Opening the Year of Faith
“Today, Venerable Brethren, is a day of joy for Mother Church: through God’s most kindly providence the longed-for day has dawned for the solemn opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, here at Saint Peter’s shrine. And Mary, God’s Virgin Mother, on this feast day of her noble motherhood, gives it her gracious protection.”
Pope John XXIII, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, October 11, 1962
With these words Pope John XXIII opened the first session of the Second Vatican Council fifty years ago. And today Pope Benedict XVI opens the Year of Faith, first to celebrate what Blessed John Paul II called “the great grace bestowed on the Church in the twentieth century” (Novo Millenio Ineunte), and second, to dedicate ourselves to serious study of our faith. Why? As Pope John XXIII stated, “Because the whole of history and of life hinges on the person of Jesus Christ. Either men anchor themselves on Him and His Church, and thus enjoy the blessings of light and joy, right order and peace; or they live their lives apart from Him; many positively oppose Him and deliberately exclude themselves from the Church.”
Pope Benedict XVI has asked all the faithful to do several things during this Year of Faith – to study the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as well as Church History, and to study the actual documents of the Council in their original form. The Holy Father said in his Wednesday audience, on the eve of the Opening, that we need to return to the documents of the Second Vatican Council “by freeing them from a mass of publications that often hid them rather them making them known.” The historical context in which the Council took place are not much different from our own, he says. “Men are intent on the kingdom of earth rather than on the kingdom of heaven; a time, we might add, in which the forgetfulness of God has become habitual.”
It belongs to each one of us, he says, to set ourselves to the task of learning our faith and making it known to all around us. None are excepted. Of course this includes us as contemplatives, who exist in the heart of the Church, and who are asked to support the Year of Faith with our prayers. As cloistered nuns we do not have external works, or carry out an apostolate among the people. Rather our work is quiet and hidden, since that is how love acts. Not only by our prayers do we help the Church in her Gospel mission, but by our very life, by our striving in all things for the perfection of charity in order to be transformed by Christ into Himself. In the words of the Fundamental Constitutions of the Nuns, “In the midst of the Church their growth in charity is mysteriously fruitful for the growth of the people of God” (LCM 1.V). Missionaries – Sisters, priests, and brothers – can only work with a few souls, while our “missionary” activity spans the whole world as well as the whole of time. So this Year of Faith is an exciting time for us, and we pray that many souls will let themselves fall in love with Christ and answer His call to be “love in the heart of the Church.”
Recently one of our chaplains gave a homily on the parable of the sower, in which the good soil receives the seed of the Word of God and produces fruit a hundredfold. “The good soil didn’t become good soil all by itself. Someone had to pull up the vines, root up the thorns, dig out the rocks.” This is an image of the hard work of eradicating vice in the soul, but it could also be an image of the monastic life, which works on the soul to eliminate obstacles, preparing it to be “good soil” for the Word. As our Constitutions say, “The purpose of all regular observance, especially enclosure and silence, is that the word of God may dwell abundantly in the monastery” (LCM 96.II).
As a community devoted to the Perpetual Rosary as Our Lady’s Guards of Honor, the Sisters here have been keeping their Hours of Guard every day since our foundation in 1944. Imagine calculating the number of times the Holy Name of Mary, repeated twice in each Ave, has ascended from our loving hearts to the throne of God. And every time Our Lady hears our praise, she turns to Our Lord and gives us and everything we are and have to Him. “What Mary did on that day [of the Visitation], she does every day. When we praise her, when we love and honour her, when we present anything to her, then God is praised, honoured and loved and receives our gift through Mary and in Mary.” As the Most Holy Name of Mary in the Hail Mary forms a throne, as it were, for the Most Holy Name of Jesus, so the loving meditation of the Ave forms a throne for Him in our hearts.
Enclosure is a special gift of the Church to contemplatives. All religious – sisters, friars, etc. – have some type of enclosure, which is the safeguard for silence. Pope Benedict XVI spoke several times early this year on the very real need to recover the value and love of silence for all of us. But the enclosure of contemplatives is unique and all embracing. Ancient monastic tradition sees contemplative life as being associated with the prayer of Jesus alone on the mountain with His Father. The contemplative therefore, shares in “a unique way in Christ’s relationship (communio) with His Father.” It is the Holy Spirit who leads us into the solitude so that we can allow ourselves to be conformed to Jesus in His complete self-offering to the Father. This self-offering expresses itself by the renunciation of not only things, but also of space and contacts with others, so that we remain alone with God (cf. Verbi Sponsa, 3).
On August 18, the feast of Blessed Mannes, brother of our Holy Father St. Dominic, Sister Mary Jordan of the Holy Family, O.P., made her Solemn Profession in the hands of the prioress, Mother Mary Joseph, O.P.