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J.M.J.
Feast of St. Simon Stock
Confessor of Our Order
The friendship of this world is the enemy of God.
(Jas. 4.4)
How could the boy Simon Stock, at such a young, tender age of 12 leave his family behind, renounce the pomps of the world, and spurn familiar things to retire in solitude in a hollow of a trunk of an oak tree seeking the company only of his God?
His age was the Middle Ages. That was a century of great Faith evidenced by the great generosity, by the great impetus of intense charity of the faithful for never perhaps have men made such great sacrifices to God so simply, so liberally, truly giving all - the century of contemplative souls renouncing all, giving all to God. Faith... worketh charity, teaches the Apostle St. Paul (Gal 5.6). A young century at that! The people just converted, gave themselves to God: their spontaneity, their generosity, had been supernaturalized. Since the Teresian Carmel is the Church's school of intimate friendship with our so generous a God Who hang on a Cross for the price of our redemption, very well did our holy Rule bore such characteristic and very well did our boy received this grace and charism of our holy Order. The Rule of Carmel prescribes "maneant singuli in cellulis suis" (Let each one remain in his cell... day and night...); therefore, the Rule conditions a great Faith in God and an intense charity: I will espouse thee to Me in Faith (Os. 2.20). Otherwise, how could one enclose oneself in a cell to live there in prayer, especially, silent prayer? Because he does it for God - "to be alone with Him Who Is alone" (St. Teresa of Jesus) or in St. Teresa's famous phrase, "[to enter into] intimate conversation with God Who we know loves us." How, if not for Him could one embrace what is so contrary to nature and reason? There in a Teresian Carmelite cell is our life, where we ought to live; there between those four walls, that is the only sphere where a Teresian Carmelite soul can expand, grow, and arrive unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ, as the Apostle St. Paul says (Eph. 4.13). Want to live then in the same sane Carmelite cell of St. Simon Stock, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Jesus, St. Therese of the Child Jesus where one's sole pre-occupation is a most tender and generous love, care and service of our dearest Little Jesus as our Blessed Mother is wont to give Her beloved Son - no TV, no radio, no mobile phone, no digital/electronic devices, no wi-fi, no worldly distractions as is the chaos in the 'modernist' post-Vatican II seminaries, monasteries, and convents?
You should have the grace of that same great supernatural Faith that makes the mind share with God's...
For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world. And this is the victory which overcameth the world: our Faith (1 Jn. 5.4).
I write unto you, young men, because you are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you [through the same TRADITIONAL CATHOLIC TEACHINGS taught and held until Vatican II; not the maxims and principles of the world], and you have overcome the wicked one (1 Jn. 2.14).
Be not conformed to this world (Rom. 12.2).
... And the same intense sacrificial supernatural Charity which expands and makes the heart love as God does
Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life, which is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passeth away and the concupiscence thereof: but he that doth the will of God abideth for ever (1 Jn. 2.15-17).
Therefore if you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth.... You are not of this world but I have chosen you out of the world (Col 3.1-2; Jn. 15.19).
A blessed Feast to everyone!
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ReplyDeleteJ.M.J.T.
Feast of St. Paschal Baylon
"Be... yourselves like to men who wait for their lord, when he shall return... that when he knocketh, they may open to him immediately" (from today's Holy Gospel, Lk. 12.35-40). They who enter "the Order of the Virgin" (Our Lord to St. Teresa, in her "Colloquies") are "blessed" when "found without blemish" (from today's Lesson, Ecclus. 31.8-11) - that is, they are not only chaste in body but also in their eyes (who wait in patience to see their Beloved in His traditional Catholic sanctuary and finally in heaven through the Beatific Vision: to see God "as a man is wont to [see] his friend... face to face," Ex. 33.11, as is the orientation in our Sacred TraditionalLatinMass: both the priest and faithful face God), in their mind (to submit only to His truth revealed to us through our Sacred Tradition: 2 Thess. 2.14; 3.6), and in the delights, affections, and desires of their heart: "My son, give Me your... whole heart" (Pr. 23.26; Mt. 22.37); and, "that hath not gone after gold, nor put trust in money nor in treasures... who... could have transgressed, and hath noth transgressed: and could do evil things, and hath not done them" (from today's Lesson). Our Franciscan son of St. Peter Alcantara - a very good friend of our holy Mother Teresa of Jesus - was divinely sustained triumphantly in this by the traditional Sacraments, especially the Traditional Latin Mass. The impurities widespread not only in the apostate world but also festering the post-Vatican II 'modernist' seminaries and monasteries (even convents!) could only be an "evil fruit" (Mt. 7.18) of a "liturgy... tampered with" (Pope John Paul II, in Vatican's "L'Osservatore Romano," 7th Feb. 1981, cf., our post "Our Lady and the Diabolical Campaign") - the so-called "New Sacraments," particularly the "New 'Mass'" of the Protestant fashion in loud vulgar/ordinary dialect (as if a one whole long 'sermon') which contained a lie at the very heart of it (the 'Blood... shed FOR ALL' when Our Lord, even in the post-Vatican II 'modernist' Biblical versions, only said "FOR MANY" - why the Freemason Bugnini, the architect, in an archbishop's trappings, of the "New 'Mass'" insisted 'FOR ALL': "The New 'Catholic THEOlogy" of Vatican II, cf., our post "The Ultimate Delusion of Vatican II-'Catholicism') and presided by 'ecumenical' men of doubtfully valid "New" "tampered" ordinations in Lutheran or Episcopalian 'Communion Service' attire!