As the Church begins our annual observance of Holy Week, permit me to take a short break from our ongoing series of praying with the Mass.  To turn our attention to these most important days of the liturgical year is actually not really a diversion from our reflections on the Mass, for the Mass itself was instituted during this sacred week on Holy Thursday.  Christ’s offering of Himself on the Cross for our sins on Good Friday is the very mystery that we enter into every time we are present at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  Therefore the events of Holy Week are intimately connected with the celebration of the Mass, regardless of when we attend these Sacred Mysteries.  For our reflection as we enter this Holy Week, I would invite us to reflect on how this week was experienced by two of Jesus’s Apostles, Judas and Peter.  

Let us start with Judas.  In the Church’s readings for Mass on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Holy Thursday, and at Good Friday Liturgy, Judas is mentioned in all of them – the only Apostle to claim that distinction.  By keeping Judas before our eyes, the Church is inviting us to see in him the example of what can happen if we fail to keep Jesus at the center of our lives.  Judas was called to be a follower of Christ.  Jesus said to him, as well as the others: “I have called you friends.” (Jn 15:15)  Before the Last Supper, Jesus says to these closest friends: “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” (Lk 22:15). Judas had his feet washed, like the rest.  But sadly, he was so blinded in his own greed that he continued with his plan to betray Jesus.  In the Garden, Judas identifies Jesus to His captors by giving Him a kiss, to which Jesus responds: “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” (Lk 22:48)  Judas eventually went away saddened at his choice to reject Christ’s love.  But his sadness was not true contrition, for had he been contrite, he would have let that gaze of Jesus penetrate his heart and chose the path of repentance, a path that would have led to a much different ending for him.

The story of Peter is not terribly different.  This head of the Apostles was so firm in his commitment to the Lord.  He promised to never deny Him, that He would even die for Him: “Lord, I am prepared to go to prison and to die with you.” (Lk 22:33)  But when the time for witnessing to Jesus came, Peter three times denied knowing Jesus, just as the Lord had predicted.  Right after his third denial, Luke’s Gospel recounts the following reaction of Jesus: “the Lord turned and looked at Peter.” (Lk 22:61). Peter remembered what Jesus had said about his denying Him three times, and Luke writes: “He went out and began to weep bitterly.” (Lk 22:62).  Unlike with Judas, the look of Jesus at Peter after his denial did not lead to despair.  Rather, Peter’s contrition was authentic, sorrowful for having denied the Messiah.  This sorrow would not be the end of his story, for he would be reconciled on the shore of the sea after the Resurrection, when Jesus asks Peter three times: “Do you love me.”  Three times, Peter affirms his love for Jesus, to make up for his three-fold denial.  And we know the rest of his story.

Two friends of Jesus, called to be with Him, called to share in His life, called to receive His Body and Blood at the Last Supper.  Both ended up falling out of their weakness.  Both were looked up with love by Jesus.  One despaired, and one repented.  This Holy Week, I invite us to meditate on that gaze of Jesus as He looks upon us.  No matter how many times we may have denied Him or rejected Him through sin, His gaze is one of love, not one of disappointment.  His gaze is an invitation to not flee and hide out of shame or despair, but to run to Him, to be embraced by Him.  He invites us to stand at the foot of the Cross as He gazes down on you with His arms extended in a gesture as if to say: “This is how much I love you.”  May His gaze fill us with sorrow for our sins, but may we find in Him that gift of mercy that He freely offers to us, a gift that can transform our lives this week if we let Him.  For with His mercy, our sins and failures are not the end of our story, they become the places of His victory in us when we surrender those sins to Him.  If you have not yet let Him win that victory over your sins lately, He will be waiting for you in the confessional to welcome you with His merciful love.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: March 24^th 

If you’re anything like me, you have never heard of St. Aldemar.

He was a monk at the famous Abbey of Monte Casino in Italy. That abbey, one of the first established by St. Benedict, around 529 AD, was where the Rule of Benedict was first lived-out and Benedict’s vision of monastic life first seen for everything it could be. When that monastery was sacked by the Lombards in 580, forcing the monks to evacuate to Rome, that way of life began to spread throughout the Latin Church (Pope St. Gregory the Great spoke highly of it just a few years later) and within a few centuries it was the standard for Western Monasticism).  

Probably you do know the Benedictine motto “ora et labora” / “pray and work”. These certainly are the pillars of the life and structure of Benedictine Monasteries. The monks begin their day well before the sunrise singing the first period of psalms and readings (called “matins” from the latin word for morning, probably at 3 or 4am), then, perhaps after a brief break, “lauds” (this is what we would now simply call “morning prayer”, but it took this traditional name from the repetition of the theme of praise, “laudate”, that resounds through the psalms sung at sunrise, Psalms 148-150. At 6am.) Then the monks would go off to various labors around the monastery and surrounding territory – farming, building, writing, teaching … – but always ready to pause their efforts and return to the monastery for another time of prayer. Throughout the middle of the day you would have terce (third hour of the day, 9am), sext (sixth hour, noon), and none (ninth hour, 3pm). The day would also include time for meals, except for feast-days it would be simple fare, a Mass attended by the entire community and individual Masses offered by any of the monks who were priests (concelebration was only done on specific occasions, usually with a bishop), and the day would conclude with the final hours of prayer, vespers (6pm) and compline (9pm or so).

You can see the discipline and intensity of this life, but also the amazing spiritual and cultural fruit that could come from a place of such stability, sanctity, and seriousness. It is no wonder that monasteries became hubs for medieval towns, precursors to schools and hospitals, and engines of evangelization as they moved hearts towards Christ by their prayer and example.  

But we need to get back to St. Aldemar. He wasn’t born a monk of Monte Cassino. Actually, he didn’t even begin his monastic life there. He was born in Capua, Italy (not far from Monte Cassino, but a bit closer to Naples) and happily became a monk in his hometown. A princess of the region came to like the wise and faithful monk and tapped him to be in charge of a new religious house she was building. Exciting, right?! You’re living your best monastic life and then get noticed by a princess and given a brand-new monastery! … but it wasn’t God’s plan.

Aldemar was reassigned by his Benedictine superiors to move to Monte Cassino, a request he obediently followed. The princess threw a fit, Aldemar had to flee to Boiana still narrowly escaping with his life, and eventually winding up all the way North of Rome in the Abruzzi region, where he founded several other monasteries. 

Here’s what I want us to focus on: deep prayer and dutiful work were important, and they must be the backbone of our life too but they didn’t make Aldemar a saint. What got him to heaven was obedience. Here’s what St. Benedict said about that in chapter 5 of his rule:

The first step of humility is unhesitating obedience, which comes naturally to those who cherish Christ above all. Because of the holy service they have professed, or because of dread of hell and for the glory of everlasting life, they carry out the superior’s order as promptly as if the command came from God himself. The Lord says of men like this: “No sooner did he hear than he obeyed me” (Ps 17[18]:45); again, he tells teachers: “Whoever listens to you, listens to me” (Luke 10:16).

– Fr. Dominic made several different promises at his ordination, so do any of you who are married or in any religious vocation, but the most important thing that we offer to the Lord, whether through our spouse, or through our religious superior is our obedience. 

Jesus was obedient unto death. His obedience saved the world! Our emulation of that obedience will be how He saves us.

Read more of St. Benedict on Obedience here – https://christdesert.org/rule-of-st-benedict/chapter-5-obedience/ – or in the QR code:

When the Precious Blood is distributed to the faithful at Mass (note, I will address that topic in a future article), there may be the case that, when taking the chalice to consume a drink of the Precious Blood, you notice that there is a small particle of the Body of Christ in the chalice!  You might panic, thinking: “Did the last person spit a portion of the host in the chalice?”  Or, “I saw Father place that little crumb in the chalice, should I avoid consuming it?”  Why is that little portion in the chalice after all?  Let’s explore that very question.

Following the invitation to offer one another the sign of peace, the celebrant of the Mass does and says a couple of things that often go unnoticed.  Here is how it reads in the Roman Missal:

Then he takes the host, breaks it over the paten, and places a small piece in the chalice, saying quietly: May this mingling of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ bring eternal life to us who receive it.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal says the following about this action:

The gesture of breaking bread done by Christ at the Last Supper, which in apostolic times gave the entire Eucharistic Action its name, signifies that the many faithful are made one body (1 Cor 10:17) by receiving Communion from the one Bread of Life, which is Christ, who for the salvation of the world died and rose again. (GIRM, 83)

There is an interesting historical connection to this action that I think helps to drive this point about unity home.  I recall hearing about it while in seminary, and then I was reminded of it in a set of articles on the silents prayers of the Mass written by Father Boniface Hicks, O.S.B.  He writes the following:

Another origin for the mingling of a particle of the host in with the chalice was from the spirit of ecclesial unity. A particle from the consecrated host at the bishop’s Mass called a fermentum was brought to the parish church and mingled in the priest’s chalice as a sign of the unity of the priest’s Mass with the bishop’s. With this unity in mind, the priest’s prayer during the ritual action of commingling can take on other dimensions. The particle from the bishop connects the Mass with the whole diocesan Church, and the prayer can serve an intercessory role for all those in the diocese who receive from the bishop’s host. It also reminds us that salvation is not a solitary affair but, like Holy Communion, it is something that we strive for together and that brings us into unity even as it also has a dramatically personal dimension. Seen under the sign of unity, the comingling reminds us that receiving the Eucharist is certainly entering into communion with Christ, but it is also deepening our communion with his Bride, the Church. (https://adoremus.org/2021/11/the-quiet-that-speaks-haec-commixtio-may-this-mingling/)

Although this practice of bringing a portion of the bishop’s host to each church is not longer observed, the significance is still present as a reminder of the unity that is a desired fruit of our reception of Holy Communion.  I’ve written about unity in previous articles, and I think this action helps to strengthen our understanding of how important unity is when it comes to our understanding of and prayer at Mass.  This unity is both vertical (with Christ Himself) and horizontal (with His Body, the Church).  Christ’s death and Resurrection are at the service of both, and as such, our reception of Holy Communion should commit us to striving for a deeper love for Christ and His Church.

Father Alford