• Passion Saturday

  How we, each of us, should wash on another’s feet

  If I then being your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; you also out to wash one another’s feet–John xiii. 14

  Our Lord wishes that His disciples shall imitate His example. He says therefore, If I, who am the greater, being your master and the Lord, have washed your feet, you also, all the more who are the less, who are disciples, slaves even, ought to wash one another s feet. Whosoever will be the greater among you, let him be your minister . . . . Even as the Son of Man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister (Matt. xx. 26-28).

  St. Augustine says every man ought to wash the feet of his fellows, either actually or in spirit. And it is by far the best, and true beyond all controversy, that we should do it actually, lest Christians scorn to do what Christ did. For when a man bends his body to the feet of a brother, human feeling is stirred up in his very heart, or, if it be there already, it is strengthened. If we cannot actually wash his feet, at least we can do it in spirit. The washing of the feet signifies the washing away of stains. You therefore wash the feet of your brother when, as far as lies in your power, you wash away his stains. And this you may do in three ways:

  (i) By forgiving the offences he has done to you. Forgiving one another, if any have a complaint against another: even as the Lord hath forgiven you, so do you also (Coloss. iii. 13).

  (ii) By praying for the forgiveness of his sin, as St. James bids us, Pray for one another that you may be saved (James v. 16). This way of washing, like the first, is open to all the faithful.

  (iii) The third way is for prelates, who should wash by forgiving sins through the authority of the keys, according to the gospel, Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose sins you shall forgive , they are forgiven them (John xx. 23).

  We can also say that in this one act Our Lord showed all the works of mercy. He who gives bread to the hungry, washes his feet, as also does the man who harbours the harbourless or he who clothes the naked.

  Communicating to the necessities of the saints (Rom. xii. 13).

Saint for the Day

• March 28 – St. Gontran, King

  March 28

  St. Gontran, King

  St. Gontran was son of King Clotaire, and grandson of Clovis I and St. Clotildis.  Being the second son, whilst his brothers Charibert reigned at Paris, and Sigebert in Austrasia, residing at Metz, he was crowned king of Orleans and Burgundy in 561, making Chalons his capital.  When compelled to take up arms against his ambitious brothers and the Lombards, he made no other use of his victories, under the conduct of a brave general called Mommel, than to give peace to his dominions.  The crimes in which the barbarous manners of his nation involved him effaced by tears of repentance.  The prosperity of his reign, both in peace and war, condemns those who think that human policy cannot be modelled by the maxims of the Gospel, whereas nothing can render a government more flourishing.  He always treated the pastors of the Church with respect and veneration.  He was the protector of the oppressed, and the tender parent of his subjects.  He gave the greatest attention to the care of the sick.  He fasted, prayed, wept, and offered himself to God night and day as a victim ready to be sacrificed on the altar of His justice, to avert His indignation which he believed he himself had provoked and drawn down upon his innocent people.  He was a severe punisher of crimes in his officers and others, and, by many wholesome regulations, restrained the barbarous licentiousness of his troops; but no man was more ready to forgive offences against his own person.  With royal magnificence he built and endowed many churches and monasteries.  This good king died on the 28^th of March, in 593, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, having reigned thirty-one years and some months. Reflection—There is no means of salvation more reliable than the practice of mercy, since our Lord has said it: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall find mercy.”  

  Taken from the “Pictorial Lives of the Saints: with Reflections for Everyday in the year

Sunday Sermon

• Passion Sunday ~ False Accusations

  

  Under the false accusations of the Jews how calm and self-possessed our Lord remains! He does not return passion for passion, anger for anger, accusations for accusations, violence for violence; but he meets calumny with the assertion of truth, and confounds his enemies by humility and meekness. They accuse him of sin; with the sublime simplicity of a pure conscience he dares them to convince him of sin. They call him names: “Thou art a Samaritan”; to so evident a falsehood he deigns no reply. Blinded by anger, they accuse him of being possessed: “Thou hast a devil”; a simple denial, “I have not a devil,” the leaving of his own glory to his Father, the assertion of his divine mission, is the answer to the blasphemous calumny. “Now we know thou hast a devil,” repeat they, waxing more passionate; but, unimpassioned, Jesus rises above their rage to the calm heights of the Godhead, and affirms his eternal generation. Finally, losing all control of themselves, they take up stones to cast at him; but he quietly goes out of the temple and hides himself, for his hour—the hour when he would bear in silence the accusations and indignities of man, and allow himself to be led to slaughter—had not yet come.

  In this our Saviour teaches us how we should behave when the passions of others fall upon us and we are made the butt of accusations, just or unjust. In such circumstances what is generally your conduct? By no means Christian, I am afraid, but very worldly; for the world counts it true valor and justice to give tit for tat, to take tooth for tooth and eye for eye. Do you not give back as good—and often worse—than you get? Prudence, let alone Christianity, should dictate to you quite another conduct. Your counter-accusations do but strengthen and confirm the calumny; they allow it to stand, “You’re another” and “you’re no better” are poor arguments to clear yourselves. It’s a flank movement that does not cover your position, a feint that does not save you from attack. The answering of a question by asking another question is a smart trick, but no answer. A calm denial, if you could make it, or dignified silence would do the work more surely and thoroughly. And so the fight of words goes on in true Billingsgate style; to and fro they fly thick and hot, hotter and hotter as passion rises on both sides. “One word brings on another,” until white heat is reached and all control of temper lost. Then, as the Jews ended with stones, so you perhaps come to more serious passion than mere words. The result is quarrels, deadly feuds, bodily injuries, and worse, may be—bloodshed and the jail. A cow kicked a lantern in a stable, and Chicago was on fire for days. Some frivolous accusation that you pick up, while you should let it fall, starts within you a fire of anger that makes a ruin of your whole spiritual life and throws disorder all around you; families are divided; wife and husband sulk, quarrel, live a “cat and dog” life; friends are separated, connections broken. Peace flies from your homes, your social surroundings, your own hearts; the very horrors of hell are around you. Christian charity has been wounded to death, and the slightest of blows, the lightest of shafts has done it. All for the want of a little patience and self-possession! How often we hear it said: “Oh! I have such a bad temper; I’m easily riz, God forgive me! I’ve a bad passion entirely.” Well, my dear brethren, learn from this Gospel how you should control yourselves, how you should possess your souls in patience. One-half the sins of the world would be done away with, if only the lesson of this Gospel were laid to heart and put into practice. What is the lesson?

  Firstly, never seek self-praise in self-justification. Jesus turns aside the calumny of the Jews, but leaves the glorifying of himself in the hands of his Father, “who seeketh and judgeth.” Secondly, pay no attention to accusations that are absurd, evidently untrue, and frivolous. When Jesus is called names and is made out to be what every one knows he was not—”a Samaritan”—he makes no answer. Thirdly, if serious calumny, calculated to injure your usefulness in your duties and state of life, assail you, it then becomes your right, and sometimes your duty, to repel the calumny, as Jesus did when he was accused of “having a devil.” But in this case your self-justification, like that of our Saviour, should ever be calm, dignified, and Christian. It should be a defence, never an attack. The true Christian parries, he does not give the thrust; he shields himself from the arrows of malice, he does not shoot them back. Superior to revenge, he pities enemies for the evil they do; he forgives them and prays for them, as our Lord has commanded. This is Christian charity, and Christian humility as well. But as it avails little to know what we should do, if we have not God’s grace to enable us to do it, let us often say, especially in temptations to impatience: “O Jesus, meek and humble of heart! make me like unto thee.”

  Five Minute Sermons for Low Masses on All Sundays of the Year 
  Volume 1
  Imprimatur 1886