SPIRITUAL MEDITATION 1 - EMBER WEDNESDAY

As promised earlier, this is the first of four talks by Dr Michael Cullinan, of the Maryville Institute, given to the Professed Knights at Farnborough Abbey in August.  The remaining three talks will be published over the following three days, as a 'Retreat in the Workplace".

It is recommended that you read the paper each day before work, and then allow time to meditate upon it during the day, and perhaps reread it at bedtime.

Please try to observe the injunction of so many good bishops to keep these Ember Days (today, Friday and Saturday) as days of Fasting and Abstinence. That is to say, like Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. We modern Catholics do not do enough of it! This in reparation for the dreadful sinful acts of prelates reported in the news of the last few weeks, and for the cleansing of the Church. Only through prayer and fasting will the Church be purified.

(For more detailed information on the Ember Days, you could not do better than to read THIS informative, if somewhat lengthy article on Rorate Caeli.)

Pray for the Holy Father, that he may received the grace and strength to address this Evil. Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram ædificabo Ecclesiam meam.

The talks are © Dr Michael Cullinan 2018.

INTROIT

Do you like grand dinners? I’m sure some of you do. Particularly after a few days on retreat, perhaps. I don’t so much mean dinners with friends, although they’re usually the best kind of dinner of all, but those large City or College affairs, where you pass through several different rooms in the course of the evening. 

You asked for four talks. Four is a difficult kind of number, in a way. Oh I know there are four gospels, but one talk on each didn’t strike me as quite the right fare for today and tomorrow. And you asked for something relevant to working in the world. 

So I thought back to a talk I’d given on the Mass, before I was even ordained. The New Rite of Mass, you see, has four defined parts. Entrance, Liturgy of the Word, Liturgy of the Eucharist, and Dismissal. Four rooms we pass through in the course of the liturgy. So I thought I’d base my talks on that. 

We don’t really hear enough about the Mass these days. They tried to insert a few Sundays for a series of sermons on the Mass every three years. But whether by Murphy’s Law or malice aforethought, the liturgists put them in August, when most of us are moving around. So, like many other liturgical good ideas, it didn’t really work. 

Some people would say that about most of the liturgical changes. So perhaps I have to apologize for being a bit modern in my choice of subject. Perhaps I should confess that I didn’t know as much about the Old Rite back then. But the structure of the Roman Rite hasn’t changed all that much. The rooms were always there, even though they have now been redecorated and refurnished in the style of the 1970s. The rooms are still there, and perhaps a bit easier to see now. 

You might also think that I should apologize for comparing the Mass to a meal, even to a grand dinner. Because that’s what I’m going to do. But it is the heavenly banquet, even though it may more fundamentally belong to the category of worship. 

Normally the next thing would be the exhortation to silence. But you’ve already been in the cloister for a few days, so I’ll skip it. Except to say, don’t talk to someone who doesn’t want to be talked to. 

Now comes the disclaimer. This is the first time I’ve been asked to give a retreat, rather than one or two talks. So I’m feeling my way. Thank you very much for asking me. I hope you’ll leave tomorrow with something good to take away into your daily lives. It doesn’t matter if some things pass over you provided you can do that. And please feel free to say if there is anything you don’t understand, or something you’d like me to cover. 

So we’re going to pass slowly through the four rooms of the Mass. To learn something more about the Mass. But also to learn something more about prayer. And something more about living in the world. 

Let’s begin our journey. The first room of the Mass is the cloakroom. The vestibule. The Entrance or Introit, if you will. And, in the New Rite, the Introductory Rites, including the Rite of Penance. 

Cloakrooms aren’t usually very glamorous places. It would be easy to forget about them. But they are important and necessary places. 

The first thing we do in a cloakroom is to leave our cloak behind. Our outer hull, as Dorothy Sayers once described it. We leave behind what we needed outside, in the outer world. We turn our thoughts away from the outer world, towards where we are now, where we are going, who we are going to meet. 

So that’s the first thing we need to do on retreat. To put aside our everyday worries and concerns. To stop thinking of work and plans. Although we can be grateful for any ideas that simply occur to us – they can be from our host. 

The cloakroom also gives us a chance to collect ourselves together. To turn our attention to our host. 

In the New Rite the greeting comes first. Then comes the Penitential Rite. Then, maybe, the Gloria. And finally the Opening Prayer or Collect. In the Old Rite the greeting waits until before the Collect. 

This isn’t Lent. And you’ve already been here a few days. So I won’t spend too long on the Penitential Rite. I won’t say too much about sin. And I’m aware that neither the Old Roman Rite nor the Eastern Rites begin with a penitential rite, at least for the laity. 

There isn’t a magic formula for a successful retreat. People are different. And we need different things at different times. 

Sometimes it’s nice to have the Penitential Rite at the beginning. To examine our consciences and maybe go to confession so as to get all that’s burdening us out of the way first. Before meeting our host. Cloakrooms are for that too. 

Or maybe you want to use the retreat to prepare for a really good confession. To take time to examine and make resolutions. Maybe a long conversation with our host will lead to more awareness and a better confession. Perhaps that’s why in some Rites, including that of the Ordinariate, the Penitential Rite comes much later in the Mass. Perhaps you’d prefer that order today. It’s entirely up to you. 

Rather than go into sins in detail, perhaps it would be worth saying a few things in general. 

The old definition of a sin was an offence against God. It’s not wrong, but it can seem too capricious, as if things were wrong simply because God willed it so or, even worse, as if we spend our lives desperately trying not to offend a difficult, unpredictable, touchy travelling companion. 

A better way of viewing sin is as missing the mark. Instead of aiming at our eternal happiness with God, we point our will at something less. We put something else, some created thing, as our first priority. We let some thing come between us and our eternal happiness. 

So perhaps it’s worth asking ourselves where we are pointing today. 

What things mean more to us than anything else. Or than anyone else. 

What temporary pleasures we have built into refuges and dwelling places blocking ourselves from going ahead on the way to God. 

The medievals had an idea that we all have a ruling passion. One weakness that dominates all others. Some people are choleric, prone to anger. Others are prone to sadness. Others to greed. Others to sexual concupiscence. 

So it might be worth looking at ourselves carefully. Not only to identify our ruling passion and see whether, with the passing years, it is growing larger in us, but also to meditate on the contrary virtue and what we are doing to practise it, by God’s grace. 

We’re not talking here about little sins that are easy to deal with, but larger weaknesses whose healing is the work of a lifetime. And probably beyond. 

And we’re not talking about heroic virtue either. Even if our practising that contrary virtue sounds like the beginner’s squeaky notes on the violin, the main thing is to have started, and to trust that in God’s good time and grace practice may make perfect. 

So a chance to spend a moment or two in the cloakroom getting our bearings, before we go on to better things. 

I’ll only say one thing more about the Penitential Rite. It often includes the Kyrie. The ‘Lord, have mercy.’ A prayer we share with the Greeks. A very ancient prayer indeed. A prayer that was never translated into Latin. 

It’s often translated as ‘Lord, have mercy on us.’ Never as ‘Lord, have mercy on me.’ But even ‘us’ is wrong. Too restrictive. We are asking for God’s mercy on everyone. And everything. Not only on ‘us’. And not only on ourselves. On the whole cosmos. 

Penance has become very individualistic. Very ‘me’. Perhaps this is a good thing. I don’t think many of us, nor even many of the most daring liturgists, would like to see the restoration of the Order of Penitents, sectioned off at Mass, possibly dressed in white sheets. Our Mass attendance is low enough as it is. 

But it’s far too easy to see repentance as a personal matter, purely between me and my Creator. And on a retreat we do need some personal refection in the presence of our Creator. But the forgiveness we ask for in the Lord’s Prayer depends on our forgiving others. And we are clearly told to leave our gift at the altar if we realize that a brother has something against us. So whenever we celebrate our Penitential Rite this retreat, we need to look outwards as well as inwards and upwards. To look at our brothers, our friends, and our family. To ask for mercy on them and us. And to resolve to be reconciled with them as well as with our Creator. 

Of course it’s easier said than done. Forgiving a real hurt is terribly hard. There’s always the fear that we will be repulsed. And we’re very bad, in this country at least, at saying to others what we really feel. 

In fact it can be one of the hardest things we ever do, trying to restore a relationship with someone, a friend or family member we’ve been estranged from, maybe for years. We know that the only way to do it is to approach them in all our vulnerability, risking maybe another painful rejection. We may know it’s the right thing to do, the Christian thing to do, and still hold back. We may need someone to give us a shove. If you find yourself in this position, maybe these days are a time to ask for the grace to make the first move. 

It might be worth asking how I view others. Am I an optimist or a pessimist? Do I incline towards trust, even when it goes too far into presumption? Or am I a bit cautious about others, even when it leads me to suspect them too much? We all have our biases, but it’s best to know what they are and make allowances for them. 

So much for mercy and reconciliation. 

After the Kyrie comes the Gloria. When we remind ourselves of Who and What our host is. ‘We thank you for your great glory.’ It wouldn’t do any harm to spend some time meditating on that phrase one phrase. In our prayer today. And in our prayer every day. And if this leads us back to a humble realization of who and what we are, no bad thing. So long as we prepare to turn our attention outwards to our host, rather than staying imprisoned in our consciences. 

Because it’s time we left the cloakroom now. For our first meeting with our host in the anteroom. Maybe only a brief greeting at this stage. But worth preparing for by reminding ourselves Who our host is and of something important and topical about Him. Perhaps that’s what the Collect does. Just as we might want to remind ourselves to congratulate or condole with an earthly host as soon as we meet him or her.  
It’s time to leave you now. In the cloakroom. To lay aside burdens, to ask for mercy and reconciliation, and to prepare to meet God in the scriptures. 

© Michael Cullinan 2018