On Obedience and Discipline

Everyone gladly does whatever he most likes, and likes best those who
think as he does; but if God is to dwell among us we must sometimes
yield our own opinion for the sake of peace. Who is so wise that he
knows all things? So do not place too much reliance on the rightness
of your own view but be ready to consider the views of others. If your
opinion is sound, and you forego it for the love of God and follow
that of another, you will win great merit. I have often heard that it is
safer to accept advice than to give it. It may even come about that
each of two opinions is good; but to refuse to come to an agreement
with others when reason or occasion demand it is a sign of pride and
obstinacy.
--Thomas à Kempis --Imitation of Christ Bk 1, Ch 9

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11 February – St Caedmon

(Died c 680)
St Caedmon is the earliest English (Northumbrian) poet whose name is
known. An Anglo-Saxon who cared for the animals at the double
monastery of Streonæshalch (Whitby Abbey, in Yorkshire, England)
during the abbacy (657–680) of the Founder, St Hilda (614–680), he was originally ignorant of “the art of song” but learned to compose one
night in the course of a dream, according to the 8th-century historian
and Saint, The Venerable St Bede (673-735) Father & Doctor of the
Church. He later became a zealous monk and an accomplished and
inspirational Christian poet.

The sole source of original information about Cædmon’s life and work
is St Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica. According to Bede, Cædmon was a
lay brother who cared for the animals at the monastery Streonæshalch,
now known as Whitby Abbey. One evening, while the monks were feasting,
singing and playing a harp, Cædmon left early to sleep with the
animals because he knew no songs. The impression clearly given by St
Bede is that he lacked the knowledge of how to compose the lyrics to
songs. While asleep, he had a dream in which “someone” approached him
and asked him to sing principium creaturarum, “the beginning of
created things.” After first refusing to sing, Cædmon subsequently
produced a short eulogistic poem praising God, the Creator of heaven
and earth.

Upon awakening the next morning, Cædmon remembered everything he had
sung and added additional lines to his poem. He told his foreman about
his dream and gift and was taken immediately to see the abbess, St
Hilda of Whitby. The abbess and her counsellors asked Cædmon about his
vision and, satisfied that it was a gift from God, gave him a new
commission, this time for a poem based on “a passage of sacred history
or doctrine”, by way of a test. When Cædmon returned the next morning
with the requested poem, he was invited to take monastic vows. The
abbess ordered her scholars to teach Cædmon sacred history and
doctrine, which after a night of thought, Bede records, Cædmon would
turn into the most beautiful verse. According to Bede, Cædmon was
responsible for a large number of splendid vernacular poetic texts on
a variety of Christian topics.

After a long and zealously pious life, Cædmon died like a saint –
receiving a premonition of death, he asked to be moved to the abbey’s
hospice for the terminally ill where, having gathered his friends
around him, he died after receiving the Holy Eucharist, just before
nocturns.

Bede’s narrative shows that Bede, an educated and intelligent man,
believed Cædmon to be an important figure in the history of English intellectual and religious life. He, however, gives no specific dates
in his story. Cædmon is said to have taken holy orders at an advanced
age and it is implied that he lived at Whitby, at least in part,
during Hilda’s abbacy (657–680).

Cædmon is one of twelve Anglo-Saxon poets identified in medieval
sources and one of only three of these for whom both roughly
contemporary biographical information and examples of literary output
have survived. St Bede wrote, “there was in the Monastery of this
Abbess a certain brother particularly remarkable for the Grace of God,
who was wont to make religious verses, so that whatever was
interpreted to him out of scripture, he soon after put the same into
poetical expressions of much sweetness and humility in Old English,
which was his native language. By his verse the minds of many were
often excited to despise the world and to aspire to heaven.”

Cædmon’s only known surviving work is Cædmon’s Hymn, the nine-line alliterative vernacular praise poem in honour of God which he learned
to sing in his initial dream. The poem is one of the earliest attested
examples of Old English and is one of the earliest recorded examples
of sustained poetry in a Germanic language. In 1898, St Cædmon’s Cross
was erected in his honour in the graveyard of St Mary’s Church in
Whitby.


Saint Quote:
The stench of impurity before God and the angels is so great, that no
stench in the world can equal it.
--St. Philip Neri

Bible Quote:
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will
raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to
build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he
spoke of the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from
the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they
believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.  [John
2:19-22]  RSVCE


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Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me save that Thou art.
Thou my best thought by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my battle-shield, sword for my fight,
Be Thou my dignity, Thou my delight.
Thou my soul's shelter, Thou my high tower.
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise,
Thou mine inheritance, now and always;
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of heaven my Treasure Thou art.

High King of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's son,
Heart of my heart, whatever befall
Still be my vision, O ruler of all.
– Saint Dallan Forgaill

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On Obedience and Discipline

Everyone gladly does whatever he most likes, and likes best those who
think as he does; but if God is to dwell among us we must sometimes
yield our own opinion for the sake of peace. Who is so wise that he
knows all things? So do not place too much reliance on the rightness
of your own view but be ready to consider the views of others. If your
opinion is sound, and you forego it for the love of God and follow
that of another, you will win great merit. I have often heard that is
safer to accept advice than to give it. It may even come about that
each of two opinions is good; but to refuse to come to an agreement
with others when reason or occasion demand it is a sign of pride and
obstinacy.
--Thomas à Kempis --Imitation of Christ Bk 1, Ch 9

<<>><<>><<>>
March 18th - St. Anselm, Bishop of Lucca

d.1086
IT was in 1036 that St. Anselm was born in Mantua, and in 1073 his
uncle, Pope Alexander II, nominated him to the bishopric of Lucca,
left vacant by his own elevation to the chair of St. Peter, and sent
him to Germany to receive from the Emperor Henry IV the crozier and
the ring-- in accordance with the regrettable custom of the time.
Anselm, however, was so strongly convinced that the secular power had
no authority to confer ecclesiastical dignities that he could not
bring himself to accept investiture from the emperor and returned to
Italy without it. Only after he had been consecrated by Alexander’s successor, Pope St. Gregory VII, did he consent to accept from Henry
the crozier and the ring, and even then he felt scruples of conscience
on the subject. These doubts led him to leave his diocese and to
withdraw to a congregation of Cluniac monks at Polirone. A dignitary
of such high-minded views could ill be spared, and Pope Gregory
recalled him from his retirement and sent him back to Lucca to resume
the government of his diocese. Zealous with regard to discipline, he
strove to enforce among his canons the common life enjoined by the
decree of Pope St. Leo IX. In acute discordance with the edifying
example accredited to them above in our notice of St. Frediano, the
canons refused to obey, although they were placed under an interdict
by the pope and afterwards excommunicated. Countess Matilda of Tuscany undertook to expel them, but they raised a revolt and, being supported
by the Emperor Henry, drove the bishop out of the city in 1079.

St. Anselm retired to Canossa, to the Countess Matilda, whose director
he became, and in all the territories under her jurisdiction he
established strict order among the monks and the canons. He was wont
to say that he would prefer that the Church should have neither,
rather than that they should live undisciplined lives. He himself was
most austere, and always spent several hours daily in prayer: he never
drank wine, and found some pretext for avoiding delicate food at
well-served tables. Although he used to celebrate every day, he was
moved to tears in saying Mass, and he lived so continually in the
presence of God that no secular affairs could banish the remembrance
of it.

As one of Pope Gregory’s most faithful supporters, he drew upon
himself much persecution. His chief services to the pontiff were
rendered in connection with investitures, the suppression of which was
at that period a matter of life or death to the orderly government of
the Church. This abuse had been gradually increasing until it had
become a grievous scandal, especially in Germany. It had its roots in
the feudal system, under which bishops and abbots had become owners of
lands and even of cities, for which they naturally paid allegiance to
the sovereign, receiving in exchange temporal authority over the
territories they governed. But the consequence was that in course of
time all sacred offices were shamelessly sold to the highest bidder or
bestowed on profligate courtiers. Gregory had no more vigorous
supporter than Anselm of Lucca, who had himself protested against
receiving investiture at secular hands. After the death of Gregory,
the next pope nominated St. Anselm to be his legate in Lombardy--a
post which entailed the administration of several dioceses left vacant
in consequence of the investitures quarrel. Thus Anselm was apostolic
visitor, but he was never actually made bishop of Mantua, as some of
his biographers have claimed.

We read that he was a man of great learning, and had made a special
study of the Bible and of its commentators if questioned on the
meaning of any passage of Holy Scripture--a great part of which he
knew by heart--he could cite at once the explanations given by all the
great fathers of the Church. Amongst his writings may be mentioned an
important collection of canons and a commentary on the Psalms which he
began at the request of the Countess Matilda, but which he did not
live to complete. The holy bishop died in his native town of Mantua,
and the city has since adopted him as its principal patron saint.

The main source of information is the life of the saint, formerly
attributed to Bardo, primicerius of the cathedral of Lucca, though Mgr
Guidi has shown that the true author must have been a priest belonging
to the suite of the Countess Matilda (see Analecta Bollandiana, vol.
xlviii, p. 203). This “Bardo” life has been many times printed, e.g.
by Mabillon, the Bollandists, and in MGH., Scriptores, vol. xii. But
there is also a long poem by Ranierius (7300 lines), first printed by
La Fuente (1870), on which cf. Overmann in the Neues Archiv, vol. xxi
(1897). See also the Acta Sanctorum, March, vol. ii, and P. Schmeidler
in the Neues Archiv., vol. xliii. Anselm’s Collectio Canonum has been critically edited in recent times by Thaner.


Bible Quote:
19 Where words are many, sin is not wanting;
but those who restrain their lips do well.
20 Choice silver is the tongue of the just;
the heart of the wicked is of little worth.
21 The lips of the just nourish many,
but fools die for want of sense. Proverbs 10:19-21:


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For Strength from the Passion

Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we, who in our many
troubles fail because of our weakness, may with the Passion of Thine only-begotten Son pleading for us, take heart anew.
(Roman Missal)

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Whoever will come after Me, let him deny himself. (Matthew 16:24)

"If we do not pay great attention to mortifying our own will, there are many things that can take from us that holy liberty of spirit, which we seek in order to be able to mount freely towards our Creator, without being always weighed down with earth and lead. Besides, in a soul that belongs to itself, and is attached to its own will, there can never be solid virtue"
-St. Teresa

St. Mary Magdalen de' Pazzi said one day that she asked nothing of the Lord except that He would take her own will from her; for she knew that through
the vivacity of her disposition, she did not advance so much as she desired
in those virtues which render a soul most pleasing to the Lord. After saying this, she raised her eyes to Heaven and fell into an ecstasy, in which she
was shown by God how much harm is done to souls, especially those of
religious, when they are guided by their own will which they once
consecrated to God by vow. In the course of the ecstasy, she took her
Superior by the hand and led her to the oratory, where she knelt and prayed
the Virgin to enlighten her Superior also, that she might take pains to
despoil her of her will; and after prostrating herself three times upon the ground, she recovered from her trance. She was so much in earnest in this matter that she once said she did not remember ever to have tried, either secretly or openly, to incline the will of her Superior to her own.

(Taken from the book "A Year with the Saints". March - Mortification)

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