ARTICLE: Saint John Bosco, the Educator -- by Fr. Konrad zu Loewenstein

Saint John Bosco, the Educator

St. John Bosco was one of the most celebrated pedagogues and educators that has ever lived. What was his method? Apart from a brief disquisition on the 'Preventive and Repressive Systems' which we shall consider later, he did not set forth his principles of education in any detail. However, in a sermon on St. Philip Neri to a gathering of priests in May 1868, he describes an ideal of apostolate to the young, which to any-one acquainted with the life of Don Bosco and to the audience that day manifestly represents his own personal ideal. In view of this fact let us quote from this sermon at some length: -  

A Special Article for the Feast of Corpus Christi: - THE HOLY EUCHARIST ACCORDING TO CATHOLIC DOCTRINE

by Father Konrad zu Loewenstein

[A booklet with the basic doctrine on the Blessed Sacrament - reposted.]

Adoro Te devote, latens Deitas,

Quae sub his figuris vere latitas:

Tibi se cor meum totum subicit,

Quia, Te contemplans, totum deficit...

Devoutly I adore Thee, O Hidden Deity,

Who beneath these figures truly liest hidden:

My heart subjects itself entirely to Thee,

because in contemplating Thee it fails entirely...

St. Thomas Aquinas

***

PREFACE

We have considered it important to re-state clearly and concisely the sublime doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church in regard to the Holy Eucharist, in an age when notable sectors of the Catholic laity, clergy, and even of the hierarchy, trapped in a bland and merely human way of thinking, and\or seduced by a resurgence of Protestant Eucharistic heresies, manifest the most lamentable ignorance or heterodoxy in its regard, together with a conduct entirely unbecoming to such solemn realities.  

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the diocesan

authorities for having verified the conformity of this text with

Catholic Doctrine, and to the translator of the original into English

  

INTRODUCTION

The Holy Eucharist is one of the seven Sacraments of the Church. The term ‘Holy Eucharist’has two senses: The Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, and the Holy Mass. In the first sense the Holy Eucharist is considered in Itself, in the second sense It is considered in so far as It is offered.

  

I

THE MOST BLESSED SACRAMENT OF THE ALTAR

     As a Sacrament, the Most Blessed Sacrament:

    

     1) is a sign of Grace;

     2) confers Grace on us;

     3) was instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ.

     In particular:

An Easter Sermon by Father Konrad zu Loewnstein

Father Konrad zu Loewenstein

Easter 2020 

Emmaus

 ‘Was not our heart burning...’

Our Blessed Lord appears to-day to two of His disciples: Cleophas and another, perhaps his wife Maria who had stood at the foot of the Cross. When they looked back at the encounter later, what motives would they not have found for amazement and the deepest reverence? -their beloved Master Who had suffered and died in a manner so atrocious and cruel, was in truth the Messiah of the Ancient Covenant, the Glory of the Chosen People, indeed God Himself; He had risen from the dead and appeared before them in person in the form of an unknown travelling companion; He had come to their house, celebrated the Holy Eucharist for them, then vanished from their sight. 

‘Was not our heart burning within us?’ they ask each other afterwards. It was right that these chaste and pure disciples with their sincere and upright Faith in God should rejoice, says St. Lorenzo Giustiniani, that the Only Begotten Son of God should treat with them with such affection and familiarity. ‘It was right that in that ecstasy they were inebriated by fervour, illuminated with wisdom, enflamed with love at the contemplation of such tenderness and humanity... hearing the divine waves of His Wisdom... They would have felt in their soul marvellous joys never before experienced, in those supreme instants when the eternal Word of the Father spoke to them with the ineffable sweetness of His superhuman love. His words would have irradiated from Him like showers of spiritual light, His voice come forth like rivers of celestial nectar, ineffably inebriating their hearts, as though pervaded with uncontainable joy... while their mind was suspended in contemplation both at the one who spoke and at the ineffable discourses which He uttered. Certainly they would have realised that in the Lord Jesus there was something divine, but their eyes were still too closed to be able to recognise Him. They tasted the most sweet savour of His Wisdom and in this joy their heart burned in the conflagration of divine love...’

"Meditations on Death" - Part 6: A Lenten Series by Father Konrad zu Loewenstein

Part 6

A Lenten Guest Series by 

Father Konrad zu Loewenstein

6.    THE DEATH OF THE SINNER AND THE SAINT

a) The Death of the Sinner

St. Francis Borgia helping a dying impenitent (Goya)

‘My life is cut off as by a weaver; while I was yet beginning, he cut me off’ (Is 38.12). How many have been overtaken and cut off by death, while they were arranging worldly projects devised with so much labour. Others are given a time to prepare, by a shorter or longer illness.

Imagine yourself at the bed-side of a negligent Christian, overpowered by a malady with but a few hours yet to live. Behold him oppressed by pains, swoons, and suffocation; by want of breath, by cold perspirations; his reason so impaired that he feels but little, understands little, and can speak but little. We see by experience that such persons think only of their illness, of the physicians to be called to attend them, and of the remedies which may restore their health.

‘They are incapable of having any other thought than that of themselves’ says St. Lorenzo Giustiniani, and none of their relatives or friends has the courage to announce to them the advent of death, and to advise them to receive the Last Sacraments. If some-one does so, the dying man soon grows weary, and begs to be allowed to repose. He complains of a head-ache, and says it pains him to hear any-one speak. Or else he makes some reply, but is confused and knows not what he is saying.

If he does believe at all, what peace can he enjoy when he sees that in but a few moments he shall appear before the judgment-seat of Jesus Christ, Whose law and friendship he has till then despised? His sins will encompass him around, and say, in the words of St. Bernard: ‘We are your works, we will not desert you’.

To conquer bad habits, St. Augustine had to fight against them for 12 years. How will the dying man, who has always lived in sin, be able, in the midst of the pains, the stupefaction, and the confusion of death to repent sincerely of his past? His mind is darkened and his heart is hardened. ‘He that loveth danger shall perish in it’ (Eccl.us 3.27). St. Jerome teaches that of 100,000 sinners who continue in it till their death, scarcely one will be saved. St Vincent Ferrier writes that it is a greater miracle that such a one should be saved than to raise the dead to life.

Furthermore the devils will gather together and exert all their strength to assure the perdition of his soul, if indeed it is in doubt. They know that they have little time to gain it, and if they lose it at death, then they shall have lost it forever. ‘Behold the devil is come down upon you, with great wrath, knowing that he has but little time’ (Apoc 12.12). Not just one, but innumerable devils will assail him. One will say: ‘Fear not, you will recover’; another will say: ‘For years you have been deaf to God’s inspirations: how do you expect Him to have mercy on you now?’ Another will ask: ‘How can you ever repair the damage to the character of your neighbours?’ Another will say: ‘Your confessions were all invalid.’

The attacks of the devils, the certainty of his coming death, the thought of being obliged soon to take leave of everything in this world, the remorse of conscience, the time lost, the want of time present, the impossibility of conversion, the rigour of the divine judgment, the thought of eternal damnation: all these things will form a horrible tempest in his heart. And meanwhile his reason wavers, his mind darkens, and his whole frame is assailed by the pains of approaching death and the onslaught of the devils, and thus, full of confusion and terror, the dying sinner will pass into the other world. ‘The people shall be troubled and they shall pass’ (Job 34. 20).

‘Ah my God!’ exclaims St. Alphonsus, ‘Had I died on one of those nights known to Thee, where should I be now? I thank Thee for having waited on me; I thank Thee for all the time which I should have spent in Hell from the first moment that I offended Thee. Give me light and make me aware of the evil I have done Thee in voluntarily losing Thy Grace, which Thou didst merit for me by Thy death on the Cross!’ Amen.

b) The Death of the Repentant Sinner and the Saint

i) Confidence necessary at Death

God, Who is by nature Infinite Goodness, as St. Leo says, has an infinite desire to impart His own happiness to us, and therefore desires not to punish, but to have mercy on, us. ‘Return to Me,’ says the Lord, and I will receive thee’ (Jer. 3.1); ‘Turn to Me... and I will turn to you, says the Lord of Hosts’ (Zac 1.3).

With what love and tenderness does not God embrace the repentant sinner? The Good Shepherd lays the lost sheep on his shoulders rejoicing, and, coming home, calls together his friends and neighbours telling them: ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found my sheep who was lost.’ The Father runs from afar to meet and to embrace the prodigal son, and says to his other son: ‘This thy brother was dead and has returned to life; he was lost & is found’(Lk 15).

God, says Origenes, is more solicitous for our salvation than the devil is for our perdition, for the Lord loves our souls far more than the devil hates them. If the devil comes on death to tempt the dying Christian, the guardian angel will resist him together with the man’s his holy patrons; St Michael whom God has appointed to defend His faithful servants in their last combat will come, as also the divine Mother protect her child, and to drive away the devils from him. Above all Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself will come to guard that innocent or penitent sheep for whose salvation He has given His life on the Cross.

At death, the judgment of God excites fear for all, but if sinners pass from terror to despair, the saints rise from fear to confidence. ‘God does not permit us to be tempted above our strength’ (1 Cor 10.13). ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?’ (Ps. 26) ‘The Lord is my helper’ (Ps 29). When St. Bernard was tempted to despair, He said to the Saviour: ‘Thy wounds are my merits’; St. Hilarion, similarly tempted, said: ‘Go forth, my soul, what do you fear? Have you not served Christ for 70 years? And are you now afraid of death?’

But how can any-one be certain that God has forgiven his sins? ‘He can be certain’, replies St. Basil, ‘if he says: I have hated and abhorred iniquity.’ St. Claude de la Colombi`ere held it morally impossible that the man that had been faithful to God during life, should die a bad death; and St Augustine writes: ‘He who has lived well cannot die badly.’ What is true of the saints who have always lived well is also true of penitent sinners who have made a sincere conversion after grave sin. The Church teaches dogmatically that only the mortal sinner will be condemned. To have complete confidence in salvation at death, all that is necessary is, then, to be in the state of Grace.

"Meditations on Death" - Part 5: A Lenten Series by Father Konrad Loewenstein

Part 5

A Lenten Guest Series by 

Father Konrad zu Loewenstein 

5.  DELUSIONS OF THE DEVIL

1) ‘I cannot resist the temptation’

But the Apostle tells us: ‘God is faithful and never permits us to be tempted above our strength (1 Cor 10.13).’ And if you cannot resist now, how will you be able to resist next time?

2) ‘I am young and there is time for conversion’

But how do you know that there is time? And do you not know that God counts not the years but the sins of each individual? You are young, but how many sins have you already committed? There are many people of advanced age who have not been guilty of the tenth part of your sins. When the measure of the sins that He has resolved to pardon is completed, He will send a sudden death, or, which is worse, abandon you to your sin.

3) ‘I will sin, but I will confess it later’

Tell me, would you cast yourself into a pool of freezing water and say, perhaps I shall not be drowned?’ Would you take a boat into the middle of the ocean to the point where it is at its deepest, and there cast into its bosom the most precious object you possess, a jewel, an heirloom of priceless worth, and say: ‘I can always come and  retrieve it another day?’

But now you hold in your hand the infinitely precious jewel of your immortal soul, and you voluntarily cast it into Hell, and say: I hope to recover it after a good confession. And when will this confession then be? To-morrow? But who promises you to-morrow? St. Augustine says: ‘God has not promised you to-morrow: perhaps He will give it: perhaps He will not’. And if you do confess to-morrow (which is unlikely), how will you arouse the necessary sorrow? For every time you sin, this becomes more difficult.  Yielding this time will make it more difficult to resist hereafter. For each sin is like the blow of the hammer on the anvil, which serves only to make the iron harder, and so the sin hardens your heart ever more, and makes it ever less malleable to the operations of Divine Grace.

"Meditations on Death" – Part 4 : A Lenten Series by Father Konrad zu Loewenstein

Part 4

A Lenten Guest Series by 

Father Konrad zu Loewenstein 

4.    THE  FOLLY OF THE SINNER

‘The number of fools is infinite’ (Eccl 1.15)

The men of the world are fools, but they have the temerity to call themselves prudent and wise, and the faithful Christians fools. They mock their child-like faith, their prayers and mortifications, their embracing contempt, poverty, solitude, humility, and the hidden life. They never reflect that the Lord has called the wisdom of this world folly (1 Cor 3.19).

St. Bernard saw a vision of four classes of fools all with a great thirst for happiness, and trying to quench it with earth, air, fire, or water: earth for possessions; air for empty honours; fire for passions and revenge; and fetid water for voluptuous and unchaste pleasures. Such are the desires of the men of the world: such are the desires around which their prudence and wisdom revolve: desires both irrational and insatiable: ‘The possession of great wealth’ says St. Augustine, ‘does not close, but rather extends, the jaws of avarice’, and similarly for honours; the more that the unchaste man wallows in the more of impurity the greater his disgust and the greater his desire; and similarly for all the other passions.

But God has created our heart for Him, and for Him alone, and for that reason only the possession of God can make us happy, and only He can give us true peace. Brute animals were made for sensual pleasure, and in that they find their peace, but man is made for God. ‘Soul, thou hast many goods laid up for many years’ says the man in the parable (Lk 12.19), ‘Take thy rest, eat, drink, and be merry!’ Wretched fool! Says St. Basil, ‘have you then the soul of a brute that you expect that to bring you happiness?’

"Meditations on Death" Part 3 - A Lenten Series by Father Konrad zu Loewenstein: 3. The Value of Time

A Lenten Guest Series by
Father Konrad zu Loewenstein 

3.    THE VALUE OF TIME

a) The Passage of Time

What, then, is your life? ‘It is a vapour which appeareth for a while’ (Jc 4.15). The vapours exhaled from the earth, says St. Alphonsus, when raised on the air and invested with the light of the sun, make a resplendent appearance, but how long does that splendour last? It is dissipated by the first blast of wind, and then it is seen no more. ‘Cry... all flesh is grass... The grass is withered, and the flower is fallen.’ (Isaiah 40. 6); ‘Man born of woman, lives for a short while... he comes forth like a flower and is destroyed’ (Job). ‘We all die... like the waters that return no more.’ (II Kings 14.14), and ‘All rivers run into the sea’(Eccl 1.7).

The world is like a stage, says Cornelius a Lapide: one generation passes, and another comes. The generation of man is like the generation of leaves on the tree, says Homer in the Iliad: Now the leaves die and are blown about the earth by the wind; and now the trees are budding again and bringing forth new life. Life is short, even if in youth it seems long. Everything that has a limit to it is short, says St. Augustine. Indeed compared with limitless eternity the present life is nothing, or almost nothing. But if in length it is nothing, in importance it is everything. So ‘those that use this world, be as if they used it not... for the fabric of this world is passing away’ (I Cor 7.29).

‘My days... have passed as ships carrying fruits’ (Job 9.25). They have passed with their pleasures, and what remains of those pleasures now? The great ones of the world, those who have lived for pleasures, when they have died, are spoken of for a while, but they are soon forgotten: ‘Their memory has passed with a noise’ (Ps 9.7).

... As they say to themselves: ‘What hath pride profited us? or what advantage hath the boasting of riches brought us? All those things are passed away like a shadow, and like a post that runneth on, And as a ship that passeth through the waves: whereof when it is gone by, the trace cannot be found, nor the path of its keel in the waters: Or as when a bird flieth through the air, of the passage of which no mark can be found, but only the sound of the wings beating the light air, and parting it by the force of her flight; she moved her wings, and hath flown through, and there is no mark found afterwards of her way: Or as when an arrow is shot at a mark, the divided air presently cometh together again, so that the passage thereof is not known.

‘So we also being born, forthwith ceased to be: and have been able to shew no mark of virtue: but are consumed in our wickedness.  Such things as these the sinners said in Hell: For the hope of the wicked is as dust, which is blown away with the wind, and as a thin froth dispersed by the storm: and a smoke that is scattered abroad by the wind: and as the remembrance of a guest of one day that passeth by. But the just shall live for evermore: and their reward is with the Lord, and the care of them with the most High’ (Wis. 5).

“Meditations on Death” - Part 2: A Lenten Series by Father Konrad zu Loewenstein - 2: The Hour of Death

PART 2

A Lenten Guest Series by 

Father Konrad zu Loewenstein

‘It is given to man once to die, and after follows the judgment’ (Hebrews 9.27)

THE HOUR OF DEATH

‘Nothing is more certain than death’, says the Idiota, ‘but nothing is more uncertain than its Hour’.

a) The Certainty of Death

In 150 years from now all those who are at present alive will have passed out of this world: all those who now fill the bustling streets of our cities, who fill our houses, who inhabit the countryside, who sail the sea, or fly and travel, who wake and sleep: all these will havedeparted. “Days will be formed and no-one in them” (Ps. 138.16). In the same way, of allthose who lived 150 years ago, not one is still alive. “Yesterday for me: to-day for thee” (Eccl. 38. 23).

What foolishness, then, to live on this earth as though it were to be our eternal dwelling – what foolishness for a traveller passing through a country on an important mission to spend all he possesses on a house that he must soon abandon, or for a man crossing a desert to settle at an oasis and advance no further. What eminent wisdom, by contrast, to live as though each day, each act, were our last; to fill each day and each act with an ever more perfect love of God: to prepare us for our passage into Eternity.

"Meditations on Death" A Lenten Guest Series by Father Konrad zu Loewenstein - I: Introduction

A Lenten Guest-Series by 
Father Konrad zu Loewenstein

Now that we have entered the liturgical season of Septuagesima, and are about to enter the great penitential season of Lent, it is appropriate to recall to mind the perennial Catholic teaching on death.

To this end I offer readers a synthesis of the respective material to be found in the book Preparation  for Death by St. Alphonsus Maria de' Liguori.

Proficiat ad vitam aeternam! Amen.

MEDITATIONS ON DEATH

after the ‘Preparation for Death’, by St. Alphonsus Maria de’Liguori

Introduction