Monday 16 May 2022
Monday of the 5th week of Eastertide
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Monday of the 5th week of Eastertide
From a sermon by Saint Gregory of Nyssa, bishop
The firstborn of the new creation
The reign of life has begun, the tyranny of death is ended. A new birth has taken place, a new life has come, a new order of existence has appeared, our very nature has been transformed! This birth is not brought about by human generation, by the will of man, or by the desire of the flesh, but by God.
If you wonder how, I will explain in clear language. Faith is the womb that conceives this new life, baptism the rebirth by which it is brought forth into the light of day. The Church is its nurse; her teachings are its milk, the bread from heaven is its food. It is brought to maturity by the practice of virtue; it is wedded to wisdom; it gives birth to hope. Its home is the kingdom; its rich inheritance the joys of paradise; its end, not death, but the blessed and everlasting life prepared for those who are worthy.
This is the day the Lord has made – a day far different from those made when the world was first created and which are measured by the passage of time. This is the beginning of a new creation. On this day, as the prophet says, God makes a new heaven and a new earth. What is this new heaven? you may ask. It is the firmament of our faith in Christ. What is the new earth? A good heart, a heart like the earth, which drinks up the rain that falls on it and yields a rich harvest.
In this new creation, purity of life is the sun, the virtues are the stars, transparent goodness is the air, and the depths of the riches of wisdom and knowledge, the sea. Sound doctrine, the divine teachings are the grass and plants that feed God’s flock, the people whom he shepherds; the keeping of the commandments is the fruit borne by the trees.
On this day is created the true man, the man made in the image and likeness of God. For this day the Lord has made is the beginning of this new world. Of this day the prophet says that it is not like other days, nor is this night like other nights. But still we have not spoken of the greatest gift it has brought us. This day destroyed the pangs of death and brought to birth the firstborn of the dead.
I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God. O what wonderful good news! He who for our sake became like us in order to make us his brothers, now presents to his true Father his own humanity in order to draw all his kindred up after him.
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In other parts of the world and other calendars:
Saint Simon Stock, Religious
From 'The Flaming Arrow' by Nicholas of France, prior general
I will lead her into the desert, and there I will speak to her heart
Was it not our Lord and Saviour who led us into the desert, as a mark of his favour, so that there he might speak to our hearts with special intimacy? It is not in public, not in the market place, not amid noise and bustle that he shows himself to his friends for their consolation and reveals his secret mysteries to them, but behind closed doors.
To the solitude of the mountain did Abraham, unswerving in faith and discerning the issue from afar in hope, ascend at the Lord’s command, ready for obedience’s sake to sacrifice Isaac his son; under which mystery the passion of Christ – the true Isaac – lies hidden. To the solitude of the mountain was it too that Abraham’s nephew, Lot, was told to flee for his life in haste from Sodom.
In the solitude of Mount Sinai was the Law given to Moses, and there was he so clothed with light that when he came down from the mountain no one could look upon the brightness of his face.
In the solitude of Mary’s chamber, as she conversed with Gabriel, was the Word of the Father most high in very truth made flesh.
In the solitude of Mount Tabor it undoubtedly was, when it was his will to be transfigured, that God made man revealed his glory to his chosen intimates of the Old and New Testaments. To a mountain solitude did our Saviour ascend alone in order to pray. In the solitude of the desert did he fast forty days and forty nights together, and there did he will to be tempted by the devil, so as to show us the most fitting place for prayer, penance, and victory over temptation.
To the solitude of mountain or desert it was, then, that our Saviour retired when he would pray; though we read that he came down from the mountain when he would preach to the people or manifest his works. He who planted our fathers in the solitude of the mountain thus gave himself to them and their successors as a model, and desired them to write down his deeds, which are never empty of mystical meaning, as an example.
It was this rule of our Saviour, a rule of utmost holiness, that some of our predecessors followed of old. They tarried long in the solitude of the desert conscious of their own imperfection. Sometimes however – though rarely – they came down from their desert, anxious, so as not to fail in what they regarded as their duty, to be of service to their neighbours, and sowed broadcast of the grain, threshed out in preaching, that they had so sweetly reaped in solitude with the sickle of contemplation.
Copyright © 1996-2022 Universalis Publishing Limited: see www.universalis.com. Scripture readings from the Jerusalem Bible are published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. Text of the Psalms: Copyright © 1963, The Grail (England). Used with permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. All rights reserved.