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“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
With the coming and passing of the nationwide elections in these USA, this question surely was on the minds of the many who were paying at least a little attention to the necessities of living.
With the coming of the resolution of the Church’s liturgical year, next week, we should ask our selves the same question about our spiritual well-being. In daily life we pay attention to the books, the household accounts, paying the bills, watching our budgets and progress or decline. It is important to do that, and those are passing matters, the ephemera of a world which will end in fire (cf. 2 Peter 3). How much more important is it that we attend to the progress or decline of the state of our souls which are eternal?
The Church, being a wise Mother desiring the good of all, helps us ask questions of ourselves in these last weeks of the liturgical year and during the first liturgical season of Advent, which is more about the Second Coming of the Lord than it is about the First Coming at Bethlehem.
This week St. Paul provides some course corrections for the Thessalonians who seem to have fallen into some error about the Four Last Things. While remarking that the have been a good example to other communities, he urges them to be steadfast. Our forebears, the Thessalonians with St. Paul, started out at nothing. In fact, the had red in their columns, because they had to overcome either attachment to the superseded Law or their pagan ways. They began small and grew up, Paul to be the exemplary sower of seeds, Thessalonians to be the fine fruits that impressed other communities.
Our reading for the Gospel from Matthew 13 gives us growth imagery, tiny to large. First, we have the Parable of the Mustard Seed. A single tiny seed is sown, but a great bush or tree springs up large enough for birds to roost in it, perhaps as the communities around the Thessalonians benefited from their growth.
Next, we have the Parable of the Leaven. Most of us, even in this age of industrialized baking far from home and hearth, have seen the results of a small amount of yeast on a mass of moist warm flour. It grows beneficially, providing us with advantages of taste and feeling. The leavening of the bread makes it easier to digest because the fermentation paves the way for the digestive process, which helps our bodies to derive more nutrients.
One might sow a single seed and many thereafter benefit, who in turn can help others. One might use a little yeast and a bit of kneading to provide better nourishment for many others.
We are not alone in this world. Our words and deeds have ripple effects. As our liturgical year comes to its close in these next two weeks, let us take stock of ourselves as disciples of Christ, with our vocations, and our role in the Church as sharers by baptism in Christ’s Priesthood as liturgical Christians. How can I be a better active recipient in our sacred liturgical worship? How can I be the right soil for the seed to be planted, removing rocks and unwanted detritus out of the way? Can I make sure the flour of my life is just right for the reception of the fermentum?
Fermentum, if you will permit the digression, was the term used for a particle of the Eucharist preserved from the Pope’s previous Mass. It was placed into the chalice to demonstrate the continuity of the two renewals of Christ’s Sacrifice. Moreover, a fermentum particle was also carried out from the Bishop of Rome’s Mass to the City’s other churches, to show the unity of the community with Peter’s Successor. There was great concern to underscore continuity. Continuity with the past. Continuity of place. Today, however, we see an acceleration of discontinuity with place and past. This week we read of the approval of a “rite” with pagan elements that has little in continuity with either our past or other places. On the other hand, we read also of the suppression in Tyler of the celebration of the traditional Roman Rite which manifestly underscores continuity with our forebears who evangelized to the ends of the earth. One could be tempted to wonder about the force of St. Paul’s words at the end of this Sunday’s Epistle in 1 Thess., when the Apostle expresses the admiration of other Christians:
For they themselves report concerning us what a welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.
But I digress.
God, in His ineffable providence, has called us all into existence here and now, not at some other time. We are the “team” He has chosen to do His will in these exceptionally troubled days in the world and, to be frank, in the Church. All of us have something to do in the world and in the Church. We should be the best flour and the best soil, using our God-given abilities to discern – here and now – what is to be rejected and corrected, affirmed and improved. Our great desire ought to be to please God in what He has given us to do. If we strive for this, He will give us all the actual graces we need, precisely because we are the Here And Now Team.
The end of the liturgical year is prime time for discernment, for looking into the status quaestionis of our soul and circumstances. This Sunday’s Collect brings into focus how we have to apply our minds, our smarts, to these issues. Can we have a brief look?
Praesta, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus: ut, semper rationabilia meditantes, quae tibi sunt placita, et dictis exsequamur et factis.
This elegantly crafted oration miraculously survived the Bugninian snippers and pasters of the Consilium, perhaps because it doesn’t mention anything scary like propitiation. The prayer goes back to the ancient Liber Augustodunensis (Autun, France), as well as the sacramentaries known as the Gellonensis (St-Guilhem-le-Désert) and Engolismensis (Angoulême). I suspect a connection with John 8:28-29 in which Jesus warns unbelieving Jews in which He speaks of doing the Father’s will, “for I always do what is pleasing to him (quae placita sunt ei facio)”. That’s it in a nutshell, isn’t it.
Rationabilis is an adjective meaning “reasonable, rational”. I picked “rational”, partly because of an association with another prayer I know. I saw rationabilia in some authors contrasted with animalia. Reason distinguishes us from the brutes. Animalia are not given things to do with their lives as we are. We have to ponder things rationally, rather than go entirely by instinct, appetites or brute conditioning. Though a quick glance at the antics of some in metropolitan city centers might make us question that.
Literal rendering:
Grant, we beg, Almighty God: that we, meditating always on rational things, may fulfill those things which are pleasing to You both by words and by deeds.
What is the other prayer I referenced above? You might use this when you begin any study, reading, indeed just about any endeavor. We recited this prayer at the beginning of classes in Thomistic and Aristotelean philosophy. It is attributed to the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas:
Concede mihi, misericors Deus,
quae tibi sunt placita,
ardenter concupiscere,
prudenter investigare,
veraciter agnoscere,
et perfecte adimplere
ad laudem et gloriam Nominis tui. Amen.
Grant me, O merciful God,
to desire eagerly,
to investigate prudently,
to acknowledge sincerely,
and perfectly to fulfill those things
that are pleasing to Thee,
to the praise and glory of Thy Name. Amen.
Here we have total submission of man’s higher faculties to the God who gave them to us as gifts.
This prayer says to God, “have authority over me so that I can be more who I am supposed to be.”
Good soil and seed. Good leaven and flour.
One final Sunday awaits us in this liturgical year of the Lord. It’s exam time.
“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
