounts.

     “I reached the spot,” he informs us, “much disposed to examine and, to tell the truth, to laugh and enjoy myself thoroughly, expecting as I did to see a kind of farce or some grotesque absurdities.  An immense crowd of people massed themselves by degrees round those wild rocks.  I wondered at the simplicity of so many blockheads and smiled to myself at the credulity of a crowd of devotees who were kneeling sanctimoniously in front of the rocks.  We had come very early in the morning, and thanks to my skill in elbowing the crowd, I had no great difficulty in securing a place in the front ranks.  At the usual hour, towards sunrise, Bernadette arrived.  I was near to her.  I remarked, in her childish features, that expression of sweetness, innocence and profound tranquillity with which I had been struck some days previously at the residence of the Commissary.  She knelt down in a perfectly natural manner, without ostentation or embarrassment, and paying apparently little attention to the crowd which surrounded her, precisely as if she had been alone in a church or in a solitary wood, far from human gaze.  She drew out her chaplet and began to pray.  Shortly afterwards her look seemed to receive and reflect a strange unknown light;  it became fixed and rested wondering, ravished and radiant with happiness on the opening in the rock.  I turned my eyes in the same direction, but I saw nothing, absolutely nothing, except the naked branches of the wild-rose.  And yet, must I confess it to you?  In face of the transfiguration of the child, all my former prejudices, all my philosophical objections, all my preconceived negations fell at once to the ground and cleared the way for an extraordinary feeling which took possession of me in spite of myself.  I had the certitude, the irresistible intuition that a mysterious being was there.  My eyes did not see it;  but my soul and the souls of the innumerable witnesses of this solemn hour saw it as I did, with the inner light of evidence.  Yes, I attest the fact that a divine being was there.  Suddenly and completely transfigured Bernadette was no longer Bernadette.  She was an Angel from heaven plunged in indescribable ravishment.  She had no longer the same countenance;  another cast of intelligence, another life, I was going to say another stamp of soul was depicted upon it.  She bore no longer any resemblance to herself, and it seemed as if she was a perfectly different person.  Her attitude, her slightest gestures, the manner, for instance, in which she made the sign of the Cross, had a nobility, dignity, and grandeur, exceeding anything human.  She opened her eyes wide as if insatiable of seeing―wide open and almost motionless;  she was afraid, it would seem, to droop her eye-lids and to lose for a single moment the ravishing sight of the marvel she was contemplating.  She smiled at that invisible being, and all this conveyed the fullest idea of ecstasy and beatitude.  I was not less moved than the rest of the spectators.  Like them, I held my breath, in order to endeavor to hear the colloquy which was being carried on between the Vision and the child.  The latter    listened with an expression of the most profound   respect, or to express it better, of the most absolute adoration mingled with boundless love and the sweetest ravishment.  Sometimes a shade of sorrow passed over her countenance, but its habitual expression was one of extreme joy.  I observed that, at intervals of a few moments, she ceased to breathe.  During the whole of this time she had her chaplet in her hand, sometimes motionless (for ever and anon she seemed to forget it in order to lose herself entirely in the contemplation of the divine Being), sometimes gliding the beads more or less regularly through her fingers.  Each of her movements was in perfect harmony with the expression of her countenance, which denoted by turns admiration, prayer and joy.  She made from time to time those signs of the Cross, so pious, so noble and so imprinted with power, of which I have just spoken.  If the denizens of Heaven make the signs of the Cross, they will assuredly resemble those made by Bernadette in her state of ecstasy.  This gesture of the child, restricted as it was, seemed to a certain extent to embrace the Infinite.

     “At a certain moment Bernadette quitted the spot where she was praying on the bank of the Gave, and without rising from her knees proceeded to the interior of the Grotto.  It is a distance of about forty-five feet.  While she was mounting this somewhat abrupt slope, the persons who were on her route, heard her very distinctly pronounce the words ‘Penitence! penitence! penitence!’

     “A few moments afterwards she rose and walked in the midst of the crowd towards the town.  She had subsided into a poor little tattered girl, who to all appearance had taken no more part in this extraordinary spectacle than those around her.”

     Many considerable men, and among others the one whose account of the occurrence we have just given, felt themselves converted to belief on witnessing the transfiguration of the youthful seer.

Taken from Our Lady of Lourdes - 1868
by Henri Lasserre

     

Henry Went to Bed

HENRY WENT TO BED

     IT was not only at Lourdes that miraculous cures had taken place.  Many, whose maladies prevented them from repairing to the Grotto had procured some of the water and found their most inveterate symptoms suddenly disappear.

     At Nay, at the base of the Pyrenee mountains, there was a young lad called Henry Busquet who had fallen hopelessly into bad health.  He had, in 1856, a violent and long typhoid fever, the result of which was that an abscess had formed on the right side of his neck, spreading imperceptibly to the top of his chest and the extremity of his cheek.  The abscess was about as big as your hand.  This caused the lad such intense suffering as to force him at times to roll himself on the ground.  The medical man who attended him, Doctor Subervielle, a practitioner of great repute in his district, lanced the abscess about four months after its first formation, and there issued from it a vast quantity of sero-purulent matter;  but this operation did not conduce to the recovery of Henry.  After having tried several unavailing remedies, the Doctor thought of the waters at Cauterets.  In 1857, in the course of the month of October―a season of the year when the rich frequenters of the baths having taken their departure, those in poorer circumstances repair to them― young Busquet went to Cauterets and took a course of fifteen baths.  These proved more prejudicial than useful to him and served but to aggravate his sores.  His malady increased in violence notwithstanding some momentary relief.  The unfortunate lad had, in the parts mentioned above, an extensive ulcer, which emitted an abundant suppuration, covering the top of his chest, all one side of his neck, and threatened to spread to his face.  In addition to this, two fresh glandular swellings of considerable size had arisen at the side of this terrible ulcer.

     Such was the state of this poor lad when, happening to hear the marvelous effects of the water of the Grotto spoken of, he had thoughts of undertaking the journey to Lourdes.  He wished to leave home and make the pilgrimage on foot;  but he presumed too much on his own strength, and his parents refused to take him there.

     Henry, who was very pious, was haunted with the idea that he would be cured by the Virgin who had appeared to Bernadette.  He requested a woman, one of his neighbors, who was going to Lourdes, to draw for him a little of the water at the Spring.  She brought him a bottle-full of it on the evening of Wednesday, April the 28th, the Feast of the Patronage of St. Joseph.

     Towards eight o’clock at night, before retiring to rest, the lad knelt down and prayed to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary.

     His family, consisting of his father, mother and several brothers and sisters, joined with him in prayer.  They were all excellent people simple and full of faith:  one of the daughters is at the present moment a religieuse with the Sisters of Saint André.

     Henry went to bed.  Doctor Subervielle had charged him repeatedly never to use cold water, as it would inevitably lead to a serious complication of his malady;  but at that moment Henry was thinking of something else than medical prescriptions.  He removed the bandages and lint which covered his ulcer, and with a piece of linen soaked in the water from the Grotto, he bathed and washed his sores in the miraculous fluid.  He was not wanting in faith.  “It must be,” he thought to himself, “that the Virgin will effect my cure.”  He went to sleep with this hope in his breast and fell into a deep slumber.

     On awaking, what he had hoped proved a reality:  all his pain had ceased, all his sores were closed;  the glandular swellings had disappeared.  The ulcer had became a solid scar, as solid as if it had been slowly healed by the hand of time.  The eternal power which had stepped in and effected the cure, had performed in a few moments the work of several months or several years.  His recovery had been complete, sudden and without any intermediate state of convalescence.

     The medical men in their Report addressed to the Commission (from which we have derived the technical terms employed in our narration), humbly acknowledged the miraculous nature of the young lad’s recovery.

     “All affections of this nature,” observed one of them, “can only be cured very slowly, because they are connected with scrofulous diathesis, and involve the necessity of an entire change in the system.  This consideration alone, placed in opposition with the suddenness of the cure, is sufficient to prove that the fact in question deviates from the ordinary action of nature.  We rank it among facts which fully and evidently possess a supernatural character.”

     The lad’s usual medical attendant, Doctor Subervielle, declared this sudden cure―as indeed did every one―to be marvelous and divine;  but the restless skepticism, which often lurks at the bottom of the hearts of members of the Faculty, waited for time to afford full proof of the truth of his theory.

     “Who knows,” M. Soubervielle was often in the habit of saying, “but who knows, this malady may recur when Henry reaches the age of eighteen?  Up to that period I shall be always in a state of anxiety.”

     The eminent physician who spoke thus was not destined to rejoice at seeing the cure of Henry confirmed by time.  He died a short time after this and his death was a calamity to that part of the country.

     As to young Henry Busquet, the author of this book, in accordance with his practice of ascertaining the truth of facts by personal investigation, availed himself of the opportunity of seeing him and hearing the circumstances from his own lips.

     Henry told us his story, with which we are already acquainted from official reports and the testimony of several individuals.  He related it to us as if it had been the simplest thing in the world, without showing surprise of astonishment.  To the strong good sense of Christians, like Henry, sprung from the lower classes, whose minds have not been led astray by sophistry, the supernatural does not appear extraordinary, still less contrary to reason.  They find it strictly conformable with common sense.  If they are sometimes surprised at being restored to health by the aid of a physician, it is to them not matter for astonishment that God, who had power sufficient to create man, should, in his loving kindness, cure him when attacked with sickness.  They see clearly at a glance that a miracle, far from disturbing order, is on the contrary one of the laws of eternal order.  If God, in His mercy, has conferred on certain waters the virtue of removing maladies of certain kinds―if He cures indirectly those who employ, according to certain conditions, such material agency, have we not greater reason to believe that He will effect a direct cure in those who address themselves directly to Him?  Such is the reasoning of the humbler classes.

It was our great wish to see with our own eyes and touch with our own hands the traces of this terrible sore, which had been so miraculously cured.  The place where the ulcer was is marked by an immense scar.  It is now long since the lad passed safely through the crisis of his eighteenth year, and there has been no hint of any return of his cruel malady.  He has never suffered again from any running nor shown any tendency to glandular swellings, and he enjoys perfect health.  Henry Busquet is now a man of five and twenty years of age, strong and hearty.  Like his father, he is a plasterer by trade.  On Sundays he plays the trombone in the brass band at the Faufare de l’ Orphéon, an instrument on which he displays no small talent.  He has a splendid voice.  If ever you happen to go to the town of Nay, you will not fail of hearing him through the windows of some house, either being built or repaired, for, when on the scaffolding, he is wont to sing at the top of his voice from morning till night.  You may listen to him without any fear of your ears being offended by any coarse song.  His charming voice delights in gay and innocent ballads, not infrequently in the canticles of the Church.  The singer has not forgotten that it is to the Blessed Virgin Mary that he owes his life.

The Burning Candle

Our Lady's Grotto, Lourdes, France - 07/04/17

     

THE BURNING CANDLE

EASTER-SUNDAY had arrived.  Notwithstanding the pious apprehensions of the Minister of Public Worship, the marvelous occurrences at Lourdes had not “weakened the religious feeling of the population of the district.”  Numberless conversions had taken place, and the confessionals were in a state of siege.  Usurers and robbers had made restitution of their ill-gotten gains, and many scandals had ceased.  The Faithful crowded to the Holy Table.

     On Easter-Monday, the fifth of April, that is to say the very day the Prefect had visited the Bishop, the Mother of God had once more by an internal call, summoned the daughter of the miller, and the child, soon followed by an immense crowd, had repaired to the Grotto, where, as on the preceding days, the Heavens had opened themselves before her eyes, and displayed to her the Virgin Mary in a state of glory.

     That day a very singular occurrence took place before the wonder-struck eyes of the multitude.

     The taper, which Bernadette had either brought with her, or received from one of the bystanders, was of considerable size and she had rested it on the ground, supporting it at the bottom between the fingers of her hands, which were half clasped.  The Virgin appeared to her.  And behold, by an instinctive movement of adoration, the youthful Seer, falling in a state of ecstasy before the Immaculate Beauty, slightly raised her hands and let them rest calmly, and without thinking of what she was doing, on the lighted end of a taper.  And the the flame began to pass between her fingers, which were half open, and to mount above them, flickering in different directions, according as the light breeze blew.  Bernadette, however, remained motionless and absorbed in the heavenly contemplation, utterly unconscious of the phenomenon which caused so much astonishment to the multitude around  her.  Those who witnessed it pressed closely on each other in   order to obtain a better view.  M.M. Jean-Louis Fourcade, Martinou, Estrade, Callet, warden of the forest, the demoiselles Tard’hivail, and a hundred other persons were spectators of this unheard of    incident.  M. Dozons had remarked by his watch that this extraordinary state lasted more than a quarter of an hour.  All at once a slight shudder was perceptible in the frame of Bernadette.  Her features lost their lofty expression.  The Vision had vanished and the child resumed her natural state.  The bystanders seized her hand but it presented nothing unusual to the eye.  The flame had spared the flesh and the youthful Seer during her ecstasy at the feet of Mary.  The crowd, not without sufficient reasons, exclaimed that a Miracle had been performed.  One of the spectators however, wishing to test the fact, took the taper which was still lighted and applied it to Bernadette’s hand, without her being aware of what he was doing.

     “Ah! Sir,” she exclaimed, drawing back quickly, “you are burning me.”

     The occurrences at Lourdes had produced such an excitement in the surrounding districts, and the influx of strangers was so great, that on that day the multitude which had in a moment flocked around Bernadette amounted to nearly ten thousand persons, and these had not been warned beforehand, as was the case during the Quinzaine.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES BY HENRI LASSERRE - 1868

Tonight's Prayer at Lourdes

Night Procession at Lourdes - August 4, 2017

O My good Angel, whom God has appointed to be my guardian, watch over me during this night.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my heart and my soul.

First Friday's Divine Mercy Chaplet

During the month of May, in the year 1688, St. Margaret Mary wrote to her superior in Dijon: "During Holy Communion on a certain Friday the Lord spoke to me, His unworthy servant, the following words: 'I promise thee in the excessive mercy of My heart that My all-powerful love will grant to all those who communicate on the First Friday in nine consecutive months the grace of final penitence; they shall not die in My disgrace nor without having received the sacraments; My Divine Heart shall be their safe refuge at that last moment.'" Dedicated To

A Little Story From Lourdes

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OUR LADY OF LOURDES

  BY HENRI LASSERRE  

     SINCE the last day of the Quinzaine, Bernadette had several times re-visited the Grotto, but much like any other simple individual, that is to say without hearing in her heart the irresistible voice which was wont to summon her to the spot. 

     She heard this voice, however, once more on the twenty-fifth of March, in the course of the morning, and immediately proceeded towards the Rocks of Massabielle.  Her countenance was beaming with hope.  She felt within herself that she was going to see the Apparition once more, and that Paradise would throw its eternal gates half open to her ravished eyes.

     It may be easily conceived that she had become the object of general attention at Lourdes, and she could not take a step without becoming “the observed of all observers.”

     “Bernadette is going to the Grotto,” was the observation of the one to the other as she was seen passing by.

     A moment afterwards, a crowd, issuing from all the houses and collecting from all the alleys, rushed in the same direction and reached the Grotto at the same time with the child.

     In the valley, the snow had melted within the last two or three days, but still remained on the crests of the neighboring peaks.  The weather was fine and clear, and not a speck was to be seen in the calm blue of the firmament.  The sun seemed to rise with royal pomp from the bosom of the white mountains and threw a splendor over his cradle of snow. 

     It was the anniversary of the day on which the Angel Gabriel had descended to the purest of virgins, the Virgin of Nazareth, and had saluted her in the name of the Lord.  The Church was celebrating the Feast of the Annunciation.

     While the crowd was hurrying to the Grotto, and amongst it might be noticed the greater number of those who had been cured―Louis Bourriette, the widow Crouzat, Blaisette Soupenne, Benoite Cazeaux, Auguste Bordes, and twenty more, the Catholic Church, at the close of her morning office was intoning those wonderful words, “At that moment shall the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf shall recover their hearing, the lame shall leap like the deer, for the waters have burst forth in the desert, and torrents in the wilderness.”

     Bernadette had not been deceived by the joyful presentiment she had felt.  The voice which had called her was the voice of the faithful Virgin.

     As soon as the child had fallen on her knees the Apparition made herself manifest.  As ever before, an ineffable aureole beamed around her, of boundless splendor and infinite sweetness;  it was like the eternal glory of absolute peace.  As ever before, her veil and her robe falling in chaste folds were white like the glistening snow.  The two roses which blossomed on her feet had the yellow tinge which pervades the base of heaven at the first light of the virgin dawn.  Her girdle was blue as the azure firmament.

     Bernadette, plunged in ecstasy, had forgotten earth in the presence of her spotless beauty.

     “O lady,” she said to her, “would you have the goodness to inform me who you are and what is your name?”

     The queenly Apparition smiled but gave no reply.  But at that very moment, the Universal Church, proceeding with the solemn prayers of her Office was exclaiming: 

     “O Holy and Immaculate Virginity, what praises can I give unto Thee?  In truth, I know not, for thou hast borne in thy womb Him whom the Heavens cannot contain.”

     Bernadette heard not these distant voices, nor could she surmise these profound harmonies.  Notwithstanding the silence on the part of the Vision, she urged her request, and repeated:

     “O Lady, would you have the kindness to inform me who you are and what is your name?”

     The Apparition appeared to become more radiant, as if her joy kept increasing, and yet she did not reply to the child’s question.  But the Church, spread over the whole of Christendom, was continuing her prayers and chants and had reached those words:

     “Wish me joy, all ye who love the Lord, for when I was yet a child, the Most High hath loved me, and from my womb was produced the God-Man.”

     Bernadette redoubled the urgency of her request and pronounced for the third time the words:  “O Lady, would you have the kindness to inform me who you are and what is your name?”

     The Apparition appeared to enter more and more into the glory of beatitude, and as if absorbed in her own felicity, continued to return no answer.  But, by an extraordinary coincidence the universal choir of the Church was at that moment bursting forth into a song of joy and pronouncing the earthly name of the marvelous Apparition, “Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee, blessed art Thou among women.”

     Bernadette pronounced once more these suppliant words:  

     “O Lady, I beseech you, have the kindness to inform me who you are and what is your name?”

     The hands of the Apparition were clasped with fervor and her countenance was radiant with the splendors of infinite beatitude.  It was Humility crowned with Glory.  At the same time that Bernadette was contemplating the Vision, the Vision was doubtless contemplating, in the bosom of the Divine Trinity, God the Father of whom She was the daughter, God the Holy Ghost of whom She was the Spouse, and God the Son of whom She was the Mother.

     At the last question of the child She unclasped her hands, slipping over her right arm the chaplet, whose alabaster beads were strung on a golden thread.  She then opened both of Her arms and bent them towards the ground, as if to show to the earth Her Virgin hands, full of blessings.  Afterwards, raising them towards the eternal region, from which on that very day centuries before the  Divine Messenger of the Annunciation had descended, She joined them again fervently, and gazing up to Heaven with an expression of unspeakable gratitude, she pronounced the following words: 

“I am the Immaculate Conception.”

     Thus saying, She disappeared, and the child, like the multitude, found herself opposite a solitary rock.

     At her side, the miraculous Fountain, falling through its wooden conduit into its rustic basin, soothed the ear with the peaceful murmur of its waters.  It was the day and the hour, when Holy Church was intoning in her Office the magnificent hymn,―”O most glorious of Virgins.”

O Goriosa Virginum,

Sublimis inter sidera.

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My Mother's Daily Reflection with Bishop R. Barron

Your daily Gospel reflection... Thursday, August 3, 2017 17TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR I MATTHEW 13:47-53 Friends, in today's Gospel Jesus presents two more parables on the kingdom of heaven. In the first parable, we hear that "the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea…." Here the kingdom of heaven is coming for us. This is an eschatological image of the kingdom, God's final rounding up of the world at the end of time. When will it come? We don't know. But we must be ready! And being ready means being in accord with the rule of God. Then the second parable: "Every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old." Jesus knew that his ministry and teaching were, to a large extent, in continuity with what came before him. At the same time, he knew that his preaching and person did represent something new and unprecedented. So, those learned in the kingdom of God love traditions, the heritage of faith. And those learned in the kingdom also know that the Spirit is doing new things. Therefore, we have to be open to what he might want to show us.

Daily Gospel Reflection

Your daily Gospel reflection... Tuesday, August 1, 2017 MEMORIAL OF SAINT ALPHONSUS LIGUORI, YEAR I MATTHEW 13:36-43 Friends, our Gospel today is the parable of the wheat and the weeds. God sows his good seed, his word, his love and compassion, but his project is met with opposition. And the evil is such that it insinuates itself right into the very fabric of the good. In classical theology, we speak of evil as a privatio boni, a privation of the good, meaning that evil is always and everywhere parasitic on the good. Just as a parasite is living off of the healthy body (and thereby weakening it), so moral evil lives off of the good soul, the good society, the good Church (and thereby weakens them). What is the result? That it is exceptionally difficult to extricate the evil from the good without damaging the good. That's why it is extremely difficult—and often counter-productive—to go after these evils with a crusading spirit. To be sure, there are certain evils that simply have to be addressed—right now, no questions, no hesitations. But there are other evils (and they really are evil) that are best left alone for the time being, lest more damage is done in the process of extricating them.