Great Video on the Holy Priesthood

Check out this great DVD on the priesthood, produced by the Midwest Theological Forum. Speakers include St. Vincent Seminary's own, Dr. Scott Hahn.

For the Windows Media Version: Click here For the Quicktime Version: Click here

Sacred Reading (Lectio Divina)

From: "The Cloud of Unknowing"
 

 
That without imperfect meekness coming before, it is impossible for a sinner to come to the perfect Virtue of meekness in this life.

For although I call it imperfect meekness, yet I had liefer have a true knowing and a feeling of myself as I am, and sooner I trow that it should get me the perfect cause and virtue of meekness by itself, than it should an all the saints and angels in heaven, and all the men and women of Holy Church living in earth, religious or seculars in all degrees, were set at once all together to do nought else but to pray to God for me to get me perfect meekness. Yea, and yet it is impossible a sinner to get, or to keep when it is gotten, the perfect virtue of meekness without it. 120

And therefore swink and sweat in all that thou canst and mayest, for to get thee a true knowing and a feeling of thyself as thou art; and then I trow that soon after that thou shalt have a true knowing and a feeling of God as He is. Not as He is in Himself, for that may no man do but Himself; nor yet as thou shalt do in bliss both body and soul together. But as it is possible, and as He vouchsafeth to be known and felt of a meek soul living in this deadly body.

 
And think not because I set two causes of meekness, one perfect and another imperfect, that I will therefore that thou leavest the travail about imperfect meekness, and set thee wholly to get thee perfect. Nay, surely; I trow thou shouldest never bring it so about. But herefore I do that I do: because I think to tell thee and let thee see the worthiness of this ghostly exercise before all other exercise bodily or ghostly that man can or may do by grace. How that a privy love pressed in cleanness of spirit upon this dark cloud of unknowing betwixt thee and thy God, truly and perfectly containeth in it the perfect virtue of meekness without any special or clear beholding of any thing under God. And because I would that thou knewest which were perfect meekness, and settest it as a token before the love of thine heart, and didst it for thee and for me. And because I would by this knowing make thee more meek.

121For ofttimes it befalleth that lacking of knowing is cause of much pride as me thinketh. For peradventure an thou knewest not which were perfect meekness, thou shouldest ween when thou hadst a little knowing and a feeling of this that I call imperfect meekness, that thou hadst almost gotten perfect meekness: and so shouldest thou deceive thyself, and ween that thou wert full meek when thou wert all belapped in foul stinking pride. And therefore try for to travail about perfect meekness; for the condition of it is such, that whoso hath it, and the whiles he hath it, he shall not sin, nor yet much after.

Feast of St. Romuald (founder of the Benedictine Camaldolese Monks)

Excerpted from The Church's Year of Grace, Pius Parsch.
 

St. Romuald, the founder of the Camaldolese Order, could not decide for a considerable time whether to serve God in a religious life or to remain in the world. After his father killed a relative in a duel at which Romuald was forced to be present, he went to the monastery of St. Apollinaris, near Ravenna, and did penance for forty days. Later, he entered this same monastery as a monk. Then he became a follower of the hermit Marinus in Venice. In the course of time he founded an order of hermits which received its name after the most famous of his foundations, Camalduli in Tuscany.

Romuald's was one of the strictest orders for men in the West (a branch of the Benedictine Order). Members live isolated in small huts, observing strict silence and perpetual fasting, constantly praying or engaged in manual labor. Our saint enjoyed the grace of bringing sinners, particularly those of rank and power, back to God. When he died, he was a little over seventy years; he had never used a bed, had always sought out ways of practicing severe penances. 15 years later his pupil, the holy doctor of the Church, St. Peter Damian, wrote his biography.

"His greatness lies in the rigorous and austere character of his interpretation of monastic life-an approach that was quite singular and unique. In the deepest recesses of his being, Romuald was an ascetic, a monk; not perhaps, a monk of that serene peace and self-possession exemplified by St. Benedict in his life and described by him in his Rule. Nor was Romuald an organizer who through prudent legislation enabled his spirit to flourish and affect great numbers. He reminds us of the stolid figures inhabiting the Eastern deserts, men who by most rigorous mortification and severest self-inflicted penances gave a wanton world a living example of recollection and contemplation. Their very lives constituted the most powerful sermon. It is in company with men like these that St. Romuald continues to live."

Romuald was not at all a fluent reader. Whenever he made another of his many mistakes, Marinus, his teacher, beat him on his left cheek. Finally it became too much for Romuald. "But, dear master," he said modestly, "hit me on the right cheek in the future. My left ear is almost deaf." The master was surprised at such patience and thereafter acted more considerately.

The saint loved to say, "Better to pray one psalm with devotion and compunction than a hundred with distraction."

When the holy man felt his end was near, he retired to the monastery at Val di Castro. After so many journeys he was eager to begin his final pilgrimage to an eternal resting place. Before the reform of the Calendar in 1969 his feast was celebrated on February 7, the anniversary of the translation of his relics in 1481. His feast is now June 19, the day he died in 1027. In the Calendar reform the Church has tried to move the feasts of the saints to their "birthday" — referring to the day on which the saint died and celebrated his/her birth into heaven.

Symbols: Crutch; ladder.
Often Portrayed as: Monk pointing at a ladder on which other monks are ascending to heaven indicative his founding of his Order.

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CAMALDOLITES (called also Camaldolensians, Camaldolese, Camaldules, Camaldulians, from the monastery at Camaldoli near Arezzo): A religious order springing from the movement for monastic reform which also gave rise to the congregations of Cluny and Lorraine, with which it is allied in some respects, though it differs from them in others. The Italian movement is wholly independent of the French, and began later�not before the close of the tenth century, after the Cluniac monks had already reformed numerous monasteries in upper and central Italy. It was more enthusiastic than the French, and had for its object not so much the strict enforcement of the Benedictine rule as the commendation, in opposition to the moral corruption which was even deeper in the south than in the north, of the severest form of the ascetic life, that of hermits. This recalls the Greek monastic originators; and the fact is easily explicable by the strong influence of Greek traditions in Italy, especially in the south.

St. Romuald.

St. Romuald is the most prominent, but by no means the only, representative of this idea. Before or with him were working for the same end the Armenian hermit Simeon, St. Dominic of Foligno, the founder of Fonte Avellana, and the Greek Nilos of Rossano. Romuald was born at Ravenna, of the ducal family there, about 950. He was startled out of a worldly life when his father Sergius killed a kinsman in a duel arising out of a dispute over a piece of property, and retired to the monastery of S. Apollinare in Classe near Ravenna to do penance forty days on his father's behalf. His ascetic zeal was not satisfied here, although the monastery had been reformed not long before by Majolus of Cluny. He began to live a hermit's life near Venice, continued it in Catalonia, and then returned to the neighborhood of Ravenna. Wherever he went, a group of disciples formed around him; but as soon as they were sufficiently numerous in any one place, he gave them into the charge of a superior and left them. Most of these colonies were in central Italy; the three most important were Val di Castro, Monte Sitrio in Umbria, and Camaldoli, where he established a monastery in 1012. His organization shows a combination of the Western cenobite system with the Eastern anchorite life. The brothers lived in single cells, with an oratory in the midst. The whole Psalter was recited every day; the only written memorial left by Romuald was an exposition of the Psalms, which, however, is taken almost word for word from that of Cassiodorus. Meals were taken in common, but they were exceedingly scanty; the brothers went barefoot and wore their hair and beards long; the rule of silence was strictly observed. They busied themselves with agriculture and various handicrafts, those near the sea especially with the making of baskets and nets. We meet for the first time in these hermit colonies with famuli, the later lay brothers, who relieved the monks of the more burdensome household duties The rule of fasting and silence was not so strict for them, but apparently, as at Fonte Avellana, they had to take lifelong monastic vows. This institution was borrowed by Gualberto, a disciple of Romuald's, for his order of Vallombrosa and further developed by him. Romuald's activity was not confined to the founding of these communities. He made a deep impression upon the most variedclasses, and exercised a great influence over the emperor Otto III., who, it is asserted not improbably, promised him to exchange the crown for the cowl after he had conquered Rome. Though Romuald disclaimed any intention of taking part in ecclesiastical politics, he raised his voice loudly in Italy against simony and the marriage of the clergy. His zeal called him to the mission-field; disciples of his penetrated into Russia and Poland, there to meet death for their faith, and the desire of the martyr's crown finally took the aged hermit himself to Hungary. Ill health hindered his work there, and he returned to die in 1027.

The Camaldolese.

His zeal for a reform of monasticism remained active in his followers. They did not, however, emphasize the hermit ideal to the same extent, and the Italian movement gradually approximated to that of Cluny. Romuald's spirit was best followed in the community of Camaldoli, which received papal confirmation from Alexander II. in 1072. Its rule was first written in 1080 by the fourth prior, Rudolph, who modified in some respects the extreme strictness of Romuald's prescriptions, and also founded (1086) the first convent of nuns under this rule, San Pietro di Luco at Mogello. Camaldoli received many rich gifts, and the congregation spread throughout Italy, without, however, producing any very notable men except the famous jurist Gratian. The transition from the hermit to the community life became more marked, in spite of the efforts of Ambrose the Camaldolite of Portico, "major" or head of the congregation in 1431, supported by Pope Eugenius IV., to restore the old ideals. In 1476 the community of St. Michael at Murano near Venice renounced the obedience of Camaldoli, and formed a group of distinctly cenobitic Camaldolese houses, confirmed as a congregation by Innocent VIII. In 1513 Leo X. reunited all the Camaldolese monks under the headship of Camaldoli, providing that the major should hold office for but three years, and be chosen alternately from the hermits and the cenobites. But in 1520 he allowed Paolo Giustiniani to draw up new statutes and to form the new communities of hermits which he was to found into an independent congregation of St. Romuald. This new congregation, which took its name from Monte Corona near Perugia, had a very strict rule; it spread through Germany, Austria, and Poland. A fourth congregation, that of Turin, was founded in 1601 by Alessandro di Leva (d. 1612), to take in the hermits of Piedmont. A breach of this became practically a separate congregation on account of the political views of Richelieu, who was unwilling that the French hermitages should be subject to Italian superiors. By a brief of Urban VIII. (1635), its head was always to be a Frenchman, and directly subject to the pope. From 1642 Gros-Bois near Paris was its mother house. All the French communities perished at the Revolution. The congregation of Camaldoli has now six houses, including Camaldoli itself and one famous for its picturesque site high above Naples. The principal house of the Murano congregation is San Gregorio in Rome, from which came the only Camaldolese monk who has occupied the papal throne, Gregory XVI. (1831-46). Outside of Italy there is only the community of Bielany in the diocese of Cracow, belonging to the congregation of Monte Corona. The total membership of the order is not more than 200. Convents of nuns exist only in Rome and Florence.

(G. GR�TZMACHER.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Petrus Damianus, Vita Romualdi is in Damianus, Opera, ed. C. Cajetanus, ii. 255 sqq., Rome, 1608, and MPL cxliv. 953 sqq. Another Vita is in ASB 7th Feb., ii. 124-140. Consult: G. B. Mittarelli and G. D. Costadoni, Annales Camaldulenses, 9 vols., Venice, 1755-1773; W. Wattenbach, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen, i. 436, Berlin, 1893; C. W. Currier, Hist. of Religious Orders, pp. 118-123, New York, 1896; P. Helyot, Ordres monastiques, vol. v.; Heimbucher, Orden and Kongregationen, i. 203-208.

The Monastic Tonsure

newadvent.org

(Latin tondere, "to shear")

Since the founding of St. Vincent Archabbey by Archabbot Boniface Wimmer, the tradition of the monastic tonsure during the rite of the reception of the holy monastic habit has been a special tradition retained at St. Vincent even after the Second Vatican Council. This year, six men, on July 10th, will continue this sacred monastic tradition when our Archabbot Douglas Nowicki, O.S.B. using the same pair of scissors Father Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B. used in 1846, will cut our new Novices hair in the sign of the cross to symbolize their complete abandonment to the will of God and to be seen as a poor man (a slave for Jesus Christ) in the world. With that being stated, here is another article on the history of the cleric tonsure.

A sacred rite instituted by the Church by which a baptized and confirmed Christian is received into the clerical order by the shearing of his hair and the investment with the surplice. The person thus tonsured becomes a partaker of the common privileges and obligations of the clerical state and is prepared for the reception of orders. The tonsure itself is not an ordination properly so called, nor a true order. It is rather a simple ascription of a person to the Divine service in such things as are common to all clerics. Historically the tonsure was not in use in the primitive Church during the age of persecution. Even later, St. Jerome (in Ezech., xliv) disapproves of clerics shaving their heads. Indeed, among the Greeks and Romans such a custom was a badge of slavery. On this very account, the shaving of the head was adopted by the monks. Towards the end of the fifth, or beginning of the sixth, century, the custom passed over to the secular clergy.

As a sacred rite, the tonsure was originally joined to the first ordination received, as in the Greek Church it still is to the order of lector. In the Latin Church it began as a separate ceremony about the end of the seventh century, when parents offered their young sons to the service of God. Tonsure is to be given by a candidate's ordinary, though mitred abbots can bestow it on their own subjects. No special age for its reception is prescribed, but the recipient must have learnt the rudiments of the Faith and be able to read and write. The ceremony may be performed at any time or place. As to the monastic tonsure, some writers have distinguished three kinds: (1) the Roman, or that of St. Peter, when all the head is shaved except a circle, of hair; (2) the Eastern, or St. Paul's, when the entire head is denuded of hair; (3) the Celtic, or St. John's, when only a crescent of hair is shaved from the front of the head. In Britain, the Saxon opponents of the Celtic tonsure called it the tonsure of Simon Magus. According to canon law, all clerics are bound to wear the tonsure under certain penalties. But on this subject, Taunton (loc. cit. inf.) says: "In English-speaking countries, from a custom arising in the days of persecution and having a prescription of over three centuries, the shaving of the head, the priestly crown, seems, with the tacit consent of the Holy See, to have passed out of use. No provincial or national council has ordered it, even when treating of clerical dress; and the Holy See has not inserted the law when correcting the decrees of those councils."

The Monastic Beard

http://www.newadvent.org/

One of the most common questions our bearded brethren hear is, "Hey are you guy's CFR's?" In which we politely respond, "No, we are Benedictines," to which they respond back, "But you guys have the beard thing." Although it is a true compliment to be confused with the Friars of the Renewal, the truth is that we Benedictines, especially here at St. Vincent have had the "Beard thing" going on for quite some time. Here is interesting article on the clerical beard and its history. Look for more about our founder, Archabbot Boniface Wimmer, and his "magnificent beard" in the next couple of days.

Among the Jews, as among most Oriental peoples, the beard was especially cherished as a symbol of virility; to cut off another man's beard was an outrage (2 Sam. 10:4); to shave or to pluck one's own beard was a sign of mourning (Jeremiah 41:5; 48:37); to allow the beard to be defiled constituted a presumption of madness (1 Sam. 21:13). Certain ceremonial cuttings of the beard which probably imitated pagan superstition were strictly forbidden (Lev. 14:9). These usages which we learn from the Bible are confirmed by the testimony of monuments, both Egyptian and Assyrian, in which the Jews are invariably depicted as bearded. The Egyptian themselves commonly shaved, and we are told that Joseph, on being taken from his prison, was made to shave before appearing in the presence of the king (Gen 41:14).

Similarly in Greece and in Rome, shortly before the time of Christ, it was the fashion to shave, but from the accession of Hadrian onwards, as we may see from the existing statues of the Roman emperors, beards once more became the order of the day. With regard to the Christian clergy, no clear evidence is available for the early centuries. The Apostles, in our most ancient monuments, are for the most part represented as bearded, but not uniformly so. (See Weiss-Liebersdorff, Christus- und Apostelbilder, Freiburg, 1902.) St. Jerome seems to censure the practice of wearing long beards, but no very definite conclusion can be drawn from his allusions or from those of his contemporary, St. Augustine. The positive legislation on the subject for clerics appears to be Canon 44 of the so-called Fourth of Carthage, which in reality represents the synodal decrees of some council in Southern Gaul in the time of St. Cæsarius of Arles (c. 503). There it enjoined that a cleric is to allow neither hair nor beard to grow freely (Clericus nec comam nutriat nec barbam) though this prohibition is very probably directed only against beards of excessive length. Still this canon, which was widely quoted and is included in the "Corpus juris" had great influence in creating a precedent. (See for example the "Penitential" of Halitgar and the so-called "Excerptions" attributed to Egbert of York.) So far as concerns England in particular it was certainly regarded throughout the Middle Ages as uncanonical to allow the beard to grow. A cleric was known as a shorn man (bescoren man, Laws of Wihtred, A.D. 96), and if it should seem that this might refer to the tonsure, we have a law of King Alfred "If a man shave off another's beard let him make amends with twenty shillings. If he bind him first and then shave him like a priest (hine to preoste bescire) let him make amends with sixty shillings." And under Edgar we find the canon: "Let no man in holy orders conceal his tonsure, nor let himself be misshaven nor keep his beard for any time, if he will have God's blessing and St. Peter's and ours." A similar practice obtained generally throughout the West and it was one of the great subjects of reproach on the part of the Greek Church , from the time of Phoius onwards, that the Roman clergy systematically cut off their beards. But as Ratramnus of Corbie protested, it was foolish to make an outcry about a matter which concerned salvation so little as this barbæ detonsio aut conservatio

The legislation requiring the beard to be shaved seems to have remained in force throughout the Middle Ages. Thus an ordinance of the Council of Toulouse, in 1119, threatened with excommunication the clerics who "like a layman allowed hair and beard to grow", and Pope Alexanderordained that clerics who nourished their hair and beard were to be shorn by their archdeacon, by force if necessary. This last decree was incorporated in the text of the canon law (Decretals of Gregory IX, III, tit. i, cap. vii). Durandus, finding mystical reasons for everything, according to his wont, tells us that "length of hair is symbolical of the multitude of sins. Hence clerics are directed to shave their beards, for the cutting of the hair of the beard, which is said to be nourished by the superfluous humours of the stomach, denotes that we ought to cut away the vices and sins which are a superfluous growth in us. Hence we shave our beards that we may seem purified by innocence and humility and that we might be like the angels who remain always in the bloom of youth." (Rationale, II, lib. XXXII.)

In spite of this, the phrase barbam nutrire which was classical in the matter, and was still used by the Fifth Council of Lateran (1512), always remained somewhat ambiguous. Consequently usage in the sixteenth century began to interpret the prohibition as not inconsistent with a shortbeard. There are still many ordinances of episcopal synods which deal with the subject, but the point upon which stress is laid is that the clergy "should not seem to be aping the fashions of military folk" or wearing flowing beards like goats (hircorum et caprarum more), or allowing the hair on their upper lip to impede their drinking of the chalice. This last has always been accounted a solid reason in favour of the practice of shaving. To judge by the portraits of the popes, it was with Clement VII (1523) that a distinct beard began to be worn, and many among his successors, for example Paul III, allowed the beard to grow to considerable length. St. Charles Borromeo attempted to check the spread of the new fashion, and in 1576 he addressed to his clergy a pastoral "De barbâ radendâ" exhorting them to observe the canons. Still, though the length of clerical beards decreased during the seventeenth century, it was not until its close that the example of the French court and the influence of Cardinal Orsini Archbishop of Beneventum, contributed to bring about a return to the earlier usage. For the last 200 years there has been no change, and an attempt made by some of the clergy of Bavaria in 1865 to introduce the wearing of beards was rebuked by the Holy See.

As already noted, in Eastern lands a smooth face carries with it the suggestion of effeminacy. For this reason the clergy whether Catholic or Schismatic of the Oriental churches have always worn their beards. The same consideration, together with a regard for practical difficulties, has influenced the Roman authorities in according a similar privilege to missionaries, not only in the East but in other barbarous countries where the conveniences of civilization cannot be found. In the case of religious orders like the Capuchins and the Camaldolese Hermits the wearing of a beard is prescribed in their constitutions as a mark of austerity and penance. Individual priests who for medical or other reasons desire to exempt themselves from the law require the permission of their bishop.