Monday 25 January 2010

Cistercian Founders 26th January


Solemnity of the Founders of Cistercian Order

Saints Robert, Alberic & Stephen


Today we are celebrating the feast of our three founders, Robert, Alberic and Stephen. Actually there were possibly 21 founders, but we mention only the first three abbots of the new foundation. The Rule of St. Benedict gives a lot of power to the abbot and one of the reasons the twenty-one monks left the Benedictine monastery of Molesme to settle in a place called Citeaux in Burgundy, was because they wanted a stricter interpretation of the Rule of St. Benedict. But it takes more than an abbot to make a monastery. In fact I can think of nothing worse than a monastery full of abbots bossing each other around!

Daily life in a monastery is a complex interchange between authority and obedience and often times it is difficult to know who has which - no matter what the official documents say. Take for instance the job of cantor. Who has more power than the cantor? Who could put a note on the board on a Saturday stating, "The Mass readings for Sunday have been changed from the ones given in our Mass reading booklet!" So, what if the abbot had a homily prepared based on the old readings! So the homily you are about to hear, is based on six scripture readings! It will be twice as long too!

Really, all the Mass readings are concerned with one theme, the call of God.

Our founders, all twenty-one of them, left one monastery to found another based on certain ideals they had about how the monastic life should be lived. It was not a smooth transition. The first abbot, Robert, was ordered back to his original monastery. No one joined the new group for years. They were on the verge of giving up when St. Bernard arrived with a large group and joined. After a lot of trouble they were eventually able to live out their dream.

Pastoral

Now almost a thousand years later, we are celebrating their memory. It is a good occasion to look at our own calling, our own dream. The scripture reading chosen for this celebration gives us a way of evaluating how we are doing.

The first reading, Gen 12:1-4a, is the call of Abraham. The call to leave his country, his relationship with his father's house. Each of us is free to interpret what that means for us. The early desert monks called it the three great renunciations or detachments.
Country meant all the wealth and riches of the world,
to leave your kindred and relationships meant the life of sin and vice that cling to us and become like kindred to us. To leave our father's house means the whole visible world as opposed to the invisible world of the Spirit.

These are radical renunciations just as are the ones in today's Gospel, Mt 19:27-29, and even more so the ones Paul speaks of: 1 Cor 1:26-31, leave our own wisdom and justice, even our own holiness.

What does all this mean? All this renunciation and detachment? I think it means that each of us is called to go out of ourselves, to go beyond ourselves. Take the journey to a new place, an unknown place. In the letter to the Hebrews we read that our ancestors set out on the journey not knowing where they were going. They were living on a promise and they died before the promise was fulfilled.

We too live on a promise. We can demand nothing. Monks have been accused of being Pelagians, making things happen by our own effort. If we fast or get up at 3:00 am, we will become spiritual men. Life is not like that. Life is a great teacher of detachment. We don't set our program and then watch it being fulfilled. We live our life and then come to understand it in the light of scripture. Life is a call to move out of ourselves. As youth gives way to middle age we are challenged to detach from perceived ideals. As middle age gives way to old age we are forced to give up false ambition and pretenses. As old age progresses, we are made to detach from physical health itself, our body. The world we wanted to create is slowly taken from us and something unfamiliar and new replaces it. It slowly dawns on us that God is calling us and leading us on-no matter how dark it seems or how unfamiliar the road. The new self made in this image of Christ is replacing the old self. We leave ourselves to find ourselves again. Are we good monks? Are we following our Founder? Are we good Christians? Who are we to judge? Life is teaching us.
Let us put ourselves in the hands of the Lord of Life.

Fr Brendan ocso (New Melleray)
Cistercian Publications is putting out the collection of homilies and chapter talks in April.



Sunday 24 January 2010

Setting for Jesus’ teaching



Sent: Sun, January 24, 2010 7:02:10 PM
Subject: 3rd Sunday C




Homily - Fr. Raymond




3rd Sunday Year C Luke 4:16 seq.

In this scene we have what we might call the perfect setting for Jesus’ teaching. We have the crowd wrapped in attention; eager and anxious to hear what he has to say; hanging on his every word; all eyes fixed on him. But the scene ends very differently from what we would expect from such a favourable beginning. The crowd turns against him; they are enraged at him; they become an angry mob shouting for his blood; they hustle him out of the town to throw him over a cliff.

What went wrong then? What was it that so changed their attitude to him? Was it that he claimed to be from God; to be a prophet? No, they seemed to accept that on the strength of what they had heard about his miracle working in Capernaum. Was it that they were put off by his promises about deliverance from oppression; about setting the downtrodden free and bringing liberty to captives? Were they afraid that he was promising a rebellion against Rome and they were afraid of the hopeless bloodshed that would lead to? No, it was none of these things that turned them against him.

What turned them against him was the fact that he prophesied their rejection of him and God’s turning to the Gentile world with the offer of salvation. He did this by reminding them of God’s miraculous feeding of the widow of Sidon during the famine while jewish widows were dying of starvation. And he reminded them of the miraculous cure of the Syrian General Naaman while there were many lepers left to perish in Israel.

The lesson for us all is that we must be prepared to accept the word of God just as it comes at us: whether it is comforting or challenging; whether it is encouraging or warning.

The fruitfulness of God’s word in our lives depends to a great extent on the attitude we have to it; whether we accept it in faith for what it really is: God’s word for us, or whether we are indifferent to it or even antagonistic to it.

Just as we see the Fruitfulness of the words of Jesus himself depending on the basic attitude of the Crowds to whom he spoke.

Lacordaire Truth Beauty

SUNDAY 24th,Jan. 2010 MASS


Gospel according to Luke 1: 1-4; 4: 14-21


. . . "Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing'


The readings of the entire Pentateuch were covered in a three year cycle, much like our Christian lectionary today. Any well instructed male member of the assembly could be called upon to read and interpret the scriptures. On one occasion, Jesus was given the scroll of the prophet Isaiah to read (Is 61:1-2). The passage spoke of the restoration of Israel through the work of God's anointed one (the Messiah in Hebrew or Christos in Greek). Jesus announced that Isaiah's words applied to his own mission. He had been anointed by God's Spirit to announce a Jubilee year of God's favour.


Fulfilled in Your Hearing

“Truth halts at the intelligence, beauty penetrates even to the heart”. Lacordaire

Hearing the word of Jesus Christ in the Gospel, seeing his actions ... under the relief of Scripture, it is not possible for reason alone to recognize God there. Reason does not go beyond ideas, and although ideas lead it even to God, they only reveal his existence and his attributes, without revealing to it his person. There must be another light superadded to reason, in order that both together, inseparable, and convergent, may raise man to the vision of the divine personality, and prepare man one day to behold him in the impenetrable light of the uncreated essence; grace ... is that higher light which perfects reason by becoming united to it, and Jesus Christ... is the object of grace ...


Truth is not however that which first strikes us, nor is it that which most powerfully attracts to it the observation of the mind. Truth has a vesture, a halo, something which touches our inmost feeling, and against which we cannot shield ourselves save by a supreme effort of virtue; it is beauty. While truth alone leaves us masters of ourselves, beauty moves us; it attracts and enraptures us, it subjugates us even to leaving to our liberty only that which God, by his omnipotence, maintains there against all seduction. Truth halts at the intelligence, beauty penetrates even to the heart ... While truth arrests us within ourselves to consider it, beauty bears us out of ourselves towards the being in which it shines. It is, in a word and what a word! - the principle of love ...

Beauty is the creator of love ... God has sown beauty around us with a profusion that astounds and enraptures our thought ... As no beauty appears in the world without raising up a new love, Christ, the Man-God, had, as the first effect of his epiphany amongst us, the reward of a love before unknown to man, or, at least, of which he had lost all traces, in los­ing, with his innocence, the vision of his first days ...


Grace acts within to enlighten us. Christ appears without as the object of the light which penetrates within us; grace moves within the hidden springs of our liberty, Christ calls us without as the object of that inner emotion. And no one, however far away he may be, is sheltered from seeing and hearing him. We meet Jesus Christ here below as we meet another man.

Fr. Henri-Dominique Lacordaire (+ 1861) Dominican


Saturday 23 January 2010

Fr. Ronald Walls Kirkwall

Bishop Peter Moran pays tribute to the late Fr Ronnie Walls

By Bishop Peter Moran, Aberdeen

WITH the death of Fr Ronnie Walls in Kirkwall . on Saturday January 2, the Catholic Church in Scotland has lost one of its most ven­erable and well-loved priests.

Ronald James Walls (right) was born on June 23 1920 in Edinburgh, son of Thomas John Walls, optician, and Jane Ross Walls (nee Kernp). His paternal grandfather was from Orkney, and that link made Father Walls specially pleased to return in December 2006 to Kirkwall to spend his closing years.

Ronnie Walls grew up in a practising Presbyterian family in Corstorphine, Edinburgh. He attended George Heriot's School in the city from 1928 to 1937. Even in those early years, religious discussion interested him and was encouraged. He also looked back ‘to the German class as the foundation of much of my true education. Not only did we learn the language thoroughly, but through the language we were introduced to Europe.'

Indeed during his Edinburgh University days (he graduated MA [Hons.Phil.] in 1941) he spent a summer-vacation en famille on a farm in Hungary.

He married Helen in the final months of theological studies at New College, and after temporary assistantships, and by now with two young children, was inducted as Minister of Logie Easter, in Ross-shire. He has vividly portrayed that early ministry in his book The One True Kirk.

Following years of self-searching and intellectual enquiry he resigned his charge.

He and his wife were received as members of the Catholic Church at Nunraw Abbey near Haddington in 1948. He then found employment as Scottish organiser of the Converts' Aid Society and also devoted himself to writing.

In 1974 he and his wife were seriously injured in a road accident: he survived but sadly Helen died two weeks later. Some months passed before he applied for training for ordination as a Catholic priest for Aberdeen Diocese. He enrolled from 1975 to 1977 at the Beda College, in Rome, where staff comments reveal an outstanding student. On June 30, 1977 he was ordained priest in St Peter's Church, Morningside, Edinburgh, the first candidate to be ordained by the then recently nominated Bishop Mario Conti of Aberdeen.

He served in Banchory and Aboyne (1977-82), in Wick and Thurso (1982-89) and at St Josepli's, Woodside, Aberdeen (1989-95) before taking retirement. However, he was hardly less active in retirement, helping colleagues with 'supply' work while living in Portsoy (1995-2000), in Buckie (2000- 2004), in Inverness (2004- 2006) and finally moving, to his own great satisfaction, to Kirkwall in Orkney where he spent his final three years, active to the last.

Fr Ronnie Walls was appreciated within and outwith the Catholic communities wherever he lived, and will be remembered for his clarity of mind, his affable personality, his readable articles and books, his pawky humour and numerous anecdotes, and above all for his singleness of purpose in communicating his staunch Faith. With his passing, an era has ended.

To his sons David and Christopher, his sister Margaret, and other members of his family we offer our sympathy and our thanks for this splendid and long-lived colleague. May he rest in peace.

• A Mass, led by Bishop Peter Moran of Aberdeen was cele­brated in Kirkwall in St Magnus Cathedral on Friday January 8. Fr Walls' body was brought to St Peter's in Morningside, Edinburgh on Sunday evening. The funeral proper with Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow was held on Monday at 11 am at St Peter's, followed by burial at Mount Vernon.

• Fr Ronald Walls inspiring autobiography, “Love Strong as Death”, and two volumes of daily meditations on the Gospel readings at Mass, Stairway to the Upper Room, are published by Gracewing.

• Additional material from Father Donald at Nunraw Abbey

Scottish Catholic Observer Jan 15. 2010




Enormous Blessing


This morning Mass Gospel is is a periscope of two sentences of Mark.
and it must the most beautiful Eucharistic commentary selected from St. Thomas Aquinas

From: DGO

DAILY GOSPEL

«Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.» John 6,68

Saturday, 23 January 2010

Saturday of the Second week in Ordinary Time

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 3:20-21.

He came home. Again (the) crowd gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat. When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him, for they said, "He is out of his mind."

Commentary of the day :

Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Dominican theologian, Doctor of the Church
Instructions for the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ

Jesus gives himself wholly, even to his body and blood


The enormous blessings with which our Lord has lavishly gifted his christian people raise them to an immeasurable dignity. Indeed, there is not, and never has been, a nation whose gods were so close as our God is to us (cf. Dt 4,7). God's only Son, intending to make us participators in his divinity, assumed our nature and became man to make us divine. All that he borrowed from us he placed at the service of our salvation. For he offered his body to God the Father on the altar of the cross for our reconciliation, and he shed his blood as a ransom to reclaim us from our condition of slavery and purify us from all our sins through the washing of regeneration.

To believers he has left his body as food and blood as drink under the species of bread and wine, so that the remembrance of such great blessing might remain continually amongst us. O wonderful and precious feast that conveys salvation and contains sweetness in its all its fullness! What could there be more precious than this meal where, not the flesh of calves and bulls, but Christ, true God, is offered us?


Tuesday 19 January 2010

Cyprian TANSI Cistercian Monk


BLESSED CYPRIAN TANSI
1903 -1964
Beatified March 22nd 1998
Feast Day: January 20

Cyprian Tansi had three names. Iwene was the name given by his father at his birth in 1903, Michael was his baptismal name, and Cyprian his monastic name. Born into a pagan family, he was sent to a Catholic school where at the age of eight he was baptised.

On completing his education he became a teacher, and in 1925 entered the seminary. As a catechist, Michael saw to it that no child died without Baptism when he was there. Pagan and Christian alike came to him to settle their disputes. In 1937 he was ordained priest. He was an admirable pastor. There were no bounds to his zeal, his self-giving, his generosity and his good humour.

Sister Magdalen, an Irish Holy Rosary Sister, gave him a copy of Dom Marmion's Christ the Ideal of the Monk. This book sowed the seeds of a monastic vocation, which lead him to join Mount Saint Bernard Abbey in England, where he was known as Fr Cyprian. The remaining thirteen years of his life were passed unnoticed by those who knew him only as a monk. It was said of him that he was "almost overpoweringly humble," and yet was habitually cheerful with an impish sense of humour. One of his brethren described him as "just an ordinary monk, monking about." Yet Cyprian had total faith in the value of the contemplative life, believing that in his monastery he was able to contribute even more to the mission in his beloved Iboland and to the world at large.

He died unexpectedly 20 January 1964 aged 60, and was buried at Mount Saint Bernard.
However, his old parishioners in his native Iboland pressed his cause. In September 1986 his remains were exhumed and brought back to Nigeria to be re-interred at Onitsha Cathedral, there to become a centre of devotion for the local people.
Pope John Paul II travelled to Oba, Nigeria, where on 22 March 1998 he beatified Blessed Cyprian Tansi in the presence of two million people.

Cyprian was a man of tiny stature and so he appears in this Window, with his impish smile, dressed in his Cistercian cowl, with his beloved Iboland huts and hills in the background. A companion said of him that as a young teacher "he would talk with Our Lady as a child talks to his mother" As pastor he was deeply committed to promoting the Legion of Mary and the Children of Mary, and strongly recommended the Rosary At Mount Saint Bernard it was noted that: "his love of the Lady Chapel speaks for itself."

In the bottom panel there are symbols of the three basic elements of monastic life: Opus Dei (liturgical life), Opus Manuum (manual labour), and Lectio Divina (God-centred reading). The African drum and vessels symbolise the Liturgy; for work, Cyprian at the book-sewing press; and for Lectio, the book, Christ the Ideal of the Monk.

Fr. Laurence Walsh ocso
Lumen Christi

The Stained Glass Windows
Mount Saint Joseph Abbey
Roscrea 2009

(Online Shop at www.msjroscrea.ie)

Monday 18 January 2010

Christian Unity Week

WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY -- JANUARY 18-25

It is over 100 years since Fr. Paul Watson, founder of the Franciscan Society of the Atonement, proposed these dates in 1908, to cover the days between the feasts of St. Peter and of St. Paul.

But I am stumped. Where is Peter? There is no sight of Peter – we will need to look it up.

Each year, a scripture verse is selected to set the theme for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The theme for 2010 is: "You are witness of these things" (Luke 24:48).

As a Holy Ghost Father said, “Only the Spirit can be the ‘Glue’ that will reassemble a fractured Body.”

The Christian Churches in Scotland Today

It is even generally held that the 1910 World Mission Conference in Edinburgh marked the beginnings of the modern ecumenical movement. . . .

To honour this important stage in the history of the ecumenical movement it was natural for the promoters of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity - The Faith and Order Commission and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity - to invite the Scottish churches to prepare the 2010 Week of Prayer at the same time as they were actively involved in preparing to celebrate the anniversary of the 1910 Conference on the theme "Witnessing to Christ today". In response these churches suggested as the theme "You are witnesses of these things". (Luke 24.48)

The Biblical Theme: You are Witnesses of These Things

In the ecumenical movement we have often meditated on Jesus' final discourse before his death. In this final testament the importance of the unity of Christ's disciples is emphasized: "That all may be one ... so that the world may believe." (John 17.21)

This year the churches of Scotland have made the original choice of inviting us to listen to Christ's final discourse before his ascension, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things." (Luke 24.46-48). It is on these final words of Christ that we shall reflect each day.

During the 2010 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity we are invited to follow the whole of chapter 24 of Luke's gospel. Whether it be the terrified women at the tomb, the two discouraged disciples on the road to Emmaus or the eleven disciples overtaken by doubt and fear, all who together encounter the Risen Christ are sent on mission: "You are witness of these things". This mission of the Church is given by Christ and cannot be appropriated by anyone. It is the community of those who have been reconciled with God and in God, and who can witness to the truth of the power of salvation in Jesus Christ.

We sense that Mary Magdalene, Peter or the two Emmaus disciples will not witness in the same way. Yet it will be the victory of Jesus over death that all will place at the heart of their witness. The personal encounter with the risen One has radically changed their lives and in its uniqueness for each one of them one thing becomes imperative: "You are witnesses of these things." Their story will accentuate different things, sometimes dissent may arise between them about what faithfulness to Christ requires, and yet all will work to announce the Good News.


Sunday 17 January 2010

The First Benedictine Oblates

Best Reading for Maurus & Placid.

On the Feast of Saints Maurus and Placid, the selected reading for the Night Office raised questions.

The subsequent Posts have been on the SEARCH for answers. Answers brought critical responses of historical and hagiographical kind.

The latest book may be, “Life and Miracles Saint Maurus (Cistercian Studies): Disciple of Benedict-Apostle to France, by John b. Wickstrom”).

In the monastic context, the critical approach can be the same as curious, i.e. the CURIOSITAS (as understood by Cassian and Bernard of Clairvaux -- and by Augustine, when he worries that he spends to much time watching lizards catch flies).



By good chance, there is something I am pleased to name as the

BEST Reading on MAUR & Placid.

By contrast to the critical is the contemplative Vultus Christi Blog of Fr. Mark January 14, 2009.

His Homily,

“Become Like a Consuming Fire”, is so contemplative in his centre on St. Benedict and St Gregory the Great, and the deep grounding in the Eucharist.

Fr. Mark writes perfectly in the spirit of Lectio Divine.

I trust he will allow us to share his enlightening and moving introduction to Maur and Placid.

http://vultus.stblogs.org/2009/01/become-like-a-consuming-fire.html

The First Benedictine Oblates

In the Benedictine tradition, January 15th is the feast of the young disciples of Our Father Saint Benedict, Maur and Placid. Who are Maur and Placid and how do we know them? Saint Gregory the Great introduces them in his Life of Saint Benedict. He explains that after the holy Benedict had established his twelve monasteries at Subiaco, noble Christians came from Rome, presenting their sons to be raised and educated among the monks. These boys, offered by their parents to God, were the first "Oblates." Among them were Maur, an adolescent, the son of Euthicus, and Placid -- practically a toddler -- son of the patrician Tertullus. Maur quickly became Abbot Benedict's helper whereas Saint Gregory specifies that Placid was in "early childhood."

A Little Hand Wrapped in the Corporal

Picture for a moment the rite of their Oblation. It is intimately tied into the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. We know exactly what was done from Chapter 59 of the Rule.

If it happens that a nobleman offers his son to God as a monk, and the child is still of tender age, the parents should make out the petition. . . . They should wrap this petition and the boy's hand together with the Mass offering in the altar cloth (the corporal) and offer him in that way" (RB 59:1).

I see Maur, a serious lad, conscious of what is happening when his hand is wrapped together with the offerings of bread and wine in the altar cloth. And I see, little Placid; his father probably had to lift him up in his arms to reach the altar. The poor little fellow must have been in awe of the solemn fuss being made of him.

A Eucharistic Vocation

The vocation of the Benedictine Oblate is essentially Eucharistic. The very word "oblate" is used to refer to the bread and wine placed upon the altar, the oblata, as well as to those who are ritually identified with the offering, the Oblates themselves. The Benedictine Oblate lives from the altar, and returns to the altar. Like the bread and wine destined to become the Body and Blood of Christ, the Oblate is offered at the altar and then given from the altar to live out his mystical identification with Christ, the hostia perpetua, by a life of conversion and obedience.

When Saint Benedict Prayed By Night

Saint Benedict obviously recognized the potential in Placid and Maur. Saint Gregory tells us that he chose the boy Placid to accompany him in a long nocturnal prayer on the mountain. "Accompanied by the little Placid," he says, "Benedict climbed the mountain. Once at the summit, he prayed for a long time." The solitary prayer of Saint Benedict imitates that of Jesus. "Jesus, rising early before dawn, went off to a deserted place where he prayed" (Mk 1:35). It is worth pondering how Placid's experience of seeing Saint Benedict pray by night must have marked him for life. Little boys are sensitive to such things.

Placid Rescued From the Water

The most famous story of Maur and Placid has to do with the little fellow going to fetch water in the lake. He falls into the water. Saint Benedict is made aware of the situation by a kind of charismatic clairvoyance. He sends Brother Maur to rescue the child Placid. Maur, having received his abbot's blessing, runs over the surface of the water, grabs Placid by the hair, pulls him out, and then runs back over the water to dry land, carrying the little one in his arms. Saint Benedict attributes the miracle to Maur's obedience. Maur says it was due to the virtue of Saint Benedict. Then the little Placid pipes up and settles the debate. "When you pulled me out of the water, he says, I saw over my head Father Abbot's hood, and I saw that it was he who pulled me from the water."

They Persevered

What is most significant, I think, in the story of Maur and Placid is that these two lads persevered in seeking God. If Maur and Placid persevered over a lifetime in seeking God, they surely suffered temptation and darkness, never despairing of the mercy of God. Maur and Placid, tested by suffering, became able to help those who are being tested. Perhaps this is why they became patrons of Benedictine novitiates everywhere.

Two Wise Old Nonni

The sign of the mature monk -- the nonnus, to use Saint Benedict's word for a senior in the monastery -- or of the mature nun -- the nonna -- is in their capacity for compassion, in their ability to identify with weakness, to sympathize with suffering, and above all in their refusal to judge.

We know nothing of the old age of Saints Maur and Placid but I see them as two wise old nonni. I see their youthful faces grown wrinkled and their beards white but in their eyes dances the flame of their first love, the interior fire kindled from the altar, set ablaze by the mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist on the day of their Oblation. It is the fire of the Eucharist that, burning in us, will consume all that is harsh, unbending, and ready to judge, leaving only the pure flame of a mercy that gives warmth and light. The Eucharistic vocation of Saints Placid and Maur bears witness to what Abba Joseph said to Abba Lot: "You cannot be a monk unless you become like a consuming fire."



Saturday 16 January 2010

St Placid and Maurus


St. Placid and His Companions

Excerpted from The Church's Year of Grace, Pius Parsch.


St. Placid was born in Rome, in the year 515, of a patrician family. When he was seven years old he was brought to St. Benedict by his father, to be trained in monastic life. He became the most illustrious member in the circle of Benedict's first followers. Alongside the awe-inspiring figure of the holy patriarch stands little Placid, and with the innocent simplicity of a child he does much to soften the austerity emanating from the patriarch of monks. Pope St. Gregory devotes several chapters to Placid in his second book of Dialogues. "Once while blessed Benedict was in his room, one of his monks, the boy Placid, went down to get some water. In letting the bucket fill too rapidly, he lost his balance and was pulled into the lake, where the current quickly seized him and carried him about a stone's throw from the shore. Though inside the monastery at the time, the man of God was instantly aware of what had happened and called out to Maurus: 'Hurry, Brother Maurus! The boy who just went down for water has fallen into the lake, and the current is carrying him away.'


"What followed was remarkable indeed, and unheard of since the time of Peter the apostle! Maurus asked for the blessing and on receiving it hurried out to fulfill his abbot's command. He kept on running even over the water till he reached the place where Placid was drifting along helplessly. Pulling him up by the hair, Maurus rushed back to shore, still under the impression that he was on dry land. It was only when he set foot on the ground that he came to himself and looking back realized that he had been running on the surface of the water. Overcome with fear and amazement at a deed he would never have thought possible, he returned to his abbot and told him what had taken place.


"The holy man would not take any personal credit for the deed but attributed it to the obedience of his disciple. Maurus on the contrary claimed that it was due entirely to his abbot's command. He could not have been responsible for the miracle himself, he said, since he had not even known he was performing it. While they were carrying on this friendly contest of humility, the question was settled by the boy who had been rescued. 'When I was being drawn out of the water,' he told them, 'I saw the abbot's cloak over my head; he is the one I thought was bringing me to shore.'" (From The Life and Miracles of St. Benedict by Pope Gregory the Great, translated by Odo Zimmermann, O.S.B. and Benedict Avery, O.S.B.)


Maurists Benedictine Congregation

Note to the previous Post on Saints Maurus & Placid

Confusion with Saint Maurus Abbot of Glanfeuil

A long Life of St. Maurus appeared in the late 9th century, supposedly composed by one of St. Maurus's contemporaries. According to this account, the bishop of Le Mans, in western France, sent a delegation asking Benedict for a group of monks to travel from Benedict's new abbey of Monte Cassino to establish monastic life in France according to the Rule of St. Benedict. The Life recounts the long journey of St. Maurus and his companions from Italy to France, accompanied by many adventures and miracles as St. Maurus is transformed from the obedient disciple of Benedict into a powerful, miracle-working holy man in his own right. According to this account, after the great trek, St. Maurus founded Glanfeuil Abbey as the first Benedictine monastery in France. It was located on the south bank of the Loire river, a few miles east of Angers. The nave of its thirteenth-century church and some vineyards remain today (according to tradition, the chenin grape was first cultivated at this monastery.)

Scholars now believe that this Life of Maurus is a forgery by the 9th-century abbot, Odo of Glanfeuil. It was composed, as were many such saints' lives in Carolingian France, to popularize local saints' cults. The bones of St. Maurus had supposedly been found at Glanfeuil by one of Odo's immediate predecessors.

By the mid-9th century, the abbey had become a local pilgrimage site supplementing (or rivalling) the nearby abbeys of Fleury, which claimed to have the bones of St. Benedict himself, and Le Mans, which had supposedly obtained the bones of St. Benedict's sister, St. Scholastica.

The study that accompanied the revision in 1969 of the Roman Catholic calendar of saints[1] states: "Saint Maurus, the disciple of Saint Benedict, who is mentioned in the Dialogues of Saint Gregory the Great, is now universally distinguished from Maurus of Glanfeuil in the region of Angers in France, who is mentioned in the Roman Martyrology[2] on 15 January."

Odo and the monks of Glanfeuil had been obliged to flee to Paris in the face of Vikings maurauding along the Loire. There Odo reestablished the cult of St. Maurus at the suburban Parisian abbey of Saint-Pierre-des-Fossés, later renamed Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. The cult of St. Maurus slowly spread to monasteries throughout France and by the 12th century had been adopted by Monte Cassino in Italy, along with a revived cult of St. Placidus.

By the late Middle Ages, the cult of St. Maurus, often associated with St. Placidus, had spread to all Benedictine monasteries. He was sometimes identified with the semi-legendary Saint Amaro, who is said to have travelled to the Earthly Paradise.

The Congregation of St. Maur took its name from him. (Wikipedia)



Friday 15 January 2010

Maurus & Placid OSB


Saint Maurus & Placid 15 January

Our Reading for the Night Office was contributed from osb.org. of Order of Saint Benedict. After the reading I felt the need to do some home work, at first check. found enough questions raised by:


(Oxford Dictionary of Saints)

MAURUS (6th century), monk. A nobleman's son who was entrusted to "Benedict by his father to be educated and to become a monk at Monte Cassino, Maurus, according to Gregory the Great, was notable for obedience, and once at Benedict's command rescued the boy *Placid from drowning by walking, without realizing it, on the water.
Nothing more is known of him afterwards.

Later he was identified by pseudo- Faustus (Odo, abbot of Glanfeuil) with another Maurus, founder of the abbey of Glanfeuil, who was supposed to have died in 584 on 15 January.
This identification is almost universally rejected nowadays. Its uncritical acceptance in the 17th century led to the adoption of Maurus as the patron of the famous learned French Benedictine Congregation of Saint-Maur.
In their reformed calendar the Benedictines now celebrate the feast of Maurus and Placid together on 5 October (formerly is January).

AA.SS. lan. I (1643), 1038-62; AA.SS. O.S.B., I (1668), 275-98; J. McCann, St. Benedict (1938), pp. 274-8,; II. Bloch in Traditio, viii (1950), 182-221.

David Hugh Farmer 1987

The research can continue on the subject of
“Maurus as the patron of the famous learned
French Benedictine Congregation of Saint-Maur”.