{"id":8856,"date":"2014-12-15T16:52:35","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T15:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/?p=8856"},"modified":"2014-12-15T16:52:35","modified_gmt":"2014-12-15T15:52:35","slug":"the-fellowship-of-the-angels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/2014\/12\/the-fellowship-of-the-angels\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fellowship of the Angels"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"De_Speculo_Caritatis\"Yesterday at Matins:<\/em><\/p>\n

II NOCTURN<\/p>\n

From a Sermon by St Aelred, Abbot<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let us take a look at ourselves and our city.\u00a0 Our way of life is a strongly fortified city surrounded on all sides by sound observances<\/strong> which, like walls and towers, rise up to prevent our enemy from deceiving us and enticing us away from our Emperor\u2019s army.\u00a0 What a wall poverty is!\u00a0 How well it defends us against the pride of the world, against harmful and ruinous vanities and superfluities.\u00a0 What a tower silence is!\u00a0 It repels the assaults of contention, quarrelling, dissension, and detraction.\u00a0 What about obedience, humility, cheap clothing?\u00a0 What about a restricted diet?\u00a0 They are walls, they are towers against vices, against the attacks of our enemies.\u00a0 In this city we declare ourselves, not Romans, but angelic beings.\u00a0 For these observances demonstrate that we belong to the fellowship of the angels<\/strong> and are not among the slaves of the Romans.<\/p>\n

When we make profession of this way of life the words of Isaiah are fulfilled: \u201cThey shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles.\u201d Then he goes on: \u201cNation shall not lift sword against nation nor ever again be trained for war.\u201d\u00a0 Everyday this is being fulfilled literally, not in the treacherous nation of the reprobate that neither does, nor has, nor shall enjoy peace, but in the race of the just which is blessed.\u00a0 Do you not see men, nobles in the world, experiencing conversion to monastic life, laying down their spears and swords and earning their food by manual labour like peasants? But this is better, more obviously and more fully understood as being fulfilled in a spiritual way among every class, poor as well as rich, clerical as well as lay.<\/p>\n

Let us think about the sword of which the Lord said: \u201cEveryone who takes up the sword will perish by the sword,\u201d and the ploughshares by which the earth of our heart is broken, in accordance with the text: \u201cRend your hearts and not your garments.\u201d\u00a0 And we shall see at the present time countless persons changing their swords into ploughshares.\u00a0 The sword is wrongdoing.\u00a0 With this sword a person wounds himself before he does anyone else; as St Augustine says: \u201cEvery man who is a wrongdoer harms himself before he harms anyone else because, even before he injures the other person, by making up his mind to injure someone else he injures himself, slaying himself with the sword of wrongdoing.\u201d\u00a0 This is the sword of which the Lord says to Peter: \u201cEveryone who takes up the sword will perish by the sword.\u201d\u00a0 How many there are, brothers, who at the present time are beating this sword of wrongdoing into the ploughshare of compunction<\/strong>!\u00a0 Many who have previously killed their soul with the sword of sin now rend their heart by the compunction of penance.\u00a0 Many today are also changing their spears \u2014 that is, the subtlety of their wits by which they used to drag many others down into sin with them \u2014 into sickles with which they are reaping a spiritual harvest<\/strong> so that they may come to meet the Lord bearing in their hands the sheaves of justice and salvation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday at Matins: II NOCTURN From a Sermon by St Aelred, Abbot Let us take a look at ourselves and our city.\u00a0 Our way of life is a strongly fortified city surrounded on all sides by sound observances which, like walls and towers, rise up to prevent our enemy from deceiving us and enticing us <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,178],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advent-liturgy","category-florilegium-patristicum"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paVypq-2iQ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8857,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8856\/revisions\/8857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}