OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: Homilies

  • On Fasting: From a Homily in the Leabhar Breac

    ‘It is by food that Esau lost his birthright, and sold it to his brother; through fasting the noble prophet acquired a victory, and was rescued from the lions’ den; through fasting Moses, the son of Amri, received the written law; through it the people of God were rescued from the Amalecites through fasting the people of Ninive were saved; through fasting Elias wrought such miracles, on earth; through it David did penance, so as to have his sins forgiven; through it the people of Juda saved Jerusalem in the time of Ezechias, King of Juda, from the Assyrians, so that over 175,000 were destroyed; through it Peter was loosed from prison; Cornelius, the Centurion, received the Holy Ghost before baptism, and Paul vouchsafed revelations through prayer and alms and the fruit of fasting; through fasting the people of God came through the Red Sea with dry feet; through it Moses merited the love of God: through it the manna was got from heaven in the desert for ten years; through it Moses received the written law face to face with God; through it Moses was fifty days and nights without food on Mount Sinai; through it Moses acquired victory over the Amalecites; through it the Jordan opened a passage for the people of God; through it Jesse, the son of Nun, conquered the seven districts of Canaan and tumbled Jericho; through it Jonas was saved in the whale’s belly; through it the youths in the fiery furnace were preserved unhurt; through it Nebuchodonosor was freed from the visitation with which he had been afflicted; through it fifteen years were added to the life of Ezechias; through it the sun went back in its course for him; through it people are preserved from the power of the evil one, by having Christ remain fifty days and nights without food for the children of Adam; through it one is directed to the road to heaven, and God’s grace is increased; through it, when properly observed, there is an increase of love and charity, and the wonders that are wrought in the world and all the plagues staved off from man and all are the result of fasting.’

    Homily XXXVII ‘On Fasting’ – Original Irish text in R. Atkinson, ed., The Passions and Homilies from Leabhar Breac, 274. Translation from Rev. Sylvester Malone, Church History of Ireland from the Anglo-Norman Invasion to the Reformation, Vol. II, (London, 1880), 54-55.


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  • A Homily of Saint Columbanus on the Holy Trinity

    Below is a sermon of Saint Columbanus in which this great Irish Church Father teaches on God as Trinity. The text is taken from the electronic version of the works of Saint Columbanus edited by G. Walker and the original, including references to the Scriptural and other passages quoted in the sermon, is available here.

    Sermon I. Concerning the Faith

    1
    Since I bear the responsibility for very needful teaching, first of all I may briefly speak of the first thing for all to know. I desire that what is the basis of all men’s salvation should be the foundation of our talk, and that our doctrine should commence from that point whence all that is arises and what has not been begins, and that the heart’s belief should open the gateway of our talk, rightly opening, as it does, the mouths of all Christian believers to a salutary confession. Therefore, concerning the beginning of human salvation, with Christ’s help, let our words rightly take their start.

    2
    Let each man then who wishes to be saved believe first in God the first and last, one and three, one in substance, three in character; one in power, three in person; one in nature, three in name; one in Godhead, Who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit, one God, wholly invisible, inconceivable, unspeakable, Whose property it is ever to exist since God the Trinity is eternal, for Whom you must not seek a beginning, Who has no end, and Who has ever been that which He is and shall be; since in God there is no repetition, but ever the perfection of the Trinity. That God the Trinity is one, God Himself bears witness of Himself in the law, saying Hear, Israel, the Lord thy God is one. But that that one God is a Trinity, the Saviour taught in the gospel with the words, Go now and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. By this double evidence of the two laws, as on some firmest supports, the faith of believers is confirmed. And there you truly have a unity in Trinity and Trinity in unity. Briefly then, considering the greatness of the matter, we have spoken of what we believe, and the heart’s faith [has drawn forth] the confession of the mouth; and this must be firmly held against all heresies, that the one God cannot be divided or parted, since that which is all, has always been as it is. Thus let there be an end to the poisonous and mad delirium of all the heretics, because we hear and believe on the witness of God Himself, Hear, Israel, the Lord thy God is one, since He Who is one, has ever been exactly what He is; but that you may know how many, He spoke in the plural number at the foundation of the world, Let us make man in our image and likeness. Yet lest you should err upon the number, Christ shows you the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and in the name of this God as one God the whole human race is to be baptized. What more is needed on the joint eternity of the Trinity? That God is one, teaches us enough. But on the reality of the persons of Father and Son and Holy Ghost, Christ’s division, with the authority of a command, has fully informed the hearers. So all the pravity of errors is debarred by means of these evidences, in which the Trinity is proved by being named, and the unity by being witnessed.

    3
    Since then the greatness of the matter prevents us from discoursing further on subjects which appear to be unspeakable, let us hold what has been said before with a firm faith. For the man to whom these few words on God the Trinity are not sufficient, will not, [according to Scripture,] be profited by more. For of Him we have said only that He is one in three and three in one. Yet of His being who shall be able to speak? Of how He is everywhere present and invisible, or of how He fills heaven and earth and every creature, according to that saying, Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord, and elsewhere, The Spirit of God, [according to the prophet,] has filled the round earth, and again, Heaven is my throne, but earth is the footstool of my feet? Therefore God is everywhere, utterly vast, and everywhere nigh at hand, according to His own witness of Himself; I am, [He says,] a God at hand and not a God afar off. Therefore it is no God dwelling far off from us that we seek, Whom if we merit it we have within us. For He resides in us like soul in body, if only we are sound members of Him, if we are not dead in sins, if we are uninfected by the taint of a corrupt will; then truly does He reside in us Who said, And I will reside in them and walk in their midst. Yet if we are worthy that He should be in us, then in truth we are quickened by Him as His living members; for in Him, [as the Apostle says,] we live and move and have our being. Who, I say, shall explore His highest summit to the measure of this unutterable and inconceivable being? Who shall examine the secret depths of God? Who shall dare to treat of the eternal source of the universe? Who shall boast of knowing the infinite God, Who fills all and surrounds all, Who enters into all and passes beyond all, Who occupies all and escapes all? Whom none has ever seen as He is. Therefore let no man venture to seek out the unsearchable things of God, the nature, mode and cause of His existence. These are unspeakable, undiscoverable, unsearchable; only believe in simplicity and yet with firmness, that God is and shall be even as He has been, since God is immutable.

    4
    Who then is God? He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God. Seek no farther concerning God; for those who wish to know the great deep must first review the natural world. For knowledge of the Trinity is properly likened to the depths of the sea, according to that saying of the Sage, And the great deep, who shall find it out? If then a man wishes to know the deepest ocean of divine understanding, let him first if he is able scan that visible sea, and the less he finds himself to understand of those creatures which lurk beneath the waves, the more let him realize that he can know less of the depths of its Creator; and as he ought and should, let him venture to treat less of Creator than of creature, since none can be competent in the greater if he has not first explored the less, and when a man is not trusted in the lesser, in the greater how should he be trusted? For why, I ask, does a man ignorant of earthly things examine the heavenly? Oh, those who speak idle words, Not knowing, [according to the Apostle,] either what they speak or whereof they affirm! How many indeed, for whom the cry is woe, though striving to fly aloft with feeble wing, and turning their creaturely face towards the sky, at least partly, not to say in every case, without counting the cost beforehand, first venture with unclean heart and impure lips to teach concerning the great deep, not understanding that God the Trinity is known not by words but by faith, Who is understood by the pious faith of a clean heart, and not by the gabble of an impious mouth. Therefore the great Trinity is to be piously believed and not impiously questioned; for the one God, the Trinity, is an ocean that cannot be crossed over or searched out. High is the heaven, broad the earth, deep the sea and long the ages; but higher and broader and deeper and longer is the knowledge of Him Who is not diminished by nature, Who created it of nought.

    5
    Understand the creation, if you wish to know the Creator; if you will not know the former either, be silent concerning the Creator, but believe in the Creator. For a silent piety is better and knows more than an impious garrulity; for it is unseemly and impious enough to pass over from faith to the empty words of one who treats of the invisible, immeasurable, and unfathomable Lord. For The great deep, [as it is written,] who shall find it out? Since, just as the depth of the sea is invisible to human sight, even so the Godhead of the Trinity is found to be unknowable by human senses. And thus if, I say, a man wishes to know what he ought to believe, let him not think that he understands [better] by speech than by believing; for knowledge of the Godhead will recede farther when he seeks it than it was. Therefore seek the supreme wisdom, not by verbal debate, but by the perfection of a good life, not with the tongue but with the faith which issues from singleness of heart, not with that which is gathered from the guess of a learned irreligion. If then you seek the unutterable by discussion, He will fly farther from you than He was;if you seek by faith, wisdom shall stand in her accustomed station at the gate, and where she dwells she shall at least in part be seen. But then is she also truly in some measure attained, when the invisible is believed in a manner that passes understanding; for God must be believed invisible as He is, though He be partly seen by the pure heart. Wherefore, my dearest brethren, let us pray to our God Himself, everywhere present and invisible, that either faith’s fear of Him, or charity which knows no fall, may endure in us; and may this fear joined to charity make us wise in all things, and may piety persuade us to be silent on what is too great for speech, since it is a thing unsearchable and ineffable to know God as He is. Who He is and how great He is, He only knows. But since He is our God, though invisible to us, He must yet be besought by us, often besought; ever must we cling to God, to the deep, vast, hidden, lofty, and almighty God; and we must pray by the merits and intercession of His saints, that He would bestow even some ray of His light upon our darkness, which may shine on us in our dullness and ignorance on the dark roadway of this world, and that He would lead us to Himself, by the favour of our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit is the glory unto ages of ages.

    Amen.

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  • 'The Glory of the Irish Race': Saint Ciarán of Clonmacnoise

    September 9 is the feast of Saint Ciarán of Clonmacnoise and a modern summary of his life was posted last year here.  The account below of his life and virtues has been excerpted from a sermon delivered by a nineteenth-century Bishop of Ardagh, the Right Rev. George Conroy (1833-1878), on the dedication of a new church in honour of ‘the sainted founder of Clonmacnois, whose heroic sanctity as monk, priest, and abbot, made him what Alcuin styles him: the glory of the Irish race.‘ The sermon illustrates the spirit of the 19th-century national and Catholic revival in Ireland very well indeed. It is filled with romantic imagery which contrasts the riches of Ireland’s early Christian past with the contemporary degradation of the country, just as it contrasts the ruined churches of old with the new building arising on this occasion. The Bishop is particularly good at conveying the impact of the early training of Saint Ciarán (or Kyran as he has chosen to render the name) at the monastic school of Saint Enda of Aran. Aran exercised a particular fascination for this generation as the epitome of the harsh and lonely windswept island scenario which produced the ascetic Irish saints. We start at the point where the speaker begins to talk of ‘Ireland’s abiding reverence’ for St. Ciarán’s virtues:

    That St. Kyran’s virtues should never be without honour in Ireland was announced to himself thirteen centuries ago in Aran, when first he narrated to his beloved master, St. Enda, the vision that had been vouchsafed him of the future glories of Clonmacnois. He had seen the noble stream of Shannon flowing among these verdant plains, and on its banks a stately tree laden with leaves and fruits, and covering the land with its grateful shade. “That fruitful tree,” explained St. Enda, “art thou thyself, for thou shalt be great before God and man, and shalt produce sweetest fruits of good works, and shalt be honoured throughout all Ireland.” First fruits of these good works were the monastic virtues exercised by our saint in Aran. He entered that holy island in the bloom of his youth, and for the long years he sojourned there he was, as St. Enda described him, “the flower and strength of religious observance.” His life was a pattern of humility. For seven years, well-born and scholarly as he was, he toiled with his hands at those labours which men commit to the least important of their servants. He would fain continue to the end in the practice of obedience ; and even when at length he was compelled to become the master of others, he prayed that he and his charge might still continue under the guidance of St. Enda. His austerity was marvellous. Lashed by the Atlantic waves, swept by the Atlantic blasts, the island of Aran was the home of penance and mortification. Hundreds of Ireland’s saints fled to it, as the anchorets had fled to the desert solitudes of the Thebaid. “Aran”, says a recent writer, “is no better than a wild rock. It is strewed over with the ruins, which may still be seen, of the old hermitages; and, at their best, they could have been but such places as sheep would huddle under in a storm, and shiver in the cold and wet which would pierce through the chinks of the walls. . . . Yes, there on that wet soil, with that dripping roof above them, was the chosen home of these poor men. Through winter frost, through rain and storm, through summer sunshine, generation after generation of them, there they lived and prayed, and at last laid down and died.” Most fervent among these austere men was our St. Kyran, who made of his innocent body a martyr of penance. As day followed after day, and week after week, and month after month, for seven long years, he ceased not to sacrifice his will by minutest obedience, his body by severe labour, his repose by incessant prayer; and this with the flinty rock for his bed, with coarse and scanty food, in poor attire, exposed to frost and sun, buffeted by wind and snow. And as he was a miracle of humility and of penance, so also was he a miracle of sweetest charity. As his penitential life tells eloquently of his love for God, so the story of his parting from his brethren, when he was called away from Aran to Clonmacnois, as related in the ancient Life of St. Enda, is a proof of his loving heart towards men. As the boat that was to carry him to the banks of the Shannon was spreading its sails to the breeze, St. Kyran came slowly down from his beloved cell, weeping and surrounded by his weeping brethren. Tenderly his gaze lingered on each familiar sanctuary as he passed onwards to the beach, and there, kneeling down, he asked for the last time the blessing of the father of his soul. In sign of the charity that filled their hearts, and of the brotherhood they had contracted between themselves and those who were to come after them, a cross was erected on the spot, and the two saints said: “Whosoever in after times shall break the loving bond of this our brotherhood, shall not have share in our love on earth, nor in our company in heaven.” Near to where that cross stood, a church was erected to commemorate the virtues of St. Kyran as the perfect Religious….

    From Aran, St. Kyran came to this part of the valley of the Shannon, but not as yet to settle in Clonmacnois. He was now a priest, and on the island of Inis-Oenghin, in Lough Ree, he practised for eight or nine years the virtues of the perfect priest with as much fervour as he had practised on Aran those of the perfect monk. Surrounded now by disciples of his own, constituted a teacher of the faith and a dispenser of the sacraments, it was no longer permitted to him to shun altogether the concourse of men. But he did all that he could to guard from the world s tainted breath the gifts he had received and the souls that had been entrusted to his charge. St. Ambrose describes to us the attractions which islands such as those that stud the noble expanse of Lough Ree possessed for the religious men of that age. They loved, he says, those islands ” which, as a necklace of pearls, God has set upon the bosom of the waters, and in which those who would shun the pleasures of the world may find a refuge wherein to practise austerity, and save themselves from the snares of life. The water that encompasses them becomes, as it were, a veil to hide from mortal eye their deeds of penance; it aids them to acquire perfect continence; it feeds grave and sober thought; it has the secret of peace; it repels the fierce passions of earth. In it these faithful and pious men find incentives to devotion. The mysterious sounds of the waves call for the answering sound of sacred psalmody; and the peaceful voices of holy men, mingled with the murmur of the waters against the shore, rise harmonious to the heavens. Here, then, did St. Kyran lead the life of the perfect priest. Here did he practise the rule of a priest’s life that had been given to him at Aran, which his fellow-student, St. Carthage, has written for us, and which tells of “the patience, humility, prayer, fast, and cheerful abstinence; of the steadiness, modesty, calmness, that are due from a leader of religious men, whose office it is to teach, in all truth, unity, forgiveness, purity, rectitude in all that is moral; whose chief works are the constant preaching of the Gospel for the instruction of all persons, and the sacrifice of the Body of the great Lord upon the Holy Altar” (Rule of St. Carthage). Here did he reach the perfection to which, an ancient Irish treatise invites all priests: that “their hearts should be chaste and shining, and their minds like the foam of the wave, or the colour of the swan in the sunshine; that is, without any particle of sin, great or small, resting in his heart!” And here another church was raised to perpetuate the memory of his virtues. Alas! that church also is in ruins….

    …At length the day came in which, about the year 544, he who was already the perfect monk and the perfect priest was to become also the perfect abbot, founder, and ruler of the glorious monastery of Clonmacnois. How splendid were the virtues that adorned St. Kyran as the perfect abbot, let Clonmacnois itself proclaim! It was long the most celebrated religious house in Ireland. It was the mother of countless saints. It was a treasure-house of graces. It became the chief seat of learning in Ireland. It was a school of art and literature. Kings esteemed it an honour to build its walls with their royal hands. The Emperor Charlemagne sent rich presents to it through Alcuin. The chieftains and princes of Erin bestowed their gifts upon it, until, in lands and treasures, in precious chalices and sparkling gems, in stately churches and rich crosses, it was the wonder of many lands. To be laid to rest beneath its earth, as near as might be to the relics of St. Kyran, was a privilege coveted by the noblest in the land. Bright with dew, and redrosed, as it is styled in an old Irish poem, it was not its sunny meads or its bright flowers that won for it such esteem: it was Ireland’s faith in the power of its founder’s intercession. And yet he to whose merits all this was due ruled over the monastery he had founded for the short space of less than a single year. After seven months of labour there, he passed to his reward, and there beyond he rests, awaiting his glorious resurrection…

    Rt. Rev. George Conroy, Late Bishop of Ardagh, Occasional Sermons, Adresses and Essays (Dublin, 1888), 19-24.

    Note: A hymn in praise of Saint Ciarán, attributed to Saint Colum Cille can be found at my other site here.

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