What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

The joys of The Sabine Farm are manifold.

It is my great pleasure to receive guests. For a few all too short days I have been blessed with a visit from a dear friend who I got to know from when he taught at the Biblicum in Rome (he lived in my residence for a year). He reluctantly returned to his billet at Fordham in that big city, but we maintain close contact.

We have been enjoying splendid Sabine weather and silence punctuated by crickets and frogs. We are having now perfect cool still evenings with very few insect invaders. Did you know that the collective noun for mosquitos is "a scourge"? In these parts, if you don’t know that word you know the concept all too well. But nothing of that has materialized, thus leaving us to the deck and our long conversations and meals.

Anyway, the mornings have been filled with dew, glittering sunlight, lots of Latin in the chapel and hard starched linens and brocade followed by garden watering and big American breakfasts. Reading and writing has the major share of the day’s attention until one seeks the gym and then, after harvesting some items from the aforementioned garden, preparation for the evening repast begins in earnest.

After 1st Vespers, tonight found us dining on a favorite preparation, which recipe I obtained in Venice (the one in Italy): Pork roast with apricots and rosemary in white wine (tonight a Vernaccia). Sabine guests of the past who are reading this will know the stuff, I think, though I haven’t made it for a long time. I served it in the form of medallions set about with the fruit in its sauce, fresh sprigs of rosemary for their personality and fragrance, and with roasted potatoes. I uncorked a 2000 old vine Zin, which was soft enough to leave the pork its character and complex enough to handle the rosemary. Some RM VSOP followed with the help of an Upman stored in the humidor also since 2000 (thanks Mom!); nearly two inches of perfectly symetrical ash at one point!.

For the evening, we discussed and redacted my upcoming sermon I will be preaching in the cathedral at Camden (NJ) for the Feast of the Assumption (during a solemn "Tridentine" Mass with Gregorian chant and polyphonic music). My guest was of great help in this regard. He gave me insights into the Magnificat which will stay with me the rest of my life (I worked them into the sermon with his excellent help). I think this homily will respond well to The Cafeteria’s plea for help. (Don’t worry Gerald! Help is on the way! Believe it or not I was forced to live with David Haas, who was "composer" in residence at the seminary I did hard time in in the USA back in the day. I always checked my shoes when leaving the chapel after "liturgy".)

In any event, the rest of our bucolic Sabine evening was spent listening to classic recordings of operatic tenors performing true bravura set pieces while watching a spider busy on a different sort of web. It was fine.

Yes… the Sabine Farm.

Today at the Vatican Basilica the feast of Bl. Innocent XI is observed.  Here is his Collect according to the Proprium Missarum ad usum Sacrosanctae Patriarchalis Basilicae Vaticanae … Proper of Masses for use at the Most Holy Patriarchal Vatican Basilica:

COLLECT:
Deus, qui ad Ecclesiae tuae libertatem tuendam
moresque fidelium salubriter reformandos,
Beatum Innocentium pastorem suscitasti,
eius nobis intercessione concede ut, fortes in fide,
omnia adversantia superemus
et cum Christo victoriam consequamur aeternam.

LITERAL VERSION:
O God, you raised up Blessed Innocent as a shepherd
in order to defend the liberty of Your Church
and wholesomely to reform the mores of the faithful,
by his intercession grant to us that, strong in the Faith,
we may overcome every adversity,
and attain an everlasting victory with Christ.

What was going on at the time of Bl. Innocent?

Born Benedetto Odescalchi in 1611 in Como, Italy, he was educated by the Jesuits and then studied law.  He held many ecclesiastical and civil offices. Pope Innocent X made him Cardinal and then legate to Ferrara. In 1650 he became bishop of Novara and there spent all the wealth of the diocese for the poor and infirm.  He returned to Rome where he was well known for his holiness and was much consulted.  He was elected Pope in the midst of great political struggles, especially with the French.  Right away he started to reform the Roman Curia get rid of nepotism and balance the budget.  He also worked to raise the level of holiness among the laity by starting in on the clergy.  As part of his program he issued a condemnation of certain bad theological ideas about morals and forbade their teaching under pain of excommunication.  He defended the freedom of the Church in England, France and Germany.

Pope Pius XII beatified Pope Innocent on 7 October 1956.  His tomb is in the Basilica of St. Peter on the right side of the nave, directly across the way from St. Pope Pius X’s tomb.  It is said that at the recognitio of his body, he was found to be incorrupt.

The Gospel reading for today’s Mass (with the Novus Ordo) is from Matthew 17:14-20. Let us have a taste of St. Augustine’s comment on this passage. The bishop uses the image of Christus Medicus, Christ the Physician quite often. This is taken from a sermon preached probably around A.D. 410 (s. 80.3). Remember: in the ancient world, there were no anaesthetics.

3. So then, seeing that in this chapter of the Gospel the Lord exorts us to prayer after saying "It was becaus of your unbelief that you could not cast out this demon," he exhorted them to prayer, you see, by concluding like this: "This kind is only cast out by fasting and prayers". If a person is to pray in order to cast out someone else’s demon, how much more to cast out his own avarice? How much more to cast out his own habit of drunkenness? How much more to cast out his own loose living? How much more to cast out his own uncleanness?

How many things there are in us which, if they persist, bar our entry into the kingdom of heaven! Just think, brothers and sisters, how urgently people beg doctors for merely temporary health, how if someone is desperately ill he’s neither slow nor shy about cling to the man’s feet, about washing the expert surgeon’s feet with his tears. And what if the doctor tells him, "The only way you can be cured is if I tie you down, cauterize, wield the knife?" He will answer, "Do what you like, only cure me!" How keenly he must long for a few day’s volatile health, as fleeting as the morning mist, if for its sake he is willing to be tied down (ligo), and cut open and burnt, and kept from eating what he likes and drinking what he likes and when he likes! He endures all this, just to die a little later; and he is reluctant to put up with a little suffering in order not to die ever! If God, the heavenly doctor in charge of us, said to you, "Do you want to be cured?" wouldn’t you say, "O yes! I do!" Or perhaps you wouldn’t say it, because you think you are perfectly well, and that means your illness is worse than ever.

Don’t forget to make a good examination of conscience and go to confession even during the summer months! We are never on vacation from keeping our souls healthy.