Carry Christ Across the Waters
MASS Dispérsit, dedit pauperibus
LESSON Ecclesiasticus 31: 8-11
GOSPEL St Luke 12: 35-40
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
St Hyacinth was born in Poland about the year 1185. Already a canon of Cracow, he came to Rome in 1218, where he encountered St Dominic and soon received from him the habit of the newly founded Friars Preachers. Nearly forty years of apostolic labour followed, until, on 15 August 1257, the Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption, he died after having offered Mass despite his final illness. Thus even the chronology of his life seems gathered into the mysteries which the Church places before us today.
The Introit gives us the secret of that life: Os justi meditábitur sapiéntiam … lex Dei ejus in corde ipsíus — “The mouth of the just man shall meditate wisdom … the law of his God is in his heart.” The Church begins not with Hyacinth’s journeys or miracles, but with the interior man. The law of God is first in his heart; therefore wisdom comes from his mouth and apostolic action from his hands. Sanctity is never self-invention. It is what happens when a soul receives from God so completely that what has been received begins to govern everything.
The Epistle says that God “sanctified him in his faith and meekness.” These two virtues belong together. Faith receives what God reveals; meekness refuses to replace God’s truth with our own preferences. That is why the saints are so fruitful. They are not men obsessed with novelty. They are men through whom something older and greater than themselves passes undiminished.
The Gospel gives us the corresponding image: “Let your loins be girt, and lamps burning in your hands.” The Christian is a servant waiting for his Lord. Hyacinth could cross kingdoms because he had ceased treating this world as his permanent dwelling. The heart which possesses God can travel lightly.
And this brings us to the scene by which Catholic memory knows him best. When Kiev was threatened, tradition tells us that Hyacinth left the church carrying the Blessed Sacrament. Passing an image of Our Lady, he heard the appeal not to leave her behind. He therefore carried both Host and image to safety, the heavy statue becoming light in his arms.
The theology of that image is profound. Hyacinth carries Christ and Mary through a city that is passing away. In the Eucharist he carries Christ substantially present beneath sacramental appearances; in the image of Mary he carries the likeness of that Virgin from whom the same Christ truly took His human flesh. The Eucharistic and the Marian mysteries belong together because both proclaim the reality of the Incarnation.
And today the old Roman calendar places beside St Hyacinth two commemorations which complete the picture. We keep the Octave Day of St Laurence and remain within the Octave of the Assumption. Laurence carried Christ in His poor; Hyacinth carried Christ beneath the sacramental species; Mary carried Christ beneath her Immaculate Heart. Each received a treasure not his own and proved faithful to it.
There lies the lesson for our own time. The temptation of every age, and perhaps especially ours, is to suppose that Christianity must be reconstructed: doctrine adjusted, worship refashioned, morality renegotiated. But the saint teaches another principle: lex Dei ejus in corde ipsíus. The law of his God is in his heart. The mission of the Church is not to invent what the world will accept, but to carry faithfully what she has received.
And yet the paradox is that fidelity becomes light. The statue which should have crushed Hyacinth became light in his arms. So too the Faith. From outside, dogma, discipline, sacrifice and Tradition appear burdensome; but the unbearable burden is not obedience to truth. It is life without the truth for which we were made.
The Communion therefore returns us to the watching servant: “Blessed is that servant, whom when the Lord shall come, He shall find watching.” On 15 August 1257, Hyacinth reached that hour himself. The missionary who had carried Christ along the roads of Europe was now carried by Christ into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Carissimi, one day every one of us must come to that river. Much that seems indispensable will remain upon the bank. The question will be simple: what have we carried with us?
Carry Christ in sanctifying grace. Carry His law in your heart. Carry the Faith whole. Carry devotion to His Mother. Keep the lamp burning.
And when the waters finally rise before us, may we discover what St Hyacinth discovered: that nothing carried for Christ is finally too heavy, and nothing surrendered for Christ is finally lost.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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