Vultus Christi

After First Vespers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Thursday, 22 June 2017

We have crossed the threshold,
not only of Your feast, but also of Your mystery,
O Pierced One.
We have been in pilgrimage to Your Heart.
It was the light of Your Eucharistic Face that drew us on,
compelling us, impelling to seek in its radiance
the wound in Your side.

Now before us lies the door
opened not by the turn of a key
but by the thrust of a lance,
and beyond the door the abode of love.
“He has brought me to the banqueting house,
and is banner over me was love” (Ct 2:4).

We opened our books to First Vespers
and found there not the mere form of words
but the traces of a burning, blazing Word
— Your Heart —
and beneath the text
embers glowing
waiting to be fanned again into flame
by a mingling of Spirit-Breath with ours,
breath well spent in the chants of Your Church.

The Spirit came again to the help of our weakness,
loosing our tongues for the

Sit laus plena, sit sonora

Wednesday, 21 June 2017

A Meditation for Corpus Domini

Remember all the desert way
through which the Lord your God has brought you:
forty years of willful wandering.
Remember the affliction and the testing.
Remember the great and terrible wilderness
wherein there was the serpent burning with his breath,
and the scorpions.
Remember the thirsty ground where there was no water.
Remember who brought you water out of the flinty rock.
Remember who fed you in the wilderness
with manna which your fathers did not know (cf. Dt 8:15-16).

Remember, and out of your remembering
give voice to the great thanksgiving
that is what we have in common — O joy! — with all the saints.
Remember the sustenance in full ears of wheat, his gift to you.
Remember the honey dripping from the rock to your heart’s content (cf. Ps. 80:17).

Remember, and out of your remembering
let praises spring high and sweet and clear.
Praises to fill full the church, but even that is not enough.
Praises pouring out the

Puer Samuel

Sunday, 18 June 2017

Very often the key that unlocks for us the particular grace of any given Sunday is given in the Magnificat Antiphon at First Vespers. The Magnificat Antiphon is, as you know, taken from the lessons read at Matins. And so, last evening, in anticipation of the lessons from the First Book of Samuel, we sang this:

Puer Samuel ministrabat ante Deum coram Heli, et sermo Domini erat pretiosus cum eo.
The child Samuel ministered unto God before Eli, and the word of the Lord was precious in his sight.

Who is this Puer Samuel? He is one of those of whom the psalmist sings, Laudate, pueri, Dominum; laudate nomen Domini. Praise the Lord, ye children: praise ye the name of the Lord. (Psalm 112:1). He is one of those of whom we read in Genesis, Exaudivit autem Deus vocem pueri, God heard the voice of the boy (Genesis 21:17) and again, Exaudivit enim Deus vocem pueri de loco in quo est (Genesis 21:17).

The word puer figures in the Roman Canon, where it refers to Abel and to his offering: púeri tui justi Abel. In

Correspondence on the Monastic Vocation 5

Sunday, 18 June 2017

Disclaimer: The series of letters entitled “Correspondence on the Monastic Vocation”, while based on the real questions of a number of men in various places and states of life, is entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, institutions, or places is purely coincidental.

Letter 5: Anthony

Dear Father,

It may be very cheeky of me to write this, but I don’t understand how you at Silverstream, as traditional Benedictines, justify the practice of daily adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Even more, you make it a distinctive feature of your monastery. I intend no disrespect, Father, but I know of no other monastery of Benedictine monks in the world where this is done. Isn’t this rather a blot on your Benedictine credentials? I checked with my friend, Father Oswin, at Uppington Abbey. He said (and I quote) that you at Silverstream were “a bit eccentric” and that perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament has never been “the done thing” among monks of the Order. When I told Father Oswin that I was interested in visiting Silverstream, he advised me to “look into something more mainstream”.

Frankly, Father, I’m confused. Father

How Lauds are to be said on Week-days (2)

Saturday, 17 June 2017

16 Feb. 17 June. 17 Oct.

The Office of Lauds and Vespers, however, must never conclude without the Lord’s Prayer being said aloud by the Superior, so that all may hear it, on account of the thorns of scandal which are wont to arise; so that the brethren, by the covenant which they make in that prayer when they say “Forgive us as we forgive,” may cleanse themselves of such faults. But at the other Offices let the last part only of the prayer be said aloud, so that all may answer, “But deliver us from evil.”

When visitors to Benedictine monasteries assist at the Offices of Lauds or Vespers, they are often surprised that, at the end of the celebration, the abbot alone chants the Pater Noster, while the monks, bowing profoundly, listen to the prayer. In the reformed Roman Rite, all sing the Pater Noster together; people have, over the past fifty years or so, grown accustomed to doing this. In the Benedictine tradition it is not so. For centuries Benedictines have followed Saint Benedict’s clear injunction in the Holy

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After First Vespers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Sit laus plena, sit sonora

Puer Samuel

Correspondence on the Monastic Vocation 5

How Lauds are to be said on Week-days (2)

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