Support the Brisbane Oratory in Formation

Earlier this year, the great and good project of establishing an Oratory in Brisbane – first mooted for Australia, we learn, in 2011 – was made public with the blessing of Archbishop Mark Coleridge. Fr Paul Chandler, a priest of that archdiocese, together with two other priests (who wish to remain anonymous for the time being, at the request of their respective bishops), and a seminarian, Shawn Murphy, who has just begun his studies for the priesthood with the Oratorians in Toronto, are working toward establishing this new Oratorian community in 2015 or 2016. God bless their endeavours!

Now these nascent Oratorians have a website for the Brisbane Oratory in Formation: on their behalf, I ask you to above all pray for them, but also please consider donating funds for their many needs, particularly the education of their seminarian (further details may be accessed via the relevant section of their website).

As readers may realize, I am (all unworthy) a devotee of St Philip Neri, Founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, and third Apostle of Rome. Indeed, a reproduction painting of him looks down on me as I type... would that I would heed his advice to the same extent as I beseech his prayers. It was a special pleasure to me to visit his glorious relics at the Chiesa Nuova on my various visits to the Eternal City; may he intercede by his merits and suffrages for the Brisbane Oratory in Formation: "Look down from heaven and see, and visit this new vineyard: and perfect the same, which thy right hand hath planted" (Ps 79:15b-16a).

I am minded to repeat one of Newman's hymns in his honour:

St. Philip in his School (A Song.) 

This is the Saint of gentleness and kindness, 

Cheerful in penance, and in precept winning; 

Patiently healing of their pride and blindness, 

Souls that are sinning.  

This is the Saint, who, when the world allures us, 

Cries her false wares, and opes her magic coffers, 

Points to a better city, and secures us 

With richer offers.  

Love is his bond, he knows no other fetter, 

Asks not our all, but takes whate’er we spare him, 

Willing to draw us on from good to better, 

As we can bear him.  

When he comes near to teach us and to bless us, 

Prayer is so sweet, that hours are but a minute; 

Mirth is so pure, though freely it possess us, 

Sin is not in it. 

Thus he conducts by holy paths and pleasant, 

Innocent souls, and sinful souls forgiven, 

Towards the bright palace where our God is present, 

Throned in high heaven. 

******

These future Oratorians of course seek the patronage of Our Lady Help of Christians above all under God. And may Bl John Henry Newman and Bl Pier Giorgio Frassati, the other well-chosen patrons of the future Brisbane Oratory, add their prayers to those of St Philip, that in God's time things now hoped for may come to be.

Bl Pier Giorgio Frassati, Man of the Beatitudes

Once I get to Sydney, I intend to visit the tomb and shrine of Bl Mary MacKillop, and also venerate the sacred relics of Bl Pier Giorgio, temporarily translated from Turin to St Mary's Cathedral.

It is a marvellous privilege and a Godgiven blessing to come before the sacred relics of the saints: for, as the Scriptures testify, God is pleased to shew His goodpleasure with those who have lived godly and righteous lives, by approving the veneration of their bodies (which were baptised in the Name of the Trinity, temples of His Holy Spirit, one day to be raised up and glorified in the image of Christ, manifested as children of God) and by working miracles through their instrumentality - as when mere contact with the bones of St Eliseus raised a dead man to life (cf. IV (II) Kings xiii, 21; Ecclus xlviii, 14-15), as when the shadow of the living Apostle Peter (cf. Acts v,15) or handkerchiefs that had been touched by the Apostle Paul (cf. Acts xix, 12) cured the sick.

Bl Pier Giorgio is one toward whom I have some devotion, and I am sorry to have missed posting something on his feast day, the 4th of July - an unavoidable problem when one uses the '62 Breviary only!

To say something about him, I must rely on that excellent and devout bishop, His Lordship Anthony Fisher, O.P., who somehow found time in the midst of over a year of hectic preparation to preach a strong sermon on Bl Pier Giorgio at the Dominican church in Sydney on his feast day, in presence of his relics; here is a devotion of mine in his honour, he who is styled "the Man of the Beatitudes", after the words of Cardinal Wojtyla in 1977: “Behold the man of the eight beatitudes who bears in himself the grace of the Gospel, the Good News, the joy of salvation offered to us by Christ.” As the Blessed used to say, “verso l’alto” (toward the top)!

ORATIO AD B. PETRO GEORGIO

Aña. Benedictus Deus, qui elegit nos, ut essemus sancti et immaculati in caritate. (Eph 1:3,4)

Canticum: Beatitudines (Mt 5:3-10)

Beati pauperes spiritu: * quoniam ipsorum est regnum cælorum.
Beati mites: * quoniam ipsi possidebunt terram.
Beati qui lugent: * quoniam ipsi consolabuntur.
Beati qui esuriunt et sitiunt justitiam: * quoniam ipsi saturabuntur.
Beai misericordes: * quoniam ipsi misericordiam consequentur.
Beati mundo corde: * quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt.
Beati pacifici: * quoniam filii Dei vocabuntur.
Beati qui persecutionem patiuntur propter justitiam: * quoniam ipsorum est regnum cælorum.
Gloria Patri…

Aña. Benedictus Deus, qui elegit nos, ut essemus sancti et immaculati in caritate.

V/. Viam mandatorum tuorum cucurri.
R/. Cum dilatasti cor meum. (Ps 118(119):32)

Oremus.

Deus, qui beato juveni Petro Georgio gratiam largitus es Christum reperiendi in fide et caritate cum gaudio; praesta quæsumus ut, eo intercedente, et nos evangelicarum Beatitudinem spiritum inter homines hodierni temporis diffundere valeamus. Per...

(O God, Who didst give grace to the blessed youth Pier Giorgio to find Christ in faith and charity with joy; grant, we beseech Thee, that, he interceding, we also may have the strength to propagate the spirit of the evangelical Beatitudes among the men of the present time. Through…)