Blessed Schuster’s Daily Thoughts on the Rule: Passion Tuesday
Passion Tuesday
Station at St Cyriacus
At the Feast of Tents
1. The station was at St Cyriacus, which stood near the baths of Diocletian, before, that is, Michelangelo transformed their great hall into a temple dedicated to Our Lady, thus sacrificing oratories that were previously there.
The Gospel describes Jesus at the feast ‘of booths’1
The Saviour’s kinsfolk would have liked Him to show Himself openly, and to go Himself to Jerusalem for the great feast, in order to make converts for His messianic kingdom among the crowd.
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How different, however, are the ways of God from those of men! Saint Paul says: ‘That which appears folly among men is instead wisdom before God, as on the other hand that which men consider the flower of cleverness and wisdom is, before the Lord, nothing but ridiculous folly.’ (1 Cor 1:25)
The works of the Lord are generally born, grow, and prosper from an insignificant beginning and from hiddenness. In the parable of the leaven kneaded into the mass among three measures of flour, it is well said: quod abscondit mulier…donec fermentatum est totum. (Matt 13:33: ‘Which the woman kneads…until all is leavened.’)
The operations of divine grace are imperceptible to human sense. A great Monk of the Middle Ages2 has left us an important spiritual reminder in his De imitatione Christi: Ama nesciri. ‘Love to be unknown.’
One year, on the vigil of the Conversion of St Paul, I entreated Abbot Boniface, formerly the Novice Master of the Ven. [now Blessed—tr.] Placido Riccardi, to allow the horarium for the following day’s functions to be communicated to L’Osservatore Romano.
He refused me the permission and told me: ‘My son, our Fathers always loved hiddenness and silence, without running after publicity, as is usually done now. Let us stay there with God, we monks!’
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2. To the invitation of his relatives to go to the feast, the Lord replies: Ego autem non ascendo ad diem festum hunc; ; quia meum tempus nondum impletum est. (John 7:8: ‘I on the other hand am not going up to this feast, becauase My hour is not yet arrived.’)
In fact, He went there, but in the last days of the week, when the concourse of people had already diminished.
At Rome, a phrase of Saint Giovanni Battista De’ Rossi [1698-1764] has remained famous, regarding the influx to the basilicas where a feast is occurring.
‘When it is a feast at Saint Peter’s’, said the Saint, ‘I go to Saint Paul’s, and when instead it is a feast at Saint Paul’s, I go to Saint Peter’s, so as thus to flee from the concourse of the crowd, and to pray with greater devotion and recollection.’
The monk’s place is never in the midst of the crowd; so much so that once, in the port of Alexandria, when a woman of the people had accidentally collided with Saint Macarius, and he reproved her, ‘How is it that you, woman, dare to touch me, who am a monk?’, the other replied: ‘If you are a monk, get off to the mountain.’
Saint Macarius understood these words as a very important spiritual admonition, and the biographers say that he would often repeat to himself: ‘If you are a monk, get off to the mountain!’
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3. When the Feast of Tabernacles, after an entire week, was already about to conclude, Jesus went secretly to Jerusalem, so that His adversaries would not hinder the good which remained for Him to accomplish.
This prudence of the Saviour is admirable, in not exposing Himself and His own to an obvious danger of death, when He was able to do otherwise by remaining in the territory of Galilee, out of range of the shots of the Sanhedrin.
Meum tempus nondum impletum est. (John 7:8: ‘My time is not yet completed.’) He does not hasten it, this blessed time of our Redemption, nor does He delay it, but He awaits it serenely from the will of His heavenly Father.
In God all is in pondere, numero, et mensura. (Wisdom 11:21: ‘In weight, in number, in measure.’) Nothing is outside of its time. This is why Saint Benedict assigned this wise norm for the horarium of the Community at Cassino:
Horis competentibus et dentur quae danda sunt, et petantur quae petenda sunt: ut nemo perturbetur, neque contristetur in domo Dei. (Rule, Ch. 31: ‘At the established hours let there be distributed that which should be distributed and let request be made for what is desired; in such manner that no one in the house of God suffer disturbance or be saddened.’)
The proverb says: Serva ordinem et ordo servabit te. (‘Preserve order and you will be preserved by order.’)
1Schuster uses three different terms, tende (‘tents’), capanetti (‘booths’), and tabernacoli (‘tabernacles’) to refer the same Jewish feast of Sukkoth. ↩
2Bl. Schuster considered the Imitation of Christ to be the work of the 13th century abbot Giovanni Gersen, although it is generally ascribed to Thomas à Kempis in the 15th century. ↩