Thursday, December 1 , 2005

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
—Matthew 7:21

We who know you, and say we know you, how many of us will enter the kingdom of heaven?

At this moment [1941] we are the anvil rather than the hammer. Other men, strangers, renegades, are hammering us. . . . The anvil cannot and need not strike back: it must only be firm, only hard! . . . However hard the hammer strikes, the anvil stands firmly and silently in place and will long continue to shape the objects forged upon it. If it is sufficiently tough and firm and hard the anvil will last longer than the hammer. The anvil represents those who are unjustly imprisoned, those who are driven out and banished for no fault of their own.
—Blessed Clemens August von Galen, Bishop of Münster, quoted in Justus George Lawler, Hitler’s Hammer, the Church’s Anvil, First Things, November 2005.

How many of us are anvils of sand?

If the principle is established that one is entitled to kill his unproductive fellow-man, then woe betide all of us when we become aged and infirm! If it is legitimate to kill unproductive members of the community, woe betide the disabled who have sacrificed their health or their limbs in the productive process! If unproductive men and women can be disposed of by violent means, woe betide our brave soldiers who return home with major disabilities, as cripples, as invalids!
—Clemens August von Galen, Ibid.

Along with Bishop von Galen, suffer me to do your Father’s will, to hear your words and do them, nec laudibus nec timore, neither for praise nor out of fear.

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For the priest:

1. Say Mass as though the people were not present. This means that the priest is thinking about, speaking to, and turned towards the Most High God. Paradoxically, it is this benign neglect of the people that gets the person of the priest out of the way and invites the people into the most intimate participation in the sacred mysteries. This is now counter-intuitive to most priests, who were taught that their first, last and constant job is make the people “feel welcome”, but it is absolutely and unconditionally true: say Mass as though they are not there, and they will start to say things like, “That’s the first time in 40 years I feel like I’ve been to Mass.” Guaranteed.
—Fr Jay Scott Newman, Worshipping the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness