The Bishop's Weekly Column from the Parish Bulletin

OUR LADY OF FATIMA

CATHOLIC CHURCH

A Prayer Book for Religious

June 12, 2009

I have told this story before in this column but it bears repeating again: in my second year in the seminary, I had fallen a victim to doubts concerning the occupancy of the Papacy by John Paul II. Logically if you hear morning, noon and night the diatribes of vitriol against the hierarchy of the Catholic Church from figures of authority within the Society of St. Pius X you will begin to ask yourself the question: if these men are as you say (non-Catholic) then how can they govern the Church ? One such figure the beloved "Dinoscopus" is still prating away once a week on his blog which, in my opinion, is a must read even if only for old times' sake.

A digression: a priest friend and I were trying to discern the meaning of the word: "Dinoscopus" - I had elaborated all sorts of theories that it must have some connection with the Latin verb dignoscere - to distinguish - hence Bishop Williamson was effectively calling himself the "bishop who make distinctions". When a cartoon appeared for a while with the bishop's head on the body of a dinosaur the meaning of the word was readily apparent. Well we all make honest mistakes don't we ?

In any case the vitriol of the Dinoscopus had lead me to the hard-headed conclusion that John Paul II was not the Pope. The Dinoscopus had me in his office almost every night for three months trying to reason with me. It is for this reason alone that after hours and hours of conversation with him I know his thinking pretty well indeed. I could see only two valid positions:

A/ He is the Pope and you obey him.

B/ He is not the Pope and you disobey him.

+W presented a third way: He is the Pope but I disobey him when I decide he's not acting like a Catholic. I can see a certain logic to a point but ultimately (as a former Protestant) it smacks of the Protestant principle of private interpretation in which one effectively supplants oneself in place of the Pope. Well anyway, one night the Bishop was particularly vexed with me and he said: "Terence, I like people who think for themselves provided they think like me !" Now as a second year seminarian we were studying Logic that year - the principles of thought, judgment and reasoning. I thought quickly to myself that here I was being trained to think but being told not to. I responded respectfully: "My Lord, but pardon me, that's not thinking at all !"

Now I always called him "My Lord" since that is the way a bishop is addressed traditionally in England - and he always had the glimmer of a smile whenever I used that title. In any case the Bishop, for once, and most unusually, was floored. I think that was why I was able to get along so well with him in the end but I just now recall the time after the midday Office, he was waiting for me outside the chapel in the corridor as we were filing into the refectory for lunch. He hauled me off to his office and laid into me big time.

"Why were you making the responses so fast in the Office ? You were cutting me off !"
"I'm sorry my Lord !"

"Are you wearing a tonsure ?"
"Yes My Lord !"
"No ! Understand ?"
"Yes My Lord !"

"Why do you sing and pronounce Latin with a French accent ?"
Well now I was floored. "I don't know" I peeped.
"Sing in future with an English accent !"
"Yes My Lord !"
"We don't need another Terence F. (the name of a priest who had just left the SSPX) on our hands !"

"Lunch !" he snapped.
"Yes, My Lord ! Thank you, My Lord !"

When I entered the refectory all eyes were on me I red-facedly looked at the ground. The same eyes were on me when, with knees knocking, I came to the middle of the chapel that evening, genuflected to the Blessed Sacrament and bowed towards the Bishop singing the opening words of Compline: Iube Domne, benedicere (Bid Lord a blessing) - words sung with the heaviest of English accents and answered with an equally English accent. I was never so pleased as when Compline was over that night. I wanted the floor to swallow me up, but I would have landed in the bowling alley below and the fall would have been quite painful I'm sure.

Pain, though, is part of our Catholic vocation. On Corpus Christi (yesterday) which we will solemnize again with the rest of the Church on Sunday (at the second Mass at least) Sister Mary Michaela took down off her library shelf a book she was given some years ago by a dear lay woman in Jacksonville, Florida, who has since relocated to the western United States. This book was an old favorite of mine. Years ago as a student at the University of Liverpool, as I related in a recent column, I would say my prayers in the now closed church of St. Philip Neri. In addition to the Divine Office I would read a beat up copy of A Prayer Book for Religious by the famous Father F. X. Lasance - author of numerous guides for young men and women, prayer books and even a hand missal for laity all prior to the Council. I really treasured that book and as a seminarian I found a copy in pristine condition. Now whatever happened to those two copies I know not, but, I used this copy to lead a litany after Mass yesterday in honor of the Blessed Sacrament for the people. Turning to two of my very favorite pages from that book we read this prayer during morning meditation:

LOOKING THROUGH THE LATTICES.

BEHOLD He standeth behind our wall." But the barrier between Our Lord in His veiled presence and ourselves is not a drawback, an obstacle to union with Him inseparable indeed from the present condition of things yet an obstacle for all that. It is distinctly willed by Him as a necessary part of our trial, a wholesome discipline, a purification of love. It has in it all the privileges, advantages, blessings, that in this life belong to pain, and can be won by pain alone. It is a present blessing as well as a pledge of blessing to come. "Blessed are they that have not seen and have believed" (John xx.). It is a pledge of that full clear vision, "reserved in heaven for you, who. by the power of God, are kept by faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. Wherein you shall greatly rejoice, if now for a little time you must be made sorrowful. . . . That the trial of your faith (much more precious than gold which is tried by the fire) may be found unto praise and glory and honor at the appearing of Jesus Christ: Whom having not seen, you love; in Whom also now, though you see Him not, you believe, and believing shall rejoice with joy unspeakable" (1 Pet. i.).

"We see now through a glass in a dark manner: but then face to face" (1 Cor. xiii.). "I shall see Him, but not now" (Num. xxiv., 17). How will that face to face vision be the brighter and the sweeter for the dimness now! How will the joy of that moment, when we part for ever with faith be intensified by what faith has cost us in the past! !

But meanwhile the Beloved is behind the wall. And He is there with all the sympathy for our difficulty which His perfect knowledge of it enables Him to have. "Jesus needed not that any man should tell Him for He knew what was in man." He knows the weariness of praying on against apparently unanswered prayer; against the pain of physical restlessness, the labor of thought, the irksomeness of concentration, the perpetual gathering together of the force, that are playing truant in a thousand fields, recalled for a brief space only to be off again more wayward for their capture. All this He knows. And our remedy is to remember that He knows it. He Who has appointed prayer to be the channel of grace, means such prayer as we can bring Him. He does not ask impossibilities. He does not place us amid distracting work all day long and expect us to shut it out by an effort of will the moment we kneel down to pray. Nor even to shut it out by repeated efforts. He would have us turn our distractions and weariness not so much into matter for self-reproach, or humiliation even, as into a loving, trustful plea for His pity and His help. This is prayer. Lay the tired brain, the strained muscles, the aching head-lay them all down at His feet without a word, just for His eye to rest on and His Heart to help and heal.

There are times when physical lassitude, cold or heat, an importunate thought, a trial with its sting still fresh, baffles every effort to fix the mind on the subject of prayer, and concentrates the whole attention on what for the moment is all-absorbing. Times harder still to manage, when mind and heart are so absolutely vacant and callous that there is no rousing them to action. This reflection will some times be helpful then - What should I have to say were I in the presence of the one; with whom I am quite at my ease; my friend par excellence; to whom my trials, difficulties, character, the secrets of my soul are known; that one in whose concerns and welfare I take the deepest interest; whose views are mine, discussed again and again together-what should I find to say?

Say it, make an effort to say it to Him Who is in the tabernacle yonder.

O Jesus, hidden God, "more friendly than a brother" (Prov. xviii. 24), I believe most firmly that You are present, a few feet only from where I kneel. You are behind that little wall, listening for every word of confidence, and love, and thanksgiving, and praise. Listening when my heart is free to pour itself out to You as the brook to the river in the days of spring. Listening more tenderly when the stream is ice-bound; when I kneel before You troubled, wearied, anxious about many things, about many souls perhaps, yet dry and hard, without a word to say. Make my heart so perfectly at ease with You, O Lord, that it may be able to turn to You even in its coldness and inertness; to confide to You naturally all that most intimately concerns it; to be content with this, when discontented with all else, with self most of all - that You know all men "and need not that any should give testimony of man, for. You know what is in man" (John ii.). - Mother Mary Loyola (1845 - 1930)

A Prayer Book for Religious, Rev. F. X. Lasance, Benziger Brothers, 1934 pp. 608 & 9

In all of life's cares, concerns and doubts, familiar conversation with our Eucharistic King solves everything !

+TF

P.S. Conversation with His Lordship is also greatly appreciated !