LITURGY

Setting up the Nativity Scene

The Liturgical Seasons. With the Bethune banner hoisted again, we mark not only the Advent season, but the beginning of the entire liturgical year, with all of its seasonal change. This series of articles on the temporality of liturgy explores different temporal dimensions of our liturgies. In this installment, we shall look at our four special liturgical seasons, and how they shape the meaning of this supernatural encounter, of the dispensation of grace, of an encounter with the God who is beyond time. Fr. Damian Kearney’s reflections reprinted for this issue offer insight into Advent. This article will add reflections from the conferences of another Benedictine, the 19th-20th century Benedictine abbot, Columba Marmion, collected in the book entitled The Mysteries of Christ. Pope Benedict XV gave these texts high praise: “We readily appreciate their praiseworthiness as being singularly conducive to excite and maintain the flame of Divine love in the soul.” The pontiff commended them for their capacity of, “fostering the desire to imitate Christ and to live by Him ‘Who of God is made unto us wisdom, and justice, and sanctification, and redemption.’” (Letter to Marmion, Mysteries, p. x) We turn to Marmion’s discussion of these mysteries to inform this brief reflection on our four great liturgical seasons, seasons of grace that stand out from the flow of “tempus per annum.”

Marmion’s conferences trace the mysteries of Christ through the entire liturgical year, offering one unified message: "Christian life is essentially supernatural, and can only be found in Christ..." (Mysteries, p. xv) This grace, he shows, is dispensed in different moments, through different seasons, which all shape the meaning of the supernatural encounter. Marmion’s exploration of the Mysteries of Christ focuses on the unique grace each season opens up, the way in which God is making Himself present in our lives. He summarizes the seasonal cycle in this way:

Guided by the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Jesus Himself, the Church unfolds before the eyes of her children, every year from Christmas to the Ascension, the complete cycle of Christ’s mysteries, sometimes greatly abridged, sometimes in their exact chronological order, as during Holy Week and Paschal time. She thus makes each mystery of her Divine Bridegroom to be lived over again by an animated living representation; she makes us pass through each phase of His life. If we let ourselves be guided by her, we shall infallibly come to know the mysteries of Jesus and above all enter into the thoughts and feelings of His Divine Heart. Why is this? The Church, knowing the secret of her Bridegroom, takes from the Gospel the pages which best place each of these mysteries in relief; then, with perfect art, she illustrates them with passages of the psalms, prophecies, the epistles of St. Paul and the other Apostles, and quotations from the Fathers of the Church. She thus places the teachings of the Divine Master, the details of His life, and the substance of His mysteries in a clearer and fuller light... For although it is always the same Saviour, the same Jesus, pursuing the same work of our sanctification, each mystery, however, is a fresh manifestation of Christ for us; each has its special beauty. (Mysteries, pp. 21-22)

Advent. At Portsmouth, our recurring liturgical traditions for Advent include the production of an advent wreath which remains in the sanctuary, illuminated for Mass and Vespers. The familiar Bethune icon of Mary and the child Jesus oversees our liturgy, and we add seasonal garland to the gallery of the church. We have also recently begun to include a Christmas tree near the Marian altar in the sanctuary. An associated feast, that of Saint Nicholas on December 6, brings the annual illumination of the candle adjacent to his statue, which otherwise remains unnoticed in the upper narthex of the church during the year. The binders that provide the texts for the Divine Office, of course, undergo their seasonal rotations, offering their legible and tangible representations of the seasonal change in antiphons, psalms, hymns, and prayers. The flow of the academic year, always impacting on the population present for liturgy, fluctuates; with students typically here for a portion of Advent, but travelling home for the holidays to leave the church quieter and more meditative as Christmas approaches.

Icon-Banner by Ade Bethune

Marmion sees Advent as a substantially a Marian season: “The Church has willed - and what is more just? - that the liturgy of Advent should be full of the thought of the Blessed Virgin.” (Mysteries, p. 112) This character resonates with our own patronage by Our Lady, Queen of Peace, and is corroborated in the feasts of Immaculate Conception (December 8) and Our Lady of Guadalupe (December 12), which lead us to illuminate the candles surrounding Our Lady at her altar in our church. Marmion teaches:

If then we want the celebration of Christ’s Nativity to procure great glory for the Holy Trinity, and to be a consolation for the Heart of the Incarnate Word, a source of abundant graces for the Church and for ourselves, let us strive to purify our hearts, let us preserve a humility full of confidence, and above all let us enlarge our souls by the breath and vehemence of our desires... Let us humbly ask her to make us enter into her dispositions. She will hear our prayer; we shall have the immense joy of seeing Christ born anew within our hearts by the communication of a more abundant grace… (Mysteries, pp. 112-113)

Marmion himself discerns a character of temporality in Advent, describing a progressivity of revelation, by degrees over time, captured in the weeks leading up to Christmas: “Moreover, the greatness of the mystery of the Incarnation and the majesty of the Redeemer demanded that the revelation of Him to the human race should only be made by degrees. Man, on the morrow of his fall, was neither worthy of receiving nor capable of welcoming the full manifestation of the God-Man. It was by a dispensation at once full of wisdom and mercy, that God disclosed this ineffable mystery only little by little, by the mouth of the prophets; when the human race should be sufficiently prepared, the Word, so many times announced, so often promised, would Himself appear here below to instruct us.” (pp. 96-97). Marmion even announces: “All the Old Testament is a prolonged Advent…” (Mysteries, p. 101)

When, therefore, we read the prophecies that the Church proposes to us during Advent, let us in the fulness of our faith, say like the first disciples of Jesus-: “We have found Him of Whom... the prophets did write.” Let us repeat to Christ Jesus Himself: Thou art truly the One Who is to come; we believe it, and we adore Thee Who to save the world didst deign to become incarnate and to be born of a Virgin. (Mysteries, pp. 105-106)

In a close and careful examination of the responses, collects, antiphons, and readings of the liturgy, Marmion traces these Advent messages throughout our liturgies, which express the aspirations which the church “makes us constantly repeat.”

Christmas. The arrival of Christmas is marked in our church by the addition of the beautiful Italian creche, whose delicate illumination provides an ethereal quality to the scene. This season is celebrated quietly here, with the School not in session throughout the Christmas octave. The community has traditionally celebrated a Midnight Mass for faculty and friends who remain in the area, as well as the Mass in the day. The community has maintained the practice of holding a monastic retreat, typically led by a guest retreat director. As we meditate upon the beautiful creche scene in the St. Joseph chapel of the church, we might consider Marmion’s statement: “It is from the Crib that He inaugurates this life of suffering such as He willed to live for our salvation, this life of which the term is at Golgotha, and that, in destroying sin, is to restore to us the friendship of His Father. The Crib is certainly only the first stage, but it radically contains all the others.” (Mysteries, p. 127). He goes on to say:

Thus, each day, the union established between man and God in the Incarnation, is continued and made closer. In giving Himself in Communion, Christ increases the life of grace in the generous and faithful soul, making this life develop more freely and expand with more strength; He even bestows upon such a soul the pledge of that blessed immortality of which grace is the germ and whereby God will communicate Himself to us fully and unveiled... This will be the consummation, magnificent and glorious, of the exchange inaugurated at Bethlehem in the poverty and humiliations of the Crib. (Mysteries, p. 133)

Creche Scene at the Grotto

Marmion articulates beautifully some of the theology of the Incarnation: “This then, if I may so express myself, is one of the acts of the contract. God takes our nature so as to unite it to Himself in a personal union. What is the other act? What is God going to give us in return? Not that He owes us anything... But as He does all things with wisdom, He could not take upon Himself our nature without a motive worthy of Him. What the Word Incarnate gives in return to humanity is an incomprehensible gift; it is a participation, real and intimate, in His Divine nature... In exchange for the humanity which He takes, the Incarnate Word gives us a share in His Divinity; He makes us partakers of His Divine Nature. And thus is accomplished the most wonderful exchange which could be made.” (Mysteries, p. 120-121)

Lent. The season of Lent opens for us in the midst of late winter, and with School in session, thus the Ash Wednesday Mass typically has the School present. While Mass attendance in the Lenten season is broken up by the school’s vacation in March, Lent still makes its mark on School life each year, as the students and faculty join the monastic community in many of its Lenten liturgies. Saint Benedict highlights the ongoing Lenten character of monastic life, and Marmion has much to say on the spirituality of this season in his Lenten conferences.

Lenten Chasuble prepared fro conventual Mass

The astonishing abasements into which love plunges Christ give faith its merit; the manifestation of His Divine prerogatives gives faith its support. (Mysteries, p. 174) … (The Church) wills that during forty days, we should live like Him in the spirit of penance, retreat, solitude and prayer. In order to help us to pass this time well, and to arouse within us the sentiments which should animate us, she gives us the account of Christ’s fasting, temptation and triumph at the opening of these forty holy days. (p.194)

Marmion’s wisdom provides sound advice that one is well served to carry along on one’s Lenten journey: “And this, despite temptations, trials, sufferings. Do not let us listen to the voice of the Evil One: his suggestions are those of a prince of darkness; do not let us be led away by the prejudices of the world: its maxims are deceptive; let us take care not to be seduced by the solicitations of the senses: to satisfy them only brings trouble upon the soul. It is Jesus alone Whom it behooves us to hear and follow. Let us yield ourselves to Him by faith, confidence, love, humility and obedience.” (Mysteries, pp. 244-45)

Easter. The Paschal Candle and the eruption of flowers in front of the altar, now adorned with a beautiful golden antependium, announce the season visually in our church. The alleluias, hymns, and resurrection readings announce it audibly. The most significant liturgical moments of the year transpire in Holy Week, and the monastery has been able to have the School present for much of this time. For Marmion, the Easter season is powerfully expressed in baptism, and our own community has been blessed, in several of our recent years, with the celebration of baptism at our Easter Vigil. Marmion writes: “The holy water into which we are plunged at baptism is, according to the Apostle, the figure of the sepulchre; upon coming forth from it, the soul is purified from ail sin, from all stain, set free from all spiritual death, and clad with grace, the principle of divine life: in the same way as upon coming forth from the tomb, Christ freed Himself from all infirmity so as to live henceforth a perfect life. …We shall understand scarcely anything of the liturgy of Easter week, if we do not keep before our eyes the thought of baptism which was then solemnly conferred upon the catechumens. (Mysteries, pp. 290-291). He continues, distilling the Easter faith of Christians to its most central and compelling elements: “…we should die more and more to ‘the old man’; that all in us should be dominated and governed by grace. (p. 291); Let us try to act in such a way that each Easter, each day of this blessed season which extends from the Resurrection to Pentecost, may produce within us a more complete death to sin, to the creature, and a more vigorous and more abundant increase of the life of Christ.” (p. 295)

Divine Adoration in Easter Season

If, each year, we are faithful in sharing in Christ’s sufferings during Lent and Holy Week, each year, too, the celebration of Easter, the contemplation of the glory of Jesus triumphant over death, makes us participate more fruitfully and more abundantly in the state of Our Risen Lord; it increases our detachment from all that is not God, and, by grace, faith and love, it makes the divine life grow within us. At the same time, it enlivens our hope... (p. 300)

Marmion’s conferences cover all the feasts of the liturgical year, including those which occur in “Ordinary Time.” The collection of his conferences in The Mysteries of Christ provides an index that offers a “Distribution of the Conferences according to the Liturgical Cycle” (pp 409-410), providing readers easy access to spiritual reading throughout the year.

 

Blessed Columba Marmion

 

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Christ in His Mysteries, Columba Marmion (transl., Mother M. St. Thomas; London: Sands, 9th Edition)