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Advent with St Anthony of Egypt: Preparation

25th November 2022

The CHC blog

Advent With St Anthony: Preparation

The first post in a series of blogs by Gabriel Stirling that will explore what lessons St Anthony of Egypt can teach us about the season of Advent.

‘Therefore, you too must stand ready because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect’ – St Matthew, 24:44

During Advent, we are reminded not only of the Nativity in Bethlehem, but also of Christ’s Second Coming. This is a theme found throughout Sacred Scripture, as well as in the lives of the Saints. In particular, the life of the founder of monasticism, St Anthony of Egypt, offers us the chance to reflect on how we should prepare for the return of Our Lord.  

St Anthony was born in around 250 AD in Roman-ruled Egypt. A faithful believer from a young age, it was this devotion that made him a target for the Devil, who inflicted greater and greater torments on St Anthony. Not surrendering to the Evil One, he ventured into the tombs that inhabit the barren Egyptian landscape, to live a life dedicated to penance and solitude.

It was here in the barren wilderness that St Anthony entered into spiritual combat with the Devil. According to one account, he found himself subjected to the torments of demons who tried, but failed, to posess his body. The Devil tempted him with food and other material comforts, things that the hermit had surrendered.  But St Anthony was able to persevere in the face of these trials, strengthened through the grace of God. The demons eventually left him, defeated and demoralised. 

This retreat into the wilderness was not out of a desire for spiritual enlightenment or self-improvement. Instead, St Anthony saw it as a place of preparation before coming face to face with Christ. Speaking to his fellow monks, he said that that, by leading the contemplative life, they would be ‘ever striving and looking forward to the day of Judgment’. For St Anthony, the end goal of this ascetic life was to find his soul ready to meet with God.

St Anthony reminds us that the true focus of any Christian life should be one of preparation. In finding a place of relative peace, we can call upon God to help us with whatever spiritual trials that we face. Admittedly, finding a wilderness to prepare in is difficult when confronted with the noise of modern life. But quiet spaces still do exist, be it in praying the Rosary at home, visiting the Blessed Sacrament or attending a weekday Mass in church. In these moments, we surrender ourselves to God and receive a foretaste of the glory of Heaven.

The Tourment of St Anthony, a late-15th century painting attributed to Michelangelo

Advent offers us the chance to break the cycle of sin before the joyous festivities of Christmas. But perhaps more significantly, the life of St Anthony calls on us to prepare beyond Advent. Following his example, let us resolve to listen to God’s call and prepare our soul for the Kingdom of Christ.

Source: Life of St Anthony, St Athanasius/New Advent

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Saint Theodore – a Bishop for our times

19th September 2022

The CHC blog

Saint Theodore: a Bishop for our times

Today is the memorial of St Theodore of Tarsus, the namesake of the home of the Christian Heritage Centre. But what else do we know about his life, and what lessons should Catholics take from it?

St Theodore was born in around 600AD in Tarsus, now part of Turkey, but which was then a predominantly Greek settlement in the Byzantine Empire. His studies took him first to Constantinople, and later Rome, where he initially planned on becoming a monk. However, his plans changed when in 669, he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Church that St Theodore found on his arrival in England had many problems. The dioceses were too large and many did not have bishops in their posts. St Theodore revitalised the Church, visiting all the dioceses of England, and appointing bishops to vacant sees. He managed to reconcile clergy who had fallen out, and held the first synod for the entire province of Canterbury. After his death in 690, St Bede wrote that St Theodore was “the first archbishop whom all the English obeyed”. 

St Theodore’s life exemplified the call for unity among Christians. He had travelled all the way across Europe from Tarsus to Canterbury. But during this time, St Theodore was always part of the same “Catholic and Apostolic Church” affirmed each Sunday in the Creed. Moreover,  St Theodore had managed to end to the divisions that had plagued the Church. Through this and more, St Theodore truly lived to St Paul’s command to the Galatians that “all one in Christ Jesus”.

In 2017, work began on renovating a derelict mill owned by Stonyhurst College in Lancashire. When the building was completed in 2019, it was given the name Theodore House. One reason for this was the donation made to The Christian Heritage Centre by the Theodore Trust of over £2 million, with which the Trust made its final bequest and closed down. This donation effectively gave wheels to the Old Mill project (no pun intended), breathing life into the carefully drawn-up plans. Given the charity’s intention of making use of the new building to help revitalise the Christian faith in our country, as well as St Theodore’s relevance to England and his veneration by Orthodox, Catholic and Anglicans alike, the name seemed all the more fitting.

Opened in February 2019 by Lord Nicholas Windsor, Theodore House not only hosts the charity’s courses, conferences and retreats, but it also provides facilities for bed and breakfast, as well as space for private functions.

We ask for his intercession for the future of the Christian Heritage Centre and for the future of the Catholic Church in England & Wales.

St Theodore, pray for us!

Source: The Catholic Encyclopaedia/New Advent

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St Benedict of Nursia

Saints, Scholars & Spiritual Masters
#7 St Benedict of Nursia

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

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The seventh talk of Saints, Scholars and Spiritual Masters turns to the “Father of Western Monasticism” and his Rule of life, which  still guides religious life around the world 1,500 years later. Benedict fled Rome, with the degenerate and empty lifestyle that he found amongst his fellow students, to become a hermit in the hills outside the city. His saintliness soon attracted diverse followers, and set him on the path of establishing monastic communities and writing a Rule. Though these were not primarily centres of learning, Benedictine monasteries, and others following their example, became the repositories of learning and culture. Europe thus owes not only its monastic tradition to Benedict, but also the continuity of its development through the medieval era.

About the speaker:

Father Cassian Folsom, O.S.B., is the founding prior of the Monastery of San Benedetto, located in Norcia, Italy, the birthplace of Saint Benedict. He was born in Massachusetts in 1955, and has been a monk since 1979 and a priest since 1984. Fr. Cassian studied music before joining the monastic community of Saint Meinrad in 1974. He has served as the pro-president of the Pontifical Liturgical Institute at Sant’ Anselmo from 1997 to 2000. He founded his monastic community in Rome in 1998 and transferred it to Norcia in the year 2000. Father Cassian has been a consulter to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments since 2010, and is the author of numerous studies on Roman Catholic liturgy.

Other videos in the series:

St John Henry Newman

#3 St John Henry Newman

#4 St Thomas Aquinas

#5 St Francis de Sales

#6 The Spanish Mystics

#8 St Francis of Assisi

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Media Video

The Spanish Mystics

Saints, Scholars & Spiritual Masters
#6 Saints Teresa of Avila & John of the Cross

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

Please donate here:


The sixth talk of Saints, Scholars and Spiritual Masters looks at two giants of the interior life: St Theresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. The profound mysticism of these two well-loved, Spanish saints did not detract from their pragmatic determinedness. Together, they reformed the Carmelite order in Spain, founding no less than 23 monasteries between them and effectively establishing the order of Discalced Carmelites. The hardships and difficulties they both endured in pursuing their vocation and in reforming their order were only met with a strength that was founded on their deep love for Christ, which was also the foundation of the great friendship between them.

About the speaker:

Fr Matthew Blake is a Carmelite priest. Originally from Ireland, he has lived and worked  in the UK for more than thirty years. His ministry has mainly involved retreat direction, for which he is well-known in the UK, and he has also worked in many different parishes.

A selection of Fr Blake’s talks can be found here.

 

Other videos in the series:

St John Henry Newman

#3 St John Henry Newman

#4 St Thomas Aquinas

#5 St Francis de Sales

#7 St Benedict of Nursia

#8 St Francis of Assisi

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Media Video

St Francis de Sales

Saints, Scholars & Spiritual Masters
#5 St Francis de Sales

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

Please donate here:


The fifth talk of Saints, Scholars and Spiritual Masters explores the spirituality of a great Bishop and director of souls: St Francis de Sales. Known for his deep love of God and his determination to bring every person – be they lay or religious – to a real holiness of life, he paid special attention to lay people living working lives. Much of his writing was directed to showing such people how to grow in holiness through their day-to-day activity. His fame as a spiritual director brought him into demand from Popes, royalty and nobility. Despite this, he lived out the last word of advice he gave from his deathbed: “humility”.

About the speaker:

Canon Scott Tanner is a priest of the Institute of Christ the King, Soverign Priest. After studying Theology and Religious Studies at Nottingham University, he studied for the priest at St Philip Neri Seminary, near Florence, Italy. He was ordained in 2015 and worked in the Diocese of Shrewsbury before joining the parish of St Walburge’s in Preston, Lancashire.

 

Other videos in the series:

St John Henry Newman

#3 St John Henry Newman

#4 St Thomas Aquinas

#6 The Spanish Mystics

#7 St Benedict of Nursia

#8 St Francis of Assisi

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Media Video

Newman 101 conference

Newman 101: Why Newman Matters Today

Recordings of the online colloquium celebrating St Newman’s 10th anniversary of beatification and 1st anniversary of canonisation.

Introduction

***The recordings are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

Please donate here:



Newman's Marian Turn

For more information about Dr Lamb, please click here.

 

Newman as Friend & Pastor
in the Work of Meriol Trevor

For more information about Mrs Caldecott, please click here.

Newman on Imagination:
Callista Revisited

For more information about Dr Pezzini, please click here.

Newman on Why Culture Matters

For more information about Dr Phillips, please click here.

Questions & Conclusion

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Media Video

St Thomas Aquinas

Saints, Scholars & Spiritual Masters
#4 St Thomas Aquinas

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

Please donate here:


The fourth talk of Saints, Scholars and Spiritual Masters will explore the spirituality of one of the Church’s greatest theologians: Thomas Aquinas. Known for his unique and massive synthesis of Catholic theology, Aquinas earned the title of “The Angelic Doctor” not just for his great learning, but for the wisdom and light he brought to the Church’s thinking. In this talk, Fr Richard Conrad, O.P. will focus particularly on the themes of being, freedom and friendship. As the greatest of God’s gifts, they are fundamental to this great saint’s spirituality.

About the speaker:

Richard Conrad studied chemistry at Cambridge, and after his doctorate joined the Dominican Friars. He has served as Prior in Cambridge and Leicester, and for 8 years was Novice Master of the Province. He taught dogmatic theology at Maryvale Institute part-time from 1992 to 2016, and from 2007 has been resident at Blackfriars, Oxford, where he teaches dogmatic theology and the thought of Thomas Aquinas, and is currently Director of the Aquinas Institute.

For more information about Fr Conrad, please click here.

Other videos in the series:

St Ignatius of Loyola

#1 St Ignatius of Loyola

#2 St Therese of Lisieux

St John Henry Newman

#3 St John Henry Newman

#5 St Francis de Sales

#6 The Spanish Mystics

Categories
Media Video

St John Henry Newman

St John Henry Newman

Saints, Scholars & Spiritual Masters
#3 St John Henry Newman

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

Please donate here:


The third talk of Saints, Scholars and Spiritual Masters explores the spirituality of the latest English person to be canonised: John Henry Newman. Known for his great intellect and his conversion from Protestantism to the Catholic Faith, Newman’s journey was powered by his grasping of the realism and certainty of God’s presence.  At the heart of this journey was his conscience, drawing him “out of the shadows into truth”. This talk will focus on Newman’s ‘realism’ and his conversions.

About the speaker:

Dr Giuseppe Pezzini

Tutorial Fellow in Latin Language and Literature at Corpus Christi College Oxford. He came to St Andrews in 2016 after research fellowships at Magdalen College, Oxford and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He worked as an assistant editor for the Oxford Dictionary of Medieval Latin, and has published especially on Latin language and literature, philosophy of language, and the theory of fiction, ancient and modern, including above all Tolkien’s views on the ‘mystery of literary creation’. He is an Associate of the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Art in St Andrews and the Tolkien Editor of the Journal of the Inklings Studies. He is a member of the RSE Young Academy Scotland, the Young Academy of Europe, and a collaborator of the Meeting of Rimini, for which he has curated exhibitions on John Henry Newman (2011, 2014), Oscar Wilde (2015) and JRR Tolkien (2021).

For more information about Dr Pezzini, please click here.

Other videos in the series:

St Ignatius of Loyola

#1 St Ignatius of Loyola

#2 St Therese of Lisieux

#4 St Thomas Aquinas

#5 St Francis de Sales

#6 The Spanish Mystics

Categories
Media Video

St Therese of Lisieux

Saints, Scholars & Spiritual Masters
#2 St Therese of Lisieux

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

Please donate here:


The second talk in the series explores the life and spirituality of Therese of Lisieux. Perhaps one of the most beloved saints of Western Europe, Therese died at the age of only 24 after a long struggle with tuberculosis. She had spent 9 years as a Carmelite nun, fighting to be allowed to enter the convent at the age of 15. Her hidden and simple, yet whole-hearted life of prayer was repaid with a special grace of intimacy with God. Her vocation to love in her very ordinary struggles and simple life instantly made her an immensely popular and accessible saint. Canonised only 28 years after her death, her “Story of a Soul” has been read by and inspired countless people all over the world.

About the speaker:

Canon John Udris is Spiritual Director at St Mary’s College, Oscott, Birmingham.  He has a Licence in Spirituality from the Dominican University in Rome.  He is the author of two books on St Therese: ‘Holy Daring’ and ‘The Gift of St Therese of Lisieux.’

Other videos in the series:

St Ignatius of Loyola

#1 St Ignatius of Loyola

St John Henry Newman

#3 St John Henry Newman

#4 St Thomas Aquinas

#5 St Francis de Sales

#6 The Spanish Mystics

Categories
Media Video

St Ignatius of Loyola

St Ignatius of Loyola

Saints, Scholars & Spiritual Masters
#1 St Ignatius of Loyola

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

Please donate here:


The first talk in our online series, Saints, Scholars and Spiritual Masters, explores the life and spirituality of St Ignatius of Loyola. Founder of the Society of Jesus, St Ignatius is perhaps one of the most attractive and enigmatic of the Western Saints. A mercenary and a romantic, he was wounded in battle and spent time recuperating in hospital. He famously converted when forced to read the Gospels and the Lives of the Saints out of boredom. The ensuing time he spent in solitude, seeking the real meaning to his life, provided the basis for his Spiritual Exercises. These remain hugely relevant, immensely popular and religiously followed centuries later.

About the speaker:

Fr Dominic Robinson, SJ is currently Parish Priest of Farm Street in central London.  Farm Street Church, and the adjoining London Jesuit Centre, is a vibrant city centre ministry of the Jesuits, aiming to extend welcome and hospitality to many different groups.  Fr Dominic is also UK director of Landings, the programme for returning Catholics, teaches Theology at St Mary’s University, is Chair of Justice & Peace in the Diocese of Westminster and Ecclesiastical Assistant to the charity Aid to the Church in Need.

For more information about Fr Robinson, please click here.

 

Other videos in the series:

#2 St Therese of Lisieux

St John Henry Newman

#3 St John Henry Newman

#4 St Thomas Aquinas

#5 St Francis de Sales

#6 The Spanish Mystics