Light of the World is a three volume series offering meditations on masses throughout the liturgical year, this book review being on the second volume. It is written the same vein as the concise “The Church’s Year” by Rev. Fr. Leonard Goffine and Dom Prosper Gueranger’s 15 volume “The Liturgical Year” and should be added to the books listed for their coverage of the liturgical year covered in an earlier blog. The Imprimi postest and Imprimatur is a follows:
Imprimi postest: + Stephen Schappler, O.S.B.
Coadjutor Abbot
Imprimatur: + Joseph E Ritter, S.T.D.
Archbishop of St. Louis
Second Printing, 1965
This is a translation of Volume II of Werde Licht by Rt. Rev. Benedict Baur, O.S.B. (ninth revised edition, 1955), Published by Herder & Co, Freiburg, Germany.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 58-13571
Copyright 1952, 1959 by Herder Book Co.
The following is a quote showing a sample or the type of meditation it offers. After some sections there are prayers to help one focus on the meditation offered in the text. This the quote about Septuagesima Sunday in its entirety. The immediately following meditation is on Septuagesima Monday.
The Liturgy of Septuagesima Sunday
- Septuagesima Sunday ushers in the Easter Cycle, and our thoughts dwell on the blessed mystery of Easter. The Easter cycle includes Christ’s passion, resurrection and glorification. The devout Christian soul will accompany the Church as she contemplates Christ in His passion, death, resurrection, and eternal glorification. Through struggle to victory is the universal law. Through suffering, tribulation, and death the soul achieves self-mastery, resurrection, and life. This struggle valiantly waged in this life will bring the soul to the resurrection and eternal life in heaven.
- On Septuagesima Sunday in the ancient Church, the candidates who were to receive baptism at Easter were selected from those who had presented themselves for instruction. This practice should remind us also that we once were presented for baptism, and as members of Christ’s mystical body we should renew our resolution to accompany Him on His sorrowful journey. We shall accompany Christ through His struggles to victory. Having resolved to acquit ourselves manfully in the struggle for the glory of God, and having concentrated all of our energies for that task, we shall eventually achieve a glorious victory and a blessed Easter. Our model of mortification during this season is the martyr St. Lawrence. We gather around him in his church at the beginning of Lent to prepare for the struggle. Dimly in the background we catch a glimpse of the greatest of all martyrs, Jesus Christ, clothed in garments crimsoned with His own blood. With Him and His holy Church we press forward for the struggle. “The sorrows of death surrounded me, the sorrows of hell encompassed me; and in my affliction I called upon the lord, and He heard my voice from His holy temple” (Introit). Reeling the burden of our sinfulness we cry out: “Graciously hear, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the prayers of Thy people, that we who are justly afflicted for our sins, may mercifully be freed for the glory of Thy name” (collect).
Having made our humble plea for mercy, we arise to gird ourselves for the struggle that lies ahead of us. The goal which we respect to reach is the eternal resurrection. But to attain our goal we must chastise our bodies and bring them into subjection (Epistle). The strength to persevere in this life of Self-denial we must seek from God, who will not deny His help to those who seek Him (Gradual). With the catechumens let us present ourselves again as laborers in the vine yard of the Lord. In this vineyard we shall work out our own salvation and that of our neighbor, and shall contribute to the success of the Church on earth. We have been called into the vineyard at the eleventh hour, that is, in the era of Christ, in the era of the new dispensation. God has given us a sublime calling. Since he also gives us strength and directs our labors, we can hardly refuse to labor zealously.
- When we make our offering in the Mass today, we do so in the spirit of the willing laborers in the vineyard of the Lord. As the paten is raised by the priest, we offer with the spotless wafer our determination to struggle against the weakness of the flesh, the allurements of the world, and sin. We unite to this offering all the trials and sufferings that the days may being us, and beg the grace of sustaining them in the spirit of St. Lawrence and in union with the suffering of our Redeemer.
Thus we begin Mass by renewing our belief that this sacrifice is truly a renewal of the offering on Calvary, and we declare ourselves ready to follow Him to death. The consummation of this sacrifice will not be death, but life; we look forward, not to Good Friday, but to Easter Sunday; not to the darkness of the grave, but to the brilliance of the resurrection; we are interested, not in the struggle, but in the victory. Christ now offers Himself, not as the suffering Redeemer, but as the living, glorified conqueror of death and sin. Through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, he makes us partakers of this resurrection and glorification. We share also in His love for the Father, His sanctity, His perfect prayer, His union with God: and thus we become most pleasing to His heavenly Father. Although His is now risen and glorified, He descends to give Himself to us in Holy Communion, and shares His glorified life with us. We are now enlightened by the glory that is His, and we begin to share His glorified life. A soul thus favored is , in a sense, already adorned with the crown of victory, and has placed in its hands already in this world the penny that is the reward for faithful service in the vineyard of the Master. The favors enjoyed by such a soul are an earnest of the crown of victory that is to be its reward in heaven. Through its sufferings it will conquer.
Septuagesima Sunday
Through struggle to victory
- Easter, the day of victory. The day of resurrection and redemption is already beginning. We gather at the stational church of the martyr St. Lawrence, who was tortured on the gridiron, We feel that we are united to him, and this union gives us strength for the struggle. Victory may be gained only though strife. At Easter we shall renew that spirit of our baptism and rise to a new life. Fur the road to Easter leads over Golgotha.
- The kingdom of heaven is like to an householder who went out early in the morning to hire laborers into his vineyard” (Gospel). He begins his search fo laborers early in the day and visits the market place again at the third, the sixth, the ninth, and the eleventh hour. At each visit he finds unemployed laborers idling in the market place, unconcerned about the work in the vineyard of souls. So, too, the Lord approaches us with the question, “Why stand you here all the day idle? . . . Go you also into My vineyard.” We have as yet done very little for the salvation of our own souls or for those of others. We must now take up the task earnestly and zealously. The Lord has given us the call: “Go you also int My vineyard,” work for the salvation of souls. Today at this very hour the invitation is given to us. For us it is not yet too late; it is never too late for any soul that is willing to turn from its evil ways and make an earnest effort. It is too late only for those who abandon the struggle. “Why stand you here all the day idle?” God calls us today to bear patiently the heat and the burden of the day in His vineyard; He invites us to strive in the arena of the world for the incorruptible crown of eternal life. We must struggle valiantly for the crown of victory.
The liturgy places St. Lawrence before us as a model for our conduct during Lent. While suffering on his bed of fire at the time of his martyrdom, he cried out: “The sorrows of death surround me, the sorrows of hell encompassed me; and in my affliction I called upon the Lord, and He heard my voice from His holy temple” (Introit). A second model is given to us in the Epistle in the person of St. Paul, the valiant champion of the Church: “Brethren, know you not that they that run in the race, all run indeed, but one receiveth the prize? So run that you may obtain. And every on that striveth for the mastery refraineth himself from all things; and they indeed that they may receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible one. I therefore so run, not as at an uncertainty; I so fight, not as one beating the air; but I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway” (Epistle).
The chosen people, the Israelites, provide a third example of the preparation we should make for Easter. The thought of our baptism and of the Holy Eucharist dominates the Easter cycle, which we are now beginning. Fut the liturgy warns us to remember that the chosen people, too, had a baptism and a Eucharist. They “were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all in Moses were baptized, in the cloud and in the sea; and did all eat the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink (and they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ). But with most of them God was not well pleased” (Epistle). Only a small remnant of the chosen people reached the Holy Land. The majority of them were unfaithful to God in spite of their baptism and the heavenly manna. We be to us if we should prove unworthy of our baptism and of the Holy Eucharist. Even the most holy things can be misused.
- “Every one that striveth for the mastery refraineth himself from all things.” That should also be our program at the beginning of Lent. Why must we give up everything? That Christ the conqueror may conquer again in us and have the honor that is His due. We must reject everything and purify ourselves, so that nothing may hamper Christ’s work in us. We die, and yet we live. We must die to all sin and to all willful imperfections. We must abandon all desires and thoughts that are not in conformity with Bod’s holy will. We must die to our own will in order that the will and the spirit of Christ may dominate us completely. This is what the holy season of Lent wishes to accomplish in us. Are we prepared to sacrifice everything? “Know you not thar hey that run in the race, all rum indeed, but on receiveth the prize?” (Epistle.)
Only ”one recieveth the prize.” This one is Christ, the conqueror of sin and death. We shall win only in so far as we are united to Him as members of His mystical body. Living in union with Him, making use of this strength, w, too, shall conquer. That He may triumph in His members He must live in us and we in Him. In the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass today we shall enter more fully into His life an he into ours. In Him we shall receive the prize, the possession of eternal life.
PRAYER
Graciously hear, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the prayers of Thy people, that we who are justly afflicted for our sins, may mercifully be freed for the glory of thy name. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. (Collect)
The table of contents covers every mass for 1) The Prelenten Season, 2) The Season of Lent, 3) Passiontide, 4) The Easter Season, 5) Pentecost. It starts with Septuagesima Sunday and ends with Ember Saturday in Pentecost week: Redeemed! On page 381.
