The requirements of being a third-order member in our order are very simple.
Almost ridiculously so, almost embarrassingly so.
You hear the requirements say, that's it, that's easy.
But of course it can be lived.
It's sort of like an ocean.
It's safe enough for a bug to swim in, but deep enough for a whale to swim in.
You can deepen your third-order life.
In addition to what is absolutely required, there are things that tertiaries should do, such as morning and evening prayers.
Now, it could be prime and complement of the Roman breviary.
It doesn't have to be. It could be something much simpler, but something by way of morning and evening prayers.
Daily attendance at Mass, if you have access to a respectable Rite, Eastern Rite or Tridentine Latin Rite.
Something by way of daily mental prayer, 15 minutes, which is what some of the saints recommend as a minimum.
15 minutes is a good start, a half hour is sort of like, I would consider the bottom rung of respectability.
But if 15 minutes is all you can do, that's better than nothing.
Daily examination of conscience and regular spiritual reading of some sort.
And spiritual reading is not constituted of reading the latest gossip about the traditional movement.
Or reading articles in any of the very good Catholic...
journals that are out there. That's not spiritual. Actually, I have correct myself.
John Venari and some of the other publishers will
put in some excellent things that constitute spiritual reading.
But, you know, the latest on, you know, Bishop so-and-so's suspension of Father so-and-so,
or the latest gossip about, you know, whatever.
Just the latest, okay?
That doesn't constitute, unless it's the latest in sanctity, which you should be wary of,
that doesn't, that doesn't constitute spiritual reading.
Now all of these practices that I recommended, this isn't a laundry list of separate exercises.
One of the biggest dangers in approaching the spiritual life is to say,
okay, check, I did this, check, I did that, check, I did that.
And having a spiritual life which is sort of a hodgepodge of a bunch of different things kind of
tacked up, you know, together and slapped up, it's got no unity.
The spiritual life must have a fundamental unity to it.
For that, I recommend two books, one a little bit more than the other, but that's simply my personal preference.
The book by Father Mary Eugene Boylan, the Trappist monk from Ireland,
who, for all of his Trappist-ness, is very practical, eminently practical,
and he's writing primarily for the layman. It's called This Tremendous Lover.
and it has a beautiful chapter on married life.
I was happy to see that a couple who's just been engaged
were given that book to read as an engagement present
and I recommended to them highly
that they read it and that they particularly pay attention to that chapter on
married life. As I told them, it almost convinced me that married life was
a good route but I couldn't choose it at that point.
Anyway, it's a beautiful, beautiful chapter on married life but the whole book shows the fundamental unity that there should be in the spiritual life.
Another book is called The Interior Life Simplified and Reduced to its Fundamental Principle.
It's got a very long title but it's edited by Father Tissot.
It was originally written by another Cistercian monk whose name was not known to us.
Tissot edited it.
So, reading this tremendous lover gives you an approach to a spiritual life that very much fits in perfectly with our concept of being a tertiary, a layman in the world striving to live Catholic ideals.
Now, all of these practices that I recommended, morning and evening prayers, daily mental prayer, daily Mass, examination of conscience and spiritual reading, one could further object, well, yeah, but how do I have time for all that stuff?
Well, if it's not in conformity with your fulfilling your duties of state, it must give way to that.
Don't let the baby cry and starve because you've got to say your evening prayers.
These things can be incorporated into the family's life.
by way of evening prayers, evening rosary followed by some evening prayers.
That constitutes evening prayers, okay?
It's nothing so structured, it's so complex as all that.
In fact, family piety should be very much the life of a tertiary.
The other answer to that objection, how I have time for all this stuff, is well, once you remove from your life the things that you should remove,
the bad entertainments, the darned television, not only the regular programming on the networks and cable and satellite or whatever, whatever they've got now,
and all of that stuff, not only that, but the Internet as a means of entertainment, period.
And other entertainments that are not wholesome, removing those from your life,
and removing unnecessary...
entertainments that are not immoral, but just that are distracting.
When you remove these things from your life, you find time, and you'll be much better off as a result.
When you find time for those things, in fact, one of the reasons that people do those things is because they're running away from two things, God and themselves.
Because as soon as you crank on the tube, or as soon as you crank on the radio,
the voice of conscience is somewhat silenced,
and God's presence is clearly, you know, ignorable at that point.
People can't take silence because they can't take themselves, and they can't take God.
I think they hate themselves more than they hate God in these instances, but that's my opinion.
Now I would like to go to a look to the future.
As
Brother Anthony Merry said when he introduced me we are very small
the apostles, no lite timere pusilis grecs, fear not little flock, for it is pleased the
father to give you a kingdom."
Now I can't promise you a kingdom other than that one just sort of banking on our Lord's
promise.
I mean there's no specific kingdom that the slaves of the bank and heart of Mary are seeking
to conquer other than that one.
But I can guarantee you that our smallness is not an obstacle to our reaching evangelical perfection and pursuing our goals of sanctity.
We don't at this point have the means of maintaining a very tight organization.
because we don't have priests, because our first order is very small, and let me make it plain, the third order is under the first order.
That's the way that the Dominicans had organized it.
When they perfected the work of St. Francis in the tertiaries, that is the way that the Dominicans perfected it,
by attaching it to the discipline of the first order, and that's the way it worked.
That's the way ours is. Now, when our first order is much larger, and when it has priests in it,
there will be much more that we can do by way of structure, okay, spiritual direction and direction of a particular postulates and so forth.
Right now, a lot is left to the individual initiative of the individual tertiary, and many do admirably well with that.
In the future, we would like to do a lot more by way of formation of tertiaries, more coordination
of apostolic endeavors, but this will take years to build.
Right now we supply the resources, we supply the ideals, we supply the thoughts, and tertiaries simply avail themselves of that and use it to the best of their ability.
And do things like take part in these conferences and other things, visit from time to time, call, write, get advice, and so forth.
One way that a third order member can aid this situation and help the third order in the future is by way of fostering in the family vocations to the first order, the second order, and the third order.
All three orders, which are acclimated to all modes of life, they all fit under it somehow, these can all be fostered in the family.
Two parents, a mom and dad who are tertiaries, should produce children who eventually become,
some of whom eventually become members of the first and or second, excuse me, the first,
second and or third order.
You can't be a member of the first and or second order, sorry.
We haven't gone to seed.
Eventually, by our third order members, fostering this vocation,
especially at present because of necessity, to the first order,
we will be able to give more direction from the top down
and we'll have more by way of hands-on formation
from the first order. Now, I left Poor St. Pius X dangling from his cliff and I haven't yet settled that and I'm sure some of you stayed awake only because of that.
So I will say exactly what it is, if you can recall, I opened by saying that our third order is an authentic response to what Pope Saint Pius X said was most needed in society today.
I'm going to read you a brief excerpt from Dom Chartard's book, The Soul of the Apostolate, an excellent book, and it could be considered a guidebook for tertiaries.
And for religious, we read it as well.
Saint Pius X had deep understanding of the needs of the church and therefore often had penetrating insights,
happening to be one day amidst a group of cardinals.
The Holy Father said to them,
What is the thing most necessary at the present time to save society?
Build Catholic schools, one said.
No.
Multiply churches, replied another. No again. Increase the recruiting of the clergy, said a third.
No, no, replied the Pope.
What is most necessary at the present time is to have in each parish a group of lay persons at the same time virtuous, enlightened, determined, and really apostolic.
That is what our Third Order seeks to be, and that is what it is to be a Third Order member of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Thank you very much.