Jesus Archives - Spes in Domino

December 22, 2024December 22, 2024 iacobusm Advent and Christmas, Saints

God Bless Little Saints: St. Servulus

Little Saints

God Bless the little saints. One understandable drawback to the great liturgical feasts, such as the magnificent celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord at Christmas, is that we can overlook lesser observances in all the excitement. For instance, today (December 23rd) is the memorial of St. Servulus. He is worth remembering for his own sake. In addition to that, his life also gives us some very fruitful matter for meditation on the penultimate day of Advent, as we prepare for Christmas itself.

“. . . but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” And he laid his hands on them and went away.” (Matthew 19:14)

Antique St. Servulus Holy Card

Let’s take a look at the story of St. Servulus. Here’s Butler’s Lives of the Saints (an account based on a homily by St. Gregory the Great):

St. Servulus

December 23.—ST. SERVULUS was a beggar, and had been so afflicted with palsy from his infancy that he was never able to stand, sit upright, lift his hand to his mouth, or turn himself from one side to another. His mother and brother carried him into the porch of St. Clement’s Church at Rome, where he lived on the alms of those that passed by. He used to entreat devout persons to read the Holy Scriptures to him, which he heard with such attention as to learn them by heart. His time he consecrated by assiduously singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving to God.

After several years thus spent, his distemper having seized his vitals, he felt his end was drawing nigh. In his last moments he desired the poor and pilgrims, who had often shared in his charity, to sing sacred hymns and psalms for him. While he joined his voice with theirs, he on a sudden cried out: “Silence! do you not hear the sweet melody and praise which resound in the heavens?” Soon after he spoke these words he expired, and his soul was carried by angels into everlasting bliss, about the year 590.

Model of Heroic Virtue

*Bob Crachit & Tiny Tim, by Fred Barnard, 1870*

Servulus is certainly an admirable model of heroic virtue. In spite of a lifetime of constant suffering, he radiated gratitude to his Creator. He devoted himself completely to God, as his name proclaims (Servulus means “little slave”). Moreover, despite his own absolute poverty, he was keenly aware of the need of others. But there’s more to the story of this saint and his feast day, coming as it does right before the celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord. When I first read Servulus’ hagiography, in fact, a passage from Charles Dickens immediately came to mind.

I was thinking of the scene in A Christmas Carol. Here, the Ghost of Christmas Present is showing Scrooge the Cratchit family’s Christmas dinner. Scrooge’s underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit, has just returned from church on Christmas day with his sickly, crippled son Tiny Tim. After Tim is whisked off by his siblings to see “the pudding singing in the copper,” Bob has the following exchange with his wife:

“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content. “As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”

Image of Christ’s Mercy

Tiny Tim sees himself as a living image of Christ’s mercy, reminding the faithful that the Nativity they’re celebrating is not just the birth of a baby, but the Incarnation of the God of Mercy as a Man. St. Servulus is also an icon, pointing out precisely who the Babe in the manger has come to be. He reminds us that in taking on human flesh, Jesus is taking to himself all that is human, excepting sin. That very emphatically includes human suffering. It is often said that when God took on human form, he sanctified humanity.

**Adoration of the Child**, *by Gerard van Honthorst, c. 1620*

Likewise, since Jesus has participated in our pain and sorrow, through his suffering we can unite ourselves to the living God. St. Servulus puts flesh on the words of St. Paul: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions (Colossians 1:24).” Small wonder that the suffering saint could hear the voices of angels even before he left this world for the next.

Good News of Great Joy

In two days, we will be celebrating Christmas, the birth of our Savior, which is indeed, as the angels tell the shepherds of Bethlehem, “good news of a great joy” (Luke 2:10). St. Servulus reminds us that He comes not so much to save us from the hardships of this world, but to save us through those hardships, so that we can be eternally happy with Him in the next.
May your Christmas be a merry one . . . and God Bless Us, Every One.

Featured Image top of page: Suffer the Little Children Come Unto Me, by Jacob Jordaens, c. 1615

November 23, 2024December 13, 2024 iacobusm The Liturgical Year

What We Wish for, or Christ the King

Be careful what you wish for . . .

Be careful what you wish for. Consider the case of the ancient Israelites. Samuel, prophet and judge, was growing old, and his sons proved unequal to the task of following in his footsteps.

Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint for us a king to govern us like all the nations.” But the thing displeased Samuel . . . And Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, “Hearken to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them . . . (1 Samuel 8:4-7)

The Lord then instructs Samuel to warn the people of what will happen to them if they take a king: he will take their sons and daughters and force them into his service, he will take their land and produce, he will demand ” the best of your cattle” and “the tenth of your flocks (see 1 Samuel 8: 11-17a).” Samuel tells the people what the Lord has instructed him to say, and wraps up this litany of grasping despotism with a flourish:

. . . and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day. (1 Samuel 8: 17b-18)

That We Might Also Be Like All the Nations

That doesn’t sound too appealing, does it? And yet,

the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; and they said, “No! but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.” (1 Samuel 8: 19-20)

**David Playing the Harp before Saul**, Rembrandt van Rijn, c. 16301631

Don’t be too surprised that the Israelites were willing to enslave themselves to a mere man in order to be “like all the nations.” We do it all the time. All of us. Not just in the political realm, either. Not that politics isn’t a great temptation: I’m sure we all know people who have made politics their religion. Even those of us who really believe that God is our king, however, sometimes look to political figures, or political programs (and there are plenty of those, even in the Church) to bring about salvation. But that’s just the beginning. We can put literally anything on the throne reserved for our True Lord Jesus Christ. Food, drink, sex, a new car, the next pay raise; you name it, we can make it an idol.

Out of Their Lives

That’s why the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe is so essential. Pope Pius XI established the feast in December, 1925. Within the prior decade World War I and the various revolutions that followed in its wake had wiped out long-established monarchies across Europe. The totalitarian ideologies of fascism and communism were threatening to submerge both faith and human freedom around the world. At the same time, growing affluence and material progress was creating ever greater temptations to idolatry.

Pope Pius addresses both of these trends in Quas Primas, the encyclical inaugurating the solemnity:

. . . We remember saying that these manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics: and we said further, that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations. Men must look for the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ . . . (Quas Primas, 1)

Private affairs or politics, individuals and states: Christ is king of all.

Heart Turned Away

And so it was, even in ancient Israel. The Israelites got their king, Saul. He turned out to be every bit as bad as Samuel predicted. In fact, chapters 13-15 of the first Book of Samuel present a smorgasbord of transgressions in which reveal Saul refuses to acknowledge the Sovereignty of God over either the state or over himself as a man. Saul’s failure leads to King David, a man truly “after God’s own Heart” (1 Samuel 13.13, Acts 13.22).

**The Prophet Nathan rebukes King David**, by Eugène Siberdt, Late 19th early 20th Century

David is indeed a much more successful King than Saul. And yet he, too, fails, both as man and king when he abuses his office to kill Uriah the Hittite in order to take the unfortunate man’s wife, Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11-12). David’s successor is Solomon, his son by Bathsheba. Despite his reputation for wisdom,

. . . the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice . . . (1 Kings 11.9)

Because of Solomon’s failure as both man and king, the Jewish kingdom was divided after his death, never to be reunited.

Son of David and Son of God

**Nativity of Jesus**, by N.C. Wyeth, 1912

At least, it would never be reunited as a political kingdom under the rule of an ordinary ruler. No merely human king, however wise or pious, could do for the Israelites what they were asking from their king. Only a King who was both son of David and Son of God could truly rule in the hearts of men and over this world. Only one person could possibly fit the bill: the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Eternal Word, God from God, yet also born in a stable to a human mother of the line of David.

What was true for ancient Israel is still true for us today. If we’re looking for any man or woman “to govern us and go out before us and fight our battles” we’ll be disappointed at best (and the best almost never happens). Yes, we do need our human institutions, but they cannot bring salvation. Our Hope is in The Lord. And for that reason, today we turn our minds and hearts to Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.

Featured image top of page: detail from Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation, by Hans Memling, c. 1485.

The Midpoint Between The Nativity and The Passion

The Midpoint

Today is the midpoint, the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. Which is to say, today is the Feast of the Presentation, a perfect microcosm of both/and. The official Christmas Season ended a couple weeks ago on the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. The Presentation of the baby Jesus in the Temple forty days after his birth as prescribed in Jewish law, however, is the concluding celebratory event of the scriptural nativity narrative. My wife’s forebears in Poland always extended their Christmas celebration until the Feast of the Presentation on February 2nd. This is still the practice in some places (including the Vatican).

At the same time, Lent is bearing down on us. The connection is clear in the traditional liturgical calendar, where Pre-Lent starts on Septuagesima Sunday, three-and-one-half weeks before Ash Wednesday. The Church just observed Septuagesima Sunday this past weekend, which you would have seen if you attended the TLM. While Pre-Lent is not formally part of the Ordinary Calendar anymore, it’s still there in the readings. You might have noticed that the response to the Psalm at the Ordinary Form mass this past Sunday was the Lenten verse: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts”. So, this year post-Christmas and Pre-Lent actually overlap by several days.

Simeon: Both/And

The both/and, Christmas/Lent aspect of the Presentation is personified in Simeon. He is the prophetic old man who has God’s promise that he will see the Messiah before he dies. Simeon takes baby Jesus in his arms and first intones a prayer of thanks and praise. We call this prayer the Nunc Dimittis from its open words in Latin. In English it begins: “Now, Lord, you let your servant go in peace . . .” (Luke 2:29-32).

The Midpoint — **Simeon the Righteous**, by Alexey Yegorov, 1830s-1840s

That, however, is not the end of it. He next turns to Mary and says:

Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel,
and for a sign that is spoken against
(and a sword will pierce through your own soul also),
that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed. (Luke 2:34-35)

Small wonder that the Presentation/Prophecy of Simeon provides both one of the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary and one of the Seven Sorrows of Mary. You can see the whole scene wonderfully played out in Caravaggio’s characteristically dramatic painting of the Presentation. The painting appears below. I also use it as the backdrop to my video of Holst’s magnificent choral setting to the Nunc Dimittis.

Caravaggio’s Painting

When we look at the painting the brightest figure in picture immediately catches our eye. That’s baby Jesus, in the middle of the left half of the composition. We then take in the shadowy image of Simeon holding the child, along with the prophetess Anna. She has also been awaiting the Messiah in the Temple. Our gaze then moves right, where we notice a befuddled looking Joseph at the margin. Our eye finally comes to rest on Mary, the blood-red of her tunic the deepest color in the picture. At last, we settle on her hands, which clutch the heart that Simeon has just told her will be pierced by a sword.

***The Presentation in the Temple***, *Caravaggio*

Joy and Sorrow

The Presentation is not the only place where we see this unexpected (to us) combination of joy and sorrow. Let’s look back a little earlier in Luke’s Gospel, where Mary sings the canticle we know as The Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). This song is her greeting to her cousin Elizabeth (who is herself pregnant with John the Baptist). The Magnificat is closely modeled on an Old Testament canticle sung by Hannah, the mother of Samuel (1 Samuel 2:1-10). Given the close resemblance of the two songs, we are clearly expected to see Hannah as a type, or prefigurement, of Mary.

Hannah’s is not simply a ritual presentation of her son to The Lord, by the way. She brings little two-year-old Samuel to the temple and leaves him there, to be raised by Eli the priest. This was the child for whom she wept and prayed, but she only received him after she promised to give him back to God, which she does, literally.

God’s Ways

There is something here that is true to motherhood in general. Mothers receive their children only to give them up in the end. The joy comes at the price of the sorrow. There is something deeper going on as well, something about the nature of Christian discipleship. But before we get to that, I’d like to take another look at the liturgical calendar.

It’s interesting that the liturgical year doesn’t unfold in the order we might expect. We have the beginning and the end, Christmas and Easter with all their drama, in the first half of the year. Then, in the last six months we have what seems like it should be the middle. It feels, however, like one long denouement until it all starts up again on the first Sunday of advent.

This is not how you or I would have planned it, but God’s ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not out thoughts (see Isaiah 55:8). We could point out that the dates of Easter and Christmas were established independently, at different times and for different reasons. The date of Easter isn’t arbitrary. It follows the dates of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. These happened at the time of the Jewish Passover. Passover is a movable feast, but always happens around the same time in Spring. Easter, consequently, is likewise a movable feast, falling somewhere between March 22nd and April 25th. The Church has celebrated the Resurrection since its very beginning.

The Way of the Cross

The celebration of Christmas, on the other hand, didn’t become common until several centuries later. In this case Holy Scripture gives no certain date. Christians in the west seem to have settled on the date of December 25th some time in the 4th century.

There is no clear record of how the Church made the final determination for the date of Christmas. There was, as it happens, an earlier consensus on the date of the Annunciation. Logically Christmas should follow nine months later, shouldn’t it? That agreed upon date for the Annunciation, by the way, was the one we still observe: March 25th.

There was a widespread belief in the early church by the way, that whatever the liturgical date of the Easter celebration, the actual date of the Resurrection was also March 25th . . . so maybe the dates are not so independent after all. Whatever factors went into it and however the liturgical calendar took on its current form, it seems that that close proximity of Christmas and Lent gives us little time to forget that our savior came into this world for the explicit purpose of following the Way of the Cross.

Pick Up the Cross

We might want to consider that the baby Jesus we see in the Presentation grows up to tell his disciples: “If any man would come after me, let him pick up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). We have heard of the crucifixion so often that it can become an abstraction. We’ve seen it so many times in tidy, pious pictures, that perhaps we can’t understand how viscerally shocking that image was to the disciples. They were personally familiar with this hideous form of execution. They had seen men undergo the wrenching, tortuous death inflicted by the hideous instrument, the cross, crux in Latin, that gives us our word excruciating. One does not lightly or casually pick up one’s cross.

A Double Edged Sword

There really is a lot going on in this one feast day. We see the two-edged prophecy of Simeon, linking Salvation and Sorrow. Likewise, we see the placement of the feast day as the midpoint, the intersection of Christmas joy and the penitential season of Lent. Finally, we find ourselves wondering at the departure from chronological order that puts those two seasons right next to each other, when we would expect to find them at opposite ends of the year. All those things come together in the Presentation to remind us that Christ is our Savior, but he has not come to save us from sorrow or suffering in this world. No, he’s come to save us from sin. Hhe doesn’t save us from the cross, he saves us through the cross.

Featured image top of page: Scene with Christ in the Temple, by Fra Bartolomeo, 1519

Music for the Presentation of Our Lord: Holst’s “Nunc Dimittis”

December 9, 2023December 7, 2024 iacobusm Advent and Christmas, The Liturgical Year

Divine Patience: 2nd Sunday of Advent

Divine Patience

Divine Patience sounds like a rather tall order, doesn’t it? We know that Jesus tells us: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) It follows that we should also be patient, as our heavenly Father is patient. I can’t help but think of the old saying “To err is human, to forgive divine.” Patience is likewise divine, and we mere humans, well, we tend to be very impatient.

And on this Second Sunday of Advent, the Mass readings remind us that God is, indeed, patient. In today’s second reading, for instance, St. Peter advises

Do not ignore this one fact, beloved,
that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years
and a thousand years like one day.
The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard “delay,”
but he is patient with you,
not wishing that any should perish
but that all should come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:8-9)

The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard “delay,” but he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:8-9)

The Scoffers

We get a broader view of just how patient our Father is if we consider the part of St. Peter’s letter that immediately precedes what we hear at Mass today. We learn that he is not only willing to wait a long, long, long time, but He is also willing to put up with a lot of nonsense from us. For a long time . . . but not forever . . .

First of all you must understand this, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.” (2 Peter 3:3-4)

St. Peter’s scoffers are certainly with us today. “All things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation,” as if this somehow shows that the Creator won’t, or can’t, do something different. Or even as if, somehow, the fact that the world has continued on its course for a long, long time means that there is no creator. St. Peter will have none of it:

They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out of water and by means of water, through which the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. (2 Peter 3:5-6)

At the Beginning and Along the Way

**The Ancient of Days**, by William Blake, 1794

God was there at the beginning, and there all along the way. And while it may seem possible to ignore the Creator now, that will not always be the case:

But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist have been stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. (2 Peter 3:7)

This is the lead-up to today’s reading, and why we should thank God for His patience. He gives us lots of time because He is

not wishing that any should perish
but that all should come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)

He gives us the Grace to repent, but it’s up to us. That is one of the meanings of the Season of Advent: we don’t just await the coming of the Christ Child in the manger at Bethlehem. We are also waiting for his coming again at the end of time. Patience will be rewarded. Let’s get ready.

Music for Advent: “Creator of the Stars at Night”

April 15, 2022 iacobusm Lent and Easter, The Triduum

Something Strange is Happening – Holy Saturday

Something Strange

Something strange is happening—there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep.

These are the opening sentences in the non-scriptural reading in today’s Office of Readings. The author, it seems, is unknown. The liturgy simply tells us that it is “an ancient homily on Holy Saturday.” The description rings true. Holy Saturday is not quite like any other day in the liturgical calendar. We experience a pause after the intense liturgical activity of Holy Thursday and Good Friday. There is a sense of expectancy, and, as the author of the reading above put it, “a great silence and stillness.”

So it seems, to us. If we read on, we see that The King may appear, to us, to be “asleep” but that is not really the case:

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory.

Jesus Doesn’t Rest

The period between Death and Resurrection is one of stillness and waiting in our world, but Jesus doesn’t rest. And why would Christ, fresh from crucifixion and death, seek out Adam and Eve? It does seem like something strange, doesn’t it? Our homilist shows him telling out first parents:

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image.

Christ addresses these words here to Adam and Eve, but He also addresses them to us, their descendants. God did not create our first parents in order to hold them “prisoner in hell.” Nor did he create any of us for that purpose. Out of his love for all of us he is calling us away from Death: Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.

“The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory.“

The Harrowing of Hell or Christ in Limbo, by Albrecht Durer, 1510

In Search of the Lost Sheep

The picture our homilist paints here of Christ is a reflection of what Jesus says of himself in the Gospels. Consider this passage from the Gospel of Matthew:

If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. (Matthew 18: 12-13)

God is Seeking Us

This is one of numerous passages that show us how intent Our Lord is on gathering us to himself. We often speak of ourselves as “seeking God,” but that’s not really the way it works, we’re deceiving ourselves. The Benedictine Mark Barrett in his book Crossing: Reclaiming the Landscape of Our Lives says:

Biblical images of God – shepherd, farmer, lover – always make God the one who is active. He takes the initiative . . . God is the seeker, and we are the object of the search. This is the strangest lesson of all.

Yes, something strange is happening. While our world seems silent and still, under the surface Our Lord is working out of our view to bring back all his lost sheep. We might want to take some time during the quiet of Holy Saturday to meditate on Christ’s saving action, and prepare ourselves to return to him when the Resurrected Lord comes back for us on Easter Sunday.

Feature image top of page: Christ in Limbo, by Fra Angelico, c. 1450

The Triduum & Easter 2022:

Christ Came to Serve – Holy Thursday

Is it I, Lord? – Good Friday

Have a Blessed Easter! (Jesus Christ is Risen Today)

Tag: Jesus