DAILY MEDITATIONS BY BISHOP CHALLONER - DEC 1 & 2

Richard Challoner (29 September 1691 – 12 January 1781) was an English Roman Catholic bishop, a leading figure of English Catholicism during the greater part of the 18th century. He is perhaps most famous for his revision of the Douay Rheims translation of the Bible.




DECEMBER 1ST


ON THE TIME OF ADVENT

Consider first, that the time of Advent, (so called from being set aside by the church for worthily celebrating the advent, that is, the coming of Christ,) is a penitential time, and a time of devotion, in which we are every day called upon by the church of God to prepare the way of the Lord, to make straight his paths; to enter into the like dispositions of those which St. John the Baptist required of the people when he was sent to preach to them conversion and penance, in order to prepare them for their Messias; that so we also, by turning away from our sins, by sorrow and repentance, and turning ourselves to the Lord our God with our whole heart, by love and affection, may dispose our souls to welcome our Saviour whose birth we are about to celebrate, and to embrace in such manner the mercy and grace which he brings with him at his first coming as to escape hereafter those dreadful judgments which his justice shall execute upon impenitent sinners at his second coming. See then, my soul that thou dedicate this holy time to suitable exercise of devotion and penance, that thou mayest answer the end of this institution.



Consider 2ndly, in what manner we are all summoned by the church, at the beginning of this holy time, (in the words of St. Paul, Rom xiii. 11, read in the epistle of the First Sunday in Advent,) to dispose ourselves now for Christ. 'Knowing the time,' says the apostle, 'that it is now the hour for us to rise from sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is passed, (or far spent,) the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light; let us walk decently, as in the day,' &c. O! my soul, let us consider these words as particularly addressed to us, in order to awaken us, and to stir us up to begin now a new life. Alas! have we not hitherto been quite asleep as to the greatest of all our concerns? Are not far the greatest part of Christians quite asleep by their unaccountable indolence in the great business of the salvation of their souls and of a happy eternity? Are they not sleeping too, which is worse, in the very midst of dangers and of mortal enemies, who are continually plotting their destruction, an even upon the very brink of a precipice, which if they fall down will let them in a moment into hell? O let us then all hearken seriously to this summons, and rouse ourselves now, whilst we have time, out of this unhappy lethargy, and from this hour begin to apply ourselves in good earnest to that only business for which we came into this world. O let us cast off now and for ever the works of darkness, and put on Jesus Christ.



Consider 3rdly, that on the First Sunday of Advent, the terrors also of God's justice are set before our eyes, in the description given in the gospel of the great accounting day; to the end, that they that will not correspond with the sweet invitations of God's mercy, and awake from sleep at the summons addressed to them in the epistle, may be roused at least by the thunder of his justice, denounced in the gospel; and be induced by the wholesome fear of the dreadful judgments that are continually hanging over the heads of impenitent sinners, to make good use of this present time of mercy, lest hereafter there should be neither time nor mercy for them. Ah! sinners, if this day you hear the voice of the Lord, either sweetly inviting you with the allurements of his mercy, or terrifying you with the threats of his judgments, see you harden not your hearts. For now is your time. Sleep on no longer, lest you come to sleep in death, as it happened to them of old, who by refusing to hearken to God's voice, provoked him so far, that he swore to them in his wrath, that they should never enter into his rest. O remember that 'the day of the Lord and his judgments shall come as a snare upon all them that will not watch,' Luke xxi. 55.



Conclude to enter now into the true spirit of this holy time - which is a penitential spirit - and to prepare the way of the Lord, by putting away all thy sins, and purifying thy soul for him; thus shalt thou welcome him at his coming, and shalt be welcome to him.





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DECEMBER 2ND

ON WHAT WE MUST DO TO PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD

Consider first, that the church, in the office appointed for this holy time, frequently puts us in mind of the mission and preaching of St. John the Baptist, and of the manner in which he endeavoured to prepare the people for Christ; to the end that we may learn, from the doctrine of this great forerunner of our Lord, in what dispositions we ought also to be if we would duly prepare the way for him. Now what the Baptist continually preached to the people was; that they should turn from their evil ways, and do penance, because the kingdom of heaven was at hand; that they should bring forth fruits worthy of penance, if they would escape the wrath to come - and this without delay - for that now the axe was laid at the root of the tree, and that every tree that did not bring forth good fruit should be cut up and cast into the fire. That they should not flatter themselves with the expectation of impunity or security, because they had Abraham for their father; for that God was able to raise up from the very stones children to Abraham; and therefore without a thorough conversion from their sins, they were to expect that the kingdom of God, and the grace and dignity of being children of Abraham, (the father of all the faithful,) should be taken away from them and given to the Gentiles. He added, that he baptized them indeed with water unto penance; but that another should come after him that should 'baptize them with the Holy Ghost and with fire; that his fan was in his hand, and that he should thoroughly cleanse his floor, and gather his wheat into the barn; but the chaff he would burn with unquenchable fire,' Matt. iii. This was the way St. John prepared the people for Christ; and it is by conforming ourselves in practice to these his lessons, at this holy time, that we must also prepare the way of the Lord, and be prepared for him.



Consider 2ndly, that the great theme of the preaching of St. John, in order to prepare the way of the Lord, was the virtue of penance; inasmuch as this was the only means by which sinners could ever effectually be reconciled to God, after actual mortal sin; and therefore this theme was at all times perpetually inculcated by all that were ever sent with commission from God to reclaim unhappy souls that had gone astray from him. It is then by this virtue of penance we also are to prepare the way of the Lord, at this holy time; this is the proper devotion for the time of Advent. Now this virtue of penance, (which always was, always is, and always will be, absolutely and indispensably necessary for the bringing back sinners to God,) implies three things: first, the renouncing and destroying of all our sins, by which we have offended so good a God; secondly, a turning of ourselves to God with our whole heart, and a dedicating ourselves henceforward to him both for time and eternity; and thirdly, an offering of ourselves to him, to make him what satisfaction we can for our past offences, by a penitential life. Christians, this is our great business at this holy time, if we hope to prepare ourselves for Christ; this is the proper exercise for it - to pass over in our mind, in the bitterness of our soul, all our years that have been spent in sin; to bewail and lament every day of this holy season, all our past treasons against the divine majesty; to turn now to God with our whole heart; to offer our whole souls to him; to exercise ourselves in his love, and to enter into new articles with him of an eternal allegiance, with a full determination of rather dying than being any more disloyal to him; and letting not one day pass without offering him some penitential satisfaction for our past guilt, to be united to, and sanctified by the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. O! how happy are they that employ the time of Advent in this manner! O! how willingly will our Lord, at the approaching Christmas, communicate himself to such souls as these.



Consider 3rdly, that at the approaching solemnity of Christmas, the church, by thrice celebrating the sacred mysteries on the same day, commemorates three different births of Christ: his eternal birth from his father; his temporal birth from his mother; and his spiritual birth by which he is born by grace in our souls. Hence the best devotion for the time of Christmas, is that which conduces the most to bring Christ into our souls by this spiritual birth; and consequently the best devotion for the time of Advent is to cleanse and to purify our souls, that he may find nothing in them that may disqualify them for his visits, or hinder him from coming to be spiritually born in us. For he will never come into an unclean soul, nor be born in a mansion where Satan resides. See then, my soul, what measures thou art to take, at this holy time, to prepare thy Inward house for the spiritual birth of this king of glory: 1. Thou must cleanse and purify it from sin and Satan; 2. Thou must adorn it with virtue and piety; and 3. Thou must daily invite thy Lord thither by fervent prayer; thus shalt thou prepare the way of the Lord in the manner that is best pleasing to him.



Conclude to put in practice all these lessons to the best of thy power, at this holy time: an Advent spent in this manner, in devotion and penance, cannot fail of bringing thee a happy Christmas.

Divine Preparations - Time of Advent from CHRIST IN HIS MYSTERIES by Dom Columba Marmion, O.S.B.- Part IV

IV

What are these dispositions? They can be summed up in four.



Purity of heart. Who was the best disposed for the coming of the Word to earth? Without any doubt, it was the Blessed Virgin Mary. At the moment when the Word came into this world, He found Mary's heart perfectly prepared, and capable of receiving the Divine riches which He willed to heap upon her. What were the dispositions of her soul?



Assuredly she possessed all the most perfect dispositions; but there is one which shines with particular brilliancy: that is her virginal purity. Mary is a virgin. Her virginity is so precious to her that it is her first thought when the angel proposes to her the mystery of the divine maternity.



Not only is she a virgin, but her soul is stainless. The liturgy reveals to us that God's special design in granting to Mary the unique privilege of the Immaculate Conception was to prepare for His Word a dwelling place worthy of Him: "Deus qui per immvaculatam Virginis conceptionem dignum Filio tuo HABITACULUM PRAEPARASTI" (Collect for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception). Mary was to be the Mother of God; and this eminent dignity required not only that she should be a virgin, but that her purity should surpass that of the angels and be a reflection of the holy splendour wherein the Father begets His Son: "In splendoribus sanctorum" (Ps 59:3). God is holy, thrice holy; the angels, the archangels, the seraphim hymn His infinite purity: "Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus" (Is 6:3). The bosom of God, of an infinite purity, is the dwelling-place of the Only-begotten Son of God. The Word is ever in "sinu Patris"; but, in becoming Incarnate, He also willed, in ineffable condescension, to be in "sinu Virginis Matris". It was necessary that the tabernacle that Our Lady offered Him should recall, by its incomparable purity, the indefectible brightness of the light eternal where as God He ever dwells: "Christi sinus erat in Deo Patre divinitas, in Maria Matre virginitas" (Sermo, XII, in Append. Operum S. Ambrosii).



Thus the first disposition that attracts Christ is a great purity. But as for ourselves, we are sinners. We cannot offer to the Word, to Christ Jesus, that immaculate purity which He so much loves. What is there that will take the place of it in us ? It is humility.



God possesses in His bosom the Son of His delight, but upon this bosom He also presses another son,-the prodigal son. Our Lord Himself tells us so. When, after having fallen so low, the prodigal returns to his father, he humbles himself to the dust, he confesses himself to be miserable and unworthy; and, at once, without a word or reproach, the father receives him into the bosom of his compassion: Misericordia motus (Lk 15:20).



Do not let us forget that the Word, the Son, only wills what His Father wills. If He becomes Incarnate and appears upon earth, it is in order to seek sinners and bring them back to His Father: "Non vend vocare justos sed peccatores "(Mt 9:13), This is so true that later Our Lord will often be found, to the great scandal of the Pharisees, in the company of sinners; He will allow Magdalen to kiss His Feet and bathe them with her tears.



We have not the Virgin Mary's purity, but let us at least ask for the humility of Magdalen, a contrite and penitent love. O Christ Jesus, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come to me; my heart will not be for Thee a dwelling-place of purity, misery dwells there. But I acknowledge, I avow this misery; come and relieve me of it. O Thou Who art mercy itself; come and deliver me, O Thou Who art almighty: Veni ad liberandum nos, Domine Deus virtutum!



A like prayer, joined to the spirit of penance, draws Christ to us because the humility that abases itself in its nothingness thereby renders homage to the goodness and power of Jesus: Et eum, qui venit ad me, non eficiam foras (Jn 6:37).



The sight of our infirmity ought not, however, to discourage us; far from that. The more we feel our weakness, so much the more ought we to open our soul to confidence, because salvation comes only from Christ.



Pusillanimes, confortamini et nolite timere, ecce Deus noster veniet et salvabit nos (Communion for the 3rd Sunday of Advent, cf. Is 35:4). "Ye faint-hearted, take courage and fear not: behold God, our God, will come and will save us." See what confidence the Jews had in the Messias. For them, the Messias was everything; in Him were summed up all the aspirations of Israel, all the wishes of the people, all the hopes of the race; to contemplate Him was all their ambition; to see His reign established would have fulfilled all their desires. And how confident and impatient the desires of the Jews became: "Come, O Lord and do not delay" (Alleluia for the 4th Sunday of Advent) "Shew us Thy face, and we shall be saved" (Ps 79:4).



Oh, if we who possess Christ Jesus, true God as well as true Man, really understood what the Sacred Humanity of Jesus is, we should have an unshaken confidence in it; for in His Humanity are all the treasures of knowledge and of wisdom; in it the Divinity itself dwells. This God-Man, Who comes to us is the Emmanuel, He is "God with us," He is our Elder Brother. The Word has espoused our nature, He has taken upon Himself our infirmities so as to know by experience what suffering is. He comes to us to make us partakers of His divine life; all the graces for which we can hope He possesses in their fulness in order to grant them to us.



The promises that, by the voice of the prophets, God made to His people so as to arouse in them the desire of the Messias, are magnificent. But many of the Jews understood these promises in the material and gross sense of a temporal and political kingdom. The good things promised to the just who awaited the Saviour were but the figure of the supernatural riches which we find in Christ; we have the divine reality, that is to say the grace of Jesus. The liturgy for Advent constantly speaks to us of mercy, redemption, salvation, deliverance, light, abundance, joy, peace. "Behold the Saviour cometh; on the day of His Birth, the world shall be flooded with light" (Antiphon for Lauds of the 1st Sunday in Advent; "exult then with joy, O Jerusalem, for the Saviour shall appear" (Antiphon for Lauds for the 3rd Sunday in Advent); "peace shall fill our earth when He shews Himself" (Response for Matins for the 3rd Sunday in Advent). Christ brings with Him all the blessings that can be lavished upon a soul: "Cum illo omnia nobis donavit" (Rom 8:32).



Let then our hearts yield themselves up to an absolute confidence in Him Who is to come. It is to render ourselves very pleasing to the Father to believe that His Son Jesus can do everything for the sanctification of our souls. Thereby we declare that Jesus is equal to Him, and that the Father "hath given all things into His hand" (Jn 3:35). Such confidence cannot be mistaken. In the Mass for the first Sunday in Advent, the Church thrice gives us the firm assurance of this. "None of them that wait on Thee shall be confounded": "Qui te exspectant non confundentur."



This confidence will above all be expressed in the ardent desire to see Christ come to reign more fully within us. "Adveniat regnum tuum!" The liturgy gives us the formula of these desires. At the same time that she places the prophecies, especially those of Isaias, under our eyes, and causes us to read them again, the Church puts upon our lips the aspirations and the longings of the just men of old time. She wills to see us prepared for Christ's coming within our souls in the same way as God willed that the Jews should be disposed to receive His Son. "Come, O Lord, They mercy, and grant us Thy people" (Alleluia for the 4th Sunday of Advent). "Shew us, O Lord, Thy mercy, and grant us Thy salvation" (Offertory for the 2d Sunday of Advent). "Come and deliver us, Lord, God Almighty! Raise up Thy power, and come" (Collect for the 4th Sunday of Advent).



The Church makes us constantly repeat these aspirations. Let us make them our own, let us appropriate them to ourselves with faith, and Christ Jesus will enrich us with His graces.



Doubtless, as you know, God is master of His gifts; He is sovereignly free, and none may hold Him to account for His preferences. But, in the ordinary ways of His Providence, He hears the supplications of the humble who bring their needs before Him: "Desiderium pauperum exaudivit Dominus" (Ps 9:17). Christ gives Himself to us according to the measure of the desire that we have to receive Him, and the capacity of the soul is increased by the desires that it expresses: "Dilata os tuum, et implebo illud" (Ps 80:2).



If then we want the celebration of Christ's Nativity to procure great glory for the Holy Trinity, and to be a consolation for the Heart of the Incarnate Word, a source of abundant graces for the Church and for ourselves, let us strive to purify our hearts, let us preserve a humility full of confidence, and above all let us enlarge our souls by the breath and vehemence of our desires.



Let us ask our Lady to make us share in the holy aspirations that animated her during those blessed days that preceded the Birth of Jesus.



The Church has willed--and what is more just?--that the liturgy of Advent should be full of the thought of the Blessed Virgin; she continually makes us sing the divine fruitfulness of a Virgin, a wonderful fruitfulness that throws nature into astonishment: "Tu quae genuisti, natura mirante, tuum sanctum genitorem, virgo pries ac posterius" (Antiphon Alma Redemptoris Mater).



Mary's virginal bosom was an immaculate sanctuary whence arose the most pure incense of her adoration and homage.



There is something veritably ineffable about the inward life of the Virgin during these days. She lived in an intimate union with the Infant-God Whom she bore in her bosom. The soul of Jesus was, by the Beatific Vision, plunged in the Divine light; this light radiated upon His Mother. In the sight of the angels, Mary truly appeared as "a woman clothed with the sun": "Mulier amicta sole" (Rev 12:1), all irradiated with heavenly brightness, all shining with the light of her Son. Her feelings indeed reached the high level of her faith. She summed up in herself all the aspirations, all the impulses, all the longings of humanity awaiting the world's Saviour and God, at the same time going far beyond them and giving them a value that they had never hitherto attained. What holy intensity in her desires! What unshaken assurance in confidence! What fervour in her love!...



This humble Virgin is the Queen of Patriarchs, since she is of their holy lineage, and since the Child Whom she is about to bring into the world is the Son Who resumes in His person all the magnificence of the ancient promises.



She is, too, the Queen of Prophets, since she is to bring forth the Word by Whom all the prophets spoke, since her Son is to fulfil all prophecy and announce to all people the good news of redemption (Lk 4:19).



Let us humbly ask her to make us enter into her dispositions. She will hear our prayer; we shal1 have the immense joy of seeing Christ born anew within our hearts by the communication of a more abundant grace, and we shall be enabled, like the Virgin, although in a lesser measure, to understand the truth of these words of St. John: "The Word was God... and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory... full of grace and truth... And of His fulness we have all received, and grace for grace" (Jn 1:14-16).