We are blessed to have in our library number of books by or about the Blessed Ildefonso Schuster, O.S.B. (1880–1954). Among them is a collection of personal letters that Abbot Schuster wrote to his friend, Dom Giuseppe Piccinino, O.S.B. (1904–1918). In the letter addressed to Dom Giuseppe on Passion Sunday 1909, Dom Ildefonso already demonstrates, at twenty–nine years of age, that intense application to the liturgy of the day that would characterise him all his life. The Sacred Scriptures, the Sacred Liturgy, and the Rule of Saint Benedict are the sources to which he spontaneously refers. These three sources continued to irrigate his soul, even when, as Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, he was obliged to cope with the sufferings inflicted upon his flock during the Second World War. Blessed Schuster never shrank from speaking of participation in the victimhood of Christ. His piety was intensely Benedictine, Eucharistic, and priestly. Blessed Ildefonso Schuster focused always on the Holy Sacrifice; he conformed his whole life to the mysteries he celebrated at the altar with gravity and reverence. Here is an extract from his
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