Undusted Texts

  For an introduction to St. John and this text, as well as Part I of the text, see my previous post here:  https://undustedtexts.blogspot.com/2024/01/st-john-of-avila-sermon-651-on.html What Bush Is This, Which Burns and Is Not Consumed? Who will speak? 1 Who will speak the powerful deeds of the Lord (Ps 106:2) ? Who will understand His mercies? Have you encountered any book in which you have read the mercies of God? Have you see n a book which tells them? Moses wandered, pasturing his herd, and set it there in the deepest part of the desert, and, wandering, he, very careless, saw a bramble which burned and was not consumed; he was frightened at how it burned and was not consumed. “Certainly, I have to go there and see this great marvel.” Is there not more, Moses? Is there not more? He goes there, and, as soon as he draws near, he finds that God was in the bramble. See, through your life, he who saw God in the bramble, and [God] spoke to him fr...

  Introduction St. Juan de Ávila (1499-1569) was an Andalusian priest and preacher, brought to new prominence upon being named a Doctor of the Church by the late Pope Benedict XVI on October 7, 2012.  Though he tried to arrange a fraternal community of priests, little came of it outside his immediate circle, and, towards the end of his life, he started sending his interested disciples to the Jesuits.  The majority of his work was focused on being a preacher, for which he was nicknamed the "Apostle of Andalusia."  He was also the first rector of the University of Baeza, which became a model for Jesuit seminaries.  His process of veneration was slow: declared Venerable in 1759 (during the investigation for which the Vatican misplaced manuscripts for dozens of his works), he was not beatified until 1894 and not canonized until 1970. Being primarily a preacher, it is fitting that a large portion of his writings consists of sermons.  Oddly, when many of these we...