Feast of Reparation

Today in Mectildian Monasteries is the Great Feast of Reparation. Though not exclusive to the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration – at one time, it was much more widely spread, especially in France – it encapsulates the essence of the charism of the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration.

Jesus is the Great Reparator

Our Venerable Mother, Mectilde de Bar (1614-1698), Foundress of the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration, saw the vocation of the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration as this: to be perpetually devoted to adoration in union with Most Blessed Sacrament, hosts with the Eucharistic Host, victims with the Divine Victim of the Altar, in reparation for all the ingratitude and offenses shown to that Most August Sacrament.

She recognized that this vocation was, in fact, impossible from a human point of view. Who can give God fitting adoration? Who can repair His Glory? Only God! So what to do?

For Mother Mectilde the answer was simple: Yes, only God can adore God fittingly and repair His glory, but God makes Himself one with man in the Most Blessed Sacrament precisely for this. It only remains to unite oneself to the states of Jesus in the Host. If one is to adore Jesus, one must let Jesus make us Himself.

The primary moment where this is expressed in the Mectildian tradition is in the daily Act of Reparation. In this Act of Reparation, a sister (or for us, a brother) identified herself with those guilty of ingratitude and offenses against the Most Blessed Sacrament by praying an Act of Reparation in the same manner in which those condemned of capital crimes asked for pardon.

But the sister was not to do this at just any time. Since only Jesus could be the Reparator, she was to receive Holy Communion, and then go and kneel at a representation of the column of Christ’s scourging to show her identification with Jesus on behalf on all the sinners of the world. Only then would she read the Act of Reparation. Mother Mectilde believed that it would really be Jesus, one with her in the Eucharist, Jesus-Host, who would be praying the prayer of Reparation.

Mother Mectilde’s Act of Reparation

Silverstream Priory uses an Act of Reparation based upon the act of Reparation recited by Mother Mectilde. Her original Act of Reparation is available in The Mystery of Incomprehensible Love, the first book published of or about Mother Mectilde in English.

A Curious Text

Several parts of the text contained in this book were changed – and other parts added – when the prayer was adapted for use at Silverstream Priory. Reading over the original prayer, one particular word stands out, a word not contained in the version currently in use.

I adore You with all my heart
in Your divine Sacrament,
with the intention of making reparation
for all the irreverences, profanations, and sacrileges committed against You in this aweful mystery.
I kneel before Your divine Majesty
to adore You now,
in the name of all those
who have never paid You any homage,
and who, perhaps, will be so unfortunate
as never to render it to You,
such as heretics, atheists,
blasphemers, sorcerers… (pg 108-109)

The word sorcerers stood out to me the first time I read this prayer. I wasn’t sure what to make of this. Few people in today’s western world would be inclined to take sorcerers seriously. Could this really have been something on people’s minds in the 17th Century?

Mystery of Incomprehensible Love explains:

The 17th century was a Eucharistic century. It had this character in reaction to the Calvinists, who denied the Real Presence; it was so also in the thought of reparation—reparation for the sacrileges committed by the soldiery during the wars which for too long laid waste the kingdom, and for those committed by magicians and sorcerers, at that time very numerous.

Mother Mectilde’s Grief

In her book, The True Spirit (as of yet unpublished in English), Mother Mectilde expresses a touching grief over the fact the Most Blessed Sacrament was being used for the purpose of magic, a fact that seems to have caught her imagination greatly. A Benedictine Oblate provides the translation.

Let us consider the profanations which the godless and sorcerers make of those precious and adorable Hosts. We should die simply remembering such things. And without a miracle, there are some souls who would not be able to bear hearing about the abominable evils which these devils incarnate do to our divine Savior Jesus Christ. We must pass over these in silence since we cannot speak forcefully enough about them; but the truth is, we should die of sorrow at seeing the infinite love of God so unworthily repaid. Yes, I can say it, and I wish my heart broke in saying it, that, for the incomprehensible charity of Jesus Christ and for His passionate love for mankind, they wrench Him from His Eucharistic throne and they do things of which one dare not speak. Yet with such rage as surpasses those of the demons, they throw themselves on the divine Hosts with an inexplicable greediness to destroy Jesus Christ, and subdue Him by shameful treatment which cannot be described, and which we might call infinite in some way, because of the violence of their malice. No more than this is needed to give the death blow to a heart who loves Jesus Christ; this should at least wound it in such a way as never to be healed.

A little later in the book, she continues the same theme.

I consider Him in the hearts of sinners…He is contained there with the cruelest enemies who only plot His death, who trample Him under foot, and cause Him more shame than the poverty and discomforts of the stable. Moreover—frightful prodigy!—which not only shocks us, but would cause us to die of horror—to see God in the hands of wicked and abominable sorcerers, in some way being used for their diabolical malice. What! My God reduced to a condition so shameful, who remains in the Sacred Host, used as a charm and a spell! Could we not die merely from speaking of this horror? Oh God, who can understand it? What! The one who created heaven and earth, who punishes the rebel angels and faithless men with eternal torment, who causes the whole world to tremble when it pleases Him to make the blows of His power and justice felt, the One who drew all things from nothing and who by His will alone could return them to it—He becomes a nothing Himself!

In this divine Sacrament He surrenders His strength, His glory, and His power. Does it not seem that He has become powerless, by allowing Himself to be taken and carried by sacrilegious and vile hands, who touch Him only to profane Him, and if they could, tear away from Him His being and life?

Oh! With what rage those wretches treat the love of my divine Master, which makes Him like a prisoner in the Tabernacles, to exercise a tyrannical power over His divine Person for their abominable schemes! Oh marvel! Oh prodigy! I would like to exclaim it through the whole world! There is nothing so shocking! A God in the hands of demons, a God who endures things I cannot express.

But Surely Not Today?

Who among those who truly love the Eucharistic Lord could not be moved by the grief Mother Mectilde expresses over the thought of the Most Blessed Sacrament being used for sacrilegious purposes? I think that most of us know at some level that such practices are not confined to ages more religious – if not more superstitious – than our own.

Something that I recently read drove this point home to me. Triumph of the Heart #48, pp 14-17  tells the story of the conversion of a girl named Michelle who had ended up, little by little, involved in satanism. She was sent on a mission to kill the foundress of a community that had been rescuing people like her, and ended up converting herself.

One paragraph in particular stood out to me. Perhaps what it says will be incredible to some of you, but the very starkness of it is enough to make one wonder. She writes regarding the effects of a certain sacrilegious consecration that she made:

My life changed from that moment on. Suddenly I had the ability to speak and understand foreign languages; this was very useful in our restaurant. I knew the occupations of the guests dining with us and knew things I had never read or heard before. Above all, I knew when a priest was carrying the Blessed Sacrament. That gave me a feeling of power. In reality though, I was a living corpse in this time—spiritually, physically and psychologically

Let that sink in for a moment. She believed that she was given power by the evil one to know the Presence of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Perhaps Mother Mectilde’s heartfelt concern to make reparation to the love of Jesus blasphemed by those practicing magic is not so outdated as a first instinct might suggest! Perhaps in these days too we must abide before the Lord Jesus, loving Him for those who wish to make His Presence part of their sorcery, asking Him to unite Himself to us so that, in us, He may repair this love, and Love may be Loved.

August Queen of Heaven

August Queen of Heaven
and Sovereign Mistress of the Angels,
you who from the beginning
have received from God the power and the mission
to crush the head of Satan,
we humbly beseech you to send the heavenly legions
so that, under your command and by your power,
they may pursue the demons, combat
them everywhere, suppress their audacity,
and drive them back into the abyss.

Who is like unto God?

O good and tender Mother,
you will ever be our love and our hope!

O Divine Mother, send the holy Angels to defend me
and drive far away from me the cruel enemy.

Holy Angels and Archangels, defend us, guard us.