This is one of those rare reading sets where all four readings can be easily woven into a single homily. The reason is that in addition to being thematic, all these passages are things that we can easily (if we are honest) apply to ourselves in some fashion.

The Psalmist tells us: “For the kingdom is the LORD’s: and he is the governor among the nations.” (Verse 28, KJV) God is in charge. How often have we heard this in one form or another or read it on some low-budget t-shirt? So often, I think, that familiarity has bred contempt. Yet how important this message is! If God is in charge, then why do we fear? Because we are doubters.

Martin Luther is often quoted as having said, “Never doubt in the dark what God has shown you in the light.” But is that realistic? Yes and no. Yes, by faith, we never doubt for, as Scripture says, “Now faith is substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1, KJV) And then again, no, it is not realistic because we are humans. We know well and good our frailties and foibles. We know we should not fear this or that and yet we do. This is the struggle of faith. This is the combat the Desert Fathers spoke so often and so poignantly of.

In our reading from Exodus today, the Israelites have been led through the desert. God has fed
them, God has protected them from the most powerful army on earth, God has revealed Himself to his people in visible forms. Yet, the Israelites were thirsty and running low on water. Literally more than a million people and innumerable sheep, cattle, and perhaps other livestock are wandering around with dwindling supplies of water. “And the people thirsted there for water; and the people murmured against Moses, and said, Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?” (Exodus 17:3) Miracle after miracle was granted freely from the hand of God to His people, and all they could see was their thirst. They feared because they did not really believe. The accusation they make is that God did all this to kill them! Moses, in speaking with God about it was told to take his staff and strike the rock so that water flowed and the people were given water for their thirst. For all that, there was no blessing in it.
St. Paul tells the Church at Rome how Abraham’s promise was seen by faith and yet never obtained while Abraham yet lived. The promise, he says, “…was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” (Romans 4:23-25, KJV) Do we really believe? Or do we merely give intellectual assent?

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus drives out the money changers and those who sold doves from the Temple. Why? These people had turned the place above all others where God was to be the sole focus of attention and made it a “den of thieves.” They had come to this most holy place to focus on themselves, to get gain by catering to the needs of pious and observant Jews not out of a desire to serve, but to make money and fill their lust for money and perhaps power. The money changers charged a fee to exchange the profane Roman coinage for Temple money. The sellers of doves no doubt charged prices artificially inflated by demand at the Temple. The focus was on self all the way.

I often hear spiritual folks (of several faith traditions and world-views) speak of surrendering. Surrender to God, to a spiritual master/leader/teacher, to a system or program. Surrender never works. Let me explain why: you see, surrender is what a soldier gives to his enemy when it is time to quit fighting or die. It is never voluntary, it is never motivated by love, and it always waits for and seeks its opportunity to escape. This is precisely what the Israelites were doing in respect to God and Moses. They had surrendered, but they did not love. The money changers had submitted to the system of Judaism, but they did not submit themselves to lives lived in belief of Abraham’s promise.

I’ll say it again: Never surrender. If you love God, submit to God. To submit to God is to place yourself voluntarily under His yoke. It is to love what He loves, to seek out what He seeks out, to do what He does. It places one’s own desires and ambitions on the back burner so that the Beloved’s desires are at the front at all times. You place yourself at His disposal for His purposes. What did Jesus say? “He who loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.” (St. Mark 8:35, KJV) This is submission.

As Lent gets underway and progresses, remember to submit yourself to God day by day, hour by hour. Don’t surrender to Lenten devotions, fasting, etc. Don’t wait for God to act; He already has in Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross for us. Move forward in faith and submit your life to

Memorial day: March 2nd

His father belonged to the noble family of Berg; his mother, a holy woman from whom he took his name, to a family of Sus (or Süs). When thirteen years of age he entered the Dominican convent at Constance, where he made his preparatory, philosophical, and theological studies.

From 1324 to 1327 he took a supplementary course in theology in the Dominican studium generale at Cologne, where he sat at the feet of Johann Eckhart, “the Master”, and probably at the side of Tauler, both celebrated mystics. Returning to Constance, he was appointed to the office of lector, from which he seems to have been removed some time between 1329 and 1334. In the latter year he began his apostolic career. About 1343 he was elected prior of a convent, probably at Diessenhofen. Five years later he was sent from Constance to Ulrn where he remained until his death.

Suso’s life as a mystic began in his eighteenth year, when giving up his careless habits of the five preceding years, he made himself “the Servant of the Eternal Wisdom”, which he identified with the Divine essence and, in a concrete form, with the personal Eternal Wisdom made man. Henceforth a burning love for the Eternal Wisdom dominated his thoughts and controlled his actions. He had frequent visions and ecstasies, practised severe austerities (which he prudently moderated in maturer years), and bore with rare patience corporal afflictions, bitter persecutions and grievous calumnies.

He became foremost among the Friends of God in the work of restoring religious observance in the cloisters. His influence was especially strong in many convents of women, particularly in the Dominican convent of Katherinenthal, a famous nursery of mysticism in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and in that of Toss, where lived the mystic Elsbeth Stagel, who turned some of his Latin into German, collected and preserved most of his extant letters, and drew from him the history of his life which he himself afterwards developed and published.

In the world he was esteemed as a preacher, and was heard in the cities and towns of Swabia, Switzerland, Alsace, and the Netherlands. His apostolate, however, was not with the masses, but rather with individuals of all classes who were drawn to him by his singularly attractive personality, and to whom he became a personal director in the spiritual life.

It has often been incorrectly said that he established among the Friends of God a society which he called the Brotherhood of the Eternal Wisdom. The so-called Rule of the Brotherhood of the Eternal Wisdom is but a free translation of a chapter of his “Horologium Sapientiae”, and did not make its appearance until the fifteenth century.

The first writing from the pen of Suso was the “Büchlein der Wahrheit”, which he issued while a student at Cologne. Its doctrine was unfavourably criticized in some circles — very probably on account of its author’s close relations with Eckhart, who had just been called upon to explain or to reject certain propositions — but it was found to be entirely orthodox.

As in this, so in his other writings Suso, while betraying Eckhart’s influence, always avoided the errors of “the Master”. The book was really written in part against the pantheistic teachings of the Beghards, and against the libertine teachings of the Brethren of the Free Spirit. Father Denifle considers it the most difficult “little book” among the writings of the German mystics.

Whereas in this book Suso speaks as a contemplative and to the intellect, in his next, “Das Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit”, published early in 1328, he is eminently practical and speaks out of the fullness of his heart to “simple men who still have imperfections to be put off”. Bihlmeyer accepts Denifle’s judgment that it is the “most beautiful fruit of German mysticism”, and places it next to the “Homilies” of St. Bernard, and the “Imitation of Christ” by Thomas à Kempis. In the second half of the fourteenth and in the fifteenth century there was no more widely read meditation book m the German language.

In 1334 Suso translated this work into Latin, but in doing so added considerably to its contents, and made of it an almost entirely new book, to which he gave the name “Horologium Sapientiae”. Even more elevating than the original, finished in language, rich in figure, rhythmic in movement, it became a favourite book in the cloisters at the close of the Middle Ages, not only in Germany, but also in the Netherlands, France, Italy, and England.

To the same period of Suso’s literary activity may belong “Das Minnebüchlein” but its authenticity is doubtful.

After retiring to Ulm Suso wrote the story of his inner life (“Vita” or “Leben Seuses”), revised the “Büchlein der Wahrheit”, and the “Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit”, all of which, together with eleven of his letters (the “Briefbüchlein”), and a prologue, he formed into one book known as the “Exemplar Seuses”.

Suso is called by Wackernagel and others a “Minnesinger in prose and in the spiritual order.” The mutual love of God and man which is his principal theme gives warmth and colour to his style. He used the full and flexible Alamannian idiom with rare skill, and contributed much to the formation of good German prose, especially by giving new shades of meaning to words employed to describe inner sensations. His intellectual equipment was characteristic of the schoolmen of his age. In his doctrine there was never the least trace of an unorthodox tendency.

For centuries he exercised an influence upon spiritual writers. Among his readers and admirers were Thomas à Kempis and Bl. Peter Canisius.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII
Nihil Obstat, June 1, 1910, Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor
Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of Ne

Born: March 21, 1295 at Uberlingen, Germany as Heinrich von Berg

Died: January 25, 1361 at Ulm, Germany

Beatified: 1831 by Pope Gregory XVI

Representation: Dominican with the Holy Name on his chest

Works: Book of the Eternal Wisdom, The Thirst of God

Nothing is known of the early years of Blessed Christopher. He received the Dominican habit in the convent of San Eustorgio in Milan, Italy, in the early 15th century. He is recorded as being “holy and abstemious, humble and studious”–the ordinary virtues that we have come to take for granted among the beati; there is nothing to indicate the type of person Christopher was, or what peculiar circumstances might have led him to the Dominicans. He is noted especially for his preaching and for his gift of prophecy.

The age in which Christopher lived was a rough and dangerous one, and a time for prophets and penitents to thrive. He was himself an apostolic preacher throughout Liguria and the Milanese, famous for the impact of his sermons on sinners. He had a vivid power of description and this, coupled with his gift of prophecy, made his sermons unforgettable.

Christopher worked in many parts of Italy, but his name is particularly venerated in Taggia, where he spent many years. As a result of his preaching, the people of Taggia built a monastery and church dedicated to Our Lady of Mercy and Christopher became its first abbot. A great wave of spiritual revival was felt in Taggia during his tenure, but he was not optimistic about the future.

In a vision he saw that most of the population would be carried off by plague. Twenty years before anyone was paying any attention to the Turks, he told the people of Taggia that Turks would invade the city, and they did, as he had prophesied. A disastrous flood swept the area, fulfilling another of his prophesies. He wrote four volumes of sermon aids, containing scriptural examples and quotations from the Fathers of the Church.

In 1484, when he was absent from Taggia preaching a mission, Christopher fell ill and knew that he was about to die. He insisted on returning to his own monastery at Taggia. There he received the last sacraments and immediately died (Benedictines, Dorcy).

Born: In the early part of the 15th century

Died: 1484 at Our Lady of Mercy convent, Taggia, Italy of natural causes

Beatified: 1875 by Pope Pius IX

 

The Order of Preachers, Reformed is pleased to announce the Postulancy of Father John Kinsley of Tempe, Arizona.  Father John has been following us for some time now, and has expressed a desire to join our Order.  Please pray for him as he discerns God’s will for his life, and begins the process of joining us in our journey to bring Christ to the world.  Thanks be to God!