Review for Religious - Issue 06.6 (November 1947)

Issue 6.6 of the Review for Religious, 1947.x A.M.D.G. ,Kevlew "Keng!ous NOVEMBER 15, 1947 ¯~O~r~Finances and You ........... i" The Editors ~T, houghis on Advent and Christmas - " Adam C.~Ellls : Faitl~and Prayer: . ’.." . . ,. =. ~3harlds F. Donovan " Chr +Jan Joy . . :; . .- . Mother Mary Robeh Falls -. i’We ~re All ~ne" ............. C!aud~ ~a. B~okReviews Communications Questions Answered ¯ Annual Inde~ -,, # V, OLLIME VI NUMBER;6 .NUMB,ER 6 CONTEN’I:S OUR FINANCES AND YOU-~-The Editors and the Bi~siness Office 3’~1"~ THOUGHTS ON ADVE~NT AND CHRIStMAS.---Adam C. Ellisl S.J.~~. 323 COMMUNICATIONS .......... ’ ....... : . ,. 329 FAITH AND PRAYER--Charles F. Dbnovan. S.J. ~35- :’¯YOUNG CHRISTIAN FARMERS. .. ....... ¯ .... 341 . CHRIS’ffIAN JOY~-Mother Marry Robert~Falls, O.S.U. . MARIAN NOTICES ........... : ......... 354" YWE ARE ALL ONE"--Claude Keen, O.F.M. " ~ 3~5~,~ OUR CONTRIBUTORS IN PRAISE OF PRAYER~Au~ustine Klaas, S.J. . ¯ ....... (~UESTIONS AND ANSWERS-- 27. "Absence from Novitiate" in House Infirmary ....... 371~ 28. Secula’r Studies not Permitted to Novices .. .......... 372 29’.~Recommendat~on, not Required f~r Postulants from High Schools and Colleges ...... ¯ . . ... ’ ..... : : 372 30. Transferring to Another Community.. ............ 373 31. Readmit.dng Novice, to Novitiate ,, ......... " 373 32. Indulgenced Prayer for the Dead ............. 3~4 ¯ ~ 33. WasI~ing ,i~ltar Linens .......... ~¢ ....... 374, ~4~ Standing during the Angelus ............. 375 35.. Posture at Funeral during Absolution of Corpse ....... 375 BOOK REVIEWS~. ’ Perfect Obedience; St. ~John of the Cross; Doctor of Divine Love and Contemplation ....... ’ ....... 375 BOOK NOTICES ................ ’ ...... : "378 INDEX TO VOLUME VI .............. ; 3"81 "REVIEW, FOR RELIGIOUS, Novembe£ 19:47. Vol. VI, No. 6. ’Published bi-~ mommy; January, Mari:h, May, 3uly, September. and Ngyember at the C011ege Press, 606~ Harrison Street, ,Topeka Kansas. by St. Mary’s, College: St. Marys, KanSas, , with ecclesiastical approbation. Entered as secon~d class matter January 15’,~,1942~ at the Post Office’, Topeka. Kansas, under the act of March 3. 1879. o °Editorial Board: Adam C. Ellis, S.d.. G, Augustine Ellard, S.J., Gerald K~’IIy,~ SiJ.~ ¯, Editorial Secretary: Alfred F. Schneider, S;J. ’ Copyright 1"946, by Adam C. Ellis. Permission is hereby granted" for quotations of reasonabl~ length, provided, dtie credit is given this review and~ the author. Subscription price." 2 dollars a year. Printed in U. S. A. Before~ writlncj to us, please consult no|Ice on Inside back ~var. Our I:::in nces You i F AT ALL possible, we intend to maintain the same sub-scription price, despite the fact that costs have increased greatly--in some cases almost doubled--since we began publication. 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Among the diocesan clergy in particular, we have comparatively few subscribers: yet many of these priests minister to religious and could greatly profit b~" the REVIEW. A gift subscription at Christmas time wo_uld hardly cost more than many other presents that religious com-munities are accustomed to give to chaplains, confessors, and so forth. 3. Our subscriptions are payable in advance; hence, please enclose remittance with your orders and renewals. This avoids the expense entailed in mailing out bills and reminders. 4. When sending a new subscription, be sure that the address is given completely and correctly, with zone number if there is one, For renewals send subscription number also. This number appears on the address of your regular copy. Make a record of this number and always refer to it when dealing with our business office. 321 OUR FINANCES AND YOU 5. 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The com-mission we allow is relatively small, yet it absorbs ~ practically any margin of profitwe might have on the individual subscription. If you buy through agencies, please use only those that are authorized by our business office. And if you are renewing through, agencies, please have the agency send your subscription number with the renewal. We lcan assume no responsibility for mistakes made by agencies. 9. We take all reasonable means to see that your copy is deliv-ered to you. Nevertheless, we receive an exceptional number of com-plaints about lost copies. We urgently request you ’to wait a reason-able time and to check with your own post office and in your own religious house before notifying us. that your copy was not delivered. The seemingly unnecessary sending of extra c0p.ies~is a source of no small loss to us. ~ If all subscribers will cooperate with us by observing the foregoing poinks, we may be able to maintain’ our pres-ent price despite the rising cost of materials and overhead. ¯ THE EDITORS AND THE BUSINESS,OFFICE. 322 Thoughts on Advent and Christmas Adam C. Ellis, S.J. The Feast of Christmas CHRISTMAS is the first’specifically Christian feast to be established by the Church. By that I mean to say that the feasts of Easter and Whitsunday were based upon the pre-existing Jewish feasts of the Pasch and of " Pentecost and were given a new reference to the Resurrection of Our Lord and to the coming of the Holy Ghost, But the feast of Christmas has no parallel in the Old T, estament.. The first documentary reference to the feast of Christ-mas comes to us in a Depositio martyrum, or early martyr-ology, of the year 354 which contains this brief noticd.’. "December 25. Christ is born in Bethlehem of Judea." (VIII Kal. Ian. natus Christus in Bethleem Iudee.) Tra-dition carries the feast back as far as the year 336. We know that it was celebrated in Rome in the middle of the fourth Century, because St. Ambrose tells us in his treatise De Virginitate that his sister, St. M~rcellina, was clothed with the veil of virgins by Pope St. Liberius (352-366) in the. basilica of St. Peter on the feast of Christmas. From Rome this feast spread to the churches of the East; and we have a Christmas sermon preached by St. John Chrysostom at Antioch in 3"88. St. Gregory of Nazianzen introduced the feast at Constantinople about 379 or 380, and from there it spread to Cappadocia. It was celebrated in Alex-andria under the regime of St. Cyril in 432, and in Jerusa-lem under the Patriarch Juvenal about the same time. 323 ADAM C. ELLIS Review for Religious Advent The period of preparation for the feast of Christmas which we now call Advent was gradually introduced about a century afl~er the’ feast itself, probably in imitation of the forty days of Lent Which served as a preparation for the great feast of the Resurrection. In the sixth century Bishop Perpetuus of Tours prescribed three fast days a week from the feast of St. Martin (November 11) to Christmas as a worthy preparation for the feast of the Birth of Christ. Such a period of preparation for the feast of Christmas must have been introduced into the Roman Church some time after Pope Stl Leo the Great, since he makes no men-tion of it in his sermons,, but before the reign of St. Gregory the Great, who comments on Advent in his homilies. For a long time there was no uniformity of practice in the West. The Gelasian Sacramentary~ has five Sundays for Advent; the Gregorian only four. But from the eleventh century on, the Roman" usage of four weeks of Advent Was adopted throughout the Western Church. Spirit of the Advent Liturgy The longing for the coming of the Redeemer is ex-pressed by the daily repetition of the Rotate coeli in the versicle and response for Vespers: "Ye heavens, drop down dew from above, and let the clouds rain down. the Just One." In the lessons of the first nocturn of Matins, the prophet Isaias portrays in gloriously bright colors for the people of God the coming Redeemer as well as His kingdom of grace and of consolation. This longing for the Re-deemer may be summarized in the oft repeated plea of the 1The Sacramentarg (or Book of the Sacred Mysteries) was the first complete litur-gical book known in the West. It contained the celebrant’s part of the Mass (collects, secrets, prefaces, canon, and post-communlons) as well as the prayers and ceremonies for the other sacraments. The three best known sacramentaries were the Leonine, the Gelasian, and the Gregorian. 324 November, 19,t7 ADVENT AND CHRISTMAS .responsory: "Come and save us, O Lord, and do not tarry." It is expressed most strikingly, perhaps, in the so-called "O" antiphons which accompany the Magnificat at Vespers during the week preceding the feast of Christmas: O Adonai, tome and with an outstretched arm redeem us. O Root of Jesse, come to deliver us and tarry not. O Key of David, come and bring forth from this prison house the captive that sitteth in darkness and in the shadow of death. :O Dawn of the East, come and enlighten them that sit in dark, hess and in the shadow of death. O King of the Gentiles, come and deliver man whom tl~ou didst form outof the dust of the earth. O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the expected of the nations, and their Savior, come to save us, O Lord our God. The penitential spirit of Advent is brought home to us by the violet vestments and by the silence of the organ. We miss the joyous anthems of the Te Deum and of the Gloria in the Sunday and ferial offices. This spirit of penance is also exemplified throughout the Advent liturgy by the stern character of John the Baptist who daily cries out to us in the versicle and response of Lauds: "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths." In the Gospel’s for the third and fourth Sundays of Advent we find John the Baptist busy preaching penance and baptizing sinners in thee Jordan, preparing them for the public ministry of Christ. And he confessed and did not deny: I am not the Christ .... I am not Elias .... I am not the prophet. I am the voice of One crying in the desert: "Prepare the road of the Lord, make straight His paths. Let every gully be filled up, and every hill and knoll be brought low; and let the crooked places be straightened out, and the rough roads smoothed, and .all flesh shall see the Salvation of the Lord." In the Gospel of the second Sunday of Advent, we find John in prison. He had prepared the way for Christ’s pub-lic life; now he quietly disappears from the scene: "He must 325 ADAM C. ELLIS Review, for Religious increase, but I must decrease," he had t01d his disciples. Now he sends them to Christ to Ask: "Art thou He that art to come, or. lool~ we for another?" so that they also might join the disciples of Jesus. " But our Lord is not to be out~ done in generosity. He asks the assembled multitude: What went you out i~nto the desert to see’? A reed shaken by the wind? . . . A man clothed in soft garments? . . . A prophet? Yea, I tell you, and more than a prophet! For this is he of"whom.it is written: "Behold, I send my messenger before Thy fate,’~ho shall prepare .Thy road before Thee." Indeed, I tell you, among those born of women there has not arisen one greater than John the Baptist. A spirit of jo~ is interwoven through the earnestness’of the Advent liturgy. This spirit manifests itself ,esi~ec~ally in the prophec!es of Isaias which form the lessons of the first nocturn of Matins throughout the four weeks of Advent, culminating in the grand promise: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel, God with us." This spirit of j~y also recurs in verses like the following: Shout for joy, O daughter of Sion, rejoice greatly. O daughter of Jerusalem .... Come, O Lord, visit us in peace, that we may rejoice before thee with a perfect heart .... People of Sion, behold the Lord shall come to save the nations; and the Lord shall make the glory of his voice to be heard, in the joy of your heart. This joy blossoms out in all its fulness in the Introit of the Mass of the third Sunday of Advent: "Rejoice in the Lord always: again I say, rejoice..Let your forbearance be known to all men. The Lord is near." Our Blessed Lad~/, cause of our salvation and of our joy, is frequently mentioned in the Advent liturgy. Every Sunday and ferial day a special collect is said in her honor: 0 God, whose will it was that Thy Word should take flesh, at the message of an angel, in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary: grant to us Why suppliants that we who believe her to be truly the Mother of God, may be helped by her intercession with Thee. The antiphon for the Magnificat for the third Sunday 326 November, 1947 ADVENT AND CHRISTMAS of. A~dvent addresses her as follows: "Blessed art thou Mary that hast believed tl~e Lord; those things shall be accom~ plished in thee, which were spoken to thee by the Lord., In the Gospel for ~YCednesday in Ember ~¢reek we have the story of the Annunciation, while .in that for Friday visit of Mary to Elizabeth is portrayed. TheOffert0ry,6f the Mass for the fourth Sunday of Advent is ou~ favorite prayer: Hail Mary, full among women, and Finally; the of grace: the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou blessed is the fruit of thy’womb. Mass of the Vigil of Christmas gives expression to all these thoughts contained in the Adveht liturgy. In the Introit and again in the Gradual we are told: "This day you shall know that the Lord will come and save us; and in the morning you shall see his glory." In the Collect we pray: O God who dost gladden us with the yea.rly expectation of our redemption, grant that we who now joyfully receive "Thine only begotten Son as our Redeemer, may also without fear, behold Him coming as our judge, Our Lord Jesus Christ Thy Son. And in the Gospel we read: .Joseph, son of David, fear not tO take unto thee Mary thy wife; for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost~ And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for He shall save his people from their sins. Three Christmas Masses Christmas is distinguished from all other feasts of the ecclesiastical year by the celebration of three Masses. This custom had been in existence in Rome for some time in the sixth century when Pope St. Gregory wrote his homilies. The Gelasian Sacramentary fixes the time for the first Mass "’ad galli cantum’" (at cockcrow), but soon it was moved to midnight, under the influence no doubt of the text from the book of Wisdom: 327 Retn’eto for Religious. For while all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, thy almighty word leapt down from .thlr royal throne as a fierce conqueror into the midst of the land of destruction. Originally there were only two Masses on Christmas-- the first during the night at the basilica of St. Mary Major, which coatained a replica of the crib of Bethlehem, hence the title ad praesepe,(at the crib) ; the second, at St. Peter’s, in the course of the morning hours. The third Mass, which’ is our present second Mass, was introduced by a custom which originally had nothing to do with the feast of Christ-mas. The Greek church celebrated the feast of St. Anastasia 0n December 25, and both Constantinople and Jerusalem had a church in her honor. In Rome the royal palace of the absent eastern~emperors on the Palatine also had a church dedicated to St. Anastasia, and the Pope stopped there tO pay his respect to this great saint on his way from St. Mary Major to St. Peter’s. Thus was introduced our second Christmas Mass, at dawn, at the Station of St. Anastasia. Although the celebration of three Masses on Christmas day was thus introduced by extrinsic circumstance, the faithful of the Middle Ages loved to attach symbolic meanings to the Church’s liturgy. Up to the time of Durandus the Christmas liturgy was still referred only to the eternal and temporal birth of Christ. As he tells us: "The first Mass refers to the eternal birth of Christ, from the Father without a mother; the second to His tem-poral birth, from the mother without a father; the third unites both of them’, the eternal and the temporal birth." (Prima missa pertinet ad generationem aeternam, scilicet, de patre sine matte, secunda ad temporalem, de matte sine patre, tertia compacta est, quia de utraque agit, et ideo perti-net ad aeternaro simul et temporatem.) But soon after the time of Durandus the popular 328 Nouembero 1947 COMMUNICATIONS imagination referred the third Mass on Christmas day to the mystical birth of Christ in the souls of~the just~ If we. examine the three Mass formularies for Christmas day,, we may find. in each one references to the threefold birth of Christ; but~if we follow the norm that the gospel bespeaks the character of the Mass, then we may say that the first Mass at midnight refers to Christ’s temporal birth of the Virgin Mary: "And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn." The Mass at dawn refers to Christ’s birth in the hearts of the faithful, represented by the shepherds of the gospel who were ~he first to take Christ into their hearts by reason of their faith: "And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen as was told them." The gospel of the’ third Mass, evidently refers to the eternal birth of the word from the Father: ’,’In the beginning ,was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Vacations {or Religious Reverend Fathers: We heartily disagree with the Sister who maintains that vacations for religious are a respite from the vows; who finds no hint of vaca-tions in the life of Our Lord; and who feels that the sacrificial ideal of the rellgiofis life e~cludes such periods of relaxation. ’ Our.religious superiors in their wisdom and foresight have recently purchased a home in. the mountains in order to make possible a Vacation for our Sisters. They have accepted the almost universal opinion of theologians and physicians that periods of relaxation are not only helpful but necessary for maximum efficiency in our spir-itual life, as well as for physical and mental well-being. Sisters on vacation in this mountain home are by no means dis- 329 COMMUNICATIONS Revietu [of Religiou~ pensed from their vows. /~Ithough routine is not strictly followed, the religious exercises are performed in their entirety and with more fervor than is possible amid the harassing details of active life. It is true that in the Gospels we find no mention of the word vacation. Howeverl we do read of Christ’s bidding His disciples to come apart and rest a while with Him. To our minds a vacatlon for religious is just that going apart with Him,and resting a while. This rest w~ take with the hope that we will return to our active duties invigorated and refreshed, and able to follow Him more devotedly and labor more ardently for His cause. ---SOME SISTERS WHO HAD A VACATION. Reverend Fathers: I am happy, to submit the following information~in the~’hope that more communities will enjoy the benefit that we are deriving from our Vacation House. Our0vacatiohs were formerly spent with relatives ~r at a com-munity house other than that in .which the Sisters w’~re ,~t~tic;ned~ About five years ago" ~¢e were fortunate in securing by thee ocean’ side a twerity-five room-private home, which has been c6nveYted into ~an ideal vacation l~ouse with a modified.~ spiritual ,atmosphere. The property surrounding this building included riparian’ rights to three hundred feet of bathing beach privacy. Its lawns and drive-ways, while providing seclusion for the Sisters, furnish a complete change four thos~e laboring in the~ci,,ties during the year. " ,~To-further !nsu~re re~ .for ~th~e Sisters, there are no visitors received at this house, no lay people employed except the gardener, no inter-course whatever with the c;utsi~le ~orld.’ It is in charge of a senior Sister who is assisted by another member qualified in the’~ulinary nits: The vacationists give this latter Sister a helping hand’ immediately after breakfast in’.pfeparing the prihcipal meal and in puttihg the convent i~i order for the day. Everyone is then free,for the forenoon to relax as she chooses: she may go bathing in the Atlantic billows or bask in the s.unshine, she may iead, o