Since we are travellers and pilgrims in the world, let us ever ponder on the end of the road, that is of our life, for the end of our roadway is our home (St Columban, 8th sermon).
GospelJohn 2:1-11 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)
On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee,
and the mother of Jesus was there.Jesus also was
invited to the wedding with his disciples.When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus
said to him, “They have no wine.”And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what
does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”His mother said to the servants, “Do
whatever he tells you.”
Now there
were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each
holding twenty or thirty gallons.Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim.And he said to
them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master
of the feast.” So they took it.When the master of the feast tasted the
water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants
who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroomand said to him, “Everyone serves the good
wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have
kept the good wine until now.”This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee,
and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.
On the third Sunday of January the Church in the Philippines celebrates the Feast of the Santo Niño, the Holy Child. You will find Sunday Reflections for that Feasthere.
The Sunday Reflections below focus on the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C.
Wedding of King Baudoin and Queen Fabiola
15 December 1960
I have used this material before. I
truly believe that the lives of King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola can speak to
all Christians no matter what their state of life or social position may be.
Last SundayI featured the late King Baudouin of the Belgians. This
week I feature him again, with Queen Fabiola, who died on 5 December 2014. The
King died suddenly on 31 July 1993. In his spiritual biography of the
King, Baudouin, King of the Belgians, The Hidden Life, the
late Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens, Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, tells the
remarkable story of how Baudouin and Fabiola met. The matchmaker of the
marriage of Baudouin and Fabiola was an Irish woman, Veronica O'Brien.
Veronica was envoy of the Legion of
Mary to France and some other European countries. Much 'cloak and dagger' work
was involved in finding a wife and queen for the young king. Much more
importantly, much prayer was involved too, prayer that was basically a
searching for God's will. They became formally engaged in Lourdes, France, King
Baudouin travelling incognito, as he always did when he went there. (There are
references online in obituaries of the King and elsewhere to Veronica O'Brien
as 'Sister Veronica'. She was not a religious but a lay person. Members of the
Legion of Mary address each other as 'Brother' and 'Sister' only during Legion
meetings, not elsewhere).
The couple were married in Brussels
on 15 December 1960. The video shows part of the church wedding, which took
place immediately after the civil wedding. In a number of European countries a
separate civil ceremony is required by law and takes place before the church
celebration. The King wrote in his spiritual diary for that day: Normally
we are awake by day and dream at night, but this time it's as if I'm in a dream
all day.
On 8 July 1978 Baudouin wrote in his
diary: My God, I thank you for having led us by the hand to the feet of
Mary, and every day since then, I thank you, Lord, that we have been able to
love each other in your Love, and that that love has grown each day.
And Queen Fabiola wrote to
Veronica: I knew Our Blessed Lady was a Queen and a Mother, and all
sorts of other things, but I never knew that she was a Matchmaker!
Quoting the Queen led Cardinal
Suenens to quote a Spanish verse:
Cristo dijo a su Madre
el dia de la Asunción
no te vaya de este mundo
sin pasar por Aragón.
Christ said to his Mother
on the day of the Assumption:
do not leave this world
without passing through Aragón.
Before her marriage the Queen was Doña Fabiola de Mora y Aragón.
King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola in 1969 [Wikipedia; photo]
The Cardinal quotes freely from Baudouin's diary about Queen Fabiola.
Fill Fabiola with your holiness. May she live her life in your joy and your peace. Teach me to love her with your own tenderness . . .
Fabiola is so loving; she warms my heart. Her silent, yet active presence is a source of great joy to me. My God, how you have spoiled me!
Thank you, Jesus, for having nurtured in me an immense love for my wife. Thank you for having given me a spouse whose love for me is second only to her love for You. May we both grow in you, Lord.
When Veronica O'Brien met Fabiola in Spain she asked the young woman, who had no idea where things were leading, why she had never married. She replied, What can I say? I have never fallen in love up to now. I have put my life into the hands of God. I abandon myself to Him, maybe he is preparing something for me.
Veronicarecounted all of this in a letter to the King and concluded, It was utterly astounding, because I knew exactly what God was preparing for her.
Thirty years later the King wrote in his spiritual diary: Mary, show me what I should do so as not to miss an opportunity of loving, of denying myself for your sake, of living the present moment to the full, as if it were my last, and of loving my darling Fabiola infinitely more. Yes, Mother, teach me to love her with tenderness, gentleness, thoughtfulness, respect, and teach me to have faith in her . . .
And Baudouin, addressing the Lord, wrote, Teach me too to respect her personality with its differences and its inconsistencies. Jesus, I thank you for having given me this wonderful treasure.
Both King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola in these extracts reflect the spirituality of a book that Cardinal Suenens had given the King before he met his future queen and wife, Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean-Pierre de Caussade SJ. One English translation of this masterpiece has the title The Sacrament of the Present Moment, which captures the essence of the book, that God's will is in the present moment.
Shortly before he left for Motril, Spain, in 1993, where he died suddenly, King Baudouin confided to Cardinal Suenens and Veronica O'Brien, I love Fabiola more and more each day: what an inspiration she is to me!
This led the Cardinal to quote Jean Guitton, the first lay person to be invited to Vatican II as an observer, Love is always fruitful, were it only because it transforms those who love.
One of the great sorrows in the life of Baudouin and Fabiola as a married couple was that they had no children. The Queen had five miscarriages. Reflecting on this, the King said to a group visiting the Palace, We have pondered on the meaning of this suffering and, bit by bit, we have come to see that it meant that our heart was freer to love all children, absolutely all children.
In a letter to a young mother the King wrote about a children's party that he and the Queen had hosted at the Palace: In one corner there was a group of handicapped children, several of them with Down's syndrome. I brought over a plateful of toffees to a little girl who had scarcely any manual control. With great difficulty, she succeed in taking a toffee but, to my astonishment, she gave it to another child. Then for a long time, without ever keeping one for herself, she distributed these sweets (candies) to all the healthy children who could not believe their eyes. What a depth of love there is in those physically handicapped bodies . . .
One by one the children left. We really felt as if they had become in some sense our children. I think they felt it too. It was a very special afternoon; the presence of the Lord was really tangible. There was such peace and joy. That was pure gift!
I have read Baudouin, King of the Belgians, The Hidden Life, a number of times and each time I am moved by it. I see in it a reflection of what's in today's gospel: his gratitude to God, like the gratitude of all at the wedding feast, not mentioned explicitly but clearly there; his and Fabiola's submission to God's will through Mary: Do whatever he tells you; and the extraordinary generosity of Jesus, God and Man, turning water into the equivalent of about 500 or 600 bottles of the best wine, a generosity that led Baudouin and Fabiola, who couldn't have children of their own, to see that our heart was freer to love all children, absolutely all children.
When we allow him, Jesus can turn the very ordinary in our lives into the extraordinary, just as a little girl with physical and mental disabilities revealed the presence of God to the King of the Belgians, just as Fabiola, his wife and queen, was a daily revelation of God's loving presence to him.
God has the same desire to reveal himself to each of us every day, specifically in the present moment. And He has given us his Mother, who is our Mother also, to guide us with her words of absolute faith, do whatever he tells you.
Traditional Latin Mass (TLM)
Second Sunday after the Epiphany
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 01-16-2022 if necessary).
This magnificent sculpture is over the High Altar in the Pilgrimage Church, Rohr, Bavaria, Germany.
The Solemnity of the Assumption
This takes the place of the Mass for the
20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
Vigil Mass
This
Mass is used on the evening of 14 August, either before or after First Vespers
(Evening Prayer) of the Solemnity. It fulfils our Sunday obligation.
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia,
England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)
This page gives the readings for both the Vigil Mass and the Sunday Mass.
GospelLuke 11:27-28(English Standard Version Anglicised: India)
As
Jesus said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to
him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you
nursed!”But he said, “Blessed
rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”
Mass celebrated on Sunday
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia,
England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)
This page gives the readings for both the Vigil Mass and the Sunday Mass.
GospelLuke 1:39-56(English Standard Version Anglicised: India)
In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill
country, to a town in Judah,and she entered the
house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby
leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit,and she exclaimed with a loud
cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of
your womb!And why
is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?For behold, when the sound of your greeting
came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.And blessed is she who believed that
there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken
to her from the Lord.”
And Mary said
“My soul magnifies
the Lord, and my spirit rejoices
in God my Saviour, for he has looked on the humble estate
of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call
me blessed; for he who is mighty has done
great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud
in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble
estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has
sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his
offspring for ever.”
And Mary remained with her
about three months and returned to her home.
The Assumption is a feast that celebrates what we
profess in the Nicene Creed, I look forward to the resurrection of the
dead and the life of the world to come. Amen. In the Apostles' Creed we
pray, I believe in . . . the resurrection of the body and life
everlasting. Amen. We rejoice in the fact that what we hope for at the end
of time, the resurrection of our bodies in glory, has already happened to Mary.
It is very striking that the gospels for the Vigil
Mass - Blessed is
the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed! – and for the Mass on the 15th are about the beginning
of life, not the end of life. And when Elizabeth heard the
greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled
with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed
are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother
of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your
greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. (Luke 1:41-44, ESVUK).
Some years ago in the Philippines after celebrating
Mass on the feast of the Visitation, when this same gospel is read, I gave a
blessing to a girl in her late teens, unmarried and pregnant. She found it very
difficult to accept the baby as her own. After I had blessed her and her baby
she told me that she could feel the child moving in her womb and that she felt
at peace with the situation.
The Second Readings in both Masses speak to us of
the meaning of death for Christians: Death
is swallowed up in victory.O
death, where is your victory?O death, where is your sting? (1 Corinthians
15:54-55, Vigil Mass) and But in
fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those
who have fallen asleep.For as by a man came death, by a man has come
also the resurrection of the dead. (1 Corinthians 15:20-21,
Sunday Mass).
These readings and the Solemnity of the Assumption
itself speak to us of the dignity of human life at its beginning and at its
end. It speaks to a world that almost everywhere sees it as a ‘human right’ to
destroy an unwanted human being in the womb. It speaks to a world that in more
and more places sees it as a ‘human right’ to choose to end the lives of old people
or persons, even children, with serious illnesses.
From the Angelus address of
Pope Benedict in Castel Gandolfo, 15 August 2008:
Mary assumed into Heaven points out to us the final
destination of our earthly pilgrimage. She reminds us that our whole being -
spirit, soul and body - is destined for fullness of life; that those who live
and die in love of God and of their neighbour will be transfigured in the image
of the glorious Body of the Risen Christ; that the Lord will cast down the
proud and exalt the humble (cf. Lk 1: 51-52). With the mystery of her
Assumption Our Lady proclaims this eternally. May you be praised for ever, O
Virgin Mary! Pray the Lord for us.
Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond.
La Salve Rociera
Sung by El Coro Rociero de Vilvoorde, Belgium
I came across this by accident. It is a Spanish hymn in honour of the Blessed Mother. The lyrics, in Spanish and English, are here.
This was sung at the funeral of Queen Fabiola of Belgium on 12 December 2014. I take it that the choir consists of Spaniards living in Vilvoorde, Belgium, which has the oldest Carmelite monastery in the world and which I have visited. Some of the nuns there are from the Philippines. The hymn captures for me the joy I have often experienced at funerals, along with grief, because of the hope that our faith as Christians in the Resurrection gives us. The Assumption reinforces that hope. The hymn also expresses something of the warmth of the faith that Spain bequeathed to its former colonies and that I experienced in the Philippines, especially a tender love for our Blessed Mother.
The hymn, especially as sung here, is another example of something that is part of the local identity of a people, in this case Spaniards, and, because of that, is something that all who have a strong sense of their own personal and communal identity can identify with.
Queen Fabiola was Spanish. She and her husband King Baudouin, who died in 1993, were devout Catholics with a great devotion to Our Lady. They became officially engaged on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. While Baudouin was alive they were known as the King and Queen of the Belgians. Those titles passed on to Baudouin's brother Albert, who succeeded him, and to Albert's wife Paola. Fabiola then acquired the title Queen of Belgium.
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia,
England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan,
Scotland, South Africa)
GospelJohn 2:1-11 (New Revised Standard
Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition)
On the third day there was a
wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the
wedding. When the
wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to
you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells
you.’ Now
standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification,
each holding twenty or thirty gallons.Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’
And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to
the chief steward.’ So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become
wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn
the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine
first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you
have kept the good wine until now.’ Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of
Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
Feast of the Santo Niño
On
the third Sunday of January the Church in the Philippines celebrates the Feast
of the Sto Niño, the Holy Child. These Sunday Reflections focus on
the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C. You will find Sunday
Reflections for the Feast of the Sto Niñohere.
bau
Wedding of King Baudoin and Queen Fabiola
15
December 1960
I have used this material before. I truly believe
that the lives of King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola can speak to all Christians
no matter what their state of life or social positions may be.
Last
SundayI featured the late King Baudouin of the Belgians. This
week I feature him again, with Queen Fabiola, who died on 5 December 2014. The
King died suddenly on 31 July 1993. In his spiritual biography of the King, Baudouin, King of the Belgians, The Hidden Life, the late Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens, Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, tells the remarkable story of how Baudouin and Fabiola met. The matchmaker of the marriage of
Baudouin and Fabiola was an Irish woman, Veronica O'Brien.
Veronica
was envoy of the Legion of Mary to France and some other European countries.
Much 'cloak and dagger' work was involved in finding a wife and queen for the
young king. Much more importantly, much prayer was involved too, prayer that
was basically a searching for God's will. They became formally engaged in
Lourdes, France, King Baudouin travelling incognito, as he always did when he
went there. (There are references online in obituaries of the King and
elsewhere to Veronica O'Brien as 'Sister Veronica'. She was not a religious but
a lay person. Members of the Legion of Mary address each other as 'Brother' and
'Sister' only during Legion meetings, not elsewhere).
The
couple were married in Brussels on 15 December 1960. The video shows part of the church wedding, which took place immediately after the civil wedding. In a number of European countries a
separate civil ceremony is required by law and takes place before the church
celebration. The King wrote in his spiritual diary for that day: Normally
we are awake by day and dream at night, but this time it's as if I'm in a dream
all day.
On
8 July 1978 Baudouin wrote in his diary: My God, I thank you for having
led us by the hand to the feet of Mary, and every day since then, I thank you,
Lord, that we have been able to love each other in your Love, and that that
love has grown each day.
And
Queen Fabiola wrote to Veronica: I knew Our Blessed Lady was a Queen
and a Mother, and all sorts of other things, but I never knew that she was a
Matchmaker!
Quoting
the Queen led Cardinal Suenens to quote a Spanish verse:
Cristo dijo
a su Madre
el dia de
la Asunción
no te vaya
de este mundo
sin pasar
por Aragón.
Christ
said to his Mother
on
the day of the Assumption:
do
not leave this world
without
passing through Aragón.
Before
her marriage the Queen was Doña Fabiola de Mora y Aragón.
The Cardinal
quotes freely from Baudouin's diary about Queen Fabiola.
Fill Fabiola
with your holiness. May she live her life in your joy and your peace. Teach me
to love her with your own tenderness . . .
Fabiola is
so loving; she warms my heart. Her silent, yet active presence is a source of
great joy to me. My God, how you have spoiled me!
Thank you,
Jesus, for having nurtured in me an immense love for my wife. Thank you for
having given me a spouse whose love for me is second only to her love for You.
May we both grow in you, Lord.
When
Veronica O'Brien met Fabiola in Spain she asked the young woman, who had no
idea where things were leading, why she had never married. She
replied, What can I say? I have never fallen in love up to now. I have
put my life into the hands of God. I abandon myself to Him, maybe he is preparing
something for me.
Veronicarecounted
all of this in a letter to the King and concluded, It was utterly
astounding, because I knew exactly what God was preparing for her.
Thirty years later the King wrote in his spiritual
diary: Mary, show me what I should do so as not to miss an opportunity
of loving, of denying myself for your sake, of living the present moment to the
full, as if it were my last, and of loving my darling Fabiola infinitely more. Yes, Mother, teach me to love her with tenderness, gentleness, thoughtfulness,
respect, and teach me to have faith in her . . .
And Baudouin, addressing the Lord, wrote, Teach
me too to respect her personality with its differences and its inconsistencies.
Jesus, I thank you for having given me this wonderful treasure.
Both King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola in these
extracts reflect the spirituality of a book that Cardinal Suenens had given the
King before he met his future queen and wife, Abandonment to Divine
Providence by Jean-Pierre de Caussade SJ. One English translation of
this masterpiece has the title The Sacrament of the Present Moment,
which captures the essence of the book, that God's will is in the present
moment.
Shortly before he left for Motril, Spain, in 1993,
where he died suddenly, King Baudouin confided to Cardinal Suenens and
Veronica O'Brien, I love Fabiola more and more each day: what an inspiration
she is to me!
This led the Cardinal to quote Jean Guitton, the
first lay person to be invited to Vatican II as an observer, Love is
always fruitful, were it only because it transforms those who love.
Children's Games (detail), Pieter Bruegel the Elder
One of the
great sorrows in the life of Baudouin and Fabiola as a married couple was that
they had no children. The Queen had five miscarriages. Reflecting on this, the
King said to a group visiting the Palace, We have pondered on the
meaning of this suffering and, bit by bit, we have come to see that it meant
that our heart was freer to love all children, absolutely all children.
In a letter
to a young mother the King wrote about a children's party that he and the Queen
had hosted at the Palace: In one corner there was a group of
handicapped children, several of them with Down's syndrome. I brought over a
plateful of toffees to a little girl who had scarcely any manual control. with
great difficulty, she succeed in taking a toffee but, to my astonishment, she
gave it to another child. then for a long time, without ever keeping one for
herself, she distributed these sweets (candies) to all the healthy children who
could not believe their eyes. What a depth of love there is in those physically
handicapped bodies . . .
One by one
the children left. We really felt as if they had become in some sense our
children. I think they felt it too. It was a very special afternoon; the
presence of the Lord was really tangible. There was such peace and joy. That
was pure gift!
I have
read Baudouin, King of the Belgians, The Hidden Life, a
number of times and each time I am moved by it. I see in it a reflection of
what's in today's gospel: his gratitude to God, like the gratitude of all at
the wedding feast, not mentioned explicitly but clearly there; his and
Fabiola's submission to God's will through Mary: Do whatever he tells
you; and the extraordinary generosity of Jesus, God and Man, turning water
into the equivalent of about 500 or 600 bottles of the best wine, a
generosity that led Baudouin and Fabiola, who couldn't have children of their
own, to see that our heart was freer to love all children, absolutely
all children.
When we
allow him, Jesus can turn the very ordinary in our lives into the
extraordinary, just as a little girl with physical and mental disabilities
revealed the presence of God to the King of the Belgians, just as Fabiola, his
wife and queen, was a daily revelation of God's loving presence to him.
God has the
same desire to reveal himself to each of us every day, specifically in the
present moment. And He has given us his Mother, who is our Mother also, to
guide us with her words of absolute faith, do whatever he tells you.
Antiphona ad introitum Entrance Antiphon Ps 65 [66]:4
Omnis terra adoret te, Deus, et psallet
tibi;
All the earth shall bow down before
you, O God, and shall sing to you,
psalmum dicat nomini tuo, Altissime.
shall sing to your name, O Most High!
Iubilate Deo, omnis terra, psalmum
dicite nomini eius: date gloriam laudi eius.
Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth; sing the
glory of his name; give to him glorious praise.
Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the
Holy Spirit.
Omnis terra adoret te, Deus, et psallet tibi;
All the earth shall bow down before
you, O God, and shall sing to you,
psalmum dicat nomini tuo, Altissime.
shall sing to your name, O Most High!
The
text in bold is for the Entrance Antiphon as used in the
Ordinary Form of the Mass, though the longer form may also be used. The latter is used in
the Extraordinary Form of the Mass (the 'Traditional Latin Mass') where this Sunday is the Second Sunday after Epiphany.
