12.6.13

June 12, 2013

● Congratulations to our students on the completion of the 2012-2013 academic year! Enjoy your summer vacation!
● The New Family BBQ is on Saturday, June 15, at 12:00 Noon.
● Reminder to all moms about our “Mothers’ Retreats.”  There will be two different weekend retreats at the Norbertine convent in Tehachapi:  August 2-4 and August 9-11.  Contact Rimini Esser for more details: riminiesser@gmail.com

The first day of classes for next school year is August 26.  Students return on Sunday, August 25.  We begin, students and parents, at 7:00 PM in the abbey church with Eucharistic Benediction, after which there will be a parent meeting in the school refectory (i.e. dining hall).  Football players return the week before, August 18, at 4:00 PM.

Sermon by Fr. Chrysostom Baer, O. Praem.
Fr. Chrysostom teaches in the abbey seminary.

June 3rd, feast of St. Charles Lwanga and companions

In the play Antigone by the fifth century BC playwright Sophocles, the kingdom of Thebes has recently been rocked by civil war.  The two greatest casualties were the sons of the ill-fated Oedipus.  Creon, the new king, orders that one son be buried honorably because he was Creon’s ally, but that the other, rebellious son be left unburied on the battlefield as an act of public shame.  Antigone, sister to both these dead brothers, in defiance to the king’s edict but in obedience to the law of the gods, repeatedly insists upon burying the brother rotting on the battleground so that his soul may pass to Hades.

Mr. Christopher Check
In the first reading today, Tobit is mocked by his Jewish neighbors in Assyrian Nineveh because he, too, has repeatedly defied royal edicts that forbade burying the dead, which was horrifying to Jewish sensibilities.  In the story before our passage today, Sennacherib, thwarted king of Assyria, 185,000 of whose troops had been slain by the angel of God, had upon his return to Nineveh killed many Israelites, and Tobit had buried them so that when the king later went looking for their bodies, they were not to be found.
But both stories, one drama and the other history, examine the obedience men owe to their lawful superiors and what the limits of human authority are.  In both cases, the title characters prefer to act piously in accordance with the law of God in the face of regal wrath rather than submit meekly like everyone else yet be guilty before God.

In fact, this was the same dilemma faced by the martyrs we celebrate today.  St. Charles Lwanga and his companions were commanded by the evil Ugandan King Mwanga to do things contrary to the Natural Law.  But the Natural Law is reason’s participation in the Eternal Law of God, so even if they hadn’t been Christians, good manly judgment would have told them the king had exceeded his jurisdiction and so could not be obeyed.

In a rage at her disobedient piety, King Creon shut his niece Antigone in a cave, where she eventually hanged herself.  Her fiancé, Hæmon, found her body and stabbed himself to death.  His mother and Creon’s wife, Eurydice, when she heard of this devastation, committed suicide, cursing her husband with her last breath.  Creon, for his part, had already been brought to repentance for what he had done, but of course too late.  It was, after all, a Greek tragedy.

Tobit, on the other hand, only suffered temporary blindness for his piety.  Through the providence of God he lived not only to see again through a miraculous cure, but also to see his son married whereupon he sang a magnificent canticle in praise of God for His goodness and mercy, foretelling the eternal dwelling of God in the heavenly Jerusalem.
Porretta Family
The Ugandan Christians, however, were subjected to awful torments.  Most of them were burned to death; others were speared; one was cut up and left on the road to die.  In the compound where they were to be killed, the adopted son of the chief executioner was part of the Christian group.  When his father ordered him to hide and so escape death, he refused.  And when the other executioners ordered him to obey his father, the youth replied, “My Father Whom I must obey is in heaven.”  These martyrs did not merely foretell the heavenly Jerusalem; they are the heavenly Jerusalem, and God dwells in them.

From the first century to the twenty-first, there have always been men willing to pit their authority against that of God.  But those who wish to live—and maybe even die—with a clean conscience before God will not end their days in Greek despair but immortal joy.  Through the intercession of the indomitable Ugandan martyrs, may we also so prefer obedience to the Eternal Law over the haranguing of those hell-bent on the unnatural that we may merit to take our place with the white robed army in the heavenly Jerusalem.



● For all the benefactors of St. Michael’s Preparatory School, living and deceased.

29.5.13

May 29, 2013

Congratulations to the Graduates of 2013!


● Thank you to Diane Emanuel and all the others who organized the graduation reception!
●Thursday, May 30, is the Solemnity of Corpus Christi.  The abbey/students will have Holy Mass at 11:00 AM (no afternoon classes).  There will be a Eucharistic Procession that evening immediately following 5:00 PM Vespers.  All are welcome!
● The last day of school is June 6.  Students will be dismissed at 10:00 AM (and no sooner). Students who need to spend the night of June 6 at the school due to travel plans are allowed to do so.
● The New Family BBQ is on Saturday, June 15, at 12:00 Noon.
● Reminder to all moms about our “Mothers’ Retreats.”  There will be two different weekend retreats at the Norbertine convent in Tehachapi:  August 2-4 and August 9-11.  Contact Rimini Esser for more details: riminiesser@gmail.com
● The first day of classes for next school year is August 26.  Students return on Sunday, August 25.  We begin, students and parents, at 7:00 PM in the abbey church with Eucharistic Benediction, after which there will be a parent meeting in the school refectory (i.e. dining hall).  Football players return the week before, August 18, at 4:00 PM.


Graduation Speech Given by Mr. Christopher Check

Ut cessavit autem loqui, dixit ad Simonem, “Duc in altum et laxate retia vestra in capturam.”

And when he had ceased speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”

Father Abbot, Father Prior, Father Victor, confreres, faculty, parents, grandparents, and godparents, friends and benefactors of Saint Michael’s,

It is equal parts honor and joy for me to be welcomed back to offer the commencement address at this holy abbey.

I feel something of an obligation to alert you, Father Abbot, that institutions that invite me to speak more than once are very likely courting the unwanted scrutiny of some sinister federal agency: And here I am thinking of something rather more malicious than the IRS of the Obama administration; something more like the amorphously defined agencies that lurk behind all the malice in a Dean Koontz novel. So when the black SUVs start climbing the drive from El Toro Road or descending from the mountains behind the abbey…Well, you may have me to blame.
On the other hand, my sense is that St. Michael’s has long been regarded by the authorities as a subversive organization.

And indeed it is. The confreres of St. Michael’s--in the classroom, or from the pulpit, behind the confessional screen, and before the Altar of God--have been joyfully undermining the work of Satan and his demons for more than half a century.

Class of 2013
The confreres of St. Michael’s Abbey each day draw down from heaven countless graces as they unite their voices in song in the Divine Office with the voices of the heavenly host. And let me underscore here--men of the class of 2013--host means “army.”

It is the army before which your Archangel patron unsheathes his broadsword and leads these eager confreres into battle against the organized forces of evil.
Now—men of the class of 2013—it is common in our age—to regard evil as some vaguely defined failure on the part of men to organize properly human society, but—once we apply the right social systems and the right technologies, we will at last eradicate all forms of human suffering. This fool’s errand in the perfectibility of human society often goes by the name of progress and its chief proponents throughout history include such figures as guillotine enthusiast Robespierre, communist Karl Marx, eugenicist Margaret Sanger, and mass murderers, Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung.

And following in the footsteps of these monsters, knowingly or not, is virtually every commencement speaker at virtually every commencement exercise. I’ll give you their speeches in one sentence: This venerable institution has made you brilliant and wonderful, now go out beyond its walls and make the world a better place.

Very well. Here’s my question: How is it then that countless graduating classes have been sent forth by countless commencement speakers to go forth and make the world a better place, and yet it is patently obvious that we are well into what Christopher Dawson seventy years ago called the “disintegration of Western Civilization.” I could use up all the time that Fr. Victor gave me just going over that data, but suffice to say that it is plain that we live in a world afflicted with a profound cultural divide, and one that is only going to get worse.  The dominant culture has declared war on marriage, on innocent life, and on Christianity.

Oh very well: here are two statistics. When I was married 22 years ago last Saturday, most American households were married-couple households.  That is no longer true. Most American households today are not.  When I was born 47 years ago, three quarters of 24-year-olds in America were married.  Seventy-five percent.  Today, that figure is nine percent.

The superabundant schemes that the meddlers of the world have inflicted on mankind since the so-called Enlightenment---and here gentlemen we have the definition of a liberal: someone who cannot mind his own business: there is a line somewhere in Pascal where he states: the world’s ills are the work of people who are not content to stay home— The superabundant schemes the meddlers of the world have inflicted on mankind in their effort to eradicate what they call evil are in reality denials of original sin.

But the confreres of St. Michael’s Abbey, thanks be to God, are not afflicted with this illusion. They know that evil is not something to be overcome by a political or economic triumph. They know that evil is not something to be overcome with a legislative or therapeutic solution. They know that evil is personal and that it is supernatural. You don’t have to take my word for it. Saint Paul’s stirring final chapter of his letter to the Ephesians settles the question: “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

So when we speak of making the world a better place—men of the class of 2013—it is the confreres of St. Michael’s Abbey who are doing the heavy lifting, the central work. If you want to know who is holding back the gates of hell here in Orange County--and I think we can all agree that that is not an assignment for the faint of heart--it is the confreres of St. Michael’s.
And now, because you young men have been formed here in this place, amidst the beauty and the reverence and the virility of Abbey life, you are now called to stand shoulder to shoulder alongside the confreres in the army of St. Michael.

May we linger for a moment on that word virility. You all see in it the Latin root, vir, meaning “man,” as in man the sex not man the species. It is not an accident that this same root, vir, is in virtue, and when we go back to the Latin word, virtu, and understand the word as the Romans did we can see why. Indeed, the word appears in the Latin text of Leo XIII’s prayer to St. Michael. “Virtute Divini.” By the Divine power.  Power is in inadequate translation. Go to Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy if you want the Roman understanding of “virtu.” It is really something closer to “manly strength” or even “courage under fire” or “courage in the face of adversity.” It was the special fire, as Machiavelli explains, in the hearts of Romans that gave them the strength to suffer one defeat after another from the brilliant Carthaginian General Hannibal Barca and at last crush his army on the plains of Zama under the command of Scipio Africanus.

And it is this manly courage to which you are now called.
Now in practice what do I mean? We have all heard speeches and sermons exhorting us to this or that disposition of heart with precious little clear direction. I do not wish to be accused of this so I am going to tell you three truths. And, in honor of Father Victor--and so that you can remember them to your grave--I have to each attached a Latin sentence. (The wise among you, by the way, will continue with your Latin studies. It is the language of Christendom, and as Pope Benedict XVI understood, restoring its use is necessary to the restoration of civilization. And the Holy Father did not mean merely Latin’s liturgical use, though he did understand that necessity.)
Here is the first truth, a well-known Roman aphorism: Nemo dat quod no habet.
Nemo dat quod no habet. No one gives what he does not have.

Gentlemen, there is only one meaningful way to change the world and that is to restore the binding force that Christianity once exercised on the world. You can be part of this effort only if you first transform your heart in Christ. You cannot help save the world if you do not see first every day to your own salvation. Our Lord is explicit on this point: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.”

You have had the best Catholic formation available in America. I don’t need to tell you about the Sacraments, personal devotions, and norms of piety. But let me underscore something you have heard about everyday here. The interior life. You must attend every day to your interior life: spiritual reading, the reading of Scripture, especially the life of Christ, prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. It is impossible for you to do good work if you first do not put your own soul in order. Nemo dat quod no habet. You cannot share love of God if you do not have it, and it is in the interior life that you will cultivate love of God. The venerable French Abbot Dom Chautrard in the book that would become Pope Saint Pius X’s beside book, The Soul of the Apostolate, makes clear that unless apostolic work is suffused with Love of God it will bear no fruit.

Again, I call in Saint Paul to back me up. This time from Corinthians: Absent love, an insight capable of penetrating the deepest mysteries of human experience is worthless.  Absent love, heroic acts of almsgiving are nothing more than a blaring trumpet or a clanging cymbal. A man can be eloquent and energetic, clever beyond his peers, or wise beyond his years, but these talents will not serve him in the least unless they are leavened by love of Jesus Christ.
So: Nemo dat quod no habet. No one gives what he does not have. If you do not cultivate love of Jesus Christ in your interior life you cannot share it with others and you will not be fit for service in the army of St. Michael. 
And St. Paul makes clear that love is not self-seeking.  It is, in fact, the opposite. Love seeks the good of the other.
And this takes me to my second truth.
Here is the Latin: Non est bonum esse hominem solum.
It is not good for man to be alone.

Gentlemen: let me cut to the chase. Today young men, and increasingly not-so-young men, when it comes to the fairer sex, are in a state of perpetual shopping.  I am not suggesting that any one of you will become one of the serial fornicators that are so much a part of the Southern California landscape, but there are a growing number of boys—and yes--boys is the word, be they 25 or 35—who are devout Catholics who won’t go find a young lady and get married. They may be daily Mass goers; they probably tell their beads every Saturday in front of the local abortuary; they love to get together on Saturday nights, open a bottle of cabernet, and discuss the social-justice encyclicals. And all this while QUOTE “discerning their vocations.” Well, let me help: the single life is not a vocation. Man is not meant to live alone. Man is intended to live in the context of a vow.

Frankly, discerning the vocation to marriage does not take much effort because the call to marriage is universal. Marriage is the natural institution without which there can be no civilization. Marriage preexists the Church and all human society. As G.K. Chesterton observes, “More holy than the gods of the city; [are] the gods of the hearth.”

Because of the universal human inclination to marry, the only discerning you gentlemen need to do is this: will you sacrifice the good of marriage for the higher good of priest or religious? Should you decide the priesthood is not for you, then go get married. There are whole parishes these days to which young people seeking orthodoxy and liturgical reverence are flocking. These parishes are overflowing with young ladies who are looking for a man to step up to the plate and be the head of the household. They want to be wives and mothers and rear joyful Catholic families.

Are they supermodels? Thank God, no. Nor are they perfect saints the likes of Teresa of Avila or Joan of Arc. Thank God again, men, because hobbled by your own shortcomings you could never live with such a lady. 
Look—no one is ever “ready” to get married (or to have children, for that matter). There will never be “enough” money, “enough” higher education, “enough” job security, “enough” of a house, and indeed, “enough” certainty that she is the one. All these objections boil down to something embarrassingly pusillanimous: a lack of faith. Gentlemen do not be pusillanimous. Be the opposite. Be magnanimous. Magnanimity—or greatness of heart—was one of Aristotle’s favorite virtues. And magnanimity requires not only greatness of heart but also the capacity to give that heart away. Msgr. Ronald Knox once said that the problem of our age is not one of broken hearts but hardened hearts. To this I would add that the hardened heart is the heart not given. Only in giving ourselves away are we fulfilled. Is there risk in this? Yes. Magnanimity requires a capacity for risk.
 
And this takes us to our final Latin injunction. It is the one with which I began.
Duc in Altum. Put out into the deep.

All of you know that on October 7, 1571, the galleys of the Holy League squared off in the bay of Lepanto against the galleys of the Islamic East. Christendom was saved by the intercession of Our Lady and we honor the event each year on the day by celebrating her Holy Rosary.
But perhaps you do not know this detail:

The Holy League was commanded by the 24-year-old Don John of Austria, and as his flagship, Real, was about to collide with the Ottoman flagship, Sultana, Don John, who was famous throughout Christendom as a great dancer, broke into a galliard on the prow of his vessel.
Since the gridiron playbook has probably received somewhat more attention here at St. Michael’s than have the manual for courtly dances of the 16th Century, I will go ahead and tell you that a Galliard is a vigorous dance based on five steps that was—as we would say today—all the rage throughout Europe. 
Imagine the 24-year-old captain general, altogether overcome with anticipation of the impending battle, leaping and landing by the bow cannons.  And now imagine the cheers the sight of his manifest thrill must have sent throughout his soldiers. And now imagine seconds later, Spanish infantry, the world’s finest, boarding Sultana, Don John himself leading the charge and receiving, and brushing off, a wound to the leg that just moments before was dancing.
What is this? It is putting out into the deep with Battle Joy. We should expect nothing less from a Christian soldier squaring off against the forces of evil.

Chesterton describes in the Ballad of the White Horse Alfred the Great who has lost all of his kingdom but a marshy island the size of a football field. Yet does he curl up into a ball? No:
The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark,
But the men signed of the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark. 
From Alfred the Great badly outnumbered by the Danes, to Christopher Columbus reading aloud the Last Gospel every night at the bow of Santa Maria, a sea-tossed vessel that could easily fit in this small cloister, To Hernan Cortez conquering the demon-worshipping Aztec kingdom with 500 Spanish soldiers, to Thomas More cracking jokes on his approach to the shambles, to Don John dancing with sword drawn about to give battle, Christian men have ever gone “gaily into the dark.” The have always put out into the deep with battle joy.

It is this battle joy, gentlemen, that is your patrimony as Soldiers of Christ. It is sanctified and made holy in the service of Christ but like all the great things in Christendom we find glimpses of in ancient times as the world anticipated the Incarnation.

Remember the Spartans defending the hot gates at Thermopylae. They are outnumbered 500 to one by the armies of Xerxes. As they prepare for battle one Spartan declares that he has heard that the Persian army is so numerous that when they let fly their arrows they block out the sun. What does Dienekes say? “Good. Then we shall have our fight in the shade.” That is battle joy.

Gentlemen, you will not have your fight in the shade. You will have it in the black of night that threatens to consume our troubled age. 
But “Nil Desperandum!”  Despair not. Grace is most abundant when it is in greatest demand (There’s Saint Paul again). You are well armed with the formation this Abbey has given you. You have the infinite graces of the Sacraments of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, and you have something that I can assure you has seen me through every possible challenge, the maternal solicitude of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Remember men, Our Lady is a mother most mericiful, but she is also the fierce fighter who crushes the head of the serpent and is prefigured in the Song of Songs, “Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array.”

Get in array behind our Lady and go with joy in to the dark. Duc in Altum. Put out into the deep!


For the repose of the soul of Christine Allen, who passed away in a fatal fall while on her way home from Wyoming Catholic College.