St Andrew

November 30th is the pivotal date for the beginning of Advent, starting the Sunday closest to November 30th, which, of course, is the feast day of Saint Andrew. Today marks the beginning of the traditional Advent devotion of the Saint Andrew Christmas Novena.

The following prayer is traditionally recited fifteen times a day until Christmas. This is a very meditative prayer that helps us increase our awareness of the real focus of Christmas and helps us prepare ourselves spiritually for His coming.

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment In which the Son of God was born Of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in the piercing cold. In that hour vouchsafe, I beseech Thee, O my God, to hear my prayer and grant my desires, [here mention your request] through the merits of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of His blessed Mother. Amen.

Prayer is an essential part of Advent.

St Raphael

Today is the feast of the Archangel Raphael (“God has healed”) who does not appear in the Hebrew Scriptures, and in the Septuagint only in the Book of Tobias. Here he first appears disguised in human form as the travelling companion of the younger Tobias, calling himself “Azarias the son of the great Ananias.” The story of the adventurous journey during which the protective influence of the angel is shown in many ways including the binding “in the desert of upper Egypt” of the demon who had previously slain seven husbands of Sara, daughter of Raguel, is picturesquely related in Tobit 5-11, to which the reader is referred. After the return and the healing of the blindness of the elder Tobias, Azarias makes himself known as “the angel Raphael, one of the seven, who stand before the Lord” (Tob., xii, 15. Cf. Apoc., viii, 2). Of these seven Archangels which appear in the angelology of post-Exilic Judaism, only three, Gabriel, Michael and Raphael, are mentioned in the canonical Scriptures. The others, according to the Book of Enoch (cf. xxi) are Uriel, Raguel, Sariel, and Jerahmeel, while from other apocryphal sources we get the variant names Izidkiel, Hanael, and Kepharel instead of the last three in the other list.

Regarding the functions attributed to Raphael we have little more than his declaration to Tobias (Tobit 12) that when the latter was occupied in his works of mercy and charity, he (Raphael) offered his prayer to the Lord, that he was sent by the Lord to heal him of his blindness and to deliver Sara, his son’s wife, from the Devil. The Jewish category of the Archangels is recognised in the New Testament (I Thess., iv, 15; Jude, 9), but only Gabriel and Michael are mentioned by name. Many commentators, however, identify Raphael with the “angel of the Lord” mentioned in John 5. This conjecture is based both on the significance of the name and on the healing rôle attributed to Raphael in the Book of Tobias. The Church assigns the feast of St Raphael to October 24th. The hymns of the Office recall the healing power of the archangel and his victory over the demon. The lessons of the first Nocturn and the Antiphons of the entire Office are taken from the Book of Tobias, and the lessons of the second and third Nocturns from the works of St Augustine, viz. for the second Nocturn a sermon on Tobias (sermon I on the fifteenth Sunday), and for the third, a homily on the opening verse of John, v. The Epistle of the Mass is taken from the twelfth chapter of Tobias, and the Gospel from John 5: 1-4, referring to the pool called Probatica, where the multitude of the infirm lay awaiting the moving of the water, for “an angel of the Lord descended at certain times into the pond; and the water was moved.And he that went down first into the pond after the motion of the water was made whole of whatsoever infirmity he lay under.” Thus the conjecture of the commentators referred to above is confirmed by the official Liturgy of the Church.

St Teresa of Ávila

St Teresa of Ávila, born Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada, also called Saint Teresa of Jesus (28 March 1515 – 4 October 1582), was a Spanish noblewoman who chose a monastic life in the Catholic Church. A Carmelite nun, prominent Spanish mystic, religious reformer, author, theologian of the contemplative life and mental prayer, she earned the rare distinction of being declared a Doctor of the Church over four centuries after her death.

She was buried at the Convento de la Anunciación in Alba de Tormes. Nine months after her death the coffin was opened and her body was found to be intact but the clothing had rotted. Before the body was re-interred one of her hands was cut off, wrapped in a scarf and sent to Ávila. Father Gracián cut the little finger off the hand and - according to his own account - kept it with him until it was taken by the occupying Ottoman Turks, from whom he had to redeem it with a few rings and 20 reales. The body was exhumed again on 25 November 1585 to be moved to Ávila and found to be incorrupt. An arm was removed and left in Alba de Tormes at the nuns' request, to compensate for losing the main relic of Teresa, but the rest of the body was reburied in the Discalced Carmelite chapter house in Ávila. The removal was done without the approval of the Duke of Alba de Tormes and he brought the body back in 1586, with Pope Sixtus V ordering that it remain in Alba de Tormes on pain of excommunication. A grander tomb on the original site was raised in 1598 and the body was moved to a new chapel in 1616.

The body still remains there, apart from the following parts:

Rome - right foot and part of the upper jaw

Lisbon - left hand

Ronda, Spain - left eye and right hand (the latter was kept by Francisco Franco until his death after  Francoist troops captured it from Republican troops during the Spanish Civil War)

Museum of the Church of the Annunciation, Alba de Tormes - left arm and heart

Church of Our Lady of Loreto, Paris, France - one finger

Sanlúcar de Barrameda - one finger

In 1622, forty years after her death, she was canonised by Pope Gregory XV. The Cortes exalted her to patroness of Spain in 1627. The University of Salamanca had granted her the title Doctor ecclesiae (Latin for "Doctor of the Church") with a diploma in her lifetime but that title is distinct from the papal honour of Doctor of the Church, which is always conferred posthumously. The latter was finally bestowed upon her by Pope Paul VI on 27 September 1970, along with Saint Catherine of Siena, making them the first women to be awarded the distinction. Teresa is revered as the Doctor of Prayer. The mysticism in her works exerted a formative influence upon many theologians of the following centuries, such as Francis of Sales, Fénelon, and the Port-Royalists. In 1670 her coffin was plated in silver.

St Francis of Assisi

Saint Francis of Assisi (Italian: San Francesco d'Assisi, Latin: Sanctus Franciscus Assisiensis), born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, informally named as Francesco (1181/1182 – 3 October 1226), was an Italian Catholic friar and preacher. He founded the men's Order of Friars Minor, the women's Order of Saint Clare, the Third Order of Saint Francis and the Custody of the Holy Land. Francis is one of the most venerated religious figures in history.

Pope Gregory IX canonised Francis on 16 July 1228. Along with Saint Catherine of Siena, he was designated Patron saint of Italy. He later became associated with patronage of animals and the natural environment. In 1223, Francis arranged for the first Christmas live nativity scene. According to Christian tradition, in 1224 he received the stigmata during the apparition of Seraphic angels in a religious ecstasy, which would make him the second person in Christian tradition after St Paul (Galatians 6: 17) to bear the wounds of Christ's Passion. He died during the evening hours of 3 October 1226, while listening to a reading he had requested of Psalm 142.

St Bonaventure

Saint Bonaventure (1221 – 15 July 1274), born Giovanni di Fidanza, was an Italian medieval Franciscan, scholastic theologian and philosopher. The seventh Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor, he was also Cardinal Bishop of Albano. He was canonised on 14 April 1482 by Pope Sixtus IV and declared a Doctor of the Church in the year 1588 by Pope Sixtus V. He is known as the "Seraphic Doctor" (Latin: Doctor Seraphicus). He steered the Franciscans on a moderate and intellectual course that made them the most prominent order in the Catholic Church until the coming of the Jesuits. His theology was marked by an attempt completely to integrate faith and reason. He thought of Christ as the "one true Master" who offers humans knowledge that begins in faith, is developed through rational understanding, and is perfected by mystical union with God. Bonaventure, however, is not only a meditative thinker, whose works may form good manuals of devotion; he is a dogmatic theologian of high rank, and on all the disputed questions of scholastic thought, such as universals, matter, seminal reasons, the principle of individuation, or the intellectus agens, he gives weighty and well-reasoned decisions. He agrees with Saint Albert the Great in regarding theology as a practical science; its truths, according to his view, are peculiarly adapted to influence the affections. He discusses very carefully the nature and meaning of the divine attributes; considers universals to be the ideal forms pre-existing in the divine mind according to which things were shaped; holds matter to be pure potentiality that receives individual being and determinateness from the formative power of God, acting according to the ideas; and finally maintains that the agent intellect has no separate existence. On these and on many other points of scholastic philosophy the "Seraphic Doctor" exhibits a combination of subtlety and moderation, which makes his works particularly valuable.

In form and intent the work of St Bonaventure is always the work of a theologian; he writes as one for whom the only angle of vision and the proximate criterion of truth is the Christian faith. This fact influences his importance for the history of philosophy; when coupled with his style, it makes Bonaventure perhaps the least accessible of the major figures of the thirteenth century. This is true, not because he is a theologian, but because philosophy interests him largely as a praeparatio evangelica, as something to be interpreted as a foreshadow or deviation from what God has revealed.

Septuaginta dies natalis quinto

On this Saint Bonaventure feast day three-quarters of a century ago, I came into the world; so my thoughts are naturally with my parents whose memory I cherish beyond measure, and to whom I owe so much: a love of music, an appreciation of the arts; a spiritual dimension, and a childlike innocence.

In my mother's arms at the age of four weeks, I was destined to be an only child, and greatly loved.

My parents at the Café Royal, Regent Street, London, in 1953.

My parents' remains are contained at my private retreat.

The Most Precious Blood of Our Lord

The Church dedicates the whole month of July to devotion of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord. In the old calendar July 1st was its special feast day, and still remains so for Traditionalist Christians.

The Liturgy, that admirable summary of the history of the Church, reminds us every year that at this date in 1849, thanks to the French army, the revolution which had driven the Pope from Rome was vanquished. To perpetuate the memory of this triumph and to show that it was due to the Saviour’s merits, Pius IX, at the time a refugee at Gaeta, instituted the Feast of the Precious Blood. Pius XI in 1934 raised it to the First Class.

The Heart of Jesus has made this adorable Blood circulate in His limbs; wherefore, as on the feast of the Sacred Heart, the Gospel presents to our view the thrust of the lance which pierced the side of the Divine Crucified, blood and water gushing forth. Thus become united the two testimonies which the Holy Ghost bore to the Messias, when He was baptised in the water of the Jordan and when He was baptised in blood on the cross (Gradual). The Docetes taught that Jesus was the Christ at His baptism, and had thus come by water, but being no longer Christ on the cross He had not come by blood.

Let us do homage to the Precious Blood of our Redeemer which the priest offers to God on the altar.