Blog Flos Carmeli English Version: The passion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

Friday, March 29, 2013

The passion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

St. Augustine of Hippo

On the Lord’s Passion

Sermon 218C, Date: about 412

The passion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ constitutes a guarantee of glory and a lesson in patience. What, after all, can the hearts of the faithful not promise themselves from God’s grace, seeing that it was not enough for the only Son of God, co-eternal with the Father, to be born for them as human being from a human being, without His also dying at the hands of the human beings He created? It’s a great thing that the Lord promises us for the future; but it’s a much greater thing which we recall He has already done for us. When Christ died for the ungodly, where were they, or what were they? Who can doubt that He is going to endow His holy ones with His life, when He has already endowed them, while they were still ungodly, with His death? Why should human frailty hesitate to believe that it is going to happen sometime or other that human beings will live with God? Something much more incredible has happened, that God has died for the sake of human beings.

Who, after all, is Christ, but that Word which was in the beginning, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (Jn 1:1)? This Word of God became flesh, and dwelt among us (Jn 1:14). You see, He would not have in Himself the wherewithal to die for us, unless He had taken mortal flesh from us. That was how the immortal one was able to die, that was how He wished to bestow life on mortals; aiming later on to give us shares in Himself, having first of all Himself taken shares in us. I mean, we had nothing of our very own by which we could really live, and He had nothing of His very own by which He could really die. Accordingly, He struck a wonderful bargain with us, a mutual give and take: ours was what He died by; His was what we might live by.

All the same, He too gave even the flesh which He took from us in order to die in it, because He is its creator; while on the other hand He in no way received from us the life by which we are going to live in Him and with Him. And thus, as regards our nature, by which we are human beings, He died from what is ours, not His, since in His own nature by which He is God, He is quite unable to die. But insofar as it is His creation, which He made as God, then He did die from what is His; since He Himself also made the flesh in which He died.

“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another;

as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”

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Prayer to Our Lady of Mount Carmel

“Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel – Be our constant hope. Mary, perfect disciple of the Lord – Make us also faithful to him. Mary, Flower of Carmel – Fill us with your joy. Virgin Mary, Beauty of Carmel – Smile upon your family Sweet Mother of Carmel – Accept me as your child. Holy, Mother beyond compare – Remember your children forever. Holy Virgin, Star of the Sea – Be our beacon of Light. Protecting Veil – Shelter us in the mantle of your love. Mary, conceived without sin – pray for us who have recourse to you.”

Prayer to Saint John Mary Vianney for the Religious Vocations

Almighty and merciful God, who didst make Saint John Marie Vianney admirable in his pastoral zeal and in his constant love of penance, grant us the grace, we implore Thee, to win for Christ, by his example and intercession, the souls of our brethren, and to attain with them everlasting glory—O, Saint John Marie Vianney, incomparable laborer in the field confided to thee, obtain for the Church the realization of Jesus’ desire. The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few. Pray to the Master of the harvest to send faithful laborers into His vineyard. O, Saint John Marie Vianney ! Intercede for the clergy. May thy patronage, and thy prayer multiply the real vocations to the priesthood. May the Holy Ghost grant thee emulators; may He give us Saints! Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

SEVERAL TIMES we have suggested that the reader might be surprised at the great emphasis given to a devotion as apparently simple as the Brown Scapular. But one of the most interesting testimonies to the importance of the Scapular devotion today has so far been scarcely mentioned. In the pages of an ancient history of the Carmelite Order (written in mediaeval Latin by a forgotten writer named Ventimiglia) the author of this book found the following account: Three famous men of God met on a street corner in Rome. They were Friar Dominic, busy gathering recruits to a new Religious Order of Preachers; Brother Francis, the friend of birds and beasts and especially dear to the poor; and Angelus, who had been invited to Rome from Mount Carmel, in Palestine, because of his fame as a preacher. At their chance meeting, by the light of the Holy Spirit each of the three men recognized each other and, in the course of their conversation (as recorded by various followers who were present), they made prophecies to each other. Saint Angelus foretold the stigmata of Saint Francis, and Saint Dominic said: "One day, Brother Angelus, to your Order of Carmel the Most Blessed Virgin Mary will give a devotion to be known as the Brown Scapular, and to my Order of Preachers she will give a devotion to be known as the Rosary. AND ONE DAY, THROUGH THE ROSARY AND THE SCAPULAR, SHE WILL SAVE THE WORLD." Since he was gathering material for a book on the Scapular Devotion, the present writer was deeply impressed on finding this story in Ventimiglia's History . . . and he was especially impressed by the prophecy of St. Dominic. Yet that prophecy appears nowhere in the past sixteen chapters which (with the exception of Chapter Fifteen and a few paragraphs referring to Fatima) were for thirteen years the total of this book . . . unchanged through several printings totaling more than 70,000 copies. St. Dominic's "prophecy" was omitted repeatedly, through all those printings and years, despite the fact that the author came later to know that today a Chapel, on that very street comer in Rome, commemorates the meeting of St. Dominic, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Angelus as described by Ventimiglia. Therefore, why the omission? Why were not the words "Through the Rosary and the Scapular She will save the world" (Taken from the Book The Sign of Her Heart by John M. Haffert)