Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, 'the martyrdom of love'

  

iBreviary 12 August 2015 Night Office, previously 11 December.

For the Memorial of Saint Jane Frances de Chantal:

SECOND READING

From The Memoirs by the secretary of Saint Jane Frances de Chantal
(Françoise-Madeleine de Chaugy, Memories sur la vie et les vertus de Sainte J.-F. De Chantal, III, 3: 3e edit., Paris, 1853, pp. 306-307)

Love is as strong as death

One day Saint Jane spoke the following eloquent words, which listeners took down exactly as spoken:

“My dear daughters, many of our holy fathers in the faith, men who were pillars of the Church, did not die martyrs. Why do you think this was?” Each one present offered an answer; then their mother continued. “Well, I myself think it was because there is another martyrdom: the martyrdom of love. Here God keeps his servants and handmaids in this present life so that they may labor for him, and he makes of them both martyrs and confessors. I know,” she added, “that the Daughters of the Visitation are meant to be martyrs of this kind, and that, by the favor of God, some of them, more fortunate than others in that their desire has been granted, will actually suffer such a martyrdom.”

One sister asked what form this martyrdom took. The saint answered: “Yield yourself fully to God, and you will find out! Divine love takes its sword to the hidden recesses of our inmost soul and divides us from ourselves. I know one person whom love cut off from all that was dearest to her, just as completely and effectively as if a tyrant’s blade had severed spirit from body.”

We realized that she was speaking of herself. When another sister asked how long the martyrdom would continue, the Saint replied: “From the moment when we commit ourselves unreservedly to God, until our last breath. I am speaking, of course, of great-souled individuals who keep nothing back for themselves, but instead are faithful in love. Our Lord does not intend this martyrdom for those who are weak in love and perseverance. Such people he lets continue on their mediocre way, so that they will not be lost to him; he never does violence to our free will.”

Finally, the saint was asked whether this martyrdom of love could be put on the same level as martyrdom of the body. She answered: “We should not worry about equality. I do think, however, that the martyrdom of love cannot be relegated to a second place, for love is as strong as death. For the martyrs of love suffer infinitely more in remaining in this life so as to serve God, than if they died a thousand times over in testimony to their faith and love and fidelity.”

RESPONSORY
See Philippians 4:8-9

There are many things that are true, honorable and just,
many that are pure, worthy of love and deserving of praise:
these you must do.
– And the God of peace will be with you.

If there is anything virtuous, anything worthy of admiration,
think of these things above all else.
– And the God of peace will be with you.

CONCLUDING PRAYER

Let us pray.

Lord,
you chose Saint Jane Frances to serve you
both in marriage and in religious life.
By her prayers
help us to be faithful in our vocation
and always to be the light of the world.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
– Amen.

Or:

O God, who made Saint Jane Frances de Chantal
radiant with outstanding merits in different walks of life,
grant us, through her intercession,
that, walking faithfully in our vocation,
we may constantly be examples of shining light.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
– Amen.

Aemiliana Lohr "The divine simplicity which is fed on the Church's milk is faith, that childlike power which makes us invincible..."

A Word in Season - Augustin Press 2001

Night Office ...

     

OCTAVE OF: EASTER

TUESDAY Year I

First Reading

1 Peter 1:22-23; 2:1-10

            Responsory      1 Pt 2:5.9

Build yourselves like living stones into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood. + Offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, alleluia.

V. You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people God has claimed as his Own. + Offer spiritual sacrifices ...

         

Second Reading          From the writings of Aemiliana Lohr

(Dns Herrenjahr Band IT, 154-157

Our youth is renewed

Easter has made Christ's resurrection a present reality for ourselves; we have risen with him. Our life in Christ that began with our baptism has been renewed. Christ our God has led us from death to life. No matter how long ago the day of our bap­tism, time and space count for nothing in the sacred mystery. It has happened now; it is now that we have put on the new being. That is the great joy of Easter: our youth is renewed like the eagle's.

The baptized are children; they remain children not in the sense of an infantile immaturity but in the sense of a divine originality and simplicity. They have put on Christ, and as he is essentially a son, their share in him has changed their nature and made them the Father's children too. Nothing of the corrupting complexity and sterile multifariousness of the world can remain in those who have been regenerated through Christ and have risen again to divine youth. Their thinking has become childlike in its Simplicity, because they stand with God above the disunity of the world in a second, eternal childhood.

Christ said: Whoever will not accept the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.

This divine childhood may, however, grow old and die unless it finds appropriate nourishment. We hear a maternal warning in the Church's call to us: Like newborn children, desire the pure milk of the spirit. There is nothing feeble about the nourishment the Church our mother offers her children. It is the he­roic blood of her crucified Bridegroom, the conqueror of death and hell, which makes us invincible too, childlike and strong at one and the same time. It makes us strong, in fact, because it makes us childlike. That is the nourishment which produces children and conquerors, the food we must long for.

We already know the nature of that divine food which is to nourish our new childhood. It is Christ, the incarnate Word of the Father, the sacrifice of the new covenant, dwelling in us through God's Holy Spirit. Christ is the milk on which the Church our mother rears her children, not to the false maturity of the world but to the abiding and everlasting childhood of the children of God. It is this holy and heavenly milk which Clement of Alexandria praises in the hymn at the end of his book Teacher:

Jesus Christ, you are the heavenly milk

flowing eagerly from the gentle breast

of your gracious bride, your wisdom;

gather your children in simplicity around you

so that in pure song, with innocent tongue,

they may call you holy,

Christ, the leader of youth.

The divine simplicity which is fed on the Church's milk is faith, that childlike power which makes us invincible and gives every Christian dominion over the world. In the dying martyr, the barren virgin, and the despised monk, faith achieves triumphs of life such as those who are sated with the world's pleasures long for in vain. The victory that conquers the world is faith.

And what is the essence of this faith? Let us listen to Saint John: Who are the conquerors of the world, if not those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Faith in the redemption of the world by the incarnate Son of God, faith in his cross and resurrection, faith in the Lord who lives on in his Church, faith in the divine life that dwells in our own hearts - in a word, the faith of Easter was and is the invincible strength of the Church and her children. The divine simplicity of that faith solves every problem, overcomes every need, and surrounds those who in the eyes of the world perish in disgrace with the glory of an eternal resurrection in God.

            Responsory      Rom 6:4.3

By our baptism we were buried with Christ, we shared in his death,

+ so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live a new life, alleluia.

V. By being baptized into Christ Jesus, we have all shared in his death, + so that as ...

Lohr, Aemiliana (1896-1972), born in Dusseldorf, Germany, studied literature and philosophy at the University of Cologne and taught before entering the Benedictine monastery of Herstelle in Germany in 1927. For several years she was chronicler and annalist, but most of her life was given to writing. She was thoroughly familiar with the works of Ildefonse Schuster, Pius Parsch, and Odo Casei on the popular explanation of the liturgy. In her book, The Church's Year of Grace, her mind soars above his­torical and philological detail to grasp the actual reality of each Mass. She is the author also of The Great Week.

+++++++++++++++++ 

  Saturday, April 7, 2012   

An idea, "the happiness of guilt" - Holy Saturday

The church has settled at the grave to weep. She looks where they have laid their Lord, where the woman has laid the Adam where it buried the people where it has the man overthrown by his advice (see FIG. Peter Chrysologus, Serm. 80). She sees it and cries.

She weeps at the tomb of the Lord, as the Lord at the tomb of Lazarus wept: the death of people over the grave of life, about the sin that killed the author of life. 

Jesus is laid in the grave -  Stations of the Cross in the Church of St. Blaise, Glottertal

But her tears flow gently and quietly. It is no longer the painful lament of Sunday Septuagesima, they rocked. The death of Adam has lost its terror at the tomb of Christ. The death of obedience has deleted sin. No longer crashes the "massa damnata" from sin to sin, from death to death down, but the body of the obedient rests in hope. An idea of ​​the "happiness of guilt" that "such and so great a Redeemer was invented worth" ... makes the show end (the church and the soul) calm and hopeful.

¶ Aemiliana Löhr OSB: The manor year. The mystery of Christ in Ordinary of the Church . 2. Tape the fourth edition. Regensburg 1942. 63f.  (Trs. from German) 

   http://www.praytellblog.com/index.php/author/kbelcher/ 

  https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Aemiliana+L%C3%B6hr&fr=dss_yset_chr 

Doing God's will - Henri Nouwen. Heb 10:26-29

Night Office

FIFTH WEEK OF LENT Year 1

Sunday

First Reading:

Hebrews 10:26-39

Responsory

... The unbeliever shall falter; + the  just will live by faith.

V. Without faith it is impossible to please God. + The just will live by faith.

Alternative Reading

From the writings of Henri J. M. Nouwen (Show Me the Way, Readings for Each Day of Lent, 33-34)

Doing God's will

Everything we know about Jesus indicates that he was concerned with only one thing: to do the will of his Father. Nothing in the gospels is as impressive as Jesus' single-minded obedience to his Father. From his first recorded words in the temple, Did you not know that I must be busy with my Father's affairs? to his last words on the cross, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit, Jesus' only concern was to do the will of his Father. He says: The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees the Father doing. The works Jesus did are the works the Father sent him to do, and the words he spoke are the words the Father gave him. He leaves no doubt about this: If I am not doing my Father's work, there is no need to believe me; my word is not my own; it is the word of the one who sent me.

Jesus is not our Saviour simply because of what he said to us or did for us. He is our Saviour because what he said and did was said and done in obedience to his Father. That is why Saint Paul could say, As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience many will be made right­eous. Jesus is the obedient one. The centre of his life is this obedient relationship with the Father.

Our lives are destined to become like the life of Jesus. The whole purpose of Jesus' ministry is to bring us to the house of his Father. Not only did Jesus come to free us from the bonds of sin and death, he also came to lead us in the intimacy of his divine life. It is difficult for us to imagine what this means. We tend to emphasize the distance between Jesus and ourselves. We see Jesus as the all-knowing and all-powerful Son of God who is unreachable for us sinful, broken human beings. But in thinking this way, we forget that Jesus came to give us his own life. He came to lift us up into loving community with the Father. Only when we recognize the radical purpose of Jesus' ministry will we be able to understand the meaning of the spiritual life. Everything that belongs to Jesus is given for us to receive. All that Jesus does we may also do.

Responsory

The unbeliever shall falter; +the just will live by faith.

V. Without faith it is impossible to please God. + The just will live by

faith.

michael-burghers-
Origen-of-alexandria-christian-writer-and-teacher-
one-of-the-greek-fathers-of-the-church

First Week Lent

Wednesday

First Reading Deuteronomy 10:12 ...

Second Reading From a homily by Origen of Alexandria

                                                    (Homilies on Numbers 12, 3: PG 12, 662)

God's gifts and human freedom

Do human beings have anything to offer to God? Yes, their faith and their love. These are what God asks of them, as it is written: And now, 0 Israel, do you know what the Lord, your God, requires of you? To fear the Lord, your God, to walk in his ways, to love him, to keep all his commandments, and to serve the Lord, your God, with all your heart and all your soul.

These are the offerings, these the gifts which we must present to the Lord. And in order that we may offer him these gifts from the heart, we must first know him, we must have drunk the knowledge of his goodness from the waters of his deep well.

But look more closely at these words of Moses the prophet:

And now, 0 Israel, what does the Lord, your God, require of you? Those who deny that the salvation of human beings is within the power of their freedom ought to blush when they hear these words! Would God require something of human beings if they were incapable of responding to God's demand and offering him what they owe him? No: there is indeed God's gift, but there is also a contribution they must make.

For example, it was indeed within the power of a human being to make a gold piece earn ten more or five more, but it was for God to see it that this man should have the gold piece which he could use to earn ten more. When the man present­ed to God the ten pieces he had earned, he received another gift, not money this time, but authority and rule over ten cities.

So, too, God required Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on a mountain which the Lord would show him, and Abraham unhesitatingly did surrender his only son. He placed him on the altar and took out the knife to cut his throat, but a voice immediately held him back and a ram was given him to sac­rifice in place of his son.

As you see, what we offer to God remains ours, but this offering is required of us in order that by giving it we may witness to our love for God and our faith in him.

Maximus of Turin. Christmas Weekday before Epiphany

Altar of the Holy Name of Jesus,
with the IHS monogram
at the top, Lublin, Poland.

Christmas Weekday before Epiphany

TUESDAY

Year I

    

Optional: Memorial: The Most Holy Name of Jesus

Patristic Reading, Night Office, 

First Reading

Colossians 3:5-16

          Responsory See Gal 3:27-28

All of us who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

+ We are all one in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Y. There are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. + We are all . . . .

From a sermon by Saint Maximus of Turin
(Sermo 6, 1-3: CCL 23, 257-258)

The Christmas mystery

Brothers and sisters, our hearts still echo with the joy of the Lord's birth, and our continuing gladness creates in us a sense of heavenly festivity. For, though the joyous day itself has passed, the sanctification that joy brought is still with us. As the newborn Saviour grows with each day that passes since his birth, so our faith in him grows stronger. Time brings the Lord an increase in age, and us an increase in salvation. It is for his own sake that the Lord grows in age; it is for our sake, not his own that he grows in holiness - since the holiness of Christ is eternal and perfect. He is said to grow in holiness because he causes our faith to deepen. For though Christ after his birth is small in body, his sovereignty is nonetheless divine.

Still then does the joy of the Lord's feast thrill our being. It bids us cry out for very gladness and say what the angels said at Christ's birth: Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will.

Note carefully what the angels said. They did not say "peace to men," that is, to all men without restriction, but peace to men of good will, so that we might understand Christ's peace to depend not on the simple fact of being human but on man's will; not human wickedness but Christian goodness. Peace is not bestowed on all, but on those who have been tested and found true. It is not given to be scattered abroad, but proposed as a good to be chosen. The peace of Christ, then, belongs to those who believe Christ to be the author of peace. It belongs to those who do not experience within themselves the conflict of sin. It is found in those w hose wills are not defiled by the blood offered to idols.

It is fitting that only an incorrupt will should possess the Saviour whom an immaculate virgin bore. Indeed, just as Mary carried him in her womb while remaining stainless, so our souls must be pure if they are to retain him. Mary was a type of our souls. As Christ looked for virginity in his mother, so he looks for integrity in our affections. A soul that is virginal with regard to sin conceives and bears the Saviour when it preaches him; it keeps him present when it observes his commandments. Faith retains him once he has been conceived in us; the confession of faith sends him forth once he is born; concern for him keeps him ours once he is grown.

Let us therefore rejoice at the feast of him whose birth the singing angels proclaim, and the simple shepherds seek out, and the pious magi adore! The grace-filled angels honour Christ as God, the innocent shepherds seek him as Lamb, and the adoring magi worship him as Priest. The veneration offered by the magi plainly shows Christ to be a priest; indeed, their gifts manifest the whole mystery of Christ. For they offered, as best they could, what they knew would be beautiful in Christ's eyes: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The gold is for kingship, the myrrh for his resurrection, and the frankincense for his propitiatory sacrifice. Gold symbolizes power, myrrh incorruptibility. and frankincense priesthood.

Responsory

The true God, begotten of the Father, came down from heaven and entered the Virgin's womb, so that we could see him in visible form, clothed in the flesh and blood that came to us from our first parents. t And from that virgin womb he came forth, God and man, light and life, creator of the world.

V. The Lord came forth like a bridegroom emerging from his bridal chamber. t And from that ..

St. Maximus of Turin

Saint Maximus of Turin Virtually nothing is known about the life of St. Maximus, except that he was the bishop of Turin, in Northern Italy, and died sometime during the first two decades of the fifth century, AD, as the Roman armies were losing ground against the barbarian hordes.  Over 100 of Maximus' homilies survive.  The mostly short, moving sermons of this Early Church Father were so moving that they were copied and passed down through the Middle Ages as models for medieval homilists to follow.   Mystery of the Lord's Baptism | Saint Maximus of Turin | Epiphany ... www.crossroadsinitiative.com344 × 480Search by image This excerpt from a sermon by St. Maximus of Turin for the Feast of the Epiphany (Sermo 100, de sancta Epiphania 1, 3: CCL 23, 398-400) is used in the Roman ...

Holy Family 'When the Son of God came into the world'.Newman

Night Office, Patristic Reading...  

Sunday in the Octave of Christmas

HOLY FAMILY

First Reading               Eph 5:25-27; Gal 1:4

Second Reading           From a Sermon by Cardinal John Newman (Plain and Parochial Sermons V. 93-95.)

Jesus came not to borrow from the world, but to import to it.

({93}...And when He ...).

When the Son of God came into the world, He was a pattern of sanctity in the circumstances of his life, as well as in His birth. He did not implicate and contaminate Himself with sinners. He came down from heaven, and made a short work in righteousness, and then returned back again where He was before. He came into the world, and He speedily left the world; as if to teach us how little He Himself, how little we His followers, have to do with the world. He, the Eternal Ever-living Word of God, did not outlive Methuselah's years, nay, did not even exhaust the {94} common age of man; but He came and He went, before men knew that He had come, like the lightning shining from one side of heaven unto the other, as being the beginning of a new and invisible creation, and having no part in the old Adam. He was in the world, but not of the world; and while He was here, He, the Son of man, was still in heaven: and as well might fire feed upon water, or the wind be subjected to man's bidding, as the Only-begotten Son really be portion and member of that perishable system in which He condescended to move. He could not rest or tarry upon earth; He did but do His work in it; He could but come and go.

And while He was here, since He could not acquiesce or pleasure Himself in the earth, so He would none of its vaunted goods. When He humbled himself unto His own sinful creation, He would not let that creation minister to Him of its best, as if disdaining to receive offering or tribute from a fallen world. It is only nature regenerate which may venture to serve the Holy One. He would not accept lodging or entertainment, acknowledgement, or blandishment, from the kingdom of darkness. He would not be made a king; He would not be called, Good Master; He would not accept where He might lay His head. His life lay not in man's breath, or man's smile; it was hid in Him from whom He came and to whom He returned.

"The Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." He seemed like other men to the multitude. Though conceived of the Holy Ghost, He was born of a poor woman, who, when guests were {95} numerous, was thrust aside, and gave birth to Him in a place for cattle. O wondrous mystery, early manifested, that even in birth He refused the world's welcome! He grew up as the carpenter's son, without education, so that when He began to teach, His neighbours wondered how one who had not learned letters, and was bred to a humble craft, should become a prophet. He was known as the kinsman and intimate of humble persons; so that the world pointed to them when He declared Himself, as if their insufficiency was the refutation of His claims. He was brought up in a town of low repute, so that even the better sort doubted whether good could come out of it. No; He would not be indebted to this world for comfort, aid, or credit; for "the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not." He came to it as a benefactor, not as a guest; not to borrow from it, but to impart to it.

And when He grew up, and began to preach the kingdom of heaven, the Holy Jesus took no more from the world then than before. He chose the portion of those Saints who preceded and prefigured Him, Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, and His forerunner John the Baptist. He lived at large, without the ties of home or peaceful dwelling; He lived as a pilgrim in the land of promise; He lived in the wilderness. Abraham had lived in tents in the country which his descendants were to enjoy. David had wandered for seven years up and down the same during Saul's persecutions. Moses had been a prisoner in the howling wilderness, all the way from Mount Sinai to the borders of Canaan. Elijah wandered back again from Carmel {96} to Sinai. And the Baptist had remained in the desert from his youth. Such in like manner was our Lord's manner of life, during His ministry: He was now in Galilee, now in Judæa; He is found in the mountain, in the wilderness, and in the city; but He vouchsafed to take no home, not even His Almighty Father's Temple at Jerusalem.

Works of John Henry Newman
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12th November - St. Theodore of Studium - Saint Machar & St Josaphat -

Night Office, Mass.

St. Theodore of Studium

A zealous champion of the veneration of images and the last geat representative of the unity and independence of the Church in the East, b. in 759; d. on the Peninsula of Tryphon, near the promontory Akrita on 11 November, 826. He belonged to a very distinguished family and like his two brothers, one of whom, Joseph, becameArchbishop of Thessalonica, was highly educated. In 781 theodore entered themonastery of Saccudion on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus near Constantinople, where his uncle Plato was abbot. In 787 or 788 Theodore was ordained priest and in 794 succeeded his uncle. He insisted upon the exact observance of the monasticrules. During the Adulterine heresy dispute (see SAINT NICEPHORUS), concerning thedivorce and remarriage of the Emperor Constantine VI, he was banished by Constantine VI to Thessalonica, but returned in triumph after the emperor's overthrow. In 799 he left Saccudion, which was threatened by the Arabs, and took charge of the monastery of the Studium at Constantinople. He gave the Studium an excellent organization which was taken as a model by the entire Byzantine monasticworld, and still exists on Mount Athos and in Russian monasticism. He supplemented the somewhat theoretical rules of St. Basil by specific regulations concerning enclosure, poverty, discipline, study, religious services, fasts, and manual labour. When the Adulterine heresy dispute broke out again in 809, he was exiled a second time as the head of the strictly orthodox church part, but was recalled in 811. The administration of the iconoclastic Emperor Leo V brought new and more severe trials.Theodore courageously denied the emperor's right to interfere in ecclesiasticalaffairs. He was consequently treated with great cruelty, exiled, and his monasteryfilled with iconoclastic monks. Theodore lived at Metopa in Bithynia from 814, then at Bonita from 819, and finally at Smyrna. Even in banishment he was the central point of the opposition to Cæsaropapism and Iconoclasm. Michael II (810-9) permitted the exiles to return, but did not annul the laws of his predecessor. Thus Theodore saw himself compelled to continue the struggle. He did not return to the Studium, and died without having attained his ideals. In the Roman Martyrology his feast is placed on 12 November; in the Greek martyrologies on 11 November.
Theodore was a man of practical bent and never wrote any theological works, except a dogmatic treatise on the veneration of images. Many of his works are still unprinted or exist in Old Slavonic and Russian translations. Besides several polemics against the enemies of images, special mention should be made of the "Catechesis magna", and the "Catechesis parva" with their sonorous sermons and orations. His writings onmonastic life are: the iambic verses on the monastic offices, his will addressed to themonks, the "Canones", and the "Pænæ monasteriales", the regulations for themonastery and for the church services. His hymns and epigrams show fiery feeling and a high spirit. He is one of the first of hymn-writers in productiveness, in a peculiarly creative technic, and in elegance of language. 550 letters testify to hisascetical and ecclesiastico-political labours.

Sources Theodorus Studites, Opera varia, ed. SIRMOND (Paris, 1696); P.G., XCIX; Nova patrum bibl., V, VIII, IX, X (Rome, 1849, 1871, 1888, 1905); Theodorus Studites, Parva Catechesis, ed. AUVRAT-TOUGARD (Paris, 1891); Bibl. hagiogr. Græca (2nd ed., Brussels, 1909), 249; THOMAS, Theodor von Studien(Osnabrück, 1892); GARDNER, Theodore of Studium (London, 1905).

12th November - Saint Machar & St Josaphat - Independent Catholic News

St Machar's Cathedral Saint Machar Bishop. This Sixth century saint was an Irish nobleman who was baptised by St Colman.  Later he became a monk and a disciple of St Columba on Iona. He is said to have evangelised Mull and Aberdeen. St Machar's Cathedral in Aberdeen is named in his honour. A stone carved with a Celtic cross - a clear indication of the site’s Celtic roots - believed to have been associated with the original building is now on display in the church.  For centuries, water from St Machar's well was used for baptisms in the  Cathedral. A few other dedications to him survive in this part of Scotland. also St Josaphat Archbishop. Born in 1584 in Wolodimir in Poland, he became a monk of the Byzantine rite when he was about 20. Ten years later he was made abbot of Vilnius. Josaphat devoted his life to promoting unity between the Orthodox and Catholic churches. In 1618 he was made archbishop of Polatsk in Bielarus, and continued to defend the Byzantine rite Catholics against the Roman rite Polish clergy. When Russia set up a rival Orthodox hierarchy in 1623, he was murdered by a mob of Cossacks at Vitebsk. He was the first Eastern-rite Catholic to be formally canonised in 1867. The Latin rite recognised him in 1882.

S

Feast of Saint James (Great)

Friday 25, 2014, Community Mass

 

 Feast of Saint James

James "the Greater" 

>> and his brother John are called by Jesus as they mend their nets in their boat on the Sea of Galilee. 

>> He belongs to the inner circle of the Apostles. 

>> With Peter and John, he witnesses the cure of Peters mother-in-law, the raising of [airus' daughter, 

>> Jesus' Transfiguration, and his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

>> The mother of lames and John asks Jesus to give

them the seats at either side of him, positions of honour and authority. 

>> This prompts Jesus' teaching: the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mt 20:28). (Magnificat.com)

 First among the apostles, was martyred by beheading in Jerusalem around the year 43/44 by order of Herod Agrippa. The tomb containing his remains, transferred from Jerusalem after the martyrdom, would have been discovered at the time of Charlemagne in 814.'s Tomb became a place of great medieval pilgrimage, so that the place took the name of Santiago (from Sancti Jacobi, in Spanish Sant-Yago), and in 1075 began the construction of the magnificent basilica dedicated to him. (iBreviary) 

  

Night Office, Patristic Reading. 

25 July Saint James  Feast

First Reading

From the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 4:1-16)

Responsory   Acts 4:33.31

With mighty power * the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

- and they were all treated with great respect.

They were filled with the Holy Spirit,

and boldly proclaimed the word of God;

- and they were ...

Second Reading   From a homily in praise of Saint James by Nicetas of Paphlagonia (Or.5:PG 105,89- 100)

James and John, together with the great Peter, were thought worthy to receive the chief and supreme honor from Christ. As his most faithful disciples he showed them on the mountain the dazzling appearance of his divine body. He also told them, as his closest friends, of the agony and distress that lay before him on account of his human nature; and immediately after the Last Supper he took them with him to assist him with their prayers, although, wearied by their great grief, they were overcome by sleep. In all their association with the Lord there was no difference, I think, between these two servants of God, no difference in their fervent zeal, their genuine faith and their perfect love, or even in the coming upon them of the Holy Spirit from above, in the assignment of tongues and the division of gifts. So far the two of them can be praised as one, con­formed as they were to the image of Christ, and confirmed and marked in the same way by the one Holy Spirit. But since each had a separate time as well as manner of death, for that we must give them separate praise.

So we salute you, James, fervent preacher of the gospel truth, who with Peter and John hold the highest position and the chief dignity among the apostles. We salute you, as one who drank Christ's cup in advance of your fellow disciples, and were baptized with the baptism of your Savior as he promised you, and are adorned with the double crown of apostle and martyr.

We salute you, blessed eye-witness of the Word, you who see God, for you have changed one fishing-ground for another, one desire for another, and one inheritance for another; in place of things unstable you have gained those that last, and in place of an earthly passing world you have gained a changeless heavenly world.

We salute you, who as you formerly had direct physical contact with the God-man on earth, so do you now, united with him in spirit, converse with him face to face in heaven.

Responsory

see Ps 18:4.5; Wis 5:1

There is no tongue, no language * in which their message is not heard.

- Their voice has resounded all over the world; their words to the ends of the earth.

The just will stand up with great confidence before those who afflicted them.

- Their voice ...