Today is the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The pierced Heart of Jesus reveals his love for us, and no one has greater love for us than Jesus does. In his divine Person is a perfect unity of divine Love and human love. He loves us with the divine Love that burns forever in the Heart of the Most Holy Trinity. He also loves us with the human love that he possesses as the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary. His finite human Heart is completely filled with his infinite divine Love. The infinite divine Love that burns in the Heart of Jesus is productive of all the goodness that we possess, and the perfect human love that burns in the Heart of Jesus is receptive to all the goodness that we possess. In the Heart of Jesus we find nothing less than the source and eminence of Goodness Itself and Love Itself. His Love is both necessary and sufficient for true and everlasting human happiness.

In 1674 in France, the Heart of Jesus was revealed to St Margaret Mary Alacoque, a humble Catholic nun of the Visitation Order. Jesus told St Margaret Mary that he was manifesting his Heart in order to reveal the source of all true love and to call everyone to turn away from the path of damnation. That revelation is the reason why many Catholics strive to keep a Holy Hour on Thursdays and to receive Holy Communion on the First Friday of each month. It is also the reason why the whole Church celebrates this Solemnity today. The readings at Mass today speak of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, seeking and saving those who are lost. The Heart of Jesus is calling us all to repentance and to our true home, the joy and happiness of heaven.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is burning with infinite Love for us, but devotion to his Heart is also a devotion to his perfect human love, his emotional subjectivity, and his real relationality to us. God, who by his divine Essence is invisible, immovable, and impassible, has become visible, movable, and passible in the man Jesus Christ, who loves us with a human love as well as a divine love. The Heart of Jesus is thus wounded by rejection and indifference. In Jesus, God can truly relate to us. Through the Incarnation, God puts himself in real relation to us. He makes himself vulnerable to us and needs us in his humanity. He can die a human death. The flesh and blood of Christ can be separated from his human soul. The visible wound that pierces his physical heart and through which his blood pours reveals his sacrificial love and his emotional woundedness.

The Heart of Jesus is consoled by our devotion and contemplation. Christ has a human soul and a human self. The human self, in the sense being used here, is distinct from the person and the soul and is the inner world of conscious thoughts and desires. There is something that it is like to be Jesus. He has a human personality and experience. The greater capacity for love, the greater capacity for wounding. No human heart was ever more sorrowful than that Heart of Christ. The piercing of his heart is a revelation of his human subjectivity and true motivations. He really was full of love for us. He is meek and humble of heart, as he said, and he is literally wounded of heart. It is an analogy, not merely a metaphor. His physical heart is literally wounded, and so is his emotional heart. He suffers mental and emotional anguish. He truly has a broken heart.

It is not easy to judge another person’s motives. Motives must be revealed in actions. Jesus was continually misjudged among men. What was it like to be Jesus? He suffered constant mental and emotional anguish, which is the greatest possible human suffering. No human heart was ever more sensitive than the Heart of Jesus was. No human heart was ever more loving. For God so loved the world, he became man and loved us with a human love so that we might love him with a divine love. God’s Love is sacrificial, and Jesus wants to purify our love. We must sacrifice our hearts for others, as Christ did for us. We must love one another, as Christ has loved us. Jesus loves us, and we can believe it and trust in his love. Jesus will not condemn those who believe in him. God makes himself vulnerable in Jesus. The Heart of Jesus is full of charity, both created charity and uncreated Charity, namely, the Holy Spirit.

Christ heals the brokenhearted. The divinity of Christ is the source of all goodness, and the humanity of Christ is the source of all grace. He binds up our wounds and gives us salvation and protection. How precious is his love and his providence! We are made other christs through the Sacrament of Baptism. We must believe in God and trust in his love for us. He will not condemn us. Even if we sin mortally, he still loves us. God loves all people, even the people in hell. God loves even Lucifer. Nothing can separate us from the Love of God, except ourselves. Separation from God is brought about by mortal sin, which requires grave matter, full knowledge, and full consent. The Sacraments of the Church are offered for our salvation. The Heart of Jesus is the source of the Sacraments. As blood and water constantly flowed from the ancient Jewish temple in Jerusalem through the brook Kidron, so too do blood and water flow constantly from the side of Christ. Jesus is the divine Messiah, the new Adam, and the new Temple.

We should learn by experience how much Christ loves us, and then we should remember it. We can taste and see that the Lord is good. The fountain from the pierced Messiah cleanses the people of God from their sins. It is an atonement. Give him your time, talent, and treasure, and especially your loving attention. Happiness is the contemplation of God in Jesus Christ. We make reparation for the offenses against his love. On Judgment Day, Christ will ask us what we sacrificed for him and for his Church. This is the Christian duty of charity that he placed on his disciples: “Love one another.” Christ offered his heart for us, as did his mother Mary. His sacrifice makes the sacrifices of his disciples efficacious.

Christ wants to possess our hearts completely. Consider the lyrics to the popular song “I Will Possess Your Heart” by Death Cab for Cutie. It’s a beautiful and haunting song. Here is a religious interpretation. Benjamin Gibbard said that “it is basically about a stalker. It’s about this nice guy who wants this girl he can’t have, and he believes they’ll be together once she realizes how great he is--he just has to wait it out. That’s the part that makes the song really creepy, the delusion of thinking that they were meant to be together. It’s a really dark song.” It is a dark and creepy song, and yet the lyrics are open to a mystical interpretation. To some people the lyrics sound as if they are being sung by Christ, who is no delusion and is the true divine Spouse of the human heart. He eternally desires to possess it.

In the music video produced by the band for the song, an abstracted young woman travels to many different countries, as if looking for a religious solution. Perhaps the lyrics and the video are Christ-haunted. Perhaps Christ is following the young women and speaking to her heart. The lyrics and the video remind us of the poem by Francis Thompson, the English Catholic writer, mystic, and opium addict. His poem “The Hound of Heaven” describes Christ as the relentless divine stalker of the human heart, like a hound following a hare. As the Jesuit J. F. X. O’Conor puts it, “As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and imperturbed pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by his divine grace. And though in sin or in human love, away from God it seeks to hide itself, divine grace follows after, unwearyingly follows ever after, till the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn to him alone in that never-ending pursuit.”

Christ in his great Mercy wants to give us nothing less than his Heart, but to accept it requires true repentance, true contrition, and a firm purpose of amendment. In the Sacrament of Reconciliation we find the fullness of Christ’s Mercy. And in the Sacrament of the Eucharist we find the fullness of Christ’s Love. The Heart of Jesus forces us to decide what we really want. If all we want is to be affirmed in our errors and in our vices, then we will reject his Love because it is too severe and too demanding. But if we allow him to pick us up, to set us on his shoulders, and to bring us back home, then we will discover the joy of his infinite Love, the perfect Love that loves us more than we love ourselves, the divine Love that is source of all goodness and every virtue. Christ has provided everything that we need for true and everlasting happiness. And so as we enter into the Mystery of Holy Communion, let us pray: O Jesus, Meek and Humble of Heart, make our hearts like unto thine. Amen.

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About Deacon Tracy Jamison, OCDS, PhD

Deacon Tracy Jamison was raised in a Christian family as the son of a Scotch-Irish evangelical minister in the Campbellite tradition. As an undergraduate he majored in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Cincinnati Christian University, where his parents had been educated. At this institution he met Joyce, who was completing a degree in Church Music, and after graduation they entered the covenant of Christian marriage in 1988. Through the study of philosophy and the writings of the Early Church Fathers, Tracy was received into the full communion of the Catholic Church in 1992. Under the influence of the theological writings of St. John Paul II he began to study the works of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross and entered formation as a Secular Carmelite of the Teresian Reform. In 1999 he completed the doctoral program in Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, and in 2002 he made his definitive profession as a Secular Carmelite. In 2010 he was ordained as a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Currently he is an associate professor of philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary of the West.

© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

O Precious and Wonderful Banquet!

Since it was the will of God’s only-begotten Son that men should share in his divinity, he assumed our nature in order that by becoming man he might make men gods. Moreover, when he took our flesh he dedicated the whole of its substance to our salvation. He offered his body to God the Father on the altar of the cross as a sacrifice for our reconciliation. He shed his blood for our ransom and purification, so that we might be redeemed from our wretched state of bondage and cleansed from all sin. But to ensure that the memory of so great a gift would abide with us for ever, he left his body as food and his blood as drink for the faithful to consume in the form of bread and wine.

O precious and wonderful banquet, that brings us salvation and contains all sweetness! Could anything be of more intrinsic value? Under the old law it was the flesh of calves and goats that was offered, but here Christ himself, the true God, is set before us as our food. What could be more wonderful than this? No other sacrament has greater healing power; through it sins are purged away, virtues are increased, and the soul is enriched with an abundance of every spiritual gift. It is offered in the Church for the living and the dead, so that what was instituted for the salvation of all may be for the benefit of all. Yet, in the end, no one can fully express the sweetness of this sacrament, in which spiritual delight is tasted at its very source, and in which we renew the memory of that surpassing love for us which Christ revealed in his passion.

It was to impress the vastness of this love more firmly upon the hearts of the faithful that our Lord instituted this sacrament at the Last Supper. As he was on the point of leaving the world to go to the Father, after celebrating the Passover with his disciples, he left it as a perpetual memorial of his passion. It was the fulfillment of ancient figures and the greatest of all his miracles, while for those who were to experience the sorrow of his departure, it was destined to be a unique and abiding consolation.

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© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

From Holy Communion to the Blessed Trinity

Fr Marie Vincent Bernadot, OP, The Newman Press, 1955

Explained by Deacon Tracy Jamison, OCDS, in relation to The Interior Castle of St Teresa of Avila

One of the main reasons why we fail to grow in holiness even though we may be daily or frequent Communicants is our lack of a correct understanding of the objective nature of Holy Communion. We need better instruction and deeper meditation. Greater comprehension of truth inspires greater devotion and self-sacrifice. The divine Life in our souls imparts divine Light to our intellects and divine Love to our wills, but these graces are not apparent to us at first. Our abiding personal union with God is from the Sacraments of the Church by grace. Baptism begins the union. Confirmation strengthens the union. Confession and Anointing of the Sick restore and refresh the union. Holy Communion gradually perfects the union in our souls. Holy Orders and Holy Matrimony sustain the union in the community. Ordinarily, we ascend to a conscious ineffable union with God by means of frequent Confession and Communion. Christ is the Vine. We are the branches.

We receive gifts at Holy Communion according to the degree to which we have disposed ourselves to them by the practice of asceticism and the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. The path to subjective mystical union is through the practice of self-denial and penance. Our spiritual poverty, chastity, and obedience must be absolute but also gradual and adjusted to our temperaments and state of life. We must spiritually give up everything we have, like the poor widow in the Temple in Jerusalem who gave her last two coins to God.

Holy Communion gives us the whole Christ, and through union with the Humanity of Christ we receive the Holy Trinity to dwell in our souls by grace. The soul then informs the heart. Holy Communion is a greater participation in the Life of the Trinity than sanctifying grace alone is. It is objectively a participation in the inner Life of the Trinity. In Holy Communion we receive this divine Life and are enabled to participate in it actively, knowing and loving God with the divine Knowledge and Love that we have received through Christ.

Holy Baptism, Holy Confirmation, Holy Confession, Holy Penance, and Holy Communion potentially give us a conscious supernatural state that already approximates the Beatific Vision. Carmelites call this state the Transforming Union or Spiritual Marriage (7^th Mansions). It is an apophatic and ineffable form of mystical knowledge which comes through our participation in divine love after Spiritual Betrothal (6^th Mansions), the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (as at Pentecost), and the sacrifice of oneself totally for the Mission of the Church. This state may or may not be accompanied by miracles. Confession prepares us for Communion by rendering us able to receive and actualize the gifts that Christ is giving us in Communion. Ordinarily, Christ limits himself to giving gifts according to the degree to which we have prepared ourselves for them. Going to Confession once per week is more perfect and more efficacious than going to Confession only once per month or less. We should add to the penances that we are assigned in order to satisfy the temporal punishment that is due our sins.

Eucharistic union is higher than the abiding union of sanctifying grace. Grace is an infused accident that flows into our souls from the Eucharistic union because of the substantial presence of Christ’s Body and Blood in it. Our souls are naturally consubstantial with our bodies. In Holy Communion, Christ enters both. Holy Communion is itself the highest possible union with the Holy Trinity. Engaging in it changes us both objectively and subjectively. After Communion, the grace of it remains in us, and thus we can remain united with Christ objectively in our souls above the level of our human consciousness. We receive and live the very Life of Christ to one degree or another. All the graces that we receive are given through and caused by the Sacred Humanity of Christ. Holy Communion is the closest possible union with the Humanity of Christ, and thus it gives us the most graces. It unites our bodies and souls to the Body and Soul of Christ so that the Body and Soul of Christ can act upon our bodies and souls directly and more perfectly. By grace, Christ acts upon our intellects and wills immediately, regardless of whether we are conscious of his action. God alone has the divine power to act through our acts without violating the freedom of our wills.

The Sacred Humanity of Christ, including his Sacred Mind and Sacred Heart, is present in the consecrated Host and Cup substantially through his Body and Blood. He becomes present in our souls mystically by sanctifying grace through his Humanity. We become mystically one because Christ is substantially one. Grace is the supernatural life of our souls. Our souls were created with the capacity to receive this higher kind of life. Holy Communion is the best means of establishing and augmenting this life in our souls. This life begins in us with Baptism and the grace of justification, either sacramentally or by desire or martyrdom.

Holy Communion increases God’s influence over our intellects and wills by increasing grace in our souls. Thus we grow in supernatural knowledge and love, knowing and loving with God’s own Knowledge and Love, which are given to us objectively in our souls and increase through the Sacraments. Through the transforming union of Spiritual Marriage, we eventually become subjectively conscious of this participation in the Life of the Blessed Trinity, if we are willing to sacrifice our own minds and hearts to it and to the Mission of the Church.

Our objective union with God is by sanctifying grace and does not require mental recollection or conscious awareness. Only mortal sin can destroy our objective union with God. But active and passive recollection perfect it by grace. Only God can complete the good work that he has begun in us. The union is given to us and is made subject to our will, which can either destroy it or cultivate it. God objectively unites our souls to himself but leaves it up to us how close to come to him subjectively. His influence upon our intellects and wills thus depends upon our active cooperation with it. We will gradually receive perfect contemplative union to the degree to which we dispose ourselves to receive it.

We must dispose and prepare ourselves for the reception of holy contemplation just as we must for the reception of Holy Communion. The practice of God’s presence in active recollection and mental prayer is the habit by which the self is brought into conformity with the action of God in the soul. It is also the means by which we dispose ourselves for the mystical nuptial union that is over and above the ordinary state of grace but is organically one with it as its perfection. If we respond properly and habitually to that which we have received, we are given more.

We must therefore endeavor to practice active recollection in the presence of God in our souls and in the tabernacles of our churches at all times. All our thoughts and desires must be directed to God. We must be constantly and mentally turned toward the Blessed Sacrament, as devout Jews were always mentally turned toward the presence of God in the Temple in Jerusalem. The unconscious personal union with the Blessed Trinity that we possess by Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, and Communion must become a conscious mental union. The practice of meditation and contemplation is the means by which to make the union more actual and perfect. God unites our souls to himself and expects us to strive to unite ourselves mentally and affectively to his presence in our souls. With his help, we can do it. Sacramental grace makes it possible for everyone.

The graced soul through Holy Communion attains and enjoys an abiding existential union with God. The self must strive to turn completely away from sin and vice and to participate fully in this abiding mystical union. Those who habitually engage in the battle of mental prayer and sacrifice themselves for others as Christ did will attain perfection, in which the self becomes totally united with the soul in the life of grace. The active practice of recollection is a necessary condition for perfect nuptial union and integration. Lack of recollection always leads to sin and spiritual immaturity or death. God requires the engagement of the whole person. Perfect union cannot be attained by those who culpably reject or neglect the Holy Sacraments, which make it generally available to all.

Mental prayer can become constant by grace and be habitually practiced at all times and in every circumstance. The three stages that we must pass through on the Way of the Cross are bodily suffering, grief of heart, and desolation of soul. For a description of this development, read the Book of Job or the Book of Tobit, or simply meditate on the Gospels. Wisdom is understanding the Cross of Christ, and holiness is embracing it. After a mystical encounter with the Cross of Christ always comes a greater participation in his Resurrection, along with a greater joy and happiness through contemplative union with God. Thus are we transformed to have a greater capacity for God. We are divinized through the Holy Cross, whether we recognize it or not.

The purpose of Eucharistic union is to unite us with Christ Crucified and to enable us to embrace the Cross as the means by which to become other Christs subjectively, as Mary and Joseph did. We lose ourselves in Christ, but we do not lose our souls or our faculties. We lose our own minds and hearts and gain the Sacred Mind and Heart of Christ by perfect participation in his divine Knowledge and Love through his Sacred Humanity. God offers this grace to all generous souls who by grace make him the absolute priority and motivation of their lives. We gain the Mind and Heart of Christ perfectly when we have completely lost our own minds and hearts. When our subjective selves are totally congruent with the objective presence of God in our souls, then we have perfect joy and finally discover who we were always meant to be.

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About Deacon Tracy Jamison, OCDS, PhD

Deacon Tracy Jamison was raised in a Christian family as the son of a Scotch-Irish evangelical minister in the Campbellite tradition. As an undergraduate he majored in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Cincinnati Christian University, where his parents had been educated. At this institution he met Joyce, who was completing a degree in Church Music, and after graduation they entered the covenant of Christian marriage in 1988. Through the study of philosophy and the writings of the Early Church Fathers, Tracy was received into the full communion of the Catholic Church in 1992. Under the influence of the theological writings of St. John Paul II he began to study the works of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross and entered formation as a Secular Carmelite of the Teresian Reform. In 1999 he completed the doctoral program in Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, and in 2002 he made his definitive profession as a Secular Carmelite. In 2010 he was ordained as a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Currently he is an associate professor of philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary of the West.

© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

Our thoughts in this present life should turn on the praise of God, because it is in praising God that we shall rejoice for ever in the life to come; and no one can be ready for the next life unless he trains himself for it now. So we praise God during our earthly life, and at the same time we make our petitions to him. Our praise is expressed with joy, our petitions with yearning. We have been promised something we do not yet possess, and because the promise was made by one who keeps his word, we trust him and are glad; but insofar as possession is delayed, we can only long and yearn for it. It is good for us to persevere in longing until we receive what was promised, and yearning is over; then praise alone will remain.

Because there are these two periods of time – the one that now is, beset with the trials and troubles of this life, and the other yet to come, a life of everlasting serenity and joy – we are given two liturgical seasons, one before Easter and the other after. The season before Easter signifies the troubles in which we live here and now, while the time after Easter which we are celebrating at present signifies the happiness that will be ours in the future. What we commemorate before Easter is what we experience in this life; what we celebrate after Easter points to something we do not yet possess. This is why we keep the first season with fasting and prayer; but now the fast is over and we devote the present season to praise. Such is the meaning of the Alleluia we sing.

Both these periods are represented and demonstrated for us in Christ our head. The Lord’s passion depicts for us our present life of trial – shows how we must suffer and be afflicted and finally die. The Lord’s resurrection and glorification show us the life that will be given to us in the future.

Now therefore, brethren, we urge you to praise God. That is what we are all telling each other when we say Alleluia. You say to your neighbour, “Praise the Lord!” and he says the same to you. We are all urging one another to praise the Lord, and all thereby doing what each of us urges the other to do. But see that your praise comes from your whole being; in other words, see that you praise God not with your lips and voices alone, but with your minds, your lives and all your actions.

We are praising God now, assembled as we are here in church; but when we go on our various ways again, it seems as if we cease to praise God. But provided we do not cease to live a good life, we shall always be praising God. You cease to praise God only when you swerve from justice and from what is pleasing to God. If you never turn aside from the good life, your tongue may be silent but your actions will cry aloud, and God will perceive your intentions; for as our ears hear each other’s voices, so do God’s ears hear our thoughts.

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© 2026, Lawain McNeil

The Lord calls himself the vine and those united to him branches in order to teach us how much we shall benefit from our union with him, and how important it is for us to remain in his love. By receiving the Holy Spirit, who is the bond of union between us and Christ our Savior, those who are joined to him, as branches are to a vine, share in his own nature.

On the part of those who come to the vine, their union with him depends upon a deliberate act of the will; on his part, the union is effected by grace. Because we had good will, we made the act of faith that brought us to Christ, and received from him the dignity of adoptive sonship that made us his own kinsmen, according to the words of Saint Paul: He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.

The prophet Isaiah calls Christ the foundation, because it is upon him that we as living and spiritual stones are built into a holy priesthood to be a dwelling place for God in the Spirit. Upon no other foundation than Christ can this temple be built. Here Christ is teaching the same truth by calling himself the vine, since the vine is the parent of its branches, and provides their nourishment.

From Christ and in Christ, we have been reborn through the Spirit in order to bear the fruit of life; not the fruit of our old, sinful life but the fruit of a new life founded upon our faith in him and our love for him. Like branches growing from a vine, we now draw our life from Christ, and we cling to his holy commandment in order to preserve this life. Eager to safeguard the blessing of our noble birth, we are careful not to grieve the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, and who makes us aware of God’s presence in us.

Let the wisdom of John teach us how we live in Christ and Christ lives in us: The proof that we are living in him and he is living in us is that he has given us a share in his Spirit. Just as the trunk of the vine gives its own natural properties to each of its branches, so, by bestowing on them the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, the only-begotten Son of the Father, gives Christians a certain kinship with himself and with God the Father because they have been united to him by faith and determination to do his will in all things. He helps them to grow in love and reverence for God, and teaches them to discern right from wrong and to act with integrity.

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© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

Today is the Feast Day of our beloved St. Catherine of Siena.

Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) became an important spiritual voice for the Catholic Church in crisis during her time. The papacy’s hold over European politics began to weaken as new western nations emerged. This was also the period of the exile of Dante and other conflicts. This prolonged crisis which started during this time eventually led to the papacy moving from Rome to Avignon in France (1309-1376). Catherine was instrumental in encouraging of the papacy’s return to Rome and carried out delicate missions on the pope’s behalf. She later became one of the first women declared a Doctor of the Church, along with Teresa of Ávila.

Catherine was a Dominican in the spirit of St. Thomas Aquinas and a stigmatist in the manner of St. Francis of Assisi. She dictated The Dialogue of Divine Providence between the years 1377 and 1378 during ecstasies. The youngest of 24 children of a wool-dyer, she experienced a vision of Jesus, with Saints Peter, Paul, and John blessing her when she was seven, and dedicated herself to Christ from that point on. At the age of twelve, her parents attempted to arrange her marriage. At fifteen, she became a tertiary in the Dominican Order.

Catherine experienced a mystical marriage with Christ in a vision in which the Infant Christ presented her with a wedding ring. Her visions led her to take part more fully in public life, and she acted as a counselor and correspondent to Popes Gregory XI and Urban VI. In 1375 she became a stigmatist and in 1376 lived in Avignon, France. In 1378 she went to Rome, Italy and lived there until she died. Her confessor and close friends supported her, notably Blessed Raymond of Capua. On October 4, 1970, she was declared Doctor of the Church.

From the Dialogue of St. Catherine

Tears - #88

It is therefore essential that the soul be constant in her charity for her neighbors and in true knowledge of herself. In this way she will feed the flame of my charity, that is, from the knowledge the soul gained by coming to know herself and my goodness to her, which made her see that I love her unspeakably much. So she loves every person with the same love she sees herself loved with, and this is why the soul, as soon as she comes to know me, reaches out to love her neighbors. Because she sees that I love them even more than she does, she also loves them unspeakably much.

Since she has learned that she can be of no profit to me, nor return to me the same pure love with which she feels herself loved by me, she sets herself to repaying my love through the means I established—her neighbors. They are the ones to whom you must be of service, just as I told you that every virtue is realized through your neighbors. I have give you these to serve, every one, both in general and individually, according to the different graces you receive from me. You must love with same pure love with which I love you. But you cannot do this for me because I love you without being loved by you, even before you existed (in fact it was love that moved me to create you in my own image and likeness) you cannot repay me. But you must give this love to other people, loving them without being loved by them. You must love them without any concern for your own spiritual or material profit, but only for the glory and praise of my name, because I love them. In this way you will fulfill the whole commandment of the Law, which is to love me above all things and your neighbor as your very self.

Note: If you are interested in reading St. Catherine’s Dialogue - read the Suzanne Noffke, O.P. translation.

Litany of St. Catherine of Siena

Lord, have mercy on us. Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us. Christ hear us. Christ, graciously hear us.

God the Father of heaven, Have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world, Have mercy on us.
God the Holy Spirit, Have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, one God, Have mercy on us.

Holy Mary, Pray for us. (repeat after each line)
St. Dominic, glorious Patriarch,
St. Catherine of Siena,
Benevolent mother of the poor,
Merciful mother of the sick,
Refuge of the sorrowful,
Intercessor for sinners,
Rose of patience,
Model of humility,
Lily of chastity,
Vessel of graces,
Zealous promoter of the honor of God,
Luster of holiness,
Example of mildness,
Glory of the Order of Preachers,
Fruitful mother of spiritual children,
Promoter of peace,
Terror of the evil spirits,
Follower of Jesus,
St. Catherine, who did give the blossoms of your innocent youth to the service of your Heavenly Spouse,
St. Catherine, whom Jesus Himself did feed with His Body and Blood,
St. Catherine, who exchanged her heart with the Heart of Jesus,
St. Catherine, who was blest with His Holy Wounds,
St. Catherine, who was taken to Heaven to the celestial nuptials,
St. Catherine, who did receive a hundredfold, reward for all her labors and merits,

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, Spare us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, Graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, Have mercy on us.

Pray for us, O glorious Virgin, St. Catherine, That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us pray, O God, who gave St. Catherine, graced with the special privilege of virginity, patience to overcome the assault of evil spirits and to stand unshaken in the love of your Name. Grant we beseech you, that after her example treading under foot the wickedness of the world and overcoming the wiles of all enemies, we may safely pass onward to your glory. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Source: Kyrie Eleison — Two Hundred Litanies by Benjamin Francis Musser O.F.M., The Magnificat Press, 1944

Today’s Mass Collect

O God, who set Saint Catherine of Siena on fire with divine love in her contemplation of the Lord’s Passion and her service of your Church, grant, through her intercession, that your people, participating in the mystery of Christ, may ever exult in the revelation of his glory. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.

St. Catherine of Siena, Pray for us.

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© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

Today is a post from Deacon Tracy Jamison, OCDS, PhD. Deacon Jamison is a Catholic Philosopher. It is a long read, but well worth the effort. Grab some coffee, a quiet place, and ask for the intercession of Saint Anselm, as we explore Saint Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God.

Anselm was born in Aosta, in northern Italy, and became a monk of Bec in Normandy, where he taught theology and devoted himself to the spiritual life. After some years as abbot, he succeeded his master Lanfranc as archbishop of Canterbury. His bitter disputes with the kings of England over the independence of the Church resulted in his twice being exiled. He died at Canterbury on 21 April 1109. He is remembered for his theological learning and writings, and for organising and reforming church life in England.

Source: Universalis

Chapter II of St Anselm’s Proslogion

Deacon Jamison, OCDS, PhD

St Anselm’s so-called “ontological” argument for the existence of God (in Chapter II of the Proslogion) was clearly refuted by St Thomas Aquinas in several texts, though Anselm’s other arguments were recognized as sound. Immanuel Kant’s well-known criticisms of the ontological argument were simply repeating what St Thomas had already said about it. Thomists developed several lines of criticism against it, as they did against all a priori arguments for the existence of God. They pointed out that any argument that attempts to infer actual existence from conceptual existence commits the fallacy of equivocation by an invalid shift in supposition.

Some modern Catholic philosophers have defended St Anselm’s argument as presupposing mystical experience of the existence of God through prayer, rather than as attempting to prove God’s existence by reason alone, but the medieval philosophers did not interpret the argument in that manner. And traditional Thomists have kept pointing out that even in the mystical experience of God our knowledge of God is necessarily indirect. In order to infer God’s actual existence from God’s essence, we would first have to know the essence of God directly in itself, which is impossible in this life. Only in the Beatific Vision in heaven will we possess such knowledge and happiness.

Some commentators, Karl Barth for example, seem to argue along the following lines (here summarized):

Thomists reject St Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God specifically because they have a different understanding of the relation of thought to existence than that held by St Anselm and others. St Anselm’s main conclusion seems to be that God cannot be thought not to exist (hence, the “fool” says in his heart that there is no God). If this realization constitutes an answer to his prayer in the first chapter, then we are dealing with something along the lines of Platonic anamnesis. Hence, the “argument” (or better, the “prayer”) is more a matter of the mind utilizing reason to find the memory or trace of its Creator in itself and experiencing the intuition that rationally flows from that recovery. This would make sense of St Anselm’s quest of faith seeking understanding in a unique way of immanence. He is presupposing the existence of God in faith. The one who believes and follows the argument or prayer is thereby given an understanding of the necessity of God’s existence, but the foundation of this understanding is the grace of rational certainty infused in the human intellect by God. The human intellect is in a supernatural participatory relationship with God through the infused virtue of faith. (See Etienne Gilson, “The Meaning and Nature of St Anselm’s Argument.”)

In Chapter I of the Proslogion, St Anselm encourages us to pray to God as follows:

Up now, slight man! Flee, for a little while, thy occupations; hide thyself, for a time, from thy disturbing thoughts. Cast aside, now, thy burdensome cares, and put away thy toilsome business. Yield room for some little time to God; and rest for a little time in him. Enter the inner chamber of thy mind; shut out all thoughts save that of God, and such as can aid thee in seeking him; close thy door and seek him. Speak now, my whole heart! Speak now to God, saying, I seek thy face; thy face, Lord, will I seek (Psalms 27:8).

Teach me, O Lord, to seek thee, and reveal thyself to me, when I seek thee, for I cannot seek thee, except thou teach me, nor find thee, except thou reveal thyself. Let me seek thee in longing, let me long for thee in seeking; let me find thee in love, and love thee in finding.

Lord, I acknowledge and I thank thee that thou hast created me in this thine image, in order that I may be mindful of thee, may conceive of thee, and love thee; but that image has been so consumed and wasted away by vices, and obscured by the smoke of wrong-doing, that it cannot achieve that for which it was made, except thou renew it, and create it anew. I do not endeavor, O Lord, to penetrate thy sublimity, for in no wise do I compare my understanding with that; but I long to understand in some degree thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe, --that unless I believed, I should not understand. (Works of St Anselm, translated by Sidney Norton Deane, 1903)

Against the modern or Barthian line of interpretation, which still remains very much a minority opinion, most commentators take Anselm’s so-called ontological argument out of the theological context of faith and prayer and believe that it simply goes like this:

God is the greatest conceivable being, i.e. that being than which nothing greater can be conceived. But if (contrary to fact) he did not actually exist, then he would not be the greatest conceivable being, since we would be able to conceive a greater being, viz. one who actually existed. Thus, just from the fact that supposing that God lacks actual existence entails a contradiction, it follows by reduction to the absurd that God must actually exist.

In other words, God must actually exist, because actual existence uniquely belongs to the concept of God. It is true that God must exist, but St Anselm’s argument in Chapter II of the Proslogion seems to lack a good reason why this is so. The argument appears to be a fallacious oversimplification, because even though it is true that actual existence uniquely belongs to the concept of God, it is nevertheless logically possible that God exists not actually but only conceptually (in the mind, so to speak).

The fallacy can be described in various ways. Here are two ridiculous arguments that commit the same fallacy as Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God: (1) “Horse is a species, and Seabiscuit is a horse, therefore Seabiscuit is a species.” (2) “Humans subsist (by virtue of their immortal souls), and Santa Claus is a human, therefore Santa Claus subsists.” The first argument equivocates on the term “horse” signifying either a concept or an actual individual. The second argument is one that I made up to illustrate the fact that even when subsistence is a necessary element of a thing’s nature, it still does not follow that the thing actually exists. Only if the modern character of Santa Claus were an actual human person would his soul actually subsist.

These two arguments are not completely analogous to Anselm’s ontological argument, but they are unsound for the same reason. From the fact that the concept of God as the greatest conceivable being necessarily includes actual existence, it does not follow that God actually exists. Attempting to infer actual being from mental being is a confusion between that which is true simpliciter (absolutely) and that which is true secundum quid (in a certain sense). Actual being necessarily follows in a conclusion only if it is already present in the premises. And if the actual existence of God is implicitly assumed in the premises of an argument for the existence of God, then the argument begs the question. The fallacy in Anselm’s ontological argument is therefore a material fallacy, not a formal fallacy. The argument either contains an equivocation or begs the question, depending on what exactly the speaker is asserting.

In general, from the order of ideas alone, we cannot validly infer anything about the order of actuality. All sound arguments for the existence of God or the Uncaused Cause must therefore be a posteriori. This is an Aristotelian principle that Dominican theology after Aquinas consistently defended. Anselm had taken the existence of God as self-evident and then supposed that the denial of the existence of God was incoherent in itself a priori, even without recourse to truths known a posteriori. This line of reasoning assumes that being known in itself is the same as being known to us. But the assumption is problematic, as Aristotle pointed out, and Aquinas explicitly invoked Aristotle’s distinction against Anselm’s novel Proslogion argument.

Sometimes the subject of a proposition necessarily does contain the predicate of the proposition, thus making the proposition conceptually true, and yet the truth of the proposition might not be immediately known to everyone, since some people lack sufficient knowledge of the subject. Take, for example, the proposition “Water is H₂O.” If we innately had sufficient knowledge of the essence of water, we could just recollect (by anamnesis) and examine the contents of that knowledge, thus demonstrating to ourselves that water is H₂O. But we do not innately have sufficient knowledge of the essence of water, so we must demonstrate to ourselves that water is H₂O by reasoning from truths which are naturally more known to us. Similarly, Anselm, in order to make his ontological argument for God’s existence valid, had to assume that we already have innate or infused knowledge of God’s essence and just need to remember what we already know about God.

Every time in the history of philosophy someone advances the ontological argument, others who reflect on it raise the objection, “It is true that the greatest conceivable being must be conceived as having actual existence, but it does not follow that there is anything in reality that actually corresponds to this concept.” The existence of created material things is naturally more known to us than the existence of God is known to us, so we must reason to God’s existence from what he has created and made naturally known to us. Anselm’s famous line of reasoning works only on the assumption that we actually possess innate, intuitive, or infused knowledge of God’s essence. As we noted above, some theologians (e.g. Karl Barth) defend Anselm’s line of reasoning as presupposing the content of faith, but if Anselm’s reasoning is based on faith, then it accepts on the basis of testimony the very truth that it attempts to prove on the basis of reason, and thus it begs the question. This defense seems inadequate and misguided, especially since Anselm himself does not use it in reply when his contemporary Gaunilo of Marmoutiers interprets the argument in Chapter II of the Proslogion as based on reason alone.

Aquinas maintains that the existence of God can be demonstrated by reason alone, not a priori, but only from truths which are more known to us a posteriori. This approach does not beg the question. And for Aquinas, whatever is demonstrated and thus known by reason alone is no longer an object of faith per se. The truths of the faith per se are truths which transcend human reason and are thus not subject to rational demonstration. It seems to me that Aquinas in effect says to Anselm, “The novel argument that you give in Chapter II of the Proslogion is viciously circular, since it cannot make the existence of God known to us without assuming that the existence of God is already known to us either by faith or by reason. The existence of God can certainly be made known to us by faith, but the specific question is whether it can also be made known to us by reason alone. And any purely rational demonstration of the existence of God which takes the existence of God as a premise already known to us by reason alone is unsound and unconvincing.”

Aquinas proposes instead that there is no good reason to suppose that we actually possess an innate or intuitive knowledge of the existence of God. Anselm needs to prove that we have such knowledge, if he is not simply begging the question by invoking the content of the faith. Aquinas has no such need, and he does not believe that there is any such proof. He believes instead that we infer and come to know the existence of God from the existence of the material universe. Aquinas therefore rejects Anselm’s argument in Chapter II of the Proslogion and reasons to God’s existence by appealing to truths that are known to us simply from our ordinary experience of the way things are. Anselm himself appeals to such truths in the Monologion. Anselm’s arguments are quite similar to arguments offered by Augustine in the 4^th and 5^th centuries and by Boethius in the 6^th century. The writings of Augustine and Boethius deeply influenced both Anselm and Aquinas.

Note that there are at least five different texts by Aquinas which are relevant to his evaluation of Anselm’s so-called ontological argument for the existence of God:

1. Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Book I, Distinction 3, Question 1, Article 2

2. Disputed Questions on Truth, Question 10, Article 12

3. Summa Contra Gentiles, Book I, Chapter 11

4. Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 2, Article 1

5. Commentary on De Trinitate of Boethius, Question 1, Article 3

If the Barthian or modern line of interpretation is correct, then Anselm’s ontological argument belongs to the phenomenological and subjective order of ideas, not to the metaphysical and objective order of essences, which is ironic given that it is called the ontological argument. As a dialectical form of prayer, such reasoning about the content of our ideas toward a better understanding is very helpful. Phenomenology and prayer are related forms of dialectical recollection (anamnesis). Prayer is the recollection of the mind, memory, and heart toward God in faith, hope, and charity. Like faith, prayer is a theological kind of virtue, but it resides in our conscious thoughts and desires. Just as the subjective self presupposes the objective soul, the subjective virtue of prayer presupposes the objective virtue of faith. It is a participation in God’s own knowledge, and it comes in degrees. It may be vocal, mental, or contemplative. It brings divine faith, hope, and charity to perfection. It tends towards looking and listening over speaking and petitioning. It facilitates a transformation of our thoughts and desires, so that we become preoccupied with the highest goods. Above all, through mental and contemplative prayer we become preoccupied with the presence of God. This activity of loving attention to God through faith, hope, and love is the highest human perfection.

Thomistic personalism is a synthesis of the medieval metaphysics of St Thomas Aquinas with the modern phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Realist phenomenology maintains that the object of knowledge exists independently of our percepts, concepts, and conscious attendings and has an identity that transcends such acts of cognition and intuition. A Thomistic realist would maintain further that the object of knowledge has its own substantial and accidental forms which acquire an intentional mode of existence in being cognized, through which they can then be recognized or intuited. Pope St John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla), for example, insists that the intentionality of consciousness is not primary but secondary, and that phenomenology is a supplemental endeavor to recognize and understand intentions which have already been cognized fundamentally through percepts and concepts formed under the natural ontological attitude. See the arguments that he makes in The Acting Person.

Eidetic intuition should not be conflated with abstractive induction or divine illumination. The intuition attained dialectically through recollection in the phenomenological attitude is an indirect kind of knowledge produced by a reflexive act of identity synthesis. The entities thus known and formulated by phenomenological analysis are nevertheless formal identities, revealing and making explicit the necessary universals which are conceptualized directly in ordinary experience. Phenomenology operates in the order of second intentions, presupposing the intellect’s natural and spontaneous power to grasp the essences of things in the order of first intentions.

Phenomenology thus understood is a dialectical endeavor to recollect and understand explicitly and consciously that which we already know implicitly and unconsciously. It is indeed related to Plato’s dialectical method of recollection (anamnesis), but it clarifies and defines forms which exist in matter and are initially comprehended by a process of sensation, perception, abstraction, and induction. Forms impregnate the human faculties with percepts and concepts and can be grasped reflexively as acts having intentional content. In The Acting Person, John Paul II (Wojtyla) offers a workable synthesis of phenomenology with traditional Thomistic epistemology. Modern phenomenologists and transcendental Thomists who attempt to avoid or eliminate the scholastic postulation of impressed and expressed species as natural formal signs are necessarily left with an inadequate theory of meaning and truth, and they are sawing off the very branch on which they are sitting, so to speak.

Aristotelian scholasticism often opposes and attempts to suppress phenomenological existentialism, and modern phenomenological existentialism often opposes and attempts to suppress Aristotelian scholasticism. According to the synthesis of St John Paul II, the truth is that these two paradigms are not totally incommensurable, and any adequate anthropology must include both of them by holding them in continuity. John Paul II regards the antagonism as unnecessary, unfortunate, and counter-productive. The modern existentialist opposition to medieval faculty psychology is just as problematic as the Aristotelian opposition to modern existential psychology. We can grant that phenomenological existentialism can be a path toward sound metaphysics, but only when it remains adequately grounded in sound metaphysics. The lessons that Aristotle taught us must not be forgotten. The Aristotelian philosophical framework is not merely one scientific paradigm among many; rather, it is the prerequisite of scientific understanding itself. Those who abandon the realism of Aristotelian philosophy of science inevitably fall into pragmatism, idealism, or nominalism.

The synthesis of John Paul II facilitates a reconciliation between Anselm’s a priori ontological argument and Aquinas’s Five Ways to prove the existence of God a posteriori. Phenomenological and existential knowledge can be obtained when we reflexively direct our intellects to the dialectical recollection and conceptualization of our own subjective acts of sensing, perceiving, judging, understanding, valuing, remembering, imagining, and meaning. Our external and internal senses cannot sense their own acts, but our intellects by contrast are able to understand their own acts of understanding, along with our other acts of cognition, including those based on the infused content of faith, and thus we can recollect that content and formalize it in sciences of second intentions.

The unique reflexive power of the human intellect is what enables us to employ our memories and imaginations in the perfective mental activity of re-cognizing our own cognitions and re-evaluating our own valuations and attitudes in order to cultivate our comprehension and appreciation of truth, goodness, and beauty and to guide our practical and moral decisions and activities. Empirical and metaphysical knowledge is fundamental and objective, having no necessary dependence on phenomenological and existential knowledge, but by contrast phenomenological and existential knowledge is supplemental and subjective, always presupposing inductive empirical and metaphysical knowledge. Phenomenology can assist the empirical sciences and open a path to metaphysics, but it cannot replace or substitute for them.

The human person is essentially a potency for the actualization of two distinct but unified orders of being.

Co-essential principles always have a prior-posterior relation. The Catholic approach to philosophy is to distinguish in order to unify and integrate. Integration always requires the posterior to be congruent with the prior. As taught in traditional Carmelite anthropology and mystical theology, the human person has a cruciform constitution. Any adequate anthropology must distinguish the vertical and objective dimension of the human person from the horizontal and subjective dimension of the human person and must then unify and integrate them. Any lack of congruence is a disintegration of the human person. See Richard E. Dumont, OCDS, PhD, Commentary on the Writings of St John of the Cross: A Cruciform Mysticism and Christocentric Anthropology, https://www.amazon.com/Commentary-Writings-St-John-Cross/dp/1456497243/.

No demonstration of the existence of God is metaphysically neutral. All demonstrations of the existence of God objectively presuppose first principles such as the principle of non-contradiction, the principle of identity, the principle of sufficient reason, and the principle of finality. May the prayers of St Anselm of Canterbury and St Thomas of Aquino together come to the aid of modern culture, liberate it from the epistemological errors of pragmatism, idealism, and nominalism, and enable it to recover an understanding of the metaphysical principles which lead the human intellect to recognize the existence and goodness of God as the only adequate foundation of human happiness and authenticity.

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About Deacon Tracy Jamison, OCDS, PhD

Deacon Tracy Jamison was raised in a Christian family as the son of a Scotch-Irish evangelical minister in the Campbellite tradition. As an undergraduate he majored in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Cincinnati Christian University, where his parents had been educated. At this institution he met Joyce, who was completing a degree in Church Music, and after graduation they entered the covenant of Christian marriage in 1988. Through the study of philosophy and the writings of the Early Church Fathers, Tracy was received into the full communion of the Catholic Church in 1992. Under the influence of the theological writings of St. John Paul II he began to study the works of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross and entered formation as a Secular Carmelite of the Teresian Reform. In 1999 he completed the doctoral program in Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, and in 2002 he made his definitive profession as a Secular Carmelite. In 2010 he was ordained as a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Currently he is an associate professor of philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary of the West.

© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

The heavenly sacrifice, instituted by Christ, is the most gracious legacy of his new covenant. On the night he was delivered up to be crucified he left us this gift as a pledge of his abiding presence.

This sacrifice is our sustenance on life’s journey; by it we are nourished and supported along the road of life until we depart from this world and make our way to the Lord. For this reason he addressed these words to us: Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life in you.

It was the Lord’s will that his gifts should remain with us, and that we who have been redeemed by his precious blood should constantly be sanctified according to the pattern of his own passion. And so he commanded those faithful disciples of his whom he made the first priests of his Church to enact these mysteries of eternal life continuously. All priests throughout the churches of the world must celebrate these mysteries until Christ comes again from heaven. Therefore let us all, priests and people alike, be faithful to this everlasting memorial of our redemption. Daily it is before our eyes as a representation of the passion of Christ. We hold it in our hands, we receive it in our mouths, and we accept it in our hearts.

It is appropriate that we should receive the body of Christ in the form of bread, because, as there are many grains of wheat in the flour from which bread is made by mixing it with water and baking it with fire, so also we know that many members make up the one body of Christ which is brought to maturity by the fire of the Holy Spirit. Christ was born of the Holy Spirit, and since it was fitting that he should fulfill all justice, he entered into the waters of baptism to sanctify them. When he left the Jordan he was filled with the Holy Spirit who had descended upon him in the form of a dove. As the evangelist tells us: Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan.

Similarly, the wine of Christ’s blood, drawn from the many grapes of the vineyard that he had planted, is extracted in the wine-press of the cross. When men receive it with believing hearts, like capacious wineskins, it ferments within them by its own power.

And so, now that you have escaped from the power of Egypt and of Pharaoh, who is the devil, join with us, all of you, in receiving this sacrifice of the saving passover with the eagerness of dedicated hearts. Then in our inmost being we shall be wholly sanctified by the very Lord Jesus Christ whom we believe to be present in his sacraments, and whose boundless power abides for ever.

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© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

Saint Paul rejoices in the knowledge that spiritual health has been restored to the human race. Just as death entered the world through Adam, so life has been given back to the world through Christ. And again: The first man, being from the earth, is earthly by nature; the second man is from heaven and is heavenly.

He adds the following: As we have borne the image of the earthly man, (that is, the image of human nature grown old in sin) so let us bear the image of the heavenly man: that is, human nature raised up, redeemed, restored and purified in Christ. We must hold fast to the salvation we have received. As the Apostle himself says: Christ is the beginning (that is, the source of resurrection and life); therefore those who belong to Christ (those who model their lives on his purity) will be secure in the hope of his resurrection and of enjoying with him the glory promised in heaven. As our Lord himself said in the gospel: Whoever follows me will not perish, but will pass from death to life.

Thus the passion of our Savior is the salvation of mankind. The reason why he desired to die for us was that he wanted us who believe in him to live for ever. In the fullness of time it was his will to become what we are, so that we might inherit the eternity he promised and live with him for ever.

Here, then, is the grace conferred by these heavenly mysteries, the gift which Easter brings, the most longed-for feast of the year; here are the beginnings of creatures newly formed: children born from the life-giving font of holy Church, born anew with the simplicity of little ones, and crying out with the evidence of a clean conscience. Chaste fathers and inviolate mothers accompany this new family, countless in number, born to new life through faith. As they emerge from the grace-giving womb of the font, a blaze of candles burns brightly beneath the tree of faith. The Easter festival brings the grace of holiness from heaven to men. Through the repeated celebration of the sacred mysteries they receive the spiritual nourishment of the sacraments. Fostered at the very heart of holy Church, the fellowship of one community worships the one God, adoring the triple name of his essential holiness, and together with the prophet sings the psalm which belongs to this yearly festival: This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad. And what is this day? It is the Lord Jesus Christ himself, the author of light, who brings the sunrise and the beginning of life, saying of himself: I am the light of day; whoever walks in daylight does not stumble. That is to say, whoever follows Christ in all things will come by this path to the throne of eternal light.

Such was the prayer Christ made to the Father while he was still on earth: Father, I desire that where I am they also may be, those who have come to believe in me; and that as you are in me and I in you, so they may abide in us.

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© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

From the Catechesis by Saint John Chrysostom, bishop

If we wish to understand the power of Christ’s blood, we should go back to the ancient account of its prefiguration in Egypt. “Sacrifice a lamb without blemish,” commanded Moses, “and sprinkle its blood on your doors.” If we were to ask him what he meant, and how the blood of an irrational beast could possibly save men endowed with reason, his answer would be that the saving power lies not in the blood itself, but in the fact that it is a sign of the Lord’s blood. In those days, when the destroying angel saw the blood on the doors he did not dare to enter, so how much less will the devil approach now when he sees, not that figurative blood on the doors, but the true blood on the lips of believers, the doors of the temple of Christ.

If you desire further proof of the power of this blood, remember where it came from, how it ran down from the cross, flowing from the Master’s side. The gospel records that when Christ was dead, but still hung on the cross, a soldier came and pierced his side with a lance and immediately there poured out water and blood. Now the water was a symbol of baptism and the blood, of the holy Eucharist. The soldier pierced the Lord’s side, he breached the wall of the sacred temple, and I have found the treasure and made it my own. So also with the lamb: the Jews sacrificed the victim and I have been saved by it.

“There flowed from his side water and blood.” Beloved, do not pass over this mystery without thought; it has yet another hidden meaning, which I will explain to you. I said that water and blood symbolized baptism and the holy Eucharist. From these two sacraments the Church is born: from baptism, “the cleansing water that gives rebirth and renewal through the Holy Spirit,” and from the holy Eucharist. Since the symbols of baptism and the Eucharist flowed from his side, it was from his side that Christ fashioned the Church, as he had fashioned Eve from the side of Adam. Moses gives a hint of this when he tells the story of the first man and makes him exclaim: “Bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh!” As God then took a rib from Adam’s side to fashion a woman, so Christ has given us blood and water from his side to fashion the Church. God took the rib when Adam was in a deep sleep, and in the same way Christ gave us the blood and the water after his own death.

Do you understand, then, how Christ has united his bride to himself and what food he gives us all to eat? By one and the same food we are both brought into being and nourished. As a woman nourishes her child with her own blood and milk, so does Christ unceasingly nourish with his own blood those to whom he himself has given life.

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© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

The Lamb that was slain has delivered us from death and given us life

There was much proclaimed by the prophets about the mystery of the Passover: that mystery is Christ, and to him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

For the sake of suffering humanity he came down from heaven to earth, clothed himself in that humanity in the Virgin’s womb, and was born a man. Having then a body capable of suffering, he took the pain of fallen man upon himself; he triumphed over the diseases of soul and body that were its cause, and by his Spirit, which was incapable of dying, he dealt man’s destroyer, death, a fatal blow.

He was led forth like a lamb; he was slaughtered like a sheep. He ransomed us from our servitude to the world, as he had ransomed Israel from the hand of Egypt; he freed us from our slavery to the devil, as he had freed Israel from the hand of Pharaoh. He sealed our souls with his own Spirit, and the members of our body with his own blood.

He is the One who covered death with shame and cast the devil into mourning, as Moses cast Pharaoh into mourning. He is the One who smote sin and robbed iniquity of offspring, as Moses robbed the Egyptians of their offspring. He is the One who brought us out of slavery into freedom, out of darkness into light, out of death into life, out of tyranny into an eternal kingdom; who made us a new priesthood, a people chosen to be his own for ever. He is the Passover that is our salvation.

It is he who endured every kind of suffering in all those who foreshadowed him. In Abel he was slain, in Isaac bound, in Jacob exiled, in Joseph sold, in Moses exposed to die. He was sacrificed in the Passover lamb, persecuted in David, dishonored in the prophets.

It is he who was made man of the Virgin, he who was hung on the tree; it is he who was buried in the earth, raised from the dead, and taken up to the heights of heaven. He is the mute lamb, the slain lamb, the lamb born of Mary, the fair ewe. He was seized from the flock, dragged off to be slaughtered, sacrificed in the evening, and buried at night. On the tree no bone of his was broken; in the earth his body knew no decay. He is the One who rose from the dead, and who raised man from the depths of the tomb.

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© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

From a letter of Saint Leo the Great, pope

Lowliness is assumed by majesty, weakness by power, mortality by eternity. To pay the debt of our sinful state, a nature that was incapable of suffering was joined to one that could suffer. Thus, in keeping with the healing that we needed, one and the same mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, was able to die in one nature, and unable to die in the other.

He who is true God was therefore born in the complete and perfect nature of a true man, whole in his own nature, whole in ours. By our nature we mean what the Creator had fashioned in us from the beginning, and took to himself in order to restore it.

For in the Savior there was no trace of what the deceiver introduced and man, being misled, allowed to enter. It does not follow that because he submitted to sharing in our human weakness he therefore shared in our sins.

He took the nature of a servant without stain of sin, enlarging our humanity without diminishing his divinity. He emptied himself; though invisible he made himself visible, though Creator and Lord of all things he chose to be one of us mortal men. Yet this was the condescension of compassion, not the loss of omnipotence. So he who in the nature of God had created man, became in the nature of a servant, man himself.

Thus the Son of God enters this lowly world. He comes down from the throne of heaven, yet does not separate himself from the Father’s glory. He is born in a new condition, by a new birth.

He was born in a new condition, for, invisible in his own nature, he became visible in ours. Beyond our grasp, he chose to come within our grasp. Existing before time began, he began to exist at a moment in time. Lord of the universe, he hid his infinite glory and took the nature of a servant. Incapable of suffering as God, he did not refuse to be a man, capable of suffering. Immortal, he chose to be subject to the laws of death.

He who is true God is also true man. There is no falsehood in this unity as long as the lowliness of man and the pre-eminence of God coexist in mutual relationship.

As God does not change by his condescension, so man is not swallowed up by being exalted. Each nature exercises its own activity, in communion with the other. The Word does what is proper to the Word, the flesh fulfills what is proper to the flesh.

One nature is resplendent with miracles, the other falls victim to injuries. As the Word does not lose equality with the Father’s glory, so the flesh does not leave behind the nature of our race.

One and the same person – this must be said over and over again – is truly the Son of God and truly the son of man. He is God in virtue of the fact that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He is man in virtue of the fact that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.

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© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

From a sermon by Saint Bernardine of Siena, priest

There is a general rule concerning all special graces granted to any human being. Whenever the divine favor chooses someone to receive a special grace, or to accept a lofty vocation, God adorns the person chosen with all the gifts of the Spirit needed to fulfill the task at hand.

This general rule is especially verified in the case of Saint Joseph, the foster-father of our Lord and the husband of the Queen of our world, enthroned above the angels. He was chosen by the eternal Father as the trustworthy guardian and protector of his greatest treasures, namely, his divine Son and Mary, Joseph’s wife. He carried out this vocation with complete fidelity until at last God called him, saying: “Good and faithful servant enter into the joy of your Lord.”

What then is Joseph’s position in the whole Church of Christ? Is he not a man chosen and set apart? Through him and, yes, under him, Christ was fittingly and honorably introduced into the world. Holy Church in its entirety is indebted to the Virgin Mother because through her it was judged worthy to receive Christ. But after her we undoubtedly owe special gratitude and reverence to Saint Joseph.

In him the Old Testament finds its fitting close. He brought the noble line of patriarchs and prophets to its promised fulfillment. What the divine goodness had offered as a promise to them, he held in his arms.

Obviously, Christ does not now deny to Joseph that intimacy, reverence and very high honor which he gave him on earth, as a son to his father. Rather we must say that in heaven Christ completes and perfects all that he gave at Nazareth.

Now we can see how the last summoning words of the Lord appropriately apply to Saint Joseph: “Enter into the joy of your Lord.” In fact, although the joy of eternal happiness enters into the soul of a man, the Lord preferred to say to Joseph: “Enter into joy.” His intention was that the words should have a hidden spiritual meaning for us. They convey not only that this holy man possesses an inward joy, but also that it surrounds him and engulfs him like an infinite abyss.

Remember us, Saint Joseph, and plead for us to your foster-child. Ask your most holy bride, the Virgin Mary, to look kindly upon us, since she is the mother of him who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns eternally. Amen.

Today’s Mass Collect

Grant, we pray, almighty God, that by Saint Joseph’s intercession your Church may constantly watch over the unfolding of the mysteries of human salvation, whose beginnings you entrusted to his faithful care.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

Over the past few days, I have been reflecting on this quote from C.S. Lewis’s Problem of Pain:

“You would like to know how I behave when I am experiencing pain, not writing books about it. You need not guess, for I will tell you; I am a great coward. But what is that to the purpose? When I think of pain—of anxiety that gnaws like fire and loneliness that spreads out like a desert, and the heartbreaking routine of monotonous misery, or again of dull aches that blacken our whole landscape or sudden nauseating pains that knock a man’s heart out at one blow, of pains that seem already intolerable and then are suddenly increased, of infuriating scorpion-stinging pains that startle into maniacal movement a man who seemed half dead with his previous tortures—it ‘quite o’ercrows my spirit’. If I knew any way of escape I would crawl through sewers to find it. But what is the good of telling you about my feelings? You know them already: they are the same as yours. I am not arguing that pain is not painful. Pain hurts. That is what the word means. I am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine of being made ‘perfect through suffering’10 is not incredible. To prove it palatable is beyond my design.” CS Lewis

We all experience pain.

Some pain and suffering are greater than others, but none of us is immune to the agonizing, unanswerable realities of this life. At times, our wounds come through the sins of others, especially those closest to us. Other times, they come through loss, illness, confusion, and trials. Most of the time, these things make no sense. We have no answers for their causes. We are stunned. Voiceless. We sit in a kind of stupor, wondering what in the world is happening and why.

Let’s be honest: suffering is the ultimate kick in the teeth. It strips away our illusions of control and leaves us poor before Christ. The only thing we can do is cry out.

It may sound cliché, but turning our eyes to Christ is the only thing we can do. Christ is the one who entered suffering freely. As Isaiah says, Christ bore rejection, injustice, and death itself. None of it was deserved. Zilch. Christ not only carried the physical pain, but also the weight of the collective sin of the world. It was an act of total abandonment to God. Christ asks us to do the same, even when we do not understand why. O Lord, why is total surrender so difficult?

Today, may we gaze upon our Lord and pray, ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.’

In the holy Eucharist, we can walk through everything life brings our way.

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© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

Two Masters

Jesus says we cannot serve two masters. We will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. This verse always feels like a punch in the gut. We live in a world where we are trying to pursue virtue while battling the sinful self. Lent is a gift in which Christ asks us to fast, give alms, and pray. It is an invitation to enter into the spiritual battle and give over to God what is rightfully his—our entire self.

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. Matthew 6:24 RSV

Of course, this is easier said than done. This complete surrender is not only hard, but it can discourage us to the point where we are tempted to give up and give in.

This past week in Evening Prayer, there was a scripture reading from Philippians. It’s the verse in which Paul asks us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12-15). Who wants to be fearful and trembling? But if you read those verses and sit with them, they are actually comforting. If only we will stop belly aching and arguing (not only with ourselves and others), God will put the will and the action into us. If we can surrender, be quiet, stop the obsession with control, and say to Christ, ‘alright, I give up, it’s your will, not mine,’ we will experience an innocence and grace that will give us the peace that passes all understanding.

That same struggle with control is exactly where temptation often gets subtle: it doesn’t always look like open rebellion, but like the “reasonable” choice to keep everything planned and thoroughly organized.

As I was in prayer this morning thinking about this, I was reminded of Joseph Ratzinger’s warning above about how easily we can prefer the “reasonable decision” and a tidy, organized world over letting God interfere with our essential purposes.

The tempter is not so crude as to suggest to us directly that we should worship the devil. He merely suggests that we opt for the reasonable decision, that we choose to give priority to a planned and thoroughly organized world, where God may have his place as a private concern but must not interfere in our essential purposes. - Jesus of Nazareth, Joseph Ratzinger

The Devil and his minions constantly whisper that we need control, that we need everything tidy in our lives, and that we need a perfect plan. So what do we do with Jesus? We make Him one of the things we control, categorize, and dismiss once we think we have it all figured out. The reality is that we don’t. Chaos, sin, and disorder are everywhere, and it can be disheartening. Jesus is asking us to let Him interfere in all of it.

This is surrender. In giving everything to Him, we will find peace.

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© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

There are eighteen major Rites in the Catholic Church, with eighteen different ways to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, of which the Latin Rite is one. We should keep in mind that the Mass is essentially one and the same Apostolic Liturgy in all valid Rites. Aramaic was the common language of many Christians in the first four centuries of the Catholic Church. Syriac was one dialect of Aramaic and was used especially in the ancient Christian city of Edessa, at the same location on the Daysan River as the modern city of Urfa in Turkey. Edessa became a major Christian center of Greek and Syriac theological and philosophical thought but fell under Arab control in the middle of the seventh century. From Edessa, the Christian evangelization of Armenia in the third century was very successful, and Armenia became the first Christian nation in 301. The Armenian alphabet was then invented at Edessa at the beginning of the fifth century.

The Catholic Church grew through the language of Syriac and spread all the way to Persia and India, and even to parts of China, as did the ancient syncretistic religion of Manichaeism. In the fourth century the Armenian Rite developed under the influence of the Syriac Rite. The Syriac Christians were very interested in Greek culture and translated much of Greek literature into Syriac. An academic requirement for the study of Greek Patristics to this day is to learn to read Syriac as well as Greek. Syriac remained the language of most Christians in the East until the rise of Islam in the sixth century, when Arabic became the vernacular and Syriac and Armenian Christians fell under Muslim rule. The success of Manichaeism and the opposing rise of Islam in the East led directly to the decline of Syriac Christianity. The early Syriac Rite was geographically much larger than both the Latin and Byzantine Rites.

The Council of Chalcedon in 451 had condemned both the Nestorian and the Monophysite Christological errors. Nestorianism emphasizes the humanity of Jesus to the exclusion of his divinity and posits two distinct persons, one human and the other divine, having separate natures that are united accidently, while Monophysitism emphasizes the divinity of Jesus and maintains that he has only one nature, which is either essentially divine or a synthesis of divine and human attributes. The Confession of Chalcedon provides a very clear statement on the human and the divine natures of Christ, hypostatically united in his divine Person:

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach people to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and body, consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the manhood, in all things like unto us, but without sin, begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the manhood, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably (ἐν δύο φύσεσιν ἀσυγχύτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀχωρίστως – in duabus naturis inconfuse, immutabiliter, indivise, inseparabiliter), the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the properties of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person (prosopon) and one Subsistence (hypostasis), not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only begotten God (μονογενῆ Θεόν), the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning [have declared] concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.

Armenian Christians have always had various conflicting and shifting loyalties to the ancient Christologies that include Monophysitism, Chalcedonianism, and Miaphysitism, with the latter proposing that Christ is both fully divine and fully human in one essentially composite nature. The Armenian Church is independent and autocephalous, tracing its origins to the missionary endeavors of the Apostles Thaddaeus and Bartholomew, but its bishops were originally under the Patriarch of Antioch and the See of Caesarea in Cappadocia. The Armenian monk and theologian St Gregory of Narek (950-1003) was involved in the founding and development of the Monastery of Narek (Narekavank) on the shores of Lake Van when Armenia was an independent kingdom after being liberated from Muslim rule. He was the abbot there, and he and his monks were sympathetic to Chalcedonianism.

In the eleventh century, openness towards Rome began. The Catholicos [Principal Bishop] Gregory II made a pilgrimage to Rome to honour the relics of the apostles Peter and Paul, and in the subsequent years the various Catholicoi acknowledged the Pontiff as Peter’s Successor. From 1205, a number of Catholicos received the pallium in Rome. In the fourteenth century Franciscan and Dominican missionaries arrived in Armenia and established religious centres, but problems with the local hierarchies led to a fracture in 1441, the year in which the Armenian hierarchy split into two branches, Sis and Etchmiadzin. In the eighteenth century there was a religious and cultural reawakening thanks to the priest Mekhit’ar who, after converting to Catholicism, founded a congregation in Constantinople but was persecuted and sought refuge in the island of St. Lazarus in Venice. In 1740 a synod of Armenian bishops gathered in Rome to elect the first Catholic patriarch of Armenian rite, established provisionally in Kraim, Lebanon; in 1742 a new seat of the Armenian Catholic patriarchate was instituted in Bzommar, Lebanon. It transferred to Constantinople in 1866 but returned to Bzommar in 1925, where it remains to this day. (Holy See Press Office, N. 160623b, 2016-06-23, “A Brief History of the Church in Armenia,” https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2016/06/23/160623b.pdf)

During World War I from 1915 to 1917 about one million Armenian Christians were targeted and exterminated by the Ottomans in Turkey, which is regarded as the first major holocaust of the 20^th century (the actual number of deaths is disputable, but the fact of the deportation and violence is undeniable). Many other such holocausts were to follow. Adolf Hitler, for example, imitated the pattern of extermination and used it against millions of Jews in Europe, calling it “The Armenian Solution.” The Monastery of Narek was abandoned in 1915 and demolished around 1951. A mosque now stands on its location. Veneration of St Gregory of Narek has never waned, and his writings were recommended to the Universal Church by Pope St John Paul II, who signed a joint declaration with His Holiness the Catholicos of All the Armenians, Karekin II, affirming that the Armenian Church and the Roman Catholic Church have a common origin. St Gregory of Narek was then declared the 36^th Doctor of the Church by Pope Francis in 2015.

As a holy theologian St Gregory of Narek composed powerful intercessory prayers in his Book of Lamentations and was influenced by St Gregory of Nyssa and the apophatic tradition. Like many other apophatic theologians of the East and the West, he wrote a commentary on The Song of Songs or The Blessing of Blessings, as he called it. In Christian theology, there are two fundamental and complementary ways to grasp something of the mystery of God—the positive way and the negative way—which are then reconciled in the analogical way of eminence and transcendence. Positive theology proceeds by way of the dogmatic affirmations which can made about God, while negative theology proceeds by way of the difference between God and created beings and emphasizes the ineffable knowledge that existential union with Christ by faith, hope, and love brings to the human heart. These two ways are complementary and should be integrated. The abstract language of dogma and the mystical language of poetry are both valid means of knowing God and should not be set in false opposition. In the ascent of our minds and hearts to the presence of God in our souls by nature and grace, the positive and negative modes of theology work together to help us to grow in holiness and to receive an even higher knowledge of God through the transformation of our capacity to participate in his divine Wisdom and Love. This higher mystical knowledge is attained only when God reveals his divine Presence to us in our souls.

The purpose of Christian prayer under the effects of grace is to surrender to the difficult but delightful spiritual transformation of the mode of the receiver. Corresponding to the positive and negative modes of theology are the two fundamental modes of prayer: the kataphatic way and the apophatic way. Both are essential to the transforming union of the soul with God. Kataphatic prayer is active and proceeds by way of images, concepts, words, devotions, creation, truth, goodness, beauty, and discursive reason. Apophatic prayer proceeds simply by way of the divine love and that God infuses in our souls through Christ and the Holy Spirit. The integrated practice of the active and passive modes of prayer in union with Christ ordinarily gives rise to mystical prayer, which is fully contemplative and directly infused by God. The ultimate goal of Christian prayer is a continuous loving trinitarian communion with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. A transformation of the heart is required because in the conditions of sin and attachment to sensible goods we do not naturally or easily attend to God in loving communion with his Presence in the soul. The transformation of the heart is possible only by personal effort and the help of grace. The spiritual life of prayer is therefore a battle, for we must struggle against ourselves, the world, and demons. Spiritual marriage between Christ and the soul is the Biblical and analogical representation of the struggle to overcome temptations and vices, to acquire self-mastery and virtues, and to remain faithful and attentive to God and his inspirations. This is the supernatural goal of every true disciple of Christ. Ultimately it is Christ who makes this goal attainable, and he offers his help to everyone who sincerely seeks God above all things in every state and walk of life.

St Gregory of Narek is a reliable spiritual guide who uses the Biblical language of analogy and allegory to write beautifully and poetically about the existential apophatic dialogue and communion of love between Christ and the soul.

Blessed are they who are worthy of the unfading crown and are wedded to Christ, for they will share His crown in the endless kingdom of Christ.

“How beautiful and delightful you have become; love to your delicacy![sic]” [the Bridegroom says to the Bride in The Blessing of Blessings.] Look precisely at the praises listed for all the Bride’s senses; see how, having listed them one by one and praised them, [Christ the Bridegroom] summarizes them again, by saying how beautiful and delightful you have become. The real beauty of a human being is to cause all one’s senses to serve God, and to divinize them by drawing near to God, by participating in the divine works, in order to become worthy of hearing such words from Christ the Bridegroom: “You have become beautiful and delightful to me.”

What immeasurable bliss! By the mouth of God to be professed beautiful and delightful to Him whom all the saints, apostles and prophets desired, the martyrs and ascetics, and the vardapets [teachers] of the Church with all her clergy. Becoming the Daughter and Bride of God, they forgot their people and their fathers’ house (Ps 44:11); becoming strangers to the world and whatever is in this world, they became delightful through their virtuous ways of life, and were loved by the Groom, who said, “Love to your delicacy!”; that is, “I love your great delicacy just as bodily bridegrooms love their physically delicate brides.” (The Blessing of Blessings: Gregory of Narek’s Commentary on the Song of Songs, translated with an introduction and notes by Roberta R. Ervine, Cistercian Publications, 2007, p. 181)

St Gregory of Narek also clearly explains that the foundation of this spiritual communion of the soul with Christ is Eucharistic Communion and the imitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

By what was the Bride empowered to be a fellow traveler on Christ’s way? By the awesome mystery of Communion—by the body and the blood of Christ which He gave to us for strength.

“He made us bold to drink with our lips and break with our teeth that on which you the angels, you sisters and queens, did not dare to gaze; we were allowed to break with our teeth Him of whom no bone was broken on the Cross, as the Prophet had predicted aforetime (Ps 33:21). In our earthly incinerated flesh we are not consumed by the uncontainable and flaming Fire, whereas you angels are not able to look upon it—nor do you dare to. I have become the container for the Uncontainable, like the Theotokos, who received Him into Her womb and was not burned, and like her archetype the burning bush.” Thus does the Bride boast before the angels; as it were, boasting in the unspeakable gift of the Groom. Going on she adds, “I am my Beloved’s, and His returning is to me.” That is, having been joined to Him through this food, I am His and He is mine. As the Lord Himself said in the Gospel (Jn 6:56), “Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood will live in Me and I in him.” (The Blessing of Blessings, p. 185)

The nuptial mystical theology of St Gregory of Narek is the same Catholic doctrine that we find in the Christian apophatic tradition as a whole. Consider for example the following explanation of the Bridal symbol in nuptial mystical theology of St John of the Cross, which is offered by St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein):

This image is not an allegory. When the soul is called the Bride of God, there is not only a relationship of similarity between two things which permits one to be designated by the other. There is, much more, such an intimate union between the image and the reality that it is almost impossible to speak of them any longer as a duality. Turned around: the meaning of the expression, being engaged [to be married] has nowhere as fitting and perfect a fulfillment as in the love relationship of God with the soul. That is the hallmark of a symbol-relationship in the strict and actual sense. The relationship of the soul to God as God foresaw it from all eternity as the goal of her creation, simply cannot be more fittingly designated than as a nuptial bond. Once one has grasped that, then the image and the reality directly exchange their roles: the divine bridal relationship is recognized as the original and actual bridal relationship, and all human nuptial relationships appear as imperfect copies of this archetype—just as the Fatherhood of God is the archetype of all fatherhood on earth. By reason of this copy-relationship, the human bridal relationship becomes useful as a symbolic expression of the divine, and in view of this function that which is a purely human relationship in actual life takes second place. Its actual reality has its highest reason for existence in that it can give expression to a divine mystery (Ephesians 5:23 ff). (St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, OCD, The Science of the Cross, translated by Sr Josephine Koeppel, OCD, ICS Publications, 2002, pp. 242-243)

Through the Sacraments of the Church and the intercessory prayers of St Gregory of Narek, the 36^th Doctor of the Church, let us renew our personal efforts daily to surrender unconditionally to the transforming power of grace and thus to enter more completely into mystical dialogue and spiritual communion with Christ.

The Collect for the Memorial of St Gregory of Narek, February 27

Almighty Ever-living God, who were pleased to imbue with mystical doctrine St. Gregory of Narek, the teacher and glory of the Armenian people, grant us by his teaching to learn the art of speaking with you and constantly to fortify our life with the Sacraments of the Church, through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever, amen.

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About Deacon Tracy Jamison, OCDS, PhD

Deacon Tracy Jamison was raised in a Christian family as the son of a Scotch-Irish evangelical minister in the Campbellite tradition. As an undergraduate he majored in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Cincinnati Christian University, where his parents had been educated. At this institution he met Joyce, who was completing a degree in Church Music, and after graduation they entered the covenant of Christian marriage in 1988. Through the study of philosophy and the writings of the Early Church Fathers, Tracy was received into the full communion of the Catholic Church in 1992. Under the influence of the theological writings of St. John Paul II he began to study the works of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross and entered formation as a Secular Carmelite of the Teresian Reform. In 1999 he completed the doctoral program in Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, and in 2002 he made his definitive profession as a Secular Carmelite. In 2010 he was ordained as a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Currently he is an associate professor of philosophy at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary of the West.

© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC

Look Up

To thee I lift up my eyes, O thou who art enthroned in the heavens! Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, till he have mercy upon us.

Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt. Too long our soul has been sated with the scorn of those who are at ease, the contempt of the proud. Psalm 123 (RSV)

The two disciples on the road to Emmaus were walking away, away from Jerusalem, away from hope. They truly believed God had failed to accomplish what He promised. Downcast, their eyes were fixed on disappointment. “But we had hoped…” Hope was in the past tense.

This is us. We live like this sometimes. In fact, more often than we’d like to admit.

Today’s Psalm of Ascent (123) teaches a great movement of the heart: look up.

We have a tendency, if we are not vigilant, to look in the wrong direction for meaning, help, and purpose. We look horizontally. We seek approval, security, toward the promise of being understood. This often turns inward as we hang on to our interpretations and our own wounded narratives.

The psalmist says to lift your eyes. Not towards the current circumstance but to the one enthroned in heaven.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us that: Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God.” But when we pray, do we speak from the height of our pride and will, or “out of the depths” of a humble and contrite heart? He who humbles himself will be exalted; humility is the foundation of prayer, Only when we humbly acknowledge that “we do not know how to pray as we ought,” are we ready to receive freely the gift of prayer. “Man is a beggar before God.” (CCC 2559)

Psalm 123 is precisely that movement. A raising.

The eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, not in fear, but in expectation. They wait for mercy. They trust provision. They depend.

All of us are dependent in some way whether it’s a spouse, a friend, a colleague, or even our community. But beneath every human dependence lies a deeper one: we are creatures. We live from another.

When we forget this, we become restless. When others treat us with contempt or indifference, something hardens in us. The psalm speaks honestly: “We have had more than enough of contempt.” The soul can become “sated” with scorn. Pride wounds. Hostility exhausts. The world often resists those who seek to live by God’s promises rather than its own.

And so we lower our gaze and stop expecting mercy.

Perhaps we can look to the Emmaus disciples as a model to follow. Even while they walked away, they remained in conversation. When Christ opened the Scriptures to them and broke the bread, the scales fell off. They recognized Him.

They rose and returned to Jerusalem. When the direction of their bodies changed, the direction of their gazed changed.

Psalm 123 asks us: Where are my eyes fixed today? Am I staring at what has disappointed me? At the contempt of others. My own interpretation of events? Or am I lifting my eyes?

To look up is not denial. It is trust. It is the quiet decision to say: My help does not come from below. It comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth (cf. Ps 121:2).

Today, look up. Grace will meet you—our Risen Lord is walking right beside you. Thanks be to God.

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© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

In Year A of the Lectionary cycle, the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent is the Temptation of Jesus in the desert (Matthew 4:1–11). When I read this Gospel, it always brings to mind Fr. Smith, the protagonist of Walker Percy’s The Thanatos Syndrome. Fr. Smith is an odd character. He is not unlike many of the saints we read about, particularly the early desert fathers of the Church. These early saints practiced what we would consider strange, even severe, asceticism. A Syrian monk by the name of Saint Simeon the Stylite is one such saint. Percy, in fact, models Fr. Smith after Simeon in his novel.

Saint Simeon the Stylite lived atop a narrow platform sixty feet in the air for thirty-seven years, with only a basket lowered for provisions. It was his way of practicing penance: praying, fasting, and bowing in prostration before God. It reminds me of those who built the Tower of Babel. These early technocrats rebelled against God, straining upward to compete with the One who created them. Saint Simeon climbed his tower for precisely the opposite reason: to detach from the world, to crush the pride within him, to come before God with nothing left to hide behind.

Fr. Smith, like Saint Simeon, does not climb a pillar but a fire lookout tower. This is his modern pillar, where he watches, prays, and does penance for a broken world. And the world Fr. Smith inhabits is our world. It is a world adrift in atheistic scientism, spiritual emptiness, and technological drunkenness. Both men embrace voluntary suffering as a means of reparation. They are not attempting to fix the world through systems or ideology. They are trying to conquer it from within; through their own renunciation, through the slow dying to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2:16).

Yesterday’s Gospel shows us why this matters so deeply. They are the three fundamental disorders that still unravel human hearts today. When Satan offers bread to a starving Jesus, it is the temptation to place the needs of the body above the will of the Father. When he spreads out all the kingdoms of the world, it is the temptation toward wealth, power, and possession. And when he urges Jesus to throw himself from the parapet so the angels might catch him, it is the temptation toward recognition and glory from men. Jesus refuses each one. He knows that genuine Messiahship does not come by shortcuts but comes by the Cross. And he knows that glory comes from God alone.

The early Church Fathers saw in all of this the figure of the New Adam. Unlike Adam, who abused the freedom God gave him, Jesus was obedient and in his obedience, restored what had been lost. He fulfilled Israel’s vocation perfectly, the vocation Israel could never manage on its own. Jesus makes all things new (Revelation 21:5)! Thanks be to God.

This is why Lent is not merely a spiritual exercise. It is a genuine participation in Christ’s own victory in the desert. By fasting, praying, and giving alms, we enter the same battle Jesus entered and we enter it with him.

Last week we reflected on Psalm 121. This was the Psalm of Ascent that was sung on the road up to Jerusalem. The terrain was dangerous. Its promise is simple and strong: “The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and for evermore.” (Ps. 121:8). Whether Simeon on his pillar, Fr. Smith on his tower, or each of us in our own desert, Christ watches over us. Christ walks with us.

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© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

The Silence of the Desert

There is a story told of St. Anthony the Great. When he first went into the desert, he was not immediately surrounded by peace. Rather, he was assaulted by waves of thoughts, memories, fears, temptations, and regrets. What was supposed to be a place of refuge and silence became a place of noise. It was the noise of his own mind. One day, after a long interior struggle, he cried out to the Lord, “Where were You?” And Christ answered him: “Anthony, I was here. I was waiting to see your struggle.”

Saint Anthony learned a valuable lesson: silence is not the absence of noise, but the place where the heart learns to remain with Christ in the midst of interior noise.

Our focus this past week has been on the pilgrims’ journey to Jerusalem, the joy accompanying their arrival in the holy city, and the sense of fulfillment that this journey brings.

Today is a good day to pause. To attempt to enter into a brief silence.

There is a tradition in ancient Christianity of going to the desert. In the fourth century, men and women left behind the noise of cities and withdrew into silence. They did not go there to escape the world, but to encounter Christ more deeply. They sought humility, repentance, fraternal charity, and purity of heart.

The Catechism reminds us: The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for: The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator. (CCC 27)

The desire for God can be buried under distraction. The desert fathers discovered that if the exterior world grows quiet, the interior world becomes louder. This is where the wisdom of the desert fathers can speak to us.

The Desert Fathers used the Greek word logismos to describe this noise. A logismos is not simply a thought. No, it is a thought that lingers. These thoughts begin to dialogue with us, often incessantly. They become a suggestion that pulls our attention away from God. If we are not on guard, these thoughts gradually begin to shape our heart.

Evagrius of Pontus suggested a dangerous pattern can develop that will eventually lead us to sin. Here is the pattern: A thought appears. We entertain it. We begin to converse with it. It takes root in the heart. Then it leads to action. It becomes a habit. Then it forms our character.

What the Desert Fathers are teaching us is that sin rarely begins with a dramatic decision. It begins with an unnoticed thought. As the Epistle James writes, “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire; then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin” (Jas 1:14–15).

It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the desert was a place free from temptation. No, the desert was the place where temptation became visible.

Life today is filled with so many great conveniences. But, it is saturated with noise. Our phones connect us with so many of these conveniences, yet, they rarely allow us to rest. Constant notifications, endless information. There is always something to read, to answer, to endlessly scroll.

When I go on pilgrimage, I make a simple decision: I do not use technology. I turn the phone off as I walk toward the next pilgrim stop in silence.

What is crazy is that at first it is uncomfortable. There is a sort of anxiousness in which something feels like it’s missing. It is weird to instinctively reach for the phone. It’s like there is a mindless search for distraction.

But slowly, usually after a few days, another reality emerges. Something feels different. The rhythm of walking becomes a sort of prayer. ‘Things’ settle down.

Yet, even when the phone is off, the mind continues speaking.

Comparison.

Resentment

Fantasy.

Fear.

Self-justification.

Old conversations.

Imagined and made up scenarios.

These logismoi are not merely passing thoughts. They are thoughts that are silently yelling—ENTERTAIN ME. These thoughts want a conversation. And if we are not attentive, it slowly shapes our perception, our emotions, and eventually our actions. It draws our attention away from the present moment. And yes, away from God. Silence does not eliminate the logismoi. It reveals them.

However, when they are revealed, they lose some of their power. We can say, “This is not from you, O Lord,” and return again to Him. In this way, the journey outward becomes a journey inward.

Perhaps today we can enter into a quieter space where we can hear the voice of Christ.

Silence is not about emptying ourselves into nothing. It is about creating space. It is the space to recognize which thoughts are not from God, and space to receive the thoughts that are.

My prayer for you today is to sit in silence. Even if it’s for a brief moment, it can be a place where if you listen closely, you will hear the voice of Christ.

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© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.

I Will Seek Your Good

“I will seek your good.” Ps 122:9

Yesterday, the pilgrim was still on the road, walking to Jerusalem. The journey was sustained by God’s loving protection. In today’s psalm, the pilgrim has arrived at the city of God. The anxiety of dangerous travel has now been replaced by joy: “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’”

The word that carries this psalm is peace. Peace is not just the absence of conflict, but fullness. Security. Prosperity. Harmony. Unity. It is a life rightly ordered under God. Jerusalem is described as a city “bound firmly together” (v. 3). The idea here is that when the heart is ordered to God and to one another, the result is unity; the result is peace.

The Catechism reminds us that peace is the “tranquility of order” (CCC 2304). This is not a kind of passivity, but rather the right relationship one has with God and neighbor. This idea is made concrete when the Church celebrates the Solemnity of Christ the King. On that day, Psalm 122 is used as the responsorial psalm to proclaim that Christ does not reign through domination, but from the Cross, establishing a kingdom of peace.

Have you ever noticed the deep sense of calm when entering a church? There is a particular stillness that settles in the heart. I often find myself looking for the sanctuary lamp—the lighted candle near the tabernacle. It is a reminder that He is here, that He is present in the Blessed Sacrament. The King of Peace dwells here in the city.

The Catechism tells us that “the Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being.” Where Christ is present, there is peace. This peace is not sentimental. It does not deny suffering, but flows from the certainty that God dwells among us.

I love the ending of this psalm: “For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.” Peace is not only something to receive. Peace is something to build. To give. Saint Thomas Aquinas defines love as to will the good of the other (ST I–II, q. 26, a. 4). That is exactly what this verse expresses. Perhaps this is what Christ is calling us to today. With all the factions, grievances, and cliques that we experience each day, may our outward movement be one in which we seek the good of the other.

Saint Charles de Foucauld once desired to convert the whole Sahara. Yet before he could become a missionary to others, he underwent his own interior conversion. God transformed his heart. He no longer sought visible success; he desired to become a “universal brother.” In the hiddenness of the desert, he fulfilled this psalm. He sought the good of those before him. May we do the same for the sake of the house of the Lord our God.

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© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.