Thoughts from a Catholic priest. All scripture quotations are taken from the Knox translation of Holy Scripture, available here [http://catholicbible.online/knox/OT/Gen].
Just a quick note of the Masses said this last three days. I've been slow to post, or have been posting here from the telephone. Friday's Mass was said for the repose of the soul of Alphonse Pandian (+), may his soul rest in peace. Saturday's Mass was for the people of the Parish; I know you are all out there and I have seen a few of you, especially visiting the parish gardens. Do take note that these are still open for daily use, although the gates close at 18.30. Mass this morning was offered for the repose of the soul of John Kelly (+), and may he rest in peace.
I should begin to comment on the Mass readings again this week, as we fall back into Ordinary Time. In the meantime, here's the beautiful, old hymn to the Holy Spirit that I heard so often at seminary, because it is sung invariably at ordination Masses of deacons, priests and bishops. The English translation is below it.
A great day for the Church, tomorrow. The Hebrews of old counted Pentecost (Hebrew, Shavuot) as one of the three great festivals of their liturgical calendar, when they would make pilgrimages to the Temple in Jerusalem. We Christians simply took up that old observance sanctified with new meaning by Christ and by the Holy Spirit who chose that moment, fifty days after the Pasch (Easter) and ten days after the Ascension, to fall in a wave upon the Apostles, the Holy Mother and their associates in the Upper Room in Jerusalem.
Tomorrow at Mass we have an old feature of the Roman Rite at Mass, the sequence of verse that follows the second reading and stands before the Gospel. Very beautiful it is, too. Here it is, and the English is below the video.
Today being a ferial day (non-festive), I thought I'd say a funeral Mass for Mr. P. P. Purcell (+), who died recently and was cremated precisely a week ago. May he be blessed; may his soul and the souls of all the Faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
I've placed at the head of this post a small drawing I made in seminary of the famous Divine Mercy image that was painted under the guidance of Sister Maria Faustina, who was commanded to do so by Christ Himself. As I must have mentioned a few times, I'm reading through Sister's diary, and am precisely halfway through the massive, 700-page book. Christ said numerous times to Sister that He intends to bestow particular graces upon us through the use of the image. I have several family members who are very devoted to the Divine Mercy image and to the cult that surrounds it. Myself, not so much, thus far. But I find Sister's diary quite compelling, and I shall now begin to pick up the devotion myself.
First steps: the chaplet every Friday at 15.00 precisely. And for every soul in sickness and approaching death that I hear of. More to come. Meanwhile, it's the seventh day of the novena to the Holy Spirit.
NOVENA TO THE HOLY SPIRIT: DAY 7
"Heal our wounds, our strength renew;
On our dryness, pour Thy dew;
Wash the stains of guilt away."
Come, O Spirit of Counsel, help and guide me in all my ways, that I may always do Thy holy will. Incline my heart to that which is good; turn it away from all that is evil, and direct me by the straight path of Thy Commandments to that goal of eternal life for which I long. Amen.
One Our Father and one Hail Mary,
Seven times the Glory be.
On my knees before the great multitude of heavenly witnesses, I offer myself soul and body to Thee, Eternal Spirit of God. I adore the brightness of Thy purity, the unerring keenness of Thy justice, and the might of Thy love. Thou art the Strength and Light of my soul. In Thee I live and move and am. I desire never to grieve Thee by unfaithfulness to grace, and I pray with all my heart to be kept from the smallest sin against Thee. Mercifully guard my every thought and grant that I may always watch for Thy light and listen to Thy voice and follow Thy gracious inspirations. I cling to Thee and give myself to Thee and ask Thee by Thy compassion to watch over me in my weakness. Holding the pierced Feet of Jesus and looking at His Five Wounds and trusting in His Precious Blood and adoring His opened Side and stricken Heart, I implore Thee Adorable Spirit, helper of my infirmity, so to keep me in Thy grace that I may never sin against Thee. Give me grace O Holy Ghost, Spirit of the Father and the Son, to say to Thee always and everywhere, Speak Lord, for Thy servant heareth. Amen.
...and you can find it here. The list has been created with the assistance of a recent Roman martyrology, but is not a comprenhensive list of English Saints, containing only those great figures who have found their way into the liturgy of the Roman Church. The page should also appear linked on the blog side-bar with all the other pages.
Yesterday's Mass was offered for the repose of the soul of Canon J. W. Browne (+), may he be forever blessed. Today, Mass was offered for the intentions of coronavirus sufferers. What an ordeal it must be to endure the treatment for that in serious cases. Let us continue to pray for the victims of the illness, and in particular those who are dying from it.
As an act of charity, would you please also pray for S. R., who is presently in hospital.
The last two days have been a liturgical high for the Church in England. Yesterday was the feast day of Saint Philip Neri, the saintly Florentine priest from the sixteenth century, who spent the greater part of his life and ministry in the holy City of Rome, leaving no writing behind but exercising a charismatic hold on the people of the City that has lasted four hundred years and more. They still call him the third Apostle of Rome, the first two being naturally Saint Peter and Saint Paul. His history begins in England in the nineteenth century with the popular English convert, Saint John Henry Newman. JHN was an academic and a minister of the Church of England who was convinced that he could find a middle way between the Catholicism that was so disliked and distrusted in England, and extreme protestantism. In the course of his study of Church history, he discovered that the concept of such a middle way (via media) had been condemned in the past as a heresy by Church Fathers and the Popes. He became one of the most famous Anglican converts to Catholicism and later sought ordination as a Catholic priest. Seeking to lead a common life with other clergy, he introduced the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri into England, with the first house in Birmingham. Many of our large cities now have colleges of Philippian priests: in addition to Birmingham and London, the oldest houses, there are Oxford and (recently) Manchester and York. More about the the English Oratories here.
Today has been the feast day of the Apostle of England, Saint Augustine, the humble monk chosen by the Holy Father (Gregory I) to bring England into stronger relation with Rome. This last summer, finding those two weeks free, I had conducted a tour of England. Intending to find friends in the East country, I drove down to Ramsgate. I had wished very much to see the shrine of S. Augustine that stands there. I had actually thought Augustine had landed at Ramsgate, but the cross that marks the point of landing is a little further west on Pegwell Bay.
I like the histories of those early days when the diocesan structures of England were in their infancy. I am, in fact, reading one of them at the moment: Saint Bede's ecclesiastical history. Augustine was not alone, he had companions, but it must have been a difficult mission, even with the assistance of the Kentish king Ethelbert. Having ended my stay at Ramsgate, I passed through Pegwell to locate the cross that was erected about a hundred years ago at the presumed landing spot, and then headed off to London, through Canterbury. At Canterbury, the cathedral was being restored, and there was scaffolding over much of the West end of the building, but it was pleasant to walk through the old church and the cloisters a few times. Afterwards, I stopped at the original monastery, which is about a quarter of a mile away from the cathedral and was where Augustine lived and died (early seventh century). I do believe he was entombed there and I don't think his relics were ever moved to the present cathedral building. Augustine was the first archbishop of the See of Canterbury, the southern See. May he pray always for the Church in these lands, his great Project.
Meanwhile, the countdown to Pentecost continues. Today is the sixth day of the novena to the Holy Spirit.
NOVENA TO THE HOLY SPIRIT: DAY 6
"If Thou take Thy grace away,
Nothing pure in man will stay;
All his good is turned to ill."
Come, O Spirit of Understanding, and enlighten our minds, that we may know and believe all the mysteries of salvation; and may merit at last to see the eternal light in Thy Light; and in the light of glory to have a clear vision of Thee and the Father and the Son. Amen.
One Our Father and one Hail Mary,
Seven times the Glory be.
On my knees before the great multitude of heavenly witnesses, I offer myself soul and body to Thee, Eternal Spirit of God. I adore the brightness of Thy purity, the unerring keenness of Thy justice, and the might of Thy love. Thou art the Strength and Light of my soul. In Thee I live and move and am. I desire never to grieve Thee by unfaithfulness to grace, and I pray with all my heart to be kept from the smallest sin against Thee. Mercifully guard my every thought and grant that I may always watch for Thy light and listen to Thy voice and follow Thy gracious inspirations. I cling to Thee and give myself to Thee and ask Thee by Thy compassion to watch over me in my weakness. Holding the pierced Feet of Jesus and looking at His Five Wounds and trusting in His Precious Blood and adoring His opened Side and stricken Heart, I implore Thee Adorable Spirit, helper of my infirmity, so to keep me in Thy grace that I may never sin against Thee. Give me grace O Holy Ghost, Spirit of the Father and the Son, to say to Thee always and everywhere, Speak Lord, for Thy servant heareth. Amen.
Mass was offered today for the repose of the soul of the Reverend J. M. P. McCarthy.
I have very little to say about Saint Bede. I have a vague idea that he lived in the eighth century and was a monk at Wearmouth and Jarrow, was a prolific philosopher, theologian and natural scientist, never travelled too far from his beloved monastery. I know he wrote an ecclesiastical history of the English people. Some months ago, having two weeks off, I went on an excursion around the country. One of my stops was my first ever to the north country and I rode into Newcastle on the trains. Pulling into Newcastle, I was surprised to see a gigantic church building appear to the right of the tracks. I was passing Durham and I determined to stop there: it was my first visit to the great cathedral, which holds the remains of both Saint Cuthbert and Saint Bede, the latter's tomb being outside the great west door of the church and to one side. I didn't know when I would be able to visit again, so I ran up the tower to the top for a view of the country around, then came down and said my rosary walking around the cloister, as (no doubt) monks had done in the long distant past.
Coming away from Durham, I stopped at the local Waterstones and got a copy of Bede's ecclesiastical history. It's sitting on the table beside me and I'm still feeling my way through it. Because of it, some people call Bede the father of English history. It should be an interesting read. May the good monk pray for us.
Mass was offered this morning for the deceased members of the Coleman family, may they be eternally blessed in the Risen Christ. And it's the memorial day of our Lady under the title Mary, Help of Christians, a devotion promoted especially by the famous Turinese priest Saint John Bosco (in the picture above). Here's an information page on the basilica with that dedication built by Saint John, containing among other things his tomb and the tomb of his protegé, Saint Dominic Savio.
In our first reading at Mass today, Saint Luke carefully counts up the eleven remaining Apostles, returned after the Ascension to the upper room where the Last Supper took place:
"Coming in, they went up into the upper room where they dwelt, Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the brother of James. All these, with one mind, gave themselves up to prayer, together with Mary the mother of Jesus, and the rest of the women and His brethren." - Acts of the Apostles, chapter 1
It was very important to maintain the count because of the two vital things that were about to happen. First, Judas the traitor was to be replaced, to make up the number of the Twelve. Twelve was and is essential to the self-understanding of the Church, for the Church was intended to reassemble symbolically the twelve tribes of ancient Israel. The Twelve would form the very pillars of the Church, as given by the book of the Apocalypse of Saint John (the 'holy city of Jerusalem' is here the Church):
"And he carried me off in a trance to a great mountain, high up, and there shewed me the holy city Jerusalem, as it came down, sent by God, from heaven, clothed in God’s glory. The light that shone over it was bright as any precious stone, as the jasper when it is most like crystal; and a great wall was raised high all round it, with twelve gates, and twelve angels at the gates, and the names of the twelve tribes of Israel carved on the lintels; three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south, three on the west. The city wall, too, had twelve foundation-stones; and these, too, bore names, those of the Lamb’s twelve Apostles." - the Apocalypse of S. John, 21: 10-14
The final member of the twelve by the Apostles, Saint Matthias, was carefully chosen in council, as the rest of the first chapter of Acts tells us. The second thing that would follow the count, once the number of the Apostles was made up is what we will celebrate next Sunday: the eruption onto the people in that Upper Room of the Holy Spirit, and the explosion (if not the birth) of the Christian Church. The Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Strengthener, would help the newly-created community to suffer through its first years, which would feature severe persecution.
In the midst of the present affliction, with sickness and disease, economic uncertainty, etc., we are being called to suffer in a way that we haven't before. In the midst of this, we are called to belong joyfully to Christ by the gospel reading today, to trust in His goodness and mercy because we belong to him:
"'I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you gave me is from you, because the words you gave to me I have given to them, and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me, because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours...'" - Gospel of S. John, chapter 17
Meanwhile, the novena continues...
NOVENA TO THE HOLY SPIRIT: DAY 3
"Thou of all Consolers best,
Visiting the troubled breast,
Dost refreshing peace bestow."
Come, O Blessed Spirit of Piety, possess my heart. Enkindle therein such a love for God, that I may find satisfaction only in His service, and for His sake lovingly submit to all legitimate authority. Amen.
One Our Father and one Hail Mary,
Seven times the Glory be.
On my knees before the great multitude of heavenly witnesses, I offer myself soul and body to Thee, Eternal Spirit of God. I adore the brightness of Thy purity, the unerring keenness of Thy justice, and the might of Thy love. Thou art the Strength and Light of my soul. In Thee I live and move and am. I desire never to grieve Thee by unfaithfulness to grace, and I pray with all my heart to be kept from the smallest sin against Thee. Mercifully guard my every thought and grant that I may always watch for Thy light and listen to Thy voice and follow Thy gracious inspirations. I cling to Thee and give myself to Thee and ask Thee by Thy compassion to watch over me in my weakness. Holding the pierced Feet of Jesus and looking at His Five Wounds and trusting in His Precious Blood and adoring His opened Side and stricken Heart, I implore Thee Adorable Spirit, helper of my infirmity, so to keep me in Thy grace that I may never sin against Thee. Give me grace O Holy Ghost, Spirit of the Father and the Son, to say to Thee always and everywhere, Speak Lord, for Thy servant heareth. Amen.
I thought that I would mark today as a Lady day, it being Saturday and a ferial day. I'll take any excuse to honour the holy Mother. Mass was offered this morning for the people of the Parish, and the Rosary said for all the penitents I have heard in my years of priesthood. Once all this virus business is finished, we need to bring back Confession in a big way. I would like to recommend that all of you, at home for months without the Sacraments, to prepare carefully with all the examinations of conscience that you can find to make your confessions when the opportunity arrives. I shall do the same. This must be a time for new beginnings, if the whole ordeal has taught us anything.
Back to our Blessed Lady. What we need is a picture and a hymn. Here's a picture. The hymn is below it. And I shall end with today's entry for the novena to the Holy Spirit.
NOVENA TO THE HOLY SPIRIT: DAY 2
"Come, Thou Father of the poor!
Come, with treasures which endure!
Come, Thou light of all that live!"
Come, O blessed Spirit of Holy Fear, penetrate my inmost heart, that I may set Thee, my Lord and God, before my face forever; help me to shun all things that can offend Thee, and make me worthy to appear before the pure eyes of Thy Divine Majesty in Heaven, where Thou livest and reignest in the unity of the ever Blessed Trinity, God, world without end. Amen.
One Our Father and one Hail Mary,
Seven times the Glory be.
On my knees before the great multitude of heavenly witnesses, I offer myself soul and body to Thee, Eternal Spirit of God. I adore the brightness of Thy purity, the unerring keenness of Thy justice, and the might of Thy love. Thou art the Strength and Light of my soul. In Thee I live and move and am. I desire never to grieve Thee by unfaithfulness to grace, and I pray with all my heart to be kept from the smallest sin against Thee. Mercifully guard my every thought and grant that I may always watch for Thy light and listen to Thy voice and follow Thy gracious inspirations. I cling to Thee and give myself to Thee and ask Thee by Thy compassion to watch over me in my weakness. Holding the pierced Feet of Jesus and looking at His Five Wounds and trusting in His Precious Blood and adoring His opened Side and stricken Heart, I implore Thee Adorable Spirit, helper of my infirmity, so to keep me in Thy grace that I may never sin against Thee. Give me grace O Holy Ghost, Spirit of the Father and the Son, to say to Thee always and everywhere, Speak Lord, for Thy servant heareth. Amen.
Mass was offered this morning for the repose of the souls of our deceased Parishioners. May they and may the souls of all the Faithful departed rest in peace. I once saw at the back of a church a large and covered notice-board that had pinned on it many orders of service and memorial cards. I think that's a wonderful idea, and something we could perhaps try to erect here. Similarly, we could compile a book of remembrance, so that our deceased Parishioners may be always remembered by name at the church.
The Mass readings continue today with the theme of the week: the gospel tells of the benefits of the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the first reading tells of the history of the early Church acting under the effect of the Holy Spirit. The next few weeks is all about praying as hard as we can for the continued gift of the Holy Spirit in our lives. I've heard say that the oldest novena (nine-day prayer) of all the ones we have is that to the Holy Spirit, for Christ Himself told the Apostles to remain in prayer before he ascended, nine days before the first Pentecost Sunday:
"He had shewn them by many proofs that He was still alive, after His Passion; throughout the course of forty days He had been appearing to them, and telling them about the kingdom of God; and now He gave them orders, as He shared a meal with them, not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the fulfilment of the Father’s promise. You have heard it, He said, from My own lips; 'John’s baptism,' I told you, 'was with water, but there is a baptism with the Holy Spirit which you are to receive, not many days from this'... Then, from the mountain which is called Olivet, they went back to Jerusalem; the distance from Jerusalem is not great, a sabbath day’s journey. Coming in, they went up into the upper room where they dwelt, Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the brother of James. All these, with one mind, gave themselves up to prayer, together with Mary the mother of Jesus, and the rest of the women and his brethren." - Acts of the Apostles, 1: 3-5, 12-14
I have omitted the Ascension narrative, but you'll find it easily in your Bibles, in the first chapter of Acts. Today is the first day (of nine) of the novena to the Holy Spirit. I shall add some of the prayers to the bottom of these posts. So, let's begin with:
NOVENA TO THE HOLY SPIRIT: DAY 1
"O Holy Spirit! Lord of light!
From Thy clear celestial height,
Thy pure and beaming radiance give!"
Almighty and eternal God, Who has vouchsafed to regenerate us by water and the Holy Spirit, and has given us forgiveness of all sins, vouchsafe to send forth from Heaven upon us Thy sevenfold Spirit, the Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding, the Spirit of Counsel and Fortitude, the Spirit of Knowledge and Piety, and fill us with the Spirit of Holy Fear. Amen.
One Our Father and one Hail Mary,
Seven times the Glory be.
On my knees before the great multitude of heavenly witnesses, I offer myself soul and body to Thee, Eternal Spirit of God. I adore the brightness of Thy purity, the unerring keenness of Thy justice, and the might of Thy love. Thou art the Strength and Light of my soul. In Thee I live and move and am. I desire never to grieve Thee by unfaithfulness to grace, and I pray with all my heart to be kept from the smallest sin against Thee. Mercifully guard my every thought and grant that I may always watch for Thy light and listen to Thy voice and follow Thy gracious inspirations. I cling to Thee and give myself to Thee and ask Thee by Thy compassion to watch over me in my weakness. Holding the pierced Feet of Jesus and looking at His Five Wounds and trusting in His Precious Blood and adoring His opened Side and stricken Heart, I implore Thee Adorable Spirit, helper of my infirmity, so to keep me in Thy grace that I may never sin against Thee. Give me grace O Holy Ghost, Spirit of the Father and the Son, to say to Thee always and everywhere, Speak Lord, for Thy servant heareth. Amen.
In the excitement of the Ascension day celebrations yesterday, I neglected the weekly prayer for vocations, which was requested by the diocesan Vocations service. It consists of devotions to the sacred Heart of Jesus, to whom all such chosen souls are intimately bound.
Please join me today as I request the Lord to bring more labourers into his vineyard.
Mass was offered on Wednesday in thanksgiving, on account of J, and again today for the repose of the souls of Ann and Frank Spencer (++), may they be all blest.
I've been thinking very much in the last few days about the Acts of the Apostles, which has provided first readings for us at Mass. And the stories are fascinating. However, it's Ascension day, and I'm going to talk about the gospel readings, which have been coming from the Gospel of Saint John. It's mostly our Lord's farewell speech to his Apostles. Chapter sixteen of the Gospel of Saint John. Christ has been saying some quite scary things: Jewish Christians will be expelled from the synagogues and people will come hunting for Christians, thinking they are doing God a favour, etc. But, then, He says to them that He has to go, that it is better that He leaves before all of this comes to pass, before the persecution of the Christians begins. Why?
The answer is, of course, that He must depart before the Holy Spirit is bestowed on the Church, for reasons that He didn't disclose and that theologians may guess at. It got me thinking of that last part of the great Creed that we recite in church on Sundays:
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified.
The Spirit of God that would pour upon the Church would strengthen her to suffer the persecutions and the sufferings in joy and tranquility. And we see that clearly in the Acts of the Apostles.
"'It will be for Him, the truth-giving Spirit, when He comes, to guide you into all truth. He will not utter a message of His own; He will utter the message that has been given to Him; and He will make plain to you what is still to come. And He will bring honour to Me, because it is from Me that He will derive what He makes plain to you. I say that He will derive from Me what He makes plain to you, because all that belongs to the Father belongs to Me.'" - the Gospel of S. John, 16: 13-15
We were not to be alone and abandoned by the Ascension of Christ, by His physical departure from this world. God comes to us in different ways and for different reasons. Now the Son departs in order that the Spirit may arrive. And as the Church begins to grow and suffers the inevitable reaction from Jew and non-Jew alike, the help of the Holy Spirit is more important. For, as Christ says,
"'...it is better for you I should go away; he who is to befriend you will not come to you unless I do go, but if only I make my way there, I will send him to you.'" - Gospel of S. John, 16: 7
I said two Masses today. The parish Mass in the morning was offered in thanksgiving, on account of F; and then there Mass for my mother. It's her birthday today and I miss her every day, for she was my best friend. I was looking through the Mass readings today and there was this odd little story from the sixteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. The holy apostles Saint Paul and Saint Silas are at Philippi, where they are here thrown into prison. So, they sing hymns praising God, while the other prisoners listen. And a sudden earthquake frees everybody from their bonds. The poor jailer knows that he is finished if the prisoners take their opportunity and escape, and he prepares to commit suicide at once. But Paul cries out and says, 'Hold on, now, we're all still here and we're not going to escape.' And then, suddenly, the jailer is converted and becomes a Christian. All I can say is, those must have been some very good hymns they were singing, so that their demonstration of joy in the midst of suffering was very compelling.
My mother died from a cancer of the abdomen and she suffered very much over a long time. She found relief in the midst of that, delighted in having her family around her and was optimistic until the end. And she loved singing hymns. It is easy to say that she is a principal reason that I am where I am. She used to ask me what she could do to evangelise. I think she did some evangelism from her bed of pain. None of us knew how to deal with her progressive illness. But that optimism was important, and even the forced smiles in the midst of pain. It put heart into us, it inspired me and so I am.
Mass was offered this morning for the repose of the soul of Christine Burgess (+), may she rest in the peace of the Risen Christ.
Today, the Church remembers the fifty-third pope, a martyr, the Holy Father Saint John I. As at various times in our history, the freedom of the Church is challenged by secular rulers, who seek to control her and use her for their own ends. The Tuscan archdeacon was elected to the See of Rome on the death of the fifty-second pope, Hormisdas in AD 523. Italy was under the thrall of Theodoric the Goth and though a Christian, he was a heretic of the Arian persuasion. Theodoric had been friendly to Catholics at first, but he was angered by correspondence that was being carried out between Rome and the Byzantine court in Constantinople, where the Catholic emperor Justin I had taken stern measures against Arianism. Theodoric threatened war on Justin, but decided to negotiate through a delegation, headed by the Holy Father John I. The pope managed to convince Justin to soften his reaction to Arianism and brought reconciliation between the Church of the West and of the East, which had been torn apart since AD 482. Theodoric, waiting for his delegation to return to Italy, suspected that it had begun to plot with the Byzantine emperor against him. When the delegation returned to Ravenna, the Holy Father was imprisoned and died shortly in prison.
Thus our Saint of the day. May he pray for us today, may he pray for his successor in Rome and for all Christians suffering injustice for the Faith.
On Friday, the children at the school made me a nice card. I think it needs to be mounted behind glass.
The children would have held May devotions at this time, if it wasn't for the awful lockdown situation. But, here's what I think: I don't need to wait until May to arrange devotions to the most blessed Lady. Oh, no indeed. As soon as this is over, we're going overboard with our 'May' devotions.
Mass was offered this morning for the people of the parish, and for deceased parishioners as well, in so far as they are still members of our parish, though departed. They are never forgotten, and always close to our hearts.
Our readings continue to take us through the Acts of the Apostles and the history of the expansion of the primitive Church in the first years. Today's first reading concerns the conversion of Samaria (Acts, chapter 8). We may remember the story of the Samaritan woman at the well and especially the part at the end of the story, where we are given to understand that the Samaritans were more receptive of the Gospel than were the Jews, and especially the Pharisees, who held the minds of the people, and the Sadducees, who manned the Temple in Jerusalem and had managed to get Christ convicted and executed. The religious observance of the Jews, centred on the Temple, had been laid out in detail by these religious groups, and there was a certain complacency in the orthodox Jew of the time that allowed him to carefully follow the very letter of the Law, and miss its heart. We see this, for example, in the small battles that were raised against Christ for his healing sick people on the Sabbath, and in the story of the rich, young man who had observed the Law perfectly all his life, but went away sadly when Christ asked him to give his riches up and join His disciples.
But the Samaritans... well, now. That needs a little historical study. Briefly, when the Assyrians had destroyed the kingdom of Israel (Samaria, Galilee, the sea coast and Transjordan) from about 740 BC, they had followed a policy of replacing much of the native population with people from foreign countries, in order to reduce the probability of insurrection (more here). When the Assyrians later destroyed the kingdom of Judah, in 587 BC, in the guise of neo-Babylonians, they followed a similar procedure and carried most of the natives of Judah and Benjamin into captivity in Babylon (more here). When these Judaean captives were permitted to return at the fall of the Babylonian empire (about 540 BC), they came back with new ideas about who was Jewish and who was not, and who could practise the ancient religion in Jerusalem. Resettling Judah and Jerusalem, they carefully excluded the inhabitants of Samaria (that is, the Samaritans) from the new Jewish cult that was being erected in Jerusalem on the site of the old Temple of Solomon, that had been ruined by the Babylonians.
And that's where the story of the opposition of the Jews to the Samaritans seems to begin, and there are signs of it in the book of Esther (Ezra), which details the return of the captives and the building of the second Temple (the first being Solomon's):
"When news reached the enemies of Juda and Benjamin that the returned exiles were rebuilding the temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, they had a request to make of Zorobabel and the chieftains. 'Let us help you to build it, they said; we too have recourse to the same God whom you worship; witness the sacrifices we have been offering to him ever since the Assyrian king Asar-Haddon settled us here.' But Zorobabel and Josue and the clan chiefs told them, 'To build a house to our God can be no common task of yours and ours. The Lord is our God, and we alone must be the builders of it; such were the orders given to us by Cyrus, king of Persia.' Nothing would serve the neighbouring folk after that but they must thwart Juda’s purpose and interfere, as best they could, with the enterprise."- Esdras, 4: 1-4
Guess who the enemies of Judah and Benjamin were. The Samaritans They had taken up the Hebrew religion when they had been transplanted into the Holy Land by the Assyrians, and now they offered to help the Jews rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. And the reply from Zorobabel (an ancestor of Christ) and others was immediate: your religion is not the same as ours, and we alone will build our Temple. And some four hundred years later, the Samaritans were still practising their own religion at the site of Mount Gerizim in Samaria, an ancient holy site relating to the stories of the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob, and a rival site to Jerusalem. So the Samaritan lady said to Jesus:
"'Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Well, it was our fathers’ way to worship on this mountain, although you tell us that the place where men ought to worship is in Jerusalem.' 'Believe me, woman,' Jesus said to her, 'the time is coming when you will not go to this mountain, nor yet to Jerusalem, to worship the Father. You worship you cannot tell what, we worship knowing what it is we worship; salvation, after all, is to come from the Jews...'" - Gospel of S. John, 4: 19-22
Christ says to the lady just what Zorobabel and others told her people before: the Lord is our God. You worship what you do not know (because your were not taught), we worship what we do know, for salvation comes to the world from the Jews. And yet, the Jews had locked salvation away from the Samaritans, and from just about everybody else. Christ had come to open those gates. Through Him, the graces of God, once destined for the Chosen tribes, would flow out onto the world. The Temple in Jerusalem would be replaced by the Temple that is the Body of Christ. We can appreciate perhaps how the radical inclusion of the Christian message would be attractive to a neglected people, as also the authority that the miracle-working deacon Philip showed in our reading today. The apostolic headquarters in Jerusalem at once dispatched the priests Saint Peter and Saint John, to administer the Sacraments to the new Samaritan Christians.
The Acts of the Apostles is our special joy in these weeks of Easter, as we approach the celebration of the Ascension this coming Thursday, and Pentecost soon after. This history of the early Church demonstrates how near we are in our faith and in our practice to those first Christians. There is a type of electricity running through the narrative and it is, at least for me, as interesting as reading a history of my own family, or a story of my own friends. It gives us a sense of a community that transcends time. When Peter tells us in our second reading this Sunday, that we should be prepared to defend our faith with gentleness, with respect, expecting to suffer for the sake of doing, good, I have a vivid sense of Christians obeying this instruction over centuries. And when Christ says to us in the gospel reading, 'If you love Me, you will keep My commandments... and I will send you the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth...,' I can see the life of every Saint in the history of the Church (and many who have not been called 'Saint,' too) that I know and love.
Mass was offered for the repose of the soul of Francesco Giaccobe (+) yesterday, and for the repose of the souls of Hazel and Andrew Nolan (++) this morning. May their souls and the souls of all the Faithful departed rest in peace.
I often point out chapter fifteen of the Acts of the Apostles as vital to our understanding of the early Church. We quickly see that, although at this time the majority of Christians were Jewish, there was a growing number of non-Jewish, gentile Christians. And the Apostles decided very early on that the marks of Judaism - circumcision and the acute observance of the Law of Moses - would not apply equally to all Christians. Rather, the observance of non-Jewish Christians would be eased, to reduce the burden of the Law on them. This was formalised in Council by the Apostles and the bishop of Jerusalem, the Apostle Saint James, in chapter fifteen of Acts. That was the first reading yesterday, and this is the apostolic mandate:
"...It is the Holy Spirit’s pleasure and ours that no burden should be laid upon you beyond these, which cannot be avoided: you are to abstain from what is sacrificed to idols, from blood-meat and meat which has been strangled, and from fornication. If you keep away from such things, you will have done your part. Farewell." - Acts of the Apostles, 15: 28-29
This demonstrates the extent of the power of adjudication that Christ had given the Apostles and bishops, through the action of the Holy Spirit, that they could apply the Law partially for pastoral reasons. Eventually the number of Jewish Christians would be dwarfed by the growth of the Church in the rest of the Roman Empire, particularly in Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Gaul, etc., and the exceptions made for gentile Christians would become more of a norm. Do read the whole of that chapter fifteen, it's short but very interesting, especially to see the authority that the bishop James seems to exert in his own See/diocese even over the Apostle Saint Peter.
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Meanwhile, I've just discovered that today is a memorial day of the English Carmelite, Saint Simon Stock. He has a strong cult in the archdiocese of Southwark, and among the Carmelites, professed and lay. Let's learn something about him. The Carmelite communities began in the Holy Land, but were introduced into Europe from about the time of the Crusades, and they took the form of an Order of mendicant friars and cloistered Sisters. Simon was an early prior of one of the English houses, known for his personal holiness and for the miracles that have been attributed to his intercession. He lived at Aylesford, where his relics are still venerated, and at a house that hosted the first general chapter of the Carmelite Order outside the Holy Land, in 1247 [link]. Simon is honoured as founder of Religious houses at great university cities, at Oxford, Cambridge, Paris and Bologna, which demonstrates his respect for the intellectual formation of the members of the Order.
Simon is best known for his association with the Brown Scapular devotion. Tradition tells us that he saw a vision of the Blessed Virgin, from whom he had requested special favours for his Order. She gave him the Scapular of the Order - all Carmelites who wore that Scapular would be saved. The generous Carmelites later began offering the Scapular in an abbreviated form to lay affiliates of the Order, and it has become one of the most popular of the Marian devotions of the Latin Church.
Mass was offered this morning for the repose of the soul of Clair Turnbull (+), may she rest in the peace of the risen Christ.
Today, the Church remembers the Apostle Saint Matthias, last of the Twelve. Most people know that there was a rotten Apostle called Judas who most wretchedly betrayed Christ, and then proceeded to hang himself in shame. What is not usually known is that the other eleven, led by the Apostle Saint Peter, felt an urgent need to make up the number Twelve, the traditional number of the of ancient Israel, whom Christ had come to renew and rebuild.
This was what the mission of Christ was all about. The story is this: long ago, when the people had been led out of Egypt and into the promised land, where they had eventually put down deep roots. At the beginning they had been ruled by God in a theocracy, administered initially, and in a vicarious fashion, by the prophet Moses and then by his successor Joshua. There followed the period of the Judges, including the strong figures of Deborah and Samson, and the great prophet-judge Samuel. And then the people decided that they would like to end the theocracy and be like the other nations surrounding them. They wanted a king. Thus began the anointed royal lines of the king Saul of Benjamin, and then the king David of Judah. The story of the rise and decline of the kings of Israel is a story of increasing apostasy from the original rule of God in the direction of a secular kingdom. The story of the prophets is one of the repeated call to the return to the rule of God, with the promise of a messianic figure, who would accomplish this very thing.
The idea, to my mind, was a return to the rule of God, via a vicarious line of Judges. Let's call them Apostles, and their successors bishops. For Christ said at one point:
"Hereupon Peter took occasion to say, 'And what of us who have forsaken all, and followed thee; what is left for us?' Jesus said to them, 'I promise you, in the new birth, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of his glory, you also shall sit there on twelve thrones, you who have followed me, and shall be judges over the twelve tribes of Israel. And every man that has forsaken home, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name’s sake, shall receive his reward a hundredfold, and obtain everlasting life.'" - Gospel of S. Matthew 19: 27-29
The number of the Twelve had to be re-established, and in the circumstances of the Ascension of Christ, the choice of the Twelfth Apostle had to be conducted by the others. And Saint Luke gives us the details of this in our first reading today. This is part of the Peter's speech on the occasion:
"There are men who have walked in our company all through the time when the Lord Jesus came and went among us, from the time when John used to baptise to the day when He, Jesus, was taken from us. One of these ought to be added to our number as a witness of his resurrection. So they named two of them, Joseph called Barsabas, who had been given the fresh name of Justus, and Matthias. And they offered this prayer, 'Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men, shew us which of these two thou hast chosen to take his place in this work of apostleship, from which Judas has fallen away, and gone to the place which belonged to him.' They gave them lots; and the lot fell upon Matthias, and he took rank with the eleven apostles." - Acts of the Apostles, 1: 21-26
We do not know much of the fate of Saint Matthias, whom Christian tradition recognises as a martyr. There is a narrative of his ministry in Judaea and then Ethiopia, in a land of cannibals, and another of his being stoned in Judaea and then beheaded there. There is also some confusion between him and the Apostle Saint Matthew and then again with a bishop of Jerusalem who was also called Matthias (more here).
The early Church held the Twelve in great veneration. And so do we.
Mass was offered yesterday for the repose of the soul of Padraig Quinn (+), and today for the repose of the soul of Patrick McClare (+); may their souls and the souls of all the Faithful departed rest in peace.
In yesterday's gospel reading, Christ says this to us:
"'He who is to befriend you, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send on my account, will in his turn make everything plain, and recall to your minds everything I have said to you. Peace is my bequest to you, and the peace which I will give you is mine to give; I do not give peace as the world gives it. Do not let your heart be distressed, or play the coward. You have heard me say that I am going away and coming back to you. If you really loved me, you would be glad to hear that I am on my way to my Father; my Father has greater power than I.'" - Gospel of S. John, 14: 26-28
You may of course remember that bit from the rite of Holy Communion at Mass, when the priest says,
"Lord Jesus Christ, who said to your Apostles, 'Peace I leave you, my peace I give you,' look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church..."
But look at the context. The line from the Mass comes just before the offering of peace from the priest to the people, and nowadays we all turn to one another with smiles and grins and say Peace be with you, etc. But Christ says in the gospel reading that he does not give peace as the world understands it, which is rather what we seem to understand it. Christ is talking about peace in the midst of distress, when one is tempted to play the coward! What can that mean?
Since the feast day of the English Martyrs, just over a week ago, I have been slowly reading through an account by the English Jesuit Father John Gerard (aka. Jarrett) of his life and work in England in the turmoil of the Elizabethan years between roughly 1588 and until her death and then until he finally left England for permanent exile in the reign of King Charles in the 1610s. In those years, especially under Elizabeth's government, Catholics were viciously persecuted, many (both priests and laity) were brutally tortured and executed as traitors. And... from Father Gerard's account, the most heroic ones took it all with great patience and suffered everything for Christ, refusing to provide information to the government officials of other Catholics who could be thus dragged down into suffering themselves. In the circumstances of suffering, it is easy to play the coward, and submit to the governmental religion. Father Gerard called such Catholics who submitted 'schismatics,' because they wished to try and be Catholic in a different way from the Old Religion of the country. To avoid persecution. I have reached the point in the book where Father has been arrested and imprisoned in a most foul prison in London, in a room near an open toilet and with his legs heavily chained. And he says that he was at peace and able to pray and meditate.
'Peace I leave you, my peace I give you.' Today is the feast day of our Lady of Fatima. In 1917, Europe was in the utmost turmoil, after years of war. In Portugal, after the regicides of about a decade previously, the spirit of the Revolution had gutted the Catholics, and atheistic and anti-Catholic agents of the government were in authority everywhere. In those circumstances, three little shepherd children had an astonishing visit from an angel who called itself the Angel of Portugal. The angel had come to prepare the way for another and more important visitor and taught the children to pray. This was one of the prayers the angel gave them.
"Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly.
I offer Thee the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity
of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world,
in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifference
by which He is offended. And through the infinite merit
of His Most Sacred Heart, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners."
When the Lady in white appeared first on the 13th day of May, she helped the children say the rosary. In a series of visits on the 13th day of almost every month until October, she gave them hope for the future and asked them to pray and do much penance for sinners. Note the mention in the Angel's prayer of outrages, sacrileges and indifference that would soon become the mark of the post-modern world in which we live today. The children were so touched by the plight of 'poor sinners' that for the next two years or so, until her death, little Jacinta Marto would keep talking about making sacrifice for the 'pobres peccadores.' The situation of the harassment of the people by the government in Portugal after 1910 would have been familiar to the English Catholics under Queen Elizabeth. Christ had once said that we would be persecuted, because they had first persecuted Him. In our gospel reading yesterday, He says to us, Do not be distressed, stay faithful, and you shall have peace in the midst of suffering. Between Father Gerard's account, the story of Saint Bernadette that I finished a few weeks ago and the diary of Saint M. Faustyna Kowalska which I'm in the middle of now, there is the extraordinary similarity that the many physical sufferings of these holy people and their mental anguish was bathed in what they all called 'consolations.' Divine consolations, that is - the peace that the world cannot give.
Good heavens, this is a long post. Have a nice video: this is the trailer from a dramatic telling of the Fátima story that was made about ten years ago:
The little monogram in the centre consists of the either the first two letters of the Lady's name or the first letters of the angelic greeting made to her at the Annunciation: Ave Maria. That is to say, Hail Mary. Into the letter M is woven the holy cross, by which her Son accomplished the great deed.
The vestment set was a gift from my brother and, for years, was the only set I owned.
Because of Saint Joseph's absence from the Gospels after the Finding in the Temple, we assume that he passed away before the public ministry of Christ. And that has been a fairly popular theme for Catholic painters. This one is from the Italian Carlo Maratta (1625-1713), and you can find more about him here.
Mass was offered this morning for the repose of the soul of Lilly Yore (+), may she be forever blest.
The story we have for the first reading is rather comical: the apostles Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas have arrived for the first time in the Greek (pagan) cities of south central Asia Minor, the province that was called Lycaonía. Geography lesson! In the Google Map above, we are centred on Iconium (which the Turks call Konya). Not far to the north-west is located Antioch-in-Pisidia. South-west on the coast is Anatolia (Turkish Antalya), where the Apostles first landed and nearby the ancient city of Perge, which stands in ruin now. Lystra and Derbe were nearer Iconium, although there are few traces of them today. Far to the south-east, near Mersin, is Tarsus, where Paul himself was from.
As usual, Paul and Barnabas began their work in the Jewish synagogues in each city. In Iconium, they found the usual fierce opposition on the part of the orthodox Jews to the Christian message. When this happened, Paul would turn at once to address the Gospel to non-Jews, making many converts. Lystra and Derbe were briefly a refuge, until the Jews from Iconium came to stir up trouble. But in the pagan atmosphere of Lystra, Paul (who was rather short, but probably more voluble) became a vision to the people there of the Greek god Hermes, the messenger god of Greek mythology. The bigger and quieter Barnabas became a vision of Zeus to them. We are then treated to the horror of the two apostles, when they realise that they are about to be worshipped.
"The apostles tore their garments when they heard of it; and both Barnabas and Paul ran out among the multitude, crying aloud, 'Sirs, why are you doing all this? We too are mortal men like yourselves; the whole burden of our preaching is that you must turn away from follies like this to the worship of the living God, who made sky and earth and sea and all that is in them. In the ages that are past, he has allowed Gentile folk everywhere to follow their own devices; yet even so he has not left us without some proof of what he is; it is his bounty that grants us rain from heaven, and the seasons which give birth to our crops, so that we have nourishment and comfort to our heart’s desire.'" - Acts of the Apostles, 14: 13-16
Even that could barely stop the people, because the two had just demonstrated divine power and performed an extraordinary miracle, healing a man crippled from birth. In a rather clever move, the Fathers who put together the lectionary for us give us Psalm 113 today, with the famous lines:
"Not to us, Lord, not to us the glory; let thy name alone be honoured; thine the merciful, thine the faithful; why must the heathen say, Their God deserts them? Our God is a God that dwells in heaven; all that his will designs, he executes. The heathen have silver idols and golden, gods which the hands of men have fashioned." - Psalm 113: 9-12
That's practically the substance of Paul's and Barnabas' protest. Anyway, here's something from a film, from Henry V. What the soldiers are singing over and over is from that first line: 'Not to us, Lord, not to us the glory; let thy name alone be honoured.'
I don't believe we have received strong enough winds to fracture this signpost so thoroughly. I suppose we can then say that somebody gave it a good kick? The old mooring is visible.
Mass was offered this morning for the repose of the soul of Moira Edwards (+), may she be forever blessed; and then later on, for the people of the parish. Our first reading today was all about the concern of the first Christian priests - the Apostles. They were struggling with the their new responsibilities, and found that the works of mercy of the Church were taking up a lot of time, and they felt they should spend themselves on prayer and on preaching and teaching. Here then, we find the origins of the Order of the deacons of the Church (Acts of the Apostles, chapter 6), one of the three traditional hierarchical levels of the Catholic clergy. When we were in seminary, it was clear that the priests ascended past this level, so that all priests were at one point deacons and remain deacons afterwards. Just as every bishop remains both a priest and a deacon. The Apostles did not give up the works of charity; they simply deputised worthy men to carry them out in their stead.
Reading through these early histories of the Church, we discover the our own origins and the origins of our mission and so, who we are. The priority of prayer and preaching for the early priests tells us what was important for them. While there is a real separation between the priests and the people, we do have common goals - the prayer and the preaching, and the works of mercy - but these are divided in various proportions between us all. In the end, as Saint Peter tells us in the second reading, we work together as one, we are living stones built into a spiritual house. We are a consecrated nation of priests offering the spiritual sacrifices of our hearts to the God who made us, and this sacrifice is made acceptable to God because of Christ, who is the cornerstone on which we are built. The Church is certainly not a set of bishops and priests in Rome, or in Westminster, or in Nottingham. The Church is all of us together, parts of a whole, working together in our various ways, a single body of whom Christ is the head.
When we think of Christ as a stepping-stone to help us cross the great abyss between us and God, we begin to understand much of this, and today's gospel reading as well. If the Church is the body of Christ, the extension of Christ in this world, then we too must be a bridge between the world and God. For Christ is the way, the truth and the life, the only way to get to God. We understand God when we have understood Christ. The request of the Apostle Philip's (John, chapter 14) occurs to us all the time today: if only we could see God. People will say to us, Show us your God and we will believe in him. And Christ's reply is the same: if you would see God, look at me. If only we could say to the world, if you would see Christ, look at us.
Mass was offered this morning for the repose of the soul of Michael Prendergast (+), may he be forever blessed in the risen Lord.
I have begun to light candles before the statue of our Lady in the corner of the church, at every Mass and during the daily Rosary. I'm trying to think of something nice to do with that statue for this Mary month of May. Maybe a nice crowning wreath and some lace. This would be easier with people around, singing hymns. I could try singing myself, but I'm not very good at it.
We normally associate the title Doctor with medical doctors today, but the title precedes the institution of the science of medicine and recalls a day when the pursuit of wisdom or philosophy was treated with more respect and the associated pursuit of divine wisdom or theology was called the queen and even mother of all science. In those days, the term 'science' itself was more broadly defined than today's emphasis on the science of the natural world or the natural sciences. A doctor is a teacher before he is a practitioner, having achieved a certain level of scholarship in his particular science as to be judged capable of teaching it to novices.
So there is a science, and there is a regulating body that determines that a particular proficient may be permitted to teach that science to others. And thus we come to the science of theology and the Christian life, and the role of the Church in putting before us certain men and women who she judges worthy not only of example and emulation (for they are all canonised Saints also) but able to teach us something of the nature of God, the nature of the Church, and the life of the Christian soul in God. These men and women we call Doctors of the Church, and they are relatively few when placed against the panoply of Saints.
I recently started to read a book that draws together into an anthology several instructional sermons given by the Holy Father Benedict XVI on the Doctors of the Church, during his Wednesday audiences. They treat all but one Doctor (Saint Peter Chrysologus), and provide short introductions to these Saints and their contributions to the intellectual and spiritual life of the Church. I thought I'd fill out a list of the Doctors, based on this book, and I shall place it on a separate page on this blog. You'll find the page in the list on the sidebar to the right. It should fill out gradually, as I get through the book. And I (and perhaps you) get to discover something new about the Saints whose names flit through our consciousness if and when we run through the liturgical calendar of the Church.
We start with Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, the great patriarch of the Coptic church of Alexandria, whose feast day we celebrated a week ago, on the 2nd day of May.
Mass was offered this morning for the repose of the soul of Sr. Raphael (+), may she be blessed. I haven't much to say about the readings at Mass today, because they were rather repetitious and we'll hear or read them again on Sunday. But we could perhaps have a pretty picture on. This is Saint Michael standing on the enemy. There is a story of the miraculous apparition of this archangel on this date in AD 663 to the bishop of Sipontum, asking that a sanctuary be erected and dedicated on Mount Gargano in Apulia. Learn more about that sanctuary, which is now part of a UNESCO world heritage site, by clicking here. We are rather fond of Saint Michael in the Latin church, and I have mounted a picture of him permanently on the sidebar of this blog, to the right.
Mass was offered yesterday (Thursday) morning for the repose of the soul of Padraig Quinn (+), may he be forever blessed. Haven't found a moment to make a note of it until now. By now, the first readings are taking us through the missionary adventures of Saint Paul and his companions and, in the synagogue of Antioch-in-Pisidia (central Asia Minor), Paul gives one of his great sermons. I won't reproduce it; it's all in the thirteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.
One of the things I love to tell anybody who waits long enough to hear it is that Saint Paul walking through the ancient world, always used the Roman roads and the Roman cities. Which means that today, following the remarkable work of archeologists over the last several decades, there are today ruins of Roman cities wherever the New Testament tells us that Paul passed through or remained.
And with the state of modern digital technology, we can actually look at these sites from our computers using satellite imagery. Occasionally, during my two years in Rome, I would stand before the high altar at the basilica of S. Paul outside the City, and I knew that I was standing just where they put the great man in the ground. I get a similar feeling when I zoom into the site of Antioch-in-Pisidia using the Google Earth software and see what archeologists have labeled as the Jewish synagogue and say to myself, 'That's where he stood and told them what was what.'
Here then, courtesy of Google Earth, and over the hills from Iconium (which the Turks today call Konya) is the old site of Antioch, in central Asia Minor:
A sixth-century Byzantine painting on wood panel, first found at the monastery built at the foot of Mount Sinai in the Constantinian period. The purple of His clothing is a symbol of royalty and power, and the face is divided in two. The right side pairs with the book of the gospels and demonstrates the severity of his role as the Judge at the end of all things. The left side, paired with the hand raised in blessing, is more clement, and probably represents the divine Mercy.
