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For this 5th Sunday after Easter we are still moving through John 16 and the Lord’s Last Supper Discourse as well as the Letter of James. Liturgically, we are very close now to the Ascension of the Lord, on Thursday, when the High Priest, the Risen Savior, entered the heavenly temple where He continuously renews His once for all time Sacrifice to the Father. Our Lord in the Discourse draws our attention heavenward, as does Holy Church by giving us these passages leading up to the Feast of the Ascension.
In the Epistle pericope for Mass, we are addressed by St. James, who exhorts us to action. But, hang on. We’ve already heard an exhortation to action in this Sunday’s Mass in the Collect. Let’s have a look before going forward to the Epistle from James.
In the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary today’s Collect was sung for the Fourth Sunday after the close of the Easter Octave (in other words today). The Gelasian or Liber sacramentorum Romanae ecclesiae (Book of Sacraments of the Church of Rome) was assembled from older material in Paris around 750. It has elements of both the Roman and Gallican (French) liturgies of the Merovingian period (5th – 8th cc.).
Deus, a quo bona cuncta procedunt,
largire supplicibus tuis:
ut cogitemus, te inspirante, quae recta sunt;
et, te gubernante, eadem faciamus.
This Collect survived the cutters and snippers who pasted the Novus Ordo together on their desks. Those who attend the Novus Ordo will hear this prayer on the 10th Sunday of Ordinary Time. The Novus Ordo version slightly rearranges the word order.
LITERAL RENDERING:
O God, from whom all good things come forth,
lavishly give graces to Your praying people,
so that, You inspiring, we may think things which are right;
and, You guiding, we may carry out the same.
There is herein first a “Deus” address to God, followed by a statement of fact about God, namely, that He is the origin of all things that are good, and then a petition, “lavishly give”. That’s the first part, the prodosis. In the apodosis we have our theme, which has a lovely parallelism in the ablative absolutes and a chiasmus with the verbs, cogitemus… faciamus… let us think… let us do”. By placing cogitemus at the beginning of the first colon of the apodosis, and faciamus at the end of the second colon, the author of this gem has cleverly stressed the antithesis: thinking and doing. We seek to discern under God’s inspiration and then carry out the good things which He gives under his guidance. This reflects St. Augustine’s insight that God crowns His own merits in us: he gives us the works to do and then makes our hands strong enough to do them. Hence, our works are truly ours, but they are meritorious because of Him. Since we are made in God’s image and likeness, by our reception of what God wants for us to think and then do, we are by our harmonization with His will already in that process of “divinization” of which the Fathers of the Church wrote so eloquently, preparing us for the Beatific Vision.
We have the antithesis of thinking and doing in our Collect. Let’s now look at the Epistle from James
22 [Dearly beloved,] be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; 24 for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing. 26 If any one thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this man’s religion is vain. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
The Apostle offers us help toward self-reflection and authenticity. Note the strict connection between receiving from God and then acting outwardly.
“Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” “Doing” the “word” which is received is the path to authenticity. Just hearing it and then not altering one’s life in action makes us false.
The dedicated, self-reflective Christian doesn’t let the Word (aka Christ) go in one ear and out the other. The Christian strives to take a firm grip on the Word and make it his own. We eat the bread from the good crops God protects and transform it into our bone and flesh. On a deeper level, the Word (aka Christ) isn’t what we, as the agents of transformation, change into ourselves. The Word is the change agent that transforms us more and more into what He is, more manifest images of God in whose likeness we are made. This is true of the Word, Christ, in Holy Scripture as it is true of the Word in the Eucharist. If we are professed Christians who are not actively striving to be transformed by the Word, we are not true to ourselves or true to the Word.
If we turn this sock inside out, we also know that one who tends to talk but doesn’t thereafter “walk” isn’t authentic either. It’s an easy thing to talk about doing something. It’s another thing to attempt to do it. Even if we have fallen short of the goal, in the striving there is truth. In both cases, hearing the Word and making it our own and producing words, perhaps even echoing the Word, and then making it concrete, there must be harmony. Otherwise, we are self-deceivers as well as other-deceivers.
James uses the image of an image. Remember that ancient mirrors were not nearly as clear and well-made as modern mirrors. In James’ time, there would be distortions of the image in the uneven, polished surface. In our time, mirrors show the distortions that are really there. Holding up a mirror to ourselves is still a powerful way of getting across the process of self-examination which we should be engaged in every day. We see our defects, defects others see. We are thereby prompted to find the defects less easily discerned.
Contact with the Word is a call to action. Action does not contrast with contemplation, of course. There will always be a tension in this earthly vale between the goods of an active life and of a contemplative life. These tensions will only be perfectly resolved in Heaven. In this essay, therefore, let us acknowledge these tensions and focus on the active, as James has done.
The Apostle James provides three practical points in this snippet of Scripture for this Sunday’s liturgical use. They are not mysterious, but they are important: 1) bridle the tongue, 2) perform works of mercy, 3) remain unstained by the world.
First, bridling your tongue isn’t too hard to figure out. The Greek here is the fun-to-say χαλιναγωγέω (chalinagōgéō) which is “to lead by a bridle”, as in the contraption by which we guide a horse now here, now there, now nowhere. Bridle doesn’t mean remain totally silent all the time. The bridle is meant for regulated movement forward and sometimes backward. In roping a calf, you make the horse backup thus keeping tension on the rope to control the lassoed critter. We must be careful to use well-reasoned words with the proper tone at the right time. Sometimes we need to backtrack to correct our errors or to say we are sorry. And, certainly, we could avoid a lot of problems by tying up our tongues in more situations than we perhaps willing to admit.
Second, you have certainly memorized the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy. The failure to perform them could have a bad outcome. Don’t believe me? Talk with Jesus by reading Matthew 25:41.
Third, remain “unstained from the world”. Here I suggest help from 1 John 2:16 in which we read about concupiscence of the flesh (gluttony, impurity, and all kinds of other sinful pleasures), the concupiscence of the eyes (covetousness, an inordinate craving after temporal goods and the sinful attachment to them) and the pride of life (ambition, which includes sins of vanity and pride). The greater share of mankind is infected with these three vices, even Christians who live outwardly well-ordered lives. Temporal pleasure, things of the flesh, matters that appeal to vanity and pride are infectious and pernicious. The Enemy of the soul can, through them, gain a strong grip. Brutally honest analysis of self in that mirror of the regular examination of conscience is a powerful medicine against these spiritual illnesses.
A final point comes from circling back to our Collect where there is a key concept that we haven’t yet explored.
In the oration we see largire. This looks like an infinitive but it is really an imperative form of the deponent largior, “to give bountifully, to lavish, bestow”. We can assume that we are asking God to lavish upon us the “bona cuncta… all good things”, which we can distill down into “graces, freely given gifts”, whether spiritual or material. At this point we have a subject (Deus), a verb (largire) and an object (bona). What about a direct object, the recipient of the bona? Supplex is a “humble petitioner, a suppliant”. The root of the word implies someone bent down, folded, low. These supplicibus, the recipients of God’s largess, are people who are praying.
That “largire supplicibus tuis” is the key to everything: “lavishly grant to those who pray”.
In today’s Gospel reading from John 16 the Lord shows that He longs to lavish His goods and graces on His Apostles. However, He reproves them for not asking for them.
Dixit Iesus discípulis suis: 23 Amen, amen, dico vobis: si quid petiéritis Patrem in nómine meo, dabit vobis. 24 Usque modo non petístis quidquam in nómine meo: Pétite, et accipiétis, ut gáudium vestrum sit plenum. … Jesus said to his disciples: 23 Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name. 24 Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
Of our Collect today, Bl. Ildefonso Schuster remarked:
In the Collect we are reminded that God is the origin of our being, therefore we implore him first of all to inspire us with just and holy thoughts, and then to give us strength to put them into practice. Here we see how little credit we can take to ourselves for the small amount of good that we do. The first impulse, the determination of our free will, the carrying out of the good resolution, all come from God, and we as reasonable creatures contribute only the bare co-operation of our wills with grace, and this, too, emanates from God. This truth which we learn in our Catholic catechism should fill us with humble submission to God and distrust of ourselves, for humility is the foundation of all our relations with God.
Prayer and prayerful grace-informed action, the humble performance of works of religion and of mercy with the prudent avoidance of evil. Here is a program of life to lead souls to the bliss of everlasting life.