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  Fr. Hewko: On the Morality of Abortion-linked Injections
Posted by: Stone - 01-17-2021, 10:39 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Spiritual] - No Replies

Fr. Hewko [Sermon for Second Sunday after Epiphany - January 17, 2021] 
On the Morality of Abortion-linked Injections

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  Cardinal Pie: Jesus Christ is King of the Nations
Posted by: Stone - 01-17-2021, 10:07 AM - Forum: Cardinal Pie - Replies (1)

Jesus Christ is King of the Nations!
[Translated from the French here via machine translation]

Jesus Christ is king; he is not one of the prophets, not one of the evangelists and apostles who does not assure him of his quality and his attributions of king. Jesus is still in the cradle, and already the Magi seek the King of the Jews Ubi is who is natu, rex Judoerum? Jesus is on the verge of death: Pilate asks him: So you are king: Ergo rex are you? You said it, Jesus answers. And this answer is made with such an accent of authority that Pilate, notwithstanding all the representations of the Jews, consecrates the kingship of Jesus by a public writing and a solemn poster .

Write, then, write, O Pilate, the words which God dictates to you, and of which you do not understand the mystery. Whatever one may say and represent, beware of changing what is already written in heaven. May your orders be irrevocable, because they are executing an immutable stop of the Almighty. That the kingship of Jesus Christ be promulgated in the Hebrew language, which is the language of the people of God, and in the Greek language, which is the language of the teachers and philosophers, and in the Roman language which is the language of the empire and the world, the language of the conquerors and politicians. Come now, O Jews, heirs of the promises; and you, O Greeks, inventors of the arts; and you, Romans, masters of the earth; come and read this admirable sign; bend your knee before your King.

Hear the last words that N.-S. address to His Apostles, before ascending to heaven: All power was given to me in heaven and on earth. Go and teach all nations. Notice, my brethren, Jesus Christ does not say all men, all individuals, all families, but all nations. It does not only say: Baptize the children, catechize the adults, marry the spouses, administer the sacraments, give the religious burial to the dead. No doubt, the mission that He confers on them understands all this, but it understands more than that, it has a public, social character because Jesus Christ is the king of peoples and nations. And as God sent the ancient prophets to the nations and to their chiefs to reproach them for their apostasies and their crimes, so Christ sends His apostles and priesthood to the peoples, to the empires, to the rulers and the legislators to teach all His doctrine and His law. Their duty, like that of St. Paul, is to bear the name of Jesus Christ before the nations and kings and sons of Israel.

Thus, Jesus Christ gives His Apostles the official mission to preach His social reign, even more, He wants this reign to be proclaimed by all the faithful. He will have him asked every day by every Christian in the Pater's prayer. Never has the divine founder of Christianity better revealed to the earth what a Christian should be than when he taught His disciples how to pray. In fact, prayer being like the religious breathing of the soul, it is in the elementary formula that Jesus Christ has given that we must seek the whole program and the whole spirit of Christianity. Let's listen to Teacher's current lesson. So you will pray, said Jesus. Sic ergo your orabitis. Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name, May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The Christian, therefore, is not as seems to believe it and as affirms every day and on all the tones a certain contemporary world, it is not therefore a being who isolates himself in himself, who is sequestrated in an oratory indistinctly closed to all the rumors of the age, and which, satisfied provided he saves his soul, takes no care of the business of this world. The Christian is the opposite of that. The Christian is a public and social man par excellence, his nickname indicates it: he is Catholic, which means universal. Jesus Christ, in tracing the Lord's prayer, ordered that none of his people could perform the first act of the religion which is the prayer, without being in contact, according to his degree of intelligence and according to his the expanse of the horizon open before him, with all that can advance or delay, favor or prevent the reign of God on earth.
And as assuredly the works of man must be coordinated with his prayer, he is not a Christian worthy of the name who does not actively employ himself to the extent of his forces, to procure this temporal reign of God and to reverse which hinders him.

-Mgr Pie - November 8, 1859 - Homily on the panegyric of St. Emilian

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  Top COVID-19 Statistics Mainstream News Isn't Reporting
Posted by: Stone - 01-17-2021, 10:05 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular] - No Replies

TOP 11 COVID-19 STATISTICS MAINSTREAM NEWS IS HIDING FROM YOU

All of this data is extracted from the CDC, WHO, Johns Hopkins, White House task force press conferences, and scientific studies.
All direct source links are cited below the list of statistics. A printable pdf version is available at the bottom of this page for those who wish to print and distribute these facts.

  1. 90% of Covid-positive individuals are asymptomatic. This is the most significant and meaningful statistic of all.


  2. Asymptomatic Covid-positive have a spread rate of only 0.7% – less than 1%. They are NOT super spreaders.


  3. Survival rate of ages 0-69 is 99.82%. Survival rate of age 70+ is 94.6% with high comorbidities and other causes of death.


  4. Dr. Deborah Birx and state health officials confirmed that all Covid-positive individuals who die from other causes are being counted as a Covid death, including, but not limited to: car accidents, gunshot wounds, 1-week to live in hospice, drowning, dementia, and alcohol poisoning. Most people did not die “FROM” or were “KILLED BY” Covid, they died “WITH IT.”


  5. Only 6% of death certificates show Covid-19 as the only cause of death, which includes “assumed cause.” On average, there are 2.9 comorbidities to documented Covid deaths. That number increases significantly in nursing homes.


  6. The CDC is grouping pneumonia, influenza, and covid deaths together as “PIC”, while discontinuing reporting on influenza hospitalizations because “the number is too low” despite being in the middle of the flu season.


  7. 38% of all Covid-related deaths have taken place in nursing homes & long term care facilities, accounting for over 129,000 of deaths reported, in which 43% of those deaths were attributed to influenza and pneumonia, and 31% were age 85+.


  8. The masks being mandated to wear, are scientifically proven to not work against viruses, according to studies, the WHO, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, in addition to 10 months of people wearing them, showing no better rate of cases than states and countries that have not worn them, plus 85% of people who tested positive were mask wearers. The CDC also reported: “no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks,” hence they do not work for Covid either.


  9. In the 2017-2018 Flu season, there were 810,000 hospitalizations, far surpassing Covid hospitalizations for the entire year. Over 61,000 people died. There were 195 pediatric deaths due to influenza, far greater than what has been reported for Covid-related pediatric deaths. No lockdowns, restrictions, social distancing, or masks were required.


  10. There has never been a sample specimen of SARS-CoV-2 isolated and purified, and the inventor of PCR and other scientists have always said that PCR should not be used for medical diagnostics – it will produce false/positives. Dr. Fauci confirmed that the cycle threshold on the tests is too high which creates false/positives.


  11. The vaccines have already shown terrible side effects, and they don’t know if it will cause infertility. Doctors all across the world have been warning about these vaccines that were rushed through in record time without long term clinical trials.

    CLICK HERE to download, print, and distribute a single page version in PDF.

    See also the following videos:
    https://youtu.be/a_Vy6fgaBPE
    https://youtu.be/IMAkFKprzRQ
    https://www.coreysdigs.com/wp-content/up...Deaths.mp4


Source Links:

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  Peer Reviewed Study Shows COVID Lockdowns Have No Benefits Compared to Voluntary Measures
Posted by: Stone - 01-17-2021, 09:56 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular] - No Replies

Peer Reviewed Study Shows COVID Lockdowns Have No Benefits Compared to Voluntary Measures
Stanford researchers found “no clear, significant beneficial effect of [more restrictive measures] on case growth in any country.”


Summit News | 15 January, 2021

A new peer reviewed study by Stanford researchers has found that mandatory lockdowns do not provide more benefits
to stopping the spread of COVID-19 than voluntary measures such as social distancing.

The study compared countries that had imposed mandatory lockdowns, such as England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the U.S., to those that had relied on the public to follow voluntary measures, such as Sweden and South Korea.

The researchers subtracted “the sum of non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) effects and epidemic dynamics in countries that did not enact more restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions (mrNPIs) from the sum of NPI effects and epidemic dynamics in countries that did.”

After analyzing the data, the researchers found “no clear, significant beneficial effect of [more restrictive measures] on case growth in any country.”

The authors added that they “do not question the role of all public health interventions,” but insisted that stay at home orders and business closures had no additional impacting on lowering the spread of the virus.

The study adds to the weight of evidence that clearly indicates lockdowns are totally pointless and only create further misery and death.

According to Professor Philip Thomas of Bristol University, the UK lockdown will end up costing 500,000 lives due to the health impact of the economic recession it will cause.

Untold numbers of people will also die from having their urgent treatments delayed as well as avoiding hospitals.

According to research published by Imperial College London and Johns Hopkins University, around 1.4 million people globally will also die from untreated TB infections.

Last September, Germany’s Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, Gerd Muller, warned that lockdown measures throughout the globe will end up killing more people than the coronavirus itself.

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  Cardinal Pie: The Sacred Heart of Jesus
Posted by: Stone - 01-17-2021, 09:41 AM - Forum: In Honor of Our Lord - Replies (1)

The Angelus: May 2004


THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS CHRIST
Five Minutes with Cardinal Pie

[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3...ipo=images]


Nothing is more founded on reason, nothing is more conformed to the doctrines of the Faith than the adoration of the Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The heart of Jesus is what there is most profound in creation. It is the noblest part of the holy human nature of the Word made Flesh. In our very physical nature, the heart is everything: when it functions in an irregular manner, life is in danger; when it ceases to beat, man immediately ceases to live. Likewise in the moral order: it is through the heart that we are something. It is the heart which gives to thoughts, to actions, to intentions, their value, good or bad. The good is what comes out of the good treasure of our heart (Lk. 6:45). What constitutes evil is the bad dispositions of the heart (Mt. 15:19). Also, while the eye of man takes hold and fixes on exterior appearances, God looks only at the heart (I Kgs. 16:7). In the language of all peoples..., the heart has always signified courage, virtue, and especially love. After the grave has snatched away a cherished being from us, we believe that we still hold him completely if we possess his heart. This part, separate from the rest of the body, seems to remain essential.

Now, having stated this, what adoration do we not owe to the Heart of Jesus? Physically, this heart has been the principal organ of a life all together divine and human. This heart has painstakingly given up, one after the other, all the drops of the redeeming Blood. It has exuded and exudes each day all the drops of the Eucharistic chalice. And if the material heart of Jesus is already worthy of honor, what is it if we consider this Heart as the seat of His love, as the principle of His inspirations? When I adore the Heart of Jesus, I adore this effusion of eternal charity which has prompted the Word of God to offer Himself as victim for our redemption. I adore this love which has confined a God for nine months in the womb of Mary, which has given birth to God as an infant in Bethlehem, which has nailed Him to the cross; this love which keeps Him night and day on our altars, this love which spreads torrents from heaven or from the tabernacle, and which is diffused into hearts. Magdalen covered the feet of Jesus with her kisses and her perfumes, but His Heart made these feet run in search of the wandering sheep in pursuit of the poor sinner's soul. The invalids and all those who were suffering invoked the all-mighty arm of Jesus, but this arm was acting only under the guidance and by the impulse of His Heart. The children of Judea loved to be touched by the divine hands of Jesus, but these tender hands were only the instruments of His Heart. One among them, already a young man, was one day the object of an inexpressible glance from Jesus, but this sweet and penetrating glance... was a lightening bolt flashing forth the fire of love from His heart (Mk. 10:21).

To you who hardly give allowance to the veneration of the Heart of Jesus, what then are you leaving of Him to me, since the Heart of Jesus is the whole of Jesus? If you forbid me to love and honor His Heart, then you forbid me to think of Jesus, to love and honor Jesus. Deprive Him of His Heart, He will no longer be Jesus to me. But, beware, your censures would not succeed in stopping me. I have in my favor the authority of the very institution of Jesus. On the eve of His death, after giving His love to those close to Him in this world, He made an admirable summary, a marvelous memorial of all His gifts. It seems that nothing more could be added to this supreme invention of His love. But behold that, on the very day of His death, having offered up His great cry and commended His spirit, Jesus...provided for the accomplishment of a last oracle. What do I see? The side of Jesus opened, and His Heart offered to the eyes of mankind to be the object of their adoration and of their love! "Observe," says St. Augustine, "[St. John] has been mindful of the language he was to use." The word has fallen from a reflective and vigilant pen. The holy writer was careful not to say that the point of the lance had struck, had wounded–this expression or any similar might not have rendered the truth–but that it opened the side of Jesus in order that the gateway of life might be in some way made manifest in this Divine Heart, the source of the redemption, from which have flowed all the mysteries, all the sacraments of the Church, without which we have no access to the life which is the true life.

There it is, the first basis and the first establishment of the devotion to the Heart of Jesus. And if–notwithstanding the evidence through the centuries of a school of fervent worshippers and passionate admirers of this glorious Heart–the worship of the Sacred Heart is only taking its more explicit form in these last ages by a doctrinal and liturgical development, I would say that we see there a providential progress, an expansion of love announced by the prophets. "There will be in the last days," Zacharias had said, "a fountain open to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem" (Zach. 13:1). This gushing source is the Heart of Jesus, offered more authentically to us and reviving in our souls new impulses of ardor and of piety.

Who could remain cold and indifferent to the Heart of Jesus? It would mean not having a heart ourselves. God forbid I not speak to you of the Heart of Jesus without speaking also of your own heart, and without placing these two hearts in the presence of each other.

Your reason may have been misled, deceived, corrupted in many ways. You have been born and raised in an evil century. You have participated in a great many errors of your time. Moreover, the original fall has left a profound devastation in all of us; it has since gutted everything. However, in spite of the inclinations of corrupted nature, the allurements of the senses, and the prejudices of education, your heart has remained stronger than your mind. No matter what you do, below all these evil layers which have superimposed themselves one after another through acts of sin and lies, there remains at the core of your being a nucleus, a germ, a power for good that nothing has been able to destroy. In a word, there rests in your heart a faculty and a need to love: a faculty which can never completely translate itself into action, a need which can never find its hunger totally filled, as long as your love does not move towards its infinite end. I declare and promise that it is impossible for you to genuinely place the heart which beats in your breast in opposition to the Heart of Jesus without it immediately being carried toward His Heart by this movement of love which is the essential act of religion, and which, in itself, constitutes the accomplishment of all the divine law of the Old and New Testament: "Diliges: You will love." This is why the Lord makes His tender invitation: "My son, give me thy heart" (Prov. 23:26), as though He were saying: Willingly I set aside all others. You will easily acknowledge, My son, that my spirit is above thine. Therefore, do not enter into a useless discussion with Me. For Me, I will always easily overcome your mind, if you want to give Me your heart completely: "Præbe, fili mi, cor tuum mihi: My son, give Me thy heart."

When you have withdrawn from Jesus Christ, you have withdrawn from your own heart. The Psalmist declared it thus: "Cor meum dereliquit me: My heart has abandoned me." Fugitives from this better portion of yourselves, come back, come back to your heart (Is. 66:8). Lord Jesus, You are the center and the magnet of hearts. Man will never place himself again under the inspirations of his own heart, without being carried back immediately to You.

The Catholic Faith is truly the religion of hearts, and the veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ is the substantial summary of all Catholicism. The One who dwells in inaccessible light in heaven, wanting to draw nearer to us, to proportion Himself to us, to bring Himself to our level, at our ability, has taken our nature, our flesh. He made Himself man, and being man, He had a heart. And we also, although brought out of nothingness and formed from mud, we have received and carry in ourselves a heart. Here is the Creator and the creature, heaven and earth, Heart to heart. All religion is summed up in this Heart-to-heart confrontation of God and man. Let us pray with the Church the invitatory of one of the most ancient offices of the Sacred Heart: "Deus ergo nos apponentem Cor suum, venite adoremus: God, in the Person of Jesus Christ, His Son, disposing His Heart to us, let us come and adore Him."

- From Œuvres Sacerdotales du Cardinal Pie, Choix de Sermons et d'Instructions de 1839 a 1849 ["Homily for the Closing of a Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus," VI, 609-614].

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  Cardinal Pie: The Sacred Heart of Jesus
Posted by: Stone - 01-17-2021, 09:41 AM - Forum: Cardinal Pie - No Replies

The Angelus: May 2004


THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS CHRIST
Five Minutes with Cardinal Pie

[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse4.explicit.bing.net%...%3DApi&f=1]


Nothing is more founded on reason, nothing is more conformed to the doctrines of the Faith than the adoration of the Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The heart of Jesus is what there is most profound in creation. It is the noblest part of the holy human nature of the Word made Flesh. In our very physical nature, the heart is everything: when it functions in an irregular manner, life is in danger; when it ceases to beat, man immediately ceases to live. Likewise in the moral order: it is through the heart that we are something. It is the heart which gives to thoughts, to actions, to intentions, their value, good or bad. The good is what comes out of the good treasure of our heart (Lk. 6:45). What constitutes evil is the bad dispositions of the heart (Mt. 15:19). Also, while the eye of man takes hold and fixes on exterior appearances, God looks only at the heart (I Kgs. 16:7). In the language of all peoples..., the heart has always signified courage, virtue, and especially love. After the grave has snatched away a cherished being from us, we believe that we still hold him completely if we possess his heart. This part, separate from the rest of the body, seems to remain essential.

Now, having stated this, what adoration do we not owe to the Heart of Jesus? Physically, this heart has been the principal organ of a life all together divine and human. This heart has painstakingly given up, one after the other, all the drops of the redeeming Blood. It has exuded and exudes each day all the drops of the Eucharistic chalice. And if the material heart of Jesus is already worthy of honor, what is it if we consider this Heart as the seat of His love, as the principle of His inspirations? When I adore the Heart of Jesus, I adore this effusion of eternal charity which has prompted the Word of God to offer Himself as victim for our redemption. I adore this love which has confined a God for nine months in the womb of Mary, which has given birth to God as an infant in Bethlehem, which has nailed Him to the cross; this love which keeps Him night and day on our altars, this love which spreads torrents from heaven or from the tabernacle, and which is diffused into hearts. Magdalen covered the feet of Jesus with her kisses and her perfumes, but His Heart made these feet run in search of the wandering sheep in pursuit of the poor sinner's soul. The invalids and all those who were suffering invoked the all-mighty arm of Jesus, but this arm was acting only under the guidance and by the impulse of His Heart. The children of Judea loved to be touched by the divine hands of Jesus, but these tender hands were only the instruments of His Heart. One among them, already a young man, was one day the object of an inexpressible glance from Jesus, but this sweet and penetrating glance... was a lightening bolt flashing forth the fire of love from His heart (Mk. 10:21).

To you who hardly give allowance to the veneration of the Heart of Jesus, what then are you leaving of Him to me, since the Heart of Jesus is the whole of Jesus? If you forbid me to love and honor His Heart, then you forbid me to think of Jesus, to love and honor Jesus. Deprive Him of His Heart, He will no longer be Jesus to me. But, beware, your censures would not succeed in stopping me. I have in my favor the authority of the very institution of Jesus. On the eve of His death, after giving His love to those close to Him in this world, He made an admirable summary, a marvelous memorial of all His gifts. It seems that nothing more could be added to this supreme invention of His love. But behold that, on the very day of His death, having offered up His great cry and commended His spirit, Jesus...provided for the accomplishment of a last oracle. What do I see? The side of Jesus opened, and His Heart offered to the eyes of mankind to be the object of their adoration and of their love! "Observe," says St. Augustine, "[St. John] has been mindful of the language he was to use." The word has fallen from a reflective and vigilant pen. The holy writer was careful not to say that the point of the lance had struck, had wounded–this expression or any similar might not have rendered the truth–but that it opened the side of Jesus in order that the gateway of life might be in some way made manifest in this Divine Heart, the source of the redemption, from which have flowed all the mysteries, all the sacraments of the Church, without which we have no access to the life which is the true life.

There it is, the first basis and the first establishment of the devotion to the Heart of Jesus. And if–notwithstanding the evidence through the centuries of a school of fervent worshippers and passionate admirers of this glorious Heart–the worship of the Sacred Heart is only taking its more explicit form in these last ages by a doctrinal and liturgical development, I would say that we see there a providential progress, an expansion of love announced by the prophets. "There will be in the last days," Zacharias had said, "a fountain open to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem" (Zach. 13:1). This gushing source is the Heart of Jesus, offered more authentically to us and reviving in our souls new impulses of ardor and of piety.

Who could remain cold and indifferent to the Heart of Jesus? It would mean not having a heart ourselves. God forbid I not speak to you of the Heart of Jesus without speaking also of your own heart, and without placing these two hearts in the presence of each other.

Your reason may have been misled, deceived, corrupted in many ways. You have been born and raised in an evil century. You have participated in a great many errors of your time. Moreover, the original fall has left a profound devastation in all of us; it has since gutted everything. However, in spite of the inclinations of corrupted nature, the allurements of the senses, and the prejudices of education, your heart has remained stronger than your mind. No matter what you do, below all these evil layers which have superimposed themselves one after another through acts of sin and lies, there remains at the core of your being a nucleus, a germ, a power for good that nothing has been able to destroy. In a word, there rests in your heart a faculty and a need to love: a faculty which can never completely translate itself into action, a need which can never find its hunger totally filled, as long as your love does not move towards its infinite end. I declare and promise that it is impossible for you to genuinely place the heart which beats in your breast in opposition to the Heart of Jesus without it immediately being carried toward His Heart by this movement of love which is the essential act of religion, and which, in itself, constitutes the accomplishment of all the divine law of the Old and New Testament: "Diliges: You will love." This is why the Lord makes His tender invitation: "My son, give me thy heart" (Prov. 23:26), as though He were saying: Willingly I set aside all others. You will easily acknowledge, My son, that my spirit is above thine. Therefore, do not enter into a useless discussion with Me. For Me, I will always easily overcome your mind, if you want to give Me your heart completely: "Præbe, fili mi, cor tuum mihi: My son, give Me thy heart."

When you have withdrawn from Jesus Christ, you have withdrawn from your own heart. The Psalmist declared it thus: "Cor meum dereliquit me: My heart has abandoned me." Fugitives from this better portion of yourselves, come back, come back to your heart (Is. 66:8). Lord Jesus, You are the center and the magnet of hearts. Man will never place himself again under the inspirations of his own heart, without being carried back immediately to You.

The Catholic Faith is truly the religion of hearts, and the veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ is the substantial summary of all Catholicism. The One who dwells in inaccessible light in heaven, wanting to draw nearer to us, to proportion Himself to us, to bring Himself to our level, at our ability, has taken our nature, our flesh. He made Himself man, and being man, He had a heart. And we also, although brought out of nothingness and formed from mud, we have received and carry in ourselves a heart. Here is the Creator and the creature, heaven and earth, Heart to heart. All religion is summed up in this Heart-to-heart confrontation of God and man. Let us pray with the Church the invitatory of one of the most ancient offices of the Sacred Heart: "Deus ergo nos apponentem Cor suum, venite adoremus: God, in the Person of Jesus Christ, His Son, disposing His Heart to us, let us come and adore Him."

- From Œuvres Sacerdotales du Cardinal Pie, Choix de Sermons et d'Instructions de 1839 a 1849 ["Homily for the Closing of a Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus," VI, 609-614].

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  Cardinal Pie: Modern Debasements of the Idea of God
Posted by: Stone - 01-17-2021, 09:36 AM - Forum: Cardinal Pie - No Replies

The Angelus - September 2003


Modern Debasements of the Idea of God
by Louis-Edouard-Désiré Cardinal Pie


The first chapter of Vatican I's dogmatic constitution on the Catholic Faith is entitled: "Of God Creator of All Things": De Deo rerum omnium creatore. Here, Gentlemen, the Holy Church fulfills what, since Jerusalem and Nicaea, it has always placed at the head of its doctrinal work and of its solemn professions of faith. Credo in Deum, says the Apostles' Creed; Credo in unum Deum, says the Nicene Creed. But today, God having been travestied, disfigured, denied, our Council lays down in all its light the revealed doctrine by which God has declared Himself to us: Sancta catholica apostolica romana Ecclesia credit et confitetur unum esse Deum verum et vivam, and the remainder that we will soon explain.

Indeed, the duty and the need of the Church is to confess God before everything. This is its duty. Like Christ who has established and sent it, the Church is born and lives only to render witness to the truth, and especially to the truth from which all the other truths have their origin and their support. The Church is therefore the witness of God, His herald, His perceptible voice.

The Church is at the same time His requirement. Because the abundance of the heart causes words to spring forth, and because the Church has received the Spirit of God, it has in it a plenitude of light, of life, of divine charity which urges it and obliges it to tell God to the world. "It believes and it confesses," Credit et confitetur. Alas! This time, it is more than a homage rendered; it is a reparation made and it is at the same time a remedy presented to men against an ill so frightful that it would seem to have been impossible.

St. John gives the description in the Apocalypse of a woman dressed in red, seated on a red beast, and he says that she is "full of names of blasphemy": plenam nominibus blasphemice.1 This woman represents the city of the reprobates, that Scripture calls also "Babylon,"2 and elsewhere "the church of those who plot evil,"3 or "the Synagogue of Satan."4 Born with sin, this society will continue up to the final judgment; it is consequently contemporaneous with all the centuries. Nevertheless, where the course of time and the movement of men and of things has caused society to pass amid so many vicissitudes, it has, so to speak, its golden ages, where everything lends assistance to it, where its reign is freer and more extended, and where it seems to triumph over the city of God. Hoec est hora vestra et potestas tenebrarum:5"This is the hour of the wicked and the power of darkness."

Will we accuse him for not being an enlightened judge, nor an accurate historian, the one who will say that our century, assuredly great by so many great works that God has accomplished, and by so many remarkable graces which He has deigned to lavish on it, has been for this city of the evil, nevertheless, a singularly propitious and favorable era? Among the liberties claimed, recognized, instituted, carried to a condition of necessity in the order of facts, as well as to the position of principles and of axioms in the order of ideas and of laws, we have had on the first rank the liberty of blasphemy.

This liberty of blasphemy has been diversely named. Like Satan, who is its father, the world is naturally and inevitably a liar. If it were obliged to speak clearly and to call things by their true name, it would be struck with impotence and with death: the truth kills it, and light is deadly to it. Lies, darkness, equivocations are necessary for it to live: lies and equivocations in actions, lies and equivocations in speech. This godless liberty has therefore called itself liberty of conscience, religious liberty, liberty of thought, liberty of the press; but, in fact and truly in right, it was the liberty of blasphemy. It has been amply used and we do not know if, since the origin of the world, we have blasphemed more. There has been learned blasphemy and ignorant blasphemy, jeering blasphemy and serious blasphemy, polite blasphemy and cynical blasphemy, peaceful blasphemy and passionate blasphemy: plenam nominibus blasphemiæ.

But what was bending and was progressively degenerating under the weight of these blasphemies was the true idea of God. We have made gods to our fancy; there has come into being gods of all sorts. We have the God who reigns and does not govern: God splendid and worthy of every respect, but without care for the world, and that the world can better honor only by considering itself too small to merit His attention and, all the more, His intervention. We have had the God-idea: absolute ideal, escaping by its very nature every definition, fleeing so much the more as we seek to comprehend it, and vanishing entirely as soon as we claim to have understood it. We have had the God-Being: the being who is, but who does not exist, who does not live, the God who does not think, nor want, nor judge, nor operate, seeing that these words signify a determination, and by that even a limit, a decrease, a contradiction, a negation of absolute being. There has been the God-progress, the God-aspiration; the God who is a boundless evolution, who tries His strength unceasingly to exist, who seeks to expand and to contain Himself, who tends by every means to His plentitude, to His perfection, to His happiness, to His last end, and who never arrives there because being by essence the infinite aspiration and the eternal progress, His life is moving without ever stopping and always aiming at an always impossible end: that reduces it exactly to the state of the damned. Neighbor and parent of the former, there has been the God-world, the God-cosmic: soul of the world, secret force, fatal, universal, vivifying everything, and if mingled with everything, it is distinct from nothing, and the world is its essential and unique expression. What should I say? There has been the God-nothingness, the God-evil, the God- hostile, jealous, tyrannical, oppressor: I stop.

You see it, Gentlemen, this is a pantheon of blasphemy: plenam nominibus blasphemiæ. But each of these blasphemous names has been given to God by our contemporaries, by our fellow-citizens, and that, more than one time, from the height of the chairs of public teaching. Each of these absurd and detestable ideas has taken the place of the rational and Catholic idea of God, and that even in baptized souls who even believed that they had not formally renounced their baptism.

After that, is it necessary to wonder at the degree of weakness, misery, and shame to which this society, ignorant and contemptuous of God has descended? The sage had said it well: "But all men are vain, in whom there is not the knowledge of God." Vani autem sunt omnes homines in quibus non subest scientia Dei.6 Do you hear? Vani omnes: whatever they may be and whatever advantages they glory in, these are no longer truly men, but shadows and phantoms of men, men who are no longer kept upright. They are inconsistent, fleeing, imperceptible men who, themselves, no longer know what to grasp nor to retain: a generation devoted to unhappiness, and which is reduced to look for its saviors among the dead, as if the dead could offer a hope of salvation: Infelices autem sunt, et inter mortuos spes illorum est.7 But if these people are taken away captive, if they are torn limb from limb, if they are delivered to the mercy of all their enemies from the outside and from the inside, the cause of it is that they have lost the key of all science and of all wisdom and the principle of all force by losing the knowledge of God: Propterea captivus ductus est populus meus, eo quod non habuerit scientiam this is why its leaders perish from starvation, and its multitudes, made thirsty for order and for peace, waste away in trouble and disorder: et nobiles ejus interierunt fame, et multitudo ejus siti exaruit.8 On account of that, the monster of revolutions, this anticipated hell, has enlarged its soul and opened its mouth without any bounds, and their strong ones and their high and glorious ones have descended into this abyss with the common people: Propterea dilatavit infernus animam suam, et aperuit os suum absque ullo termino: et descenderunt fortes ejus, et populus ejus, et sublimes gloriosique ejus, ad eum.9 Just chastisement by the outraged Divinity. Because He is no longer the unknown God10 of the pagans; He is the ignored God, and ignored by those whom He has instructed Himself, and whom He has honored with His divine adoption: Filios enutrivi et exaltavi; ipsi autem spreverunt me.11

It was therefore necessary,12 for the honor of God and for the salvation of souls, and for the deliverance of societies, it was necessary from the very first to affirm the true God, the only God, the living God, all powerful Creator, eternal, incomprehensible although perfectly knowable and truly known, infinite in His intelligence, infinite in His Will, infinite in His perfections, which are total perfection; a substance being one, sole, absolutely simple, and consequently spiritual, and by that immutable, truly and essentially distinct from the world. It was necessary to affirm of God that He has of Himself and in Himself the plentitude of His happiness: so much so that His happiness, no more than any of His perfections, is not susceptible to any increase; and that He lives, that He exists in a complete independence, at heights which go inexpressibly beyond everything that can, outside of Him, be or be conceived.

It was also necessary to affirm the truth of the perfect liberty, the absolute gratuitousness of the creative act. Without any doubt, this act and the entire universe that He produces manifest the divinity as every work manifests its author. Creation makes God known by the power that He displays, and by the astonishing beauty with which it has pleased Him to adorn it. Creation makes Him even be loved because of the innumerable goods with which He has deigned to bestow on it, and especially by the revelation that creation brings to us of this radical goodness which has inclined Him to create beings out of nothingness. In spite of that, strictly speaking, God does not have any personal interest here, He could not have any benefit, and His nature renders Him incapable of it. Why is it that this contingent glory, for which everything is made and everything had to be made, is not at all necessary to Him, is by itself of no usefulness to Him, is of no advantage? It is for us that He furnishes it, because, this glory consisting completely in that God may be known and loved and the creature being able to be perfect and happy only by this knowledge, it follows that our happiness derives from this exterior glory of God, and appears so much to determine our happiness that it finally becomes identified with it.

This is what a text of St. Hilary, often alleged by theologians to support the doctrine that we have just established, expresses marvelously: "God, [said the great Doctor], wants to be loved by us: not that God derives for Himself any fruit from our love; but this love much rather will profit us, we who will love Him": Amari se a nobis exigit: non utique amoris in se nostri fructum aliquem sui causa percipiens, sed amore ipso nobis potius, qui eum amabimus, profuturo. "The pouring out of the divine goodness, like the radiance of the sun, like the heat of fire, like the fragrance of a plant, is not useful to the one from whom it comes, but to the one who uses it": Bonitatis autem usus, ut splendor solis, ut lumen ignis, ut odor sued, non præbenti proficit, sed utenti.13

Finally, God having been affirmed and the world affirmed as a creature of God, it was necessary to establish their relationship and first the essential relationship on which are founded all the others. It has to be said, in short, that after creation, God and the world do not remain strangers from each other; that the dignity of God as well as His goodness, meaning His nature, obliges Him to incessantly watch and supremely govern the creatures upon whom He has spontaneously conferred existence; that He has His purpose, His plan, His laws, His powers, His resources, His works, and that, as there is nothing nor anyone which escapes His knowledge, there is nothing nor anyone who can be even, for an instant, outside of His reach, outside of His laws, outside of His Will.

1. Apoc. 17:3, 4.
2. Apoc. 17:5.
3. Ps. 25:5.
4. Apoc. 2:9; 3:9.
5. Lk. 22:53.
6. Wis. 13:1.
7. Wis. 13:10.
8. Is. 5:13.
9. Is. 5:14.
10. Acts, 17:23.
11. Is. 1:2.
12. Everything that follows is a paraphrase from the Vatican Constitution Dei Filius. We publish it here as the affirmation of the Catholic truth opposite the errors that Monsignor Pie has just denounced.
13. Hilary, Enarrat, on Ps. II, n. 15..

Translated exclusively for Angelus Press by Mr. & Mrs. William Platz from "Synodal Instruction on the 1st Vatican Constitution" (July 17, 1871. VII, 204-210), Pages choisies du Cardnal Pie (Paris: Librairie H. Oudin, 1916), pp. 103-110. The couple responded to an invitation in The Angelus for translators to make the work of Cardinal Pie, a mentor for Pope Pius X and Archbishop Lefebvre, available in English, for most of it is only known in French.

Louis-Edouard-Desire Cardinal Pie [say: "pea"] (1815-1880), renowned Bishop of Poitiers, France, was a major-league player in the fight against the anti-Catholic movement of the 19th century.

"...He is best known for his opposition to modern errors, and his championship of the rights of the Church. Regarding as futile the compromises accepted by other Catholic leaders, he fought alike all philosophical theories and political arrangements that did not come up to the full traditional Christian standard...." His distinguished service to the Church was recognized by Leo XIII, who made him cardinal in 1879. (From the Catholic Encyclopedia, vol.XII, 1913 ed., p. 76.)

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  Big Tech Coalition Is Developing a Digital COVID Vaccination Passport
Posted by: Stone - 01-17-2021, 09:27 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular] - No Replies

Big Tech Coalition Is Developing a Digital COVID Vaccination Passport


Breitbart | January 15, 2021

A coalition of tech and health organizations including Oracle, Microsoft, and the Mayo Clinic, is reportedly working to develop a digital COVID-19 vaccination passport that would allow businesses, airlines, and governments to check if individuals have received the vaccine.

The Hill reports that a coalition of health and technology organizations are working to develop a new digital COVID-19 vaccination passport that could be checked by businesses, airlines, and countries to confirm if an individual has received the vaccine. The coalition includes tech giants such as Microsoft and Oracle, along with the Mayo Clinic.

On Thursday, the Vaccination Credential Initiative announced that it is developing technology to confirm vaccinations in case governments mandate that people provide proof that they have received a vaccination in order to travel.

The coalition hopes that the tech will allow people to “demonstrate their health status to safely return to travel, work, school and life while protecting their data privacy.” The group is using work from the Commons Project’s international digital document that verifies a person has tested negative for COVID-19.

Currently, the Commons Project’s system, which was created in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, is being utilized by three major airline alliances. The coalition is reportedly currently in discussions with several governments to create a program requiring either negative tests or proof of vaccination to enter the country, according to Commons Project chief executive Paul Meyer.

Meyer stated in a release: “The goal of the Vaccination Credential Initiative is to empower individuals with digital access to their vaccination records so they can use tools like CommonPass to safely return to travel, work, school, and life, while protecting their data privacy.”

Mike Sicilia, the executive vice president of Oracle’s Global Business Units, commented that the passport “needs to be as easy as online banking,” and added: “We are committed to working collectively with the technology and medical communities, as well as global governments, to ensure people will have secure access to this information where and when they need it.”

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  Nine Catholic bishops with COVID-19 die in a single week
Posted by: Stone - 01-17-2021, 09:20 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Spiritual] - No Replies

Nine Catholic bishops with COVID-19 die in a single week

Rome Newsroom, Jan 15, 2021 / 02:00 pm MT (CNA).- In the past week, nine Catholic bishops have died worldwide after testing positive for COVID-19.

Between Jan. 8 and Jan. 15, bishops across three continents died as a result of the coronavirus. The deceased bishops ranged in age from 53 years old to 91. Five of the bishops died in Europe, where a new strain of COVID-19 has led many countries to implement further restrictions.

Four bishops died on the same day, Jan. 13: Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow, who was 70 years old; Bishop Moses Hamungole of Monze, Zambia, who died at the age of 53; 87-year-old Bishop Mario Cecchini of Fano, Italy; and Cardinal Eusébio Oscar Scheid, the 88-year-old retired archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Tartaglia tested positive for COVID-19 after Christmas and was self-isolating, but Glasgow archdiocese stressed that the cause of his death was currently unclear.

Bells tolled across the Colombian diocese of Santa Marta on Jan. 12 to honor Bishop Luis Adriano Piedrahita Sandoval, 74, who died on Jan. 11 of complications from COVID-19. Bishop Cástor Oswaldo Azuaje of Trujillo, 69, became the first bishop from Venezuela to die after contracting the virus on Jan. 8.

Bishop Florentin Crihalmeanu, the 61-year-old bishop of the Greek-Catholic Eparchy of Cluj-Gherla in Romania, died on Jan. 12. He was remembered by his eparchy as “a diligent, meek, and humble soul.”

Polish Bishop Adam Dyczkowski, emeritus of Zielona Góra-Gorzów diocese, died on Jan. 10 at the age of 88 and Italian Archbishop Oscar Rizzato died at the age of 91 on Jan. 11. Rizzato had served as papal almsgiver under both St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Pope Francis expressed his condolences following the death of Cardinal Scheid in a telegram on Jan. 14.

“I offer fervent prayers to welcome him into eternal happiness and console him with hope in the resurrection and to all those who mourn the loss of their beloved pastor,” the pope wrote.

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  Cardinal Pie: To Faint-Hearted Catholics
Posted by: Stone - 01-17-2021, 09:18 AM - Forum: Cardinal Pie - No Replies

Cardinal Pie:

“Let us fight, hoping against hope itself, which is what I wish to tell faint-hearted Christians, slaves to popularity, worshippers of success and shaken by the least advance of evil. Given how they feel, please God they will be spared the agonies of the world’s final trial. Is that trial close or is it still far off? Nobody knows, and I will not dare to make a guess. But one thing is certain, namely that the closer we come to the end of the world, the more and more it is wicked and deceitful men who will gain the upper hand. The Faith will hardly be found on earth, meaning that it will almost have disappeared from earthly institutions. Believers themselves will hardly dare to profess their belief in public, or in society.

The splitting, separating and divorcing of States from God which was for St Paul a sign foretelling the end, will advance day by day. The Church, while remaining always a visible society, will be reduced more and more to dimensions of the individual and the home. When She started out she said She was being shut in, and She called for more room to breathe, but as She approaches her end on earth, so She will have to fight a rearguard action every inch of the way, being surrounded and hemmed in on all sides. The more widely She spread out in previous ages, the greater the effort will now be made to cut her down to size. Finally the Church will undergo what looks like a veritable defeat, and the Beast will be given to make war on the Saints and to overwhelm them. The insolence of evil will be at its peak.”

“In such an extremity, in such a desperate state of affairs, where evil has taken over a world soon to be consumed in flames, what are all the true Christians to do, all good men, all Saints, all men with any faith and courage? Grappling with a situation more clearly impossible than ever, with a redoubled energy by their ardent prayer, by their active works and by their fearless struggles they will say, O God, O Father in Heaven, hallowed be thy name on earth as it is in Heaven, thy kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. On earth as it is in Heaven! And they will still be murmuring these words while the very earth is giving way beneath their feet.

“And just as once upon a time, following upon an appalling military disaster the whole Roman Senate and State officials of all ranks could be seen going out to meet the defeated consul and to congratulate him on not having despaired of the Roman Republic; so likewise the senate of Heaven, all the Choirs of angels, all ranks of the Blessed will come out to meet the generous athletes of the Faith who will have fought to the bitter end, hoping against hope itself.

And then that impossible ideal that the elect of all ages had obstinately pursued will become a reality. In his Second and final Coming the Son will hand over the Kingdom of this world to God his Father, the power of evil will have been cast out for ever into the depths of the abyss; whatever has refused to be assimilated and incorporated into God through Jesus Christ by faith, love and observance of the law will be flung into the sewer of everlasting filth. And God will live and reign for ever and ever, not only in the oneness of his nature and in the society of the three divine Persons, but also in the fullness of the Mystical Body of his Incarnate Son and in the fulfilment of the Communion of Saints!”

Source

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  Cardinal Pie: Doctrinal Intolerance
Posted by: Stone - 01-17-2021, 09:11 AM - Forum: Cardinal Pie - No Replies

The Angelus - June 2002

Doctrinal Intolerance
by Louis-Edouard-Désiré Cardinal Pie



A sermon of the great Cardinal Pie, appearing here for the first time in English, which he preached twice at the Cathedral of Chartres in 1841 and 1847.
Unus Dominus, una fides, unam baptisma–There is only one Lord, only one Faith, only one baptism (Eph. 4:5).

A sage has said that the actions of man are the children of his thought, and we have established ourselves that all good things as well as all bad things in a society are the fruit of the good or bad maxims that it professes. Truth in the mind and virtue in the heart are things that correspond nearly inseparably; when the mind is delivered to the demonic lie, the heart, if by chance the obsession has not seized it first, is close to delivering itself to demonic vice. Intellect and Will are two sisters between which seduction is contagious; if you see that the first has given itself up to error, throw a veil on the honor of the second.

This is because it is so, my brethren, it is because there is no harm, no wrong in the intellectual order which would not have fatal consequences in the moral order and as well as in the material order, that we apply ourselves to fight the evil in its principle, to stop it at its source, that is to say, in the ideas. A thousand prejudices are spread amongst us: Sophism, astonished to hear its own voice attacked, invokes prescription; paradox flatters itself to have acquired citizenship and the freedom of the city. Christians themselves, living amidst this impure atmosphere, do not avoid all its contagion; they too easily accept many of the errors. Tired of resisting on the essential points, often for the sake of peace and quiet, they give way on other points which seem to them less important, and they do not always perceive, and sometimes they do not want to perceive how far they could be led by their imprudent weakness. Among this confusion of ideas and false opinions, it is up to us priests of the incorruptible truth to intervene and to protest with action and with our voice; fortunate we are if the rigid inflexibility of our teaching can stop the flood of error, dethrone erroneous principles which are reigning superbly in minds, correct deadly axioms which already assume authority with the sanction of time, finally enlighten and purify a society which threatens to sink, in growing old, into a chaos of darkness and of disorders where it would no longer be possible to distinguish the nature, and even less the remedy, of its ills.

Our century cries: Tolerance! Tolerance! It is acknowledged that a priest must be tolerant, that religion must be tolerant. My brethren, in all things nothing equals frankness; and I am here to tell you frankly that there only exists in the world one society which possesses the truth, and that this society necessarily has to be intolerant. But, before broaching the subject, for us to better understand, let's make distinction between things, let's agree on the meaning of the words, and let's not confuse anything.

Tolerance can be either civil or theological; the first does not fall within our province, I permit myself only a word in this respect. If the law wants to say that it permits all religions because in its eyes they are all equally good, or furthermore because public power is incompetent to come to a decision on this matter, the law is irreligious and atheistic. It no longer professes civil tolerance such as we are going to define it, but dogmatic tolerance, and, by a criminal neutrality it justifies in individuals the most absolute religious indifference. On the contrary, if recognizing that only one religion is good, it supports and permits only the peaceful exercise of the others, the law, in this, as it has been observed before me, can be wise and necessary according to the circumstances. If there are times when it is necessary to say with the famous high constable: One faith, one law; there are other times when it is necessary to say as Fenelon said to the son of James II: Grant civil tolerance to everyone, not by approving everything as indifferent, but by suffering with patience what God suffers."

But I abandon this rough field of difficulties, and adhering to the properly religious and theological question, I will set forth these two principles:

1) The religion which comes from heaven is truth, and it is intolerant toward doctrines;
2) The religion which comes from heaven is charity, and it is full of tolerance toward people....

It is of the essence of every truth not to tolerate the contradictory principle. The affirmation of one thing excludes the negation of this very same thing, as light excludes darkness. Where nothing is certain, where nothing is defined, the sentiments can be divided, opinions can vary. I understand and I ask liberty in doubtful things. But since the truth appears with positive traits which characterize it, for that very reason that it is truth, it is positive, it is necessary, and consequently, it is one and intolerant. To condemn truth to tolerance is to force it to suicide. Affirmation kills itself if it doubts of itself; and it doubts of itself if it leaves indifferently the negation to pose itself beside it. For truth, intolerance is the care for preservation, it is the legitimate exercise of the right of property. When one possesses, it is necessary to defend, under pain of being soon entirely despoiled.

Therefore, by the very necessity of things, intolerance is everywhere, because everywhere there is good and evil, true and false, order and disorder. Everywhere the true does not endure the false, the good excludes the bad, order combats disorder. What is more intolerant, for instance, than this proposition: 2 and 2 are 4? If you come to me to say that 2 and 2 are 3, or that 2 and 2 are 5, I reply to you that 2 and 2 are 4. And if you said to me that you do not contest my manner of counting, but that you maintain yours, and that you request me to be as indulgent toward you as you are toward me; while I remain convinced that I am right and that you are wrong, if absolutely necessary I might remain silent, because after all it concerns me little enough that there may be on earth a man for whom 2 and 2 are 3 or 5.

On a certain number of questions, where the truth would be less absolute, where the consequences would be less grave, I could, up to a certain point, compromise with you. I will be conciliatory, if you speak to me of literature, of politics, of art, of agreeable sciences, because in all these things there is not a unique and determined type. There, beauty and the true are more or less conventions....But if it concerns religious truth taught or revealed by God Himself; if it is a matter of your eternal future and of the salvation of your soul, then there is no more compromise possible. You will find me immovable, and I must be. It is the condition of every truth to be intolerant; but religious truth being the most absolute and the most important of all the truths, is consequently also the most intolerant and the most exclusive.

My brethren, nothing is as exclusive as unity. But listen to the word of Saint Paul: "One Lord, one faith, one baptism." There is in Heaven only one Lord. This God, of which unity is the great attribute, has given to the earth only one creed, one doctrine, one faith. And this faith, this creed, He has confided only to a single visible society, to one Church of which all children are marked by the same seal and regenerated by the same Grace: one baptism. Thus, divine unity, which resides for all eternity in the splendors of the glory, has occurred on earth by the unity of the Evangelical dogma, of which the deposit has been committed by Jesus Christ to the hierarchical unity of the priesthood for keeping: One God, one faith, one Church.

An English clergyman has had the courage to do a book on the tolerance of Jesus Christ, and the philosopher of Geneva1 has said in speaking of the Savior of men: "I do not see that my divine Master may have subtilized on dogma." Nothing is more true. Jesus Christ has not subtilized on dogma. He has brought the truth to men, and He has said: "If anyone is not baptized in the water and in the Holy Spirit; if anyone refuses to eat my Flesh and drink my Blood, he will not have part in my Kingdom." I acknowledge it, there is not subtlety there; it is intolerance, the most positive exclusion, the most frank. And further, Jesus Christ has sent His Apostles to preach to all nations, this is to say, to destroy all existing religions, to establish the single Christian religion throughout the world and to substitute the unity of Catholic dogma for all the beliefs received from the different peoples. And foreseeing the movements and divisions that this doctrine is going to excite on earth, He is not stopped, and He declares that He has come to bring not peace but the sword, to incite war not only between peoples, but in the bosom of the same family, and to separate, with regard to convictions at least, the believing spouse from the unbelieving spouse, the Christian son-in-law from the idolatrous father-in-law. The thing is true, and the philosopher is right: Jesus Christ has not subtilized on dogma.

[Jean-Jacques Rousseau] says elsewhere to his Emile: "I do as St. Paul, and I place charity well above faith. I think that the essential of religion consists in practice that not only is it necessary to be an upright man, humane and charitable, but that whoever is truly such, believes enough of it to be saved, whatever religion he professes." There is indeed, my brethren, a beautiful commentary of St. Paul which says, for instance, that without faith it is impossible to please God; of St. Paul who declares that Jesus Christ is not divided, that in Him there is not the yes and the no, but only the yes; of St. Paul who affirms that, when against all probability an angel would come to preach another doctrine than the apostolic doctrine, it would be necessary to say to him anathema. St. Paul, apostle of tolerance!? St. Paul, who marches throwing down all arrogant science which rises against Jesus Christ, converting all minds to the servitude of Jesus Christ.

People have spoken of the tolerance of the first centuries, of the tolerance of the Apostles. My brethren, we do not reflect on this; but the establishment of the Christian religion has been on the contrary, above all, a work of religious intolerance. At the time of the preaching of the Apostles, the entire universe possessed almost completely this so-praised dogmatic tolerance. As all religions were as false and unreasonable as the other, they were not waging war against each other; as all the gods were equal to each other, there were as many demons, they were not exclusive, they tolerated each other: Satan is not divided against himself. Rome, in multiplying its conquests, multiplied its divinities; and the study of its mythology became complicated in the same proportion as the one of its geography. The victor who was ascending to the Capitol had the conquered gods marched before him with more pride even than in the conquered kings he was dragging along in his retinue. Most often, by virtue of a decree of the Senate, the idols of the barbarians were henceforth identified with the domain of the country, and the national Olympus became greater as the empire did.

Christianity, ...at its first appearance, was not pushed aside all at once. Paganism wondered if, instead of fighting this new religion, it should not give it access into its midst. Judaea had become a Roman province. Rome, accustomed to receiving and to reconciling all religions, at first welcomed, without too much fright, the religion corning out of Judaea....But it did not take long for the word of the prophet to prove correct. The multitudes of idols, who usually saw without jealousy new and strange gods come to take their place near them, suddenly sent forth a cry of fright at the arrival of the God of the Christians, and...tottered on their threatened altars. Rome was attentive to this spectacle. And soon, when it noticed that this new God was the irreconcilable enemy of the other gods; when it saw that the Christians. whose religion they had accepted, did not want to admit the religion of the nation; in a word, when it had undeniably established the intolerant spirit of the Christian faith, it was then that the persecution began.

Listen to how the historians of the time justify the tortures of the Christians: they do not speak ill of their religion, of their God, of their Christ, of their practices; it was only later that they invented calumnies. They reproach them only for not being able to tolerate any other religion than theirs.

"I did not doubt," said Pliny the Younger, "whatever their dogma may be, it might be necessary to punish their stubbornness and their inflexible obstinacy."

These are not criminals, said Tacitus, but they are intolerant, misanthropes, enemies of mankind. There is in them a headstrong faith in their principles, and an exclusive faith which condemns the beliefs of all other peoples. The pagans were saying rather generally of the Christians what Celsus has said of the Jews, whom people confused with the Christians for a long time because the Christian doctrine had taken birth in Judaea:
Quote:"That these men adhered inviolably to their laws," this sophist said, "I do not blame them; I blame only those who abandon the religion of their fathers to embrace a different one! But if the Jews or the Christians want to give themselves the appearances of a wisdom more sublime than the one of the rest of the world, I will say that we do not have to believe that they are more agreeable to God than the others."

The principal grievance against the Christians was the too absolute rigidity of their creed, and, as people said, the unsociable disposition of their theology. If their God had been only one of many, there would not have been complaints: but it was an incompatible God who was driving away all the others. This is why the persecution. Thus, the establishment of the Church was a work of dogmatic intolerance, the whole history of the Church is likewise only the history of this intolerance. What are the martyrs? People intolerant in matters of the faith who preferred torture rather than to profess error. What is the Creed? Formulas of intolerance that regulate what it is necessary to believe and that impose on the reason necessary mysteries. What is the Papacy? An institution of doctrinal intolerance, which through hierarchal unity maintains the unity of the faith. Why the Councils? To stop deviations of thought, to condemn false interpretations of dogma, to anathematize propositions contrary to the Faith.

We are therefore intolerant, exclusive in matters of doctrine: we profess it; we are proud of it. If we were not, it would be because we do not have the truth, since truth is one, and consequently intolerant. Daughter of Heaven, the Catholic religion in descending onto the earth has produced titles of its origin; it has offered to the examination of reason incontestable facts that prove irrefragably its divinity. Now, if it comes from God; if Jesus Christ, its Author, has said: "I am the truth," it is certainly necessary by an inevitable consequence that the Catholic Church maintain incorruptibly this truth such as it has received it from Heaven itself. It is very necessary that it reject, that it exclude everything that is contrary to this truth, all that would destroy it. To reproach the Catholic Church its dogmatic intolerance, its absolute affirmation in matters of doctrine, is to address to it a very honorable reproach. It is to reproach the sentinel for being too faithful and too vigilant; it is to reproach the spouse for being too scrupulous and too exclusive.

"Since we tolerate you," the sects sometimes say to the Church, "why do you not therefore tolerate us?" My brethren, it is as if concubines said to the legitimate spouse, "Since we tolerate you, why be more intolerant than we?" The concubines tolerate the spouse, what a great favor (!), truly, and the spouse is very unreasonable to base her claim on rights and privileges solely belonging to her, of which the concubines reluctantly accept to leave her a share, at least until they may succeed in banishing her entirely!

Imagine this intolerance of the Catholics! People often say about us, "They can tolerate no other Church than theirs. The Protestants certainly tolerate them!" My brethren, you were in the peaceful possession of your home and your estate. Armed men hurl themselves at it. They seize your bed, your table, your money, in a word, they establish themselves in your home, but they do not drive you out of it. They carry condescension to the point of allowing you your share. What do you have to complain of? You are quite unreasonable not to be satisfied with the common law!

"Since the Protestants say that one can be saved in your Church," it is said, "why do you pretend that one cannot be saved in theirs?" My brethren, let's put ourselves in one of the public squares of this city. A traveler asks me the route which leads to the capital. I direct him to it. Then one of my fellow-citizens approaches, and says to me, "I acknowledge that that route leads to Paris, I grant you that. But you owe me the same consideration, and you will not dispute with me that this other route–the route to Bordeaux, for instance–leads also to Paris.

Indeed, this route to Paris would be very intolerant and very exclusive not to admit that a route which is directly opposite it would lead to the very same end. It does not have a conciliatory spirit. How far does encroachment and fanaticism creep? My brethren, truly I could give way again, because the most opposite routes would eventually meet each other perhaps, after having gone around the world, whereas one would eternally follow the road of error without ever arriving at heaven. Therefore, no longer ask us why, when the Protestants acknowledge that one can save himself in our religion, we object to recognizing that, generally speaking, and outside the case of good faith and of invincible ignorance, one can save himself in theirs. The thorns can acknowledge that the vine gives grapes without the vine having to acknowledge to the thorns the same properties.

My brethren, we are moreover often confused from what we hear said on all these questions from sensible people. The logic in them is entirely missing when religion is in question. Is it passion, is it prejudice which blinds them? It is both. In the main, the passions well know what they want when they seek to disturb the foundations of the faith, to place religion among the things without consistency. They are not ignorant that by demolishing dogma they prepare a facile morality. Someone has said with perfect accuracy: "It is rather the Ten Commandments than the Creed that makes unbelievers." If all religions can be placed on the very same rank, it is that they are all equal. If all are true, it is that all are false. If all the gods tolerate each other, it is that there is no God. And when we arrive at that conclusion, there no longer remains constraining morality. How many consciences would be at ease the day the Catholic Church would give the fraternal kiss to all the sects, its rivals!

Religious indifference is therefore a system which has its root in the passions of the human heart. But it is also necessary to say that, as regards a great many men of our century, it holds to the prejudices of education. Either it concerns these men...and who have imbibed the milk of the preceding generation, or better, it concerns those who belong to the new generation. The former have sought the philosophical and religious spirit in Jean-Jacques's Emile; the others, in the eclectic or progressive school of these half-protestant and half-rationalists who today hold sway over education.

Jean-Jacques has been among us the apologist and propagandist of this system of religious tolerance. The invention of it does not belong to him, although he has audaciously surpassed paganism, which never extended indifference as far. Here are, with a short commentary, the principal points of the Genevese Catechism, which unfortunately became popular: 
Quote:All religions are good; this is to say, otherwise for the French, all religions are bad. It is necessary to practice the religion of one's country; this is to say that truth in religious matters depends on the degree of longitude and of latitude: truth on this side of the mountains, untruth beyond the mountains. Consequently, what is still more serious, it is necessary either to have no sincere religion and to be the hypocrite everywhere, or if one has a religion in his heart, to become apostate and turncoat when the circumstances desire it. The wife has to profess the same religion as her husband, and the children the same religion as their father; this is to say what was false and bad before the marriage contract has to be true and good after, and that it would be bad for the children of the cannibals to turn aside from the estimable practices of their parents!

But I hear you tell me that the century of the Encyclopedia is past, that a longer refutation would be an anachronism. Very well, let's close the book on Education. Let's open in its place the learned Essays which are almost the common source from where the philosophy of the 19th century is poured out by a thousand faithful channels on the whole surface of our country. This philosophy is called eclectic, syncretic, and, with a small modification, it is also called progressive. This smart system consists in saying that there is nothing false, that all opinion and all religions can be reconciled, that error is not possible to man unless he despoils humanity, that every error of men consists in believing to possess exclusively all the truth, when each of them hold only a link of it and that from the union of all these links must form the entire chain of truth. Thus, according to this incredible theory, there are no false religions, but they are all incomplete without each other. The true religion would be the religion of the syncretic and progressive eclecticism, which would gather together all the others, past, present, and future. All the others, this is to say, the natural religion, which recognizes one God; Atheism, which does not recognize any; Pantheism, which recognizes God in everything and everywhere; Spiritualism, which believes in the soul, and Materialism, which believes only in the flesh, in the blood and in the temperament; evangelical societies which acknowledge a revelation, and rationalistic Deism, which spurns it; Christianity, which believes the Messiah came, and Judaism, which still waits for Him; Catholicism, which obeys the Pope, and Protestantism, which regards the Pope as the Antichrist. All this is reconcilable. These are different aspects of the truth. Combining these creeds will result in a larger, more vast religion, the great, truly catholic religion, this is to say universal, since it will include all the others in its midst!

My brethren, this doctrine, which you have all qualified absurd, is not my creation. It fills thousands of recent volumes and publications....Every day it takes new forms under the pen and on the lips of men... At what point of folly have we therefore arrived? We have arrived, My Brethren, where anyone must logically arrive whosoever does not admit this incontestable principle that we have established, namely, that truth is one and consequently intolerant, exclusive of all doctrine which is not its own. And to bring together again in a few words all the substance of this first part of my discourse, I will say to you: If you seek the truth on earth, seek the intolerant Church. All errors can make concessions to each other. They are close relations since they have a common father: "You are of your father, the devil." The Truth, daughter of heaven, is the only one which does not capitulate.

Therefore, you who want to judge this great cause, appropriate to yourself in this the wisdom of Solomon. Among these different societies between which the truth is an object of strife, as was that child between the two mothers, you want to know how to judge it. Ask for a sword, feign to slice, and examine the face that the claimants will make. There will be several of them who will be resigned, who will be contented with the part that is going to be handed over to them. Say immediately, "These are not the mothers." There is one of them on the contrary, who will deny herself every settlement, who will say, "The truth belongs to me and I have to preserve it in its entirety. I will never allow that it be diminished or parceled out." Say to this one, "This is the true mother."

Yes, Holy Catholic Church, you have the truth, because you have unity, and you are intolerant to allow this unity to decompose. There is our first principle: the religion which descends from heaven is true, and consequently it is intolerant with regard to doctrines. I will add: the religion which descends from heaven is charity, and consequently it is full of tolerance with regard to individuals...

It is the characteristic of the Catholic Church to be firm and immovable on principles and to prove itself to be kindly and indulgent in their application. What is so surprising? Is she not the spouse of Jesus Christ, and like Him, does she not possess both the intrepid courage of the lion and the gentleness of the lamb? Does she not represent on earth supreme Wisdom, which takes to its purpose strongly and which disposes everything benevolently? It is especially by this sign that the religion which descended from heaven has to make itself recognized. It is by the condescensions of its charity, by the inspirations of its love. Consider the Church of Jesus Christ, and see with what infinite regards, with what respectful attentions it acts with its children, either in the manner with which it presents its teachings to their comprehension, or in the application that it makes to their behavior and to their actions. Soon you will recognize that the Church is a mother who invariably teaches truth and virtue, who can never consent to error or to evil, but who busies herself to render her teaching amiable, and who treats with indulgence the errors of weakness.

...From the first steps that it has been given to me to make in the domain of sacred theology, what has caused in me the most admiration, what has spoken the most eloquently to my soul, what would have inspired in me the Faith if I had not had the good fortune to possess it already, is on the one hand, the tranquil majesty with which the Catholic Church affirms what is certain, and on the other hand the moderation and reserve with which it abandons to free opinions everything that is not defined. No, this is not as men teaching doctrines of which they are the inventors, this is not the way they express the thoughts that are the fruit of their genius.

When a man has created a system, he supports it with an absolute tenacity. He yields neither on one point nor on another. When he is enamored with a doctrine born from his brain, he seeks to make it prevail with authority. Do not contest a single one of his ideas with him. The one that you allow yourself to discuss is precisely the most important and the most necessary to him. Almost all the books issued from the hand of men are marked with this exaggeration and this tyranny... [T]he holy Catholic theology offers an entirely different character. Since the Church has not invented the truth, but is only the depository of it, we do not find passion nor excess in its teachings. It has pleased the Son of God, in whom resided the plenitude of truth,...to clearly reveal certain appearances, certain aspects of the truth and to show only a glimpse of the others. The Church does not extend her ministry further, and is content to have taught, maintained, avenged certain and necessary principles. It allows its children to discuss, to conjecture, to reason freely on the dubious points.

Catholic teaching has been calumniated so much...that you will perhaps hardly believe what I am going to tell you. There is not a single science in the world which is less despotic than the sacred science. The deposit of teaching has been confided to the Church, but do you know what the Church teaches? A creed in 12 articles which do not form 12 lines, a creed composed by the Apostles and that the first two General Councils have explained and developed by the addition of a few words which became necessary.

We proclaim, we Catholics, that the authentic interpretation of the Holy Scriptures belongs to the Church; but do you know, my brethren, in regards to how many of the verses of the Bible the Church has used this supreme right? The Bible includes about 30,000, and the Church has perhaps not defined the meaning of 80 of these verses. The remainder are left to the commentators, and I can say, to the free examination of the Catholic reader, so that, according to the word of St. Jerome, the Scriptures are a vast field in which the intellect can play and delight, and where it will meet only a few barriers here and there around precipices, and also a few fortified places where it will be able to retrench and to find an assured assistance.

The Councils are the principal organ for Catholic teaching. Now, the Council of Trent, wanting to include in a single and same declaration all the obligatory doctrine, had not needed two pages to contain the most complete profession of Faith. And if we study the history of this Council, we recognize with admiration that it was equally jealous to maintain dogmas and to respect opinions....

Finally, the incomparable Bossuet having opposed to the calumnies of the Protestants his well-known Exposition of the Catholic Faith, proved that this same Church, which was accused of tyrannizing intellects, could reduce its defined and necessary truths into a body of doctrine a great deal less voluminous than were the confessions, synods, and declarations of the sects that had rejected the principle of authority and were professing free examination.

But I repeat, my brethren, this remarkable phenomenon, which exists only in the Catholic Church, this tranquil majesty in its assertion, this moderation and reserve concerning all questions not defined, here is, in my opinion, the adorable sign by which I have to recognize the truth which came from heaven. When I contemplate this serene conviction and this kind indulgence on the face of the Church, I throw myself into its arms, and I say to it, "You are my mother." This is as a mother teaches–without passion nor exaggeration, but with calm authority and wise measure.

You recognize this character in the teaching of the Church, in its most eminent doctors, in those of whom it adopts and authorizes the writings nearly without restriction. Augustine undertakes his immortal work The City of God, which will be until the end of the ages one of the richest monuments of the Church. He goes about avenging the holy truths of the Catholic Faith against the calumnies of dying paganism. He feels the ardors of zeal boiling within him. But if he has read in the Scriptures that God is truth, he has also read that God is charity. He understands that excess of truth can become absence of charity. He places himself on his knees and he sends toward heaven this admirable prayer: "Send, Lord, send into my heart the consolation, the temperament of your spirit, so that carried away by the love of the truth I do not lose the truth of love."

And at the other extremity of the chain of holy doctors, listen to these beautiful words of the blessed Bishop of Geneva:2 "Truth which is not charitable ceases to be the truth because in God, Who is the supreme source of the true, charity is inseparable from the truth."

Read Augustine and Francis de Sales. You will find in their writings the truth in all its purity and, on account of this very thing, all imprinted with charity and love.

Oh, priest of Carthage,3 I admire the nerve of your energetic language, the irresistible power of your sarcasm, but...will I say it? under the surface of your most orthodox writings, I seek the unction of charity. Your incisive syllables do not have the humble and sweet expression of love. I fear that you were defending the truth as one defends a system to himself, and that one day your pride abandoned the cause that your bitter zeal had sustained. Why, having consecrated his immense talent to the service of the Gospel, has Tertullian not prayed to the Lord as Augustine did, to send into his heart the consolations, the temperaments of His spirit? Love would have maintained it in the doctrine. But because he was not in charity, he lost the truth....With more love in your heart, your intelligence would not have made such a deplorable defection; charity would have maintained you in truth.

If the Catholic Church presents to our minds the teaching of the truth with so much discretion and sweetness, it is with still more condescension and goodness that it applies its principles to our conduct and our actions. Incapable of ever supporting bad doctrines, the Church is tolerant without limit for people. It never mixes error with the one who teaches it, nor the sin with the one who commits it. The Church condemns error but continues to love the man. The Church brands sin but pursues the sinner with tenderness. It earnestly desires to make him better, to reconcile him with God, to call peace and truth into his heart.

The Church makes no preference of persons. There is for the Church neither Jew, nor Greek, nor barbarian. It is not interested in your opinions. It does not ask you if you live in a monarchy or in a republic. You have one soul to save; here is all that is necessary to save it. Call on the Church. It comes to you with hands full of graces and pardon. You have committed more sins than you have hairs on your head. That does not frighten it. It expunges everything in the blood of Jesus Christ. Some of its laws are too onerous for you, it consents to accommodate them to your weakness; their rigor yields before your failings. St. Thomas Aquinas poses in principle that if no one can dispense with the divine law, condescension to the laws of the Church on the other hand does not have to be too difficult, for the sake of the sweetness which makes the foundation of its government. When the civil law is rigid and inflexible, so much more is the law of the Church yielding and supple. What other authority over the earth governs or administers as the Church?

May the world which preaches tolerance to us be as tolerant as we. We reject only principles; the world rejects persons. How many times we forgive and the world continues to condemn! How many times, in the name of God, we have pulled the veil of oblivion over the past, and the world always remembers! The very same mouths which reproach us with intolerance, blame us for our too credulous and too easy benevolence. Our inexhaustible patience towards people is almost as impugned as our inflexibility against doctrines!

...[N]o longer ask us for tolerance with regard to doctrine. Encourage, on the contrary, our solicitude to maintain the unity of dogma, which is the only bond of peace on earth. The Roman orator has said, "The union of minds is the first condition for the union of hearts." And this great man showed even in the definition of friendship the unanimity of thought with regard to divine and human things.

Our society is prey to a thousand divisions. We complain of them everyday. Where does this weakening of affections come from, this coldness of hearts? My brethren, how should hearts be brought together where minds are so far apart? Because each of us lives alone in his own thought, each of us also confines himself to the love of himself. Do we want to put an end to these countless differences of opinion which threaten to soon destroy all the spirit of family, city, and country? Do we no longer want to be strangers to each other, adversaries and almost enemies? Let's come back again to one creed, and we will soon return to harmony and love.

Every creed concerning the things of here below is very far from us. A thousand opinions divide us and for a long time there has no longer been any human dogma. I do not know if it will ever reconstitute itself among us. Fortunately, the religious creed, the divine dogma, has always maintained itself in its purity in the hands of the Church, and that way a precious germ of salvation is preserved for us. The day when all men will say: "I believe in God, in Jesus Christ, and in the Church," all hearts will not delay to draw near, and we will find again the only truly solid and lasting peace, the one that the Apostle calls peace in truth. Amen.



Translated exclusively for Angelus Press by Mr. & Mrs. William Platz from OEuvres Sacerdotales du Cardinal Pie, Choix de Sermons et d'Instructions de 1839 a 1849. The couple responded to an invitation in The Angelus for translators to make the work of Cardinal Pie, a mentor for Pope Pius X and Archbishop Lefebvre, available in English, for most of it is only known in French.

Louis-Edouard-Desire Cardinal Pie [say: "pea"] (1815-1880), renowned Bishop of Poitiers, France, was a major-league player in the fight against the anti-Catholic movement of the 19th century. "...He is best known for his opposition to modern errors, and his championship of the rights of the Church. Regarding as futile the compromises accepted by other Catholic leaders, he fought alike all philosophical theories and political arrangements that did not come up to the full traditional Christian standard...." His distinguished service to the Church was recognized by Leo XIII, who made him cardinal in 1879. (From the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913 ed., Vol. XII, p. 76.)

1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

2. St. Francis de Sales.

3. Tertullian.

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  Second Sunday after Epiphany
Posted by: Stone - 01-17-2021, 08:45 AM - Forum: Christmas - Replies (6)

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY
Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Gueranger (1841-1875)

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The third Mystery of the Epiphany shows us the completion of the merciful designs of God upon the world, at the same time that it manifests to us, for the third time, the glory of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Star has led the soul to faith; the sanctified Waters of the Jordan have conferred purity upon her; the Marriage Feast unites her to her God. We have been considering, during this Octave, the Bridegroom revealing himself to the Spouse; we have heard him calling her to come to him from the heights of Libanus; and now, after having enlightened and purified her, he invites her to the heavenly feast, where she is to receive the Wine of his divine love.

A Feast is prepared; it is a Marriage Feast; and the Mother of Jesus is present at it, for it is just that having cooperated in the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, she should take part in all that her Son does, and in all the favors he bestows on his elect. But in the midst of the Feast, the Wine fails. Wine is the symbol of Charity or Love, and Charity had failed on the earth; for the Gentiles had never tasted its sweetness; and as to the Synagogue, what had it produced but wild grapes? The True Vine is our Jesus, and he calls himself by that name. He alone could give that Wine which gladdeneth the heart of man; He alone could give us that Chalice which inebriateth, and of which the Royal Psalmist prophesied.

Mary said to Jesus: They have no Wine. It is the office of the Mother of God to tell him of the wants of men, for she is also their Mother. But Jesus answers her in words which are apparently harsh: Woman! what is it to me and to thee? My hour is not yet come. The meaning of these words is that, in this great Mystery, he was about to act not as the Son of Mary, but as the Son of God. Later on, the hour will come when, dying upon the Cross, he will do it as Man, that is, according to that human nature which he has received from her. Mary at once understands the words of her Son, and she says to the waiters of the Feast what she is now ever saying to her children: Do whatsoever he shall say to you.

Now, there were six large waterpots of stone there, and they were empty. The world was then in its Sixth Age, as St. Augustine and other Holy Doctors tell us. During these six ages, the earth had been awaiting its Savior, who was to instruct and redeem it. Jesus commands these waterpots to be filled with water; and yet, water does not suit the Feast of the Spouse. The figures and the prophecies of the ancient world were this water, and until the opening of the Seventh Age, when Christ, who is the Vine, was to be given to the world, no man had contracted an alliance with the Divine Word.

But when the Emmanuel came, he had but to say, Now draw out, and the waterpots were seen to be filled with the wine of the New Covenant, the Wine which had been kept to the end. When he assumed our human nature—a nature weak and unstable as Water—he effected a change in it; he raised it up even to himself, by making us partakers of the divine nature; he gave us the power to love him, to be united to him, to form that one Body of which he is the Head, that Church of which he is the Spouse, and which he loved from all eternity, and with such tender love, that he came down from heaven to celebrate his nuptials with her.

St. Matthew, the Evangelist of the Humanity of our Lord, has received from the Holy Ghost the commission to announce to us the Mystery of Faith by the Star; St. Luke, the Evangelist of Jesus’ Priesthood, has been selected, by the same Holy Spirit, to instruct us in the Mystery of the Baptism in the Jordan; but the Mystery of the Marriage Feast was to be revealed to us by the Evangelist John, the Beloved Disciple. He suggests to the Church the object of this third Mystery by this expression: This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Glailee, and he manifested his glory. At Bethlehem, the Gold of the Magi expressed the Divinity of the Babe; at the Jordan, the descent of the Holy Ghost and the voice of the Eternal Father proclaimed Jesus (known to the people as a carpenter of Nazareth) to be the Son of God; at Cana, it is Jesus himself that acts, and he acts as God, for, says St. Augustine, He who changed the water into wine in the waterpots could be no other than the same who, every year, works the same miracle in the vine. Hence it was that, from that day, as St. John tells us, his disciples believed in him, and the Apostolic College began to be formed.



Mass

The Introit proclaims the joy of this day, which shows us the human nature espoused to the Son of the eternal Father. Surely the earth will henceforth surrender itself wholly to the love and praise of this sacred Name which, in the Marriage Feast, has become that of the Son of Adam.

Introit
Omnis terra adoret te, Deus, et psallat tibi: psallmum dicat nomini tuo, Altissime.
Ps. Jubilate Deo omnis terra, psalmum dicite nomini ejus: date gloriam laudi ejus. Gloria Patri. Omnis terra.

Let all the earth adore thee, and sing to thee, O God: let it sing a psalm to thy name, O Most High.
Ps. Shout with joy to God, all the earth, sing ye a psalm to his name; give glory to his praise. Glory be to the Father. Let all the earth.


This name of Sons of God which has become ours by right through the bond of the sacred nuptials is none other, as Jesus himself tells us in his Beatitudes, than Peace—the Peace of God, ours truly through the action of his grace ever working it out within us. In the Collect Peace again figures as the final end of God’s government both in heaven and on earth, likewise as the supreme desire of the Church.

Collect
Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui cœlestia simul et terrena moderaris: supplicationes populi tui clementer exaudi, et pacem tuam nostris concede temporibus. Per Dominum.

Almighty and Eternal God, supreme Ruler both of heaven and earth, mercifully give ear to the prayers of thy people, and grant us peace in our time. Through, etc.

Commemoration is made, by their proper Collects, of the Saint whose feast may occur with this Sunday; the third prayer will be that of the Blessed Virgin.

Commemoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Deus qui salutis æternæ, beatæ Mariæ virginitate fœcunda, humano generi præmia præstitisti; tribue, quæsumus, ut ipsam pro nobis intercedere sentiamus, per quam meruimus auctorem vitæ suscipere, Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum Filium tuum. Qui tecum.

O God, who, by the fruitful Virginity of the Blessed Mary, hast given to mankind the rewards of eternal salvation, grant, we beseech thee, that we may experience her intercession, by whom we received the Author of life, our Lord Jesus Christ, thy Son. Who liveth, etc.


Epistle

Lesson from the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle, to the Romans. Ch. xii.
Brethren: Having different gifts, according to the grace that is given us, either prophecy, to be used according to the rule of faith; Or ministry, in ministering; or he that teacheth, in doctrine; He that exhorteth, in exhorting; he that giveth, with simplicity; he that ruleth, with carefulness; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be without dissimulation. Hating that which is evil, cleaving to that which is good. Loving one another with the charity of brotherhood, with honour preventing one another. In carefulness not slothful. In spirit fervent. Serving the Lord. Rejoicing in hope. Patient in tribulation. Instant in prayer. Communicating to the necessities of the saints. Pursuing hospitality. Bless them that persecute you: bless, and curse not. Rejoice with them that rejoice; weep with them that weep. Being of one mind one towards another. Not minding high things, but consenting to the humble.

Quote:This peace which characterizes, in the abode of saints, the Sons of God, effects in like measure on earth the oneness of the Bride, that is of the Church: peace it is that makes her to be but one body wherein the many members find their multiplicity upheld and guided by the head, the one lord; their functions, so diverse in themselves, regulated and brought under the rule and love of the Bridegroom, Christ Jesus. The Epistle which has just been read sets before us the different operations of this peace which has as its ruling motive Charity, the Queen of virtues, and which is so essential to Christianity; the Apostle specifies in detail its forms and conditions and adapts its practice to every social condition and circumstances of life. Of such value does the Church judge these considerations, that, on the following Sunday, she resumes the text of the Apostle where today she has interrupted it.

Far from a divine life in the peace of God which was its precious gift, the human race incurred death with its penalty of separation. Let us then in the Gradual sing of this wonder that has been wrought in our midst, and with the angelic choirs exalt the Lord in praise and admiration.

Gradual
Misit Dominus verbum suum, et sanavit eos: et eripuit eos de interitu eorum.
℣. Confiteantur Domino misericordiæ ejus, et mirabilia ejus filiis hominum. Alleluia, allelluia.
℣. Laudate Deum omnes Angeli ejus: laudate eum omnes virtutes ejus. Alleluia.

The Lord sent his word and healed them: and delivered them out of their distresses.
℣. Let the mercies of the Lord give glory to him: and his wonderful works to the children of men. Alleluia, alleluia.
℣. Praise ye the Lord, all his angels, praise him all his hosts. Alleluia.


Gospel

Sequel of the holy Gospel according to St. John.  Ch. ii.

At that time: there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee: and the mother of Jesus was there. And Jesus also was invited, and his disciples, to the marriage. And the wine failing, the mother of Jesus saith to him: They have no wine. And Jesus saith to her: Woman, what is that to me and to thee? my hour is not yet come. His mother saith to the waiters: Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye. Now there were set there six waterpots of stone, according to the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three measures apiece. Jesus saith to them: Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And Jesus saith to them: Draw out now, and carry to the chief steward of the feast. And they carried it. And when the chief steward had tasted the water made wine, and knew not whence it was, but the waiters knew who had drawn the water; the chief steward calleth the bridegroom, And saith to him: Every man at first setteth forth good wine, and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse. But thou hast kept the good wine until now. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee; and manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him.

Quote:O the wonderful dignity of man! God has vouchsafed, says the Apostle, to show the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which had no claim to, nay, were unworthy of such an honor. Jesus bids the waiters fill them with water and the water of Baptism purifies us; but, not satisfied with this, he fills these vessels, even to the brim, not to be drunk save in the kingdom of his Father. Thus, divine Charity, which dwells in the Sacrament of Love, is communicated to us; and that we might not be unworthy of the espousals with himself, to which he called us, he raises us up even to himself. Let us, therefore, prepare our souls for this wonderful union, and, according to the advice of the Apostle, let us labor to present them to our Jesus with such purity as to resemble that chaste Virgin, who was presented to the spotless Lamb.

During the Offertory, the Church resumes her songs of joy and give free course to her holy transports. All faithful souls are invited by her to the celebration of this adorable Mystery, the intimate union of man with God.

Offertory
Jubilate Deo universa terra: psalmum dicite nomini ejus, venite et audite, et narrabo vobis omnes qui timetis Deum, quanta fecit Dominus animæ meæ. Alleluia.

Shout with joy to God, all the earth, sing ye a psalm to his name. Come and hear, all ye who fear God, and I will tell you what great things he hath done for my soul. Alleluia.


Secret
Oblata, Domine, munera sanctifica: nosque a peccatorum nostrorum maculis emunda. Per Dominum.

Sanctify, O Lord, our offerings, and cleanse us from the stains of our sins. Through, etc.


After the Secret of the Saint who is being commemorated today, that of the Blessed Virgin is said.

Commemoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Tua, Domine, propitiatione, et beatæ Mariæ semper Virginis intercessione, ad perpetuam atque præsentem hæc oblatio nobis proficiat prosperitatem et pacem. Per Dominum.

By thy merciful forgiveness, O Lord, and by the intercession of blessed Mary, ever a Virgin, let this offering avail us for welfare and peace, both now and for evermore. Through our Lord.


The Communion Antiphon recalls once more the miracle of the changing of the water into wine. This was only a dim figure of that wondrous transformation which is accomplished on our altars, only a symbol of that divine Sacrament, the food of our souls whereby, in an unspeakable way, is realized our union with God.

Communion
Dicit Dominus: Implete hydrias aqua et fert5e architriclino. Cum gustasset architriclinus aquam vinum factam, dicit sponso: Servasti vinum bonum usque adhuc. Hoc signum fecit Jesus primum coram discipulis suis.

The Lord saith: Fill the waterpots with water and carry to the chief steward of the feast. When the chief steward had tasted the water made wine, he said to the bridegroom: Thou hast kept the good wine until now. This beginning of miracles did Jesus before his disciples.



Postcommunion
Augeatur in nobis, quæsumus Domine, tuæ virtutis operatio: ut divinis vegetati sacramentis, ad eorum promissa capienda tuo munere præparemur. Per Dominum.

May the efficacy of thy power, O Lord, be increased in us, that being fed with thy divine sacraments, we may, through thy bounty, be prepared to receive what they promise. Through, etc.

Commemoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Hæc nos communio, Domine, purget a crimine: et intercedente beata Virgine Dei Genitrice Maria, cœlestis remedii faciat esse consortes.

May this communion, O Lord, cleanse us from sin, and by the intercession of blessed Mary, the Virgin-Mother of God, make us partakers of thy heavenly remedy.


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  Fr. Hewko: Archbishop Lefebvre and the Great Reset
Posted by: Stone - 01-17-2021, 08:29 AM - Forum: Great Reset - No Replies

Fr. Hewko's January 16, 2021 Sermon: "Archbishop Lefebvre & the Great Reset"

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  Facebook Censors Mexican Cardinal for Denouncing ‘New World Order’
Posted by: Stone - 01-16-2021, 07:27 PM - Forum: Great Reset - No Replies

Facebook Censors Mexican Cardinal for Denouncing ‘New World Order’


Breitbart | January 16, 2020 

Facebook has censored a video of Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, archbishop emeritus of Guadalajara, for suggesting that
globalist leaders are exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to bring about a new world order.

In place of the cardinal’s weekly video, Facebook exhibited a greyed-out screenshot emblazoned with the banner “False information.” Underneath, Facebook added, “This publication repeats information about COVID-19 that independent fact checkers deemed false.”

On its Facebook page, Semanario Arquidiocesano Guadalajara, an information service run by the Archdiocese of Guadalajara, posted the following screenshot on January 13, along with the text “Cardinal Juan Sandoval denounced the imposition of a new world order, hours later his video was censored”:

In the nine-and-a-half-minute January 12 video, bearing the title “Plot of a new world order,” the cardinal begins by saying, “Dear friends, this will go on for a long time.”

[Image: Cardinal-Juan-Sandoval.jpg]

“This pandemic won’t end in a month or two months, perhaps not this year, perhaps not in three, four, five, six years,” he said. “That’s what these men want. It will be a long haul.”

“It’s a tough, difficult situation, the likes of which has not been seen in human history,” he said:

“Bill Gates is a prophet and foretells the future,” the cardinal noted wryly, “and not only did he predict the coming of the coronavirus, but has also warned of a possible future smallpox pandemic.”

During the pandemic, Cardinal Sandoval has criticized the shuttering of businesses and services as disproportionate measures to curb the spread of the virus.

“What they’re after is a world government, a new world order,” the cardinal asserts in the video.

“They want a single world government, a single army, a single currency, a single economy, and also a single religion — that will certainly not be the Christian religion,” he said. “It will be the religion of Mother Earth, in the name of humanity and universal brotherhood.”

“To this end, pandemics serve to weaken nations; they impoverish and indebt them, bringing down their economies,” Sandoval said. “They also weaken education, closing schools and replacing them with distance learning.”

“These pandemics also impede religious practice, as we saw all last year,” he said. “They close the churches, reduce the number of people who can worship.”

“But above all, they are creating fear, a terrible fear among the people,” he warned.

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  Advent and Christmas Sermons by St. Vincent Ferrer
Posted by: Hildegard of Bingen - 01-16-2021, 05:14 PM - Forum: Sermons by the Saints - No Replies

The seasonal winter sermons of the preacher and proclaimer of the divine Word, interpreter of sacred scripture and most subtle professor, Saint Vincent, confessor of Valencia, of the Order of Preachers, happily begin.
 

First Sunday of Advent. Sermon 1     Part one -The theme
 
Mt 21.9
And the multitudes that went before and that followed, cried, saying: Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest.
 
    Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord," (Mt 21:9).  We have prescribed  for today's gospel this text from Mt 21.  This Sunday is one of the greater Sundays of the entire year, because it is the first Sunday of the Coming (Adventus) of the Lord.  Holy Mother Church sets aside the ordinary texts of the office and begins the office of the Advent of the Lord. So, wishing to conform myself to holy mother church I propose now to preach about the Advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, how he shall come at the end of the world to judge the good and the wicked, rendering to each according to his works.  God willing,  we shall have many good thoughts. But first let us salute the Virgin Mary. 
 
   "Blessed is he who comes," etc. The words proposed is a short song which was sung by the children and the crowd at the coming of Christ into the city of Jerusalem, saying "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." To more fully introduce these words and as an introduction to the matter to be preached, it must be known  that there are found in sacred scripture clearly and manifestly three comings [adventus] of the Lord in this world, solemn and notable. general and principal.
            First was in virtuous humility. [de humiltate virtuosa]
            Second in gracious charity,[de charitate gratiosa] 
            Third in rigorous majesty. [de maiestate rigorosa]
   The first advent is already past, the second is present, the third is yet to come.  From these three advents corresponds three weeks of Advent, and the theme is understood principally of the third and last coming, and the greater, because then the good shall say, "Blessed is he who comes…etc."
 
VIRTUOUS HUMILITY
 
  The first advent of the Lord was in virtuous humility, and this already is past, when he wished to descend through incarnation, conversation, captivity, scourging and passion, that those believing in him and obeying might ascend into heaven.  The reason why he came in such humility was the pride of Adam and Eve, because they preferred not to obey God, but rather their own will.  The sin of Adam was pride, as St. Thomas says II Sent. Dist. 22, q. 1, a. 1 and II-II, q. 163, a. 1.  And, as St. Thomas says, "Disobedience in him was caused by pride," and so Augustine says To Orosius [Dial. QQ. lxv, qu. 4), " man puffed up with pride obeyed the serpent's prompting, and scorned God's commands."  Truly also in the sin of the first parents, as St. Thomas says, II-II, where above in the solution ad 2m, gluttony has its place.  It is said in Genesis 3," And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold: and she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat," (Gn 3:6), but it was not its goodness and beauty that was the first motive for sinning, but rather the argument of the serpent who said: " your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods,"(v. 5),  and it was by coveting this that the woman fell into pride. Hence the sin of gluttony resulted from the sin of pride. Therefore the first sin was pride rather than gluttony. 
 
   And pride is the foundation of all sins. V.g. Why is someone avaricious?  It is from pride, because he does not wish to obey the precept of God saying, "You should not lust," or "not commit thefts" etc.  Why is someone lustful? Is it not from pride, because he does not wish to obey the precept, "You shall not commit fornication?"  Same for gluttony and the other sins.  Authority: "Pride is the beginning of all sin," (Sir 10:15). Therefore Christ comes in great humility to reform us, like a servant in administering to us the works of redemption through human incarnation. 
 
   But you wish to understand well this lesson taught by the humility of Christ, imagine that there were many great lords and some gathered at dinner, and they did not have a servant waiter.  Imagine that the son of the king, having taken off his royal clothing and dressed simply had come to serve them all, first by offering them water for their hands and second,  by serving the food.  Would this not have been by the son of the king an act of great humility?   The humility of the Son of God is incomparably greater.  All nations of men were gathered in the room of this world, awaiting the sublime dinner of celestial feasting, but we did not have a waiter who would serve it to us.  For this purpose the Son of God exchanged, or rather hid the clothing of his godhead, and putting on  the apron of humanity comes to wait on us, although he was changed in no way by the incarnation.  Of this see in III Pars of the Summa of St. Thomas, q. 1, a. 1 ad 1, and q. 2, a. 6, ad 1 and in III Sent., dist. 2, q, 1, a. 1, ad 1.  Authority: "Who being in the form of God," namely with the clothing of deity, "…emptied himself, " that is, humbled himself, "taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man," (Phil 2:6-7), namely to serve and minister to us.
 
    And first he gives us water for our unclean hands, because all were conceived, born, and nurtured in sins. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 5: "Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned," (v. 12).  And we have in De confess. d 4, c 2, firmissime tene: On this account he first ordained the holy sacrament of Baptism. Baptism is ordained as a remedy against original sin; it is a certain spiritual regeneration and the gates of the sacrament. Whence and children lacking all actual sin, are baptized, because of the infection of original sin in which they have been conceived.  "We were," the Apostle Paul says, "by nature children of wrath," (Eph 2:3)  This sin through the act of nature or through a vitiated origin from the parent is passed down to the offspring, about which St. Thomas richly and subtly treats, II Sent., dist. 31, q. 1, a.1 & 2, and also I-IIae, in q. 81
 
  Next he serves the food saying, "I have compassion on the multitude, for behold they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat," (Mk 8:2), and he gives spiritual foods, namely evangelical and celestial teachings. Second he gives the food of miracles, by curing the sick and raising the dead.   Third he gives the foods of the virtues.  Note how tasty and nutritious [confirmabiles] they were.  Finally, he again gives warm water for the hands and feet after dinner, even warm water at supper, because from his side poured out blood and water.  The first water was of baptism, the second of penance which by the passion of Christ has its power and efficacy of washing the filth of sins from souls. 
 
   Of this service of humility Christ himself spoke, " the Son of man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a redemption for many," (Mt 20:28).  And he speaks of the first coming, already past, about which it is necessary to eat him, and praise him.  One way of speaking the theme with a change is to say, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of a servant." 
 
GRACIOUS CHARITY
 
    In the first coming Christ came as a servant, but in this second coming he comes as a friend [socius].  Reason: because it is the fashion and manner of a friend [socius] to stand with, to go with, to converse with, to eat and drink with [us], and so the Lord Jesus Christ comes from heaven to our home to simultaneously dine with us in communion.  O what a dinner [refectio] it is for the devout soul when a man, prepared, receives communion, the intellect is fed with the enlightenment of a clear faith, the memory with the best remembrances, the will with good and holy desires.  The mouth with devout prayers, and finally the whole body is fortified for penance and continuing a good life.  Nor does he  withdraw from us after communion, unless we should plan [congerium] for mortal sin, because otherwise it does not recede, so this association is so greatly pleasing.  So he himself said, "and my delights were to be with the children of men," (Proverbs 8:31).  Note "with the children of men," namely of the patriarchs, prophets, apostles and doctors who have begotten us in the Catholic faith.  See how he is our companion.  Authority.  "The Lord is faithful in all his words," (Ps 114:13), namely by fulfilling his promises, because the words being pronounced, whether by a good or a bad priest, immediately he comes to the host. 
 
   The second coming is of gracious charity, and this is present, because every day in the sacrament of the altar in the consecrated host he is really there just as he came in the first coming in the womb of the Virgin, when the Virgin Mary said the words, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord," (Lk 1:38).  Thus in every mass, when the priest says the words of consecration Christ comes to the host.  And so we adore him in the sacrament of the altar.  Of this coming we should eat him and praise him saying, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the friend."  In this way he does not show his dominion.
 
RIGOROUS MAJESTY
 
   The third coming shall be in rigorous majesty [de maiestate rigorosa], when he shall come for judgment, for judicial retribution.  Although when a man dies the soul immediately goes to judgment, and the Lord returns to it according to his deeds which he did here, because if here he had done fitting penance for his sins, immediately he gives him eternal glory.  If however he did evil and impenitent, he gives him the punishment of hell.  If, however, he was lukewarm, because neither wholly good nor bad, but mediocre, if because he had confessed, made satisfaction and forgave injuries etc, but had not done fitting penance, he gives him retribution of the punishment of purgatory, but these retributions are only of the soul, because the bodies both of the good and of the wicked which aided the souls does not yet have retribution, but they are turned to dust [incinerata]. 
 
   Thus the Lord shall come for the general judgment and shall render retribution not only to the souls but also to the bodies according to their works.  The general judgment of the future is at the end of the world, as St. Thomas says with three arguments in IV Sent., dist. 47, a. 1. 
 
    First that just as God in the beginning created all things together, so he shall judge all things together, and so the universal judgment shall correspond in being the match of the first production of things. 
 
   Second because as St. Thomas says, where above in the solution for a. 2, man can be considered in two ways, as a singular individual, and as part of a multitude, whence a twofold judgment is due to him.  One singular, which happens to him after death, when he shall receive according to those things which he did in the body, although not totally, because not with respect to the body, but just with respect to the soul.  The other judgment ought to be of him as he is a part of the whole human race, and so judgment shall come to him in the universal and general judgment, nor does God judge twice in the same matters, because he does not assess two punishments for one sin, but the punishment which had not been completely inflicted before, in the last judgment will be completed, when the wicked and evil ones are punished simultaneously in body and soul.  
 
   Third it is clear because although everyone who is damned is certain of his damnation, and the blessed of their glory, nevertheless not to all is the damnation or reward made known, nevertheless what is fitting that is known by all, so that the justice of God is apparent to all, and this commonly happens in the general judgment where all are gathered together. 
 
   Of this coming he himself says, "For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels: and then will he render to every man according to his works," (Mk 16:27).  Then he shall not come in humility, in poverty and simplicity, as in the first, nor as a companion as in the second, but he shall come as Lord which such majesty and power that the whole world shall fear and tremble. 
 
   He shall come like the most powerful of kings, who comes to his castle or city rebellious or disobedient to him with armed troops, with bombs and catapults etc.  So shall the Lord come to the castle or city of this world in which there are many rebels and disobedient to Christ the King, that he wishes and commands humility and they are proud, vain etc.  He commanded mercy and generosity and they are the worst, avaricious, extortionists, thieves and robbers.  He commanded chastity, they are lustful.  The same with the rest.   Belief without obedience will not save a man, no king or lord would be content with the belief of his subjects without obedience, on this account Christ shall come to the city of this world not as a servant, nor as a companion, but as Lord with many soldiers [cum multis gentibus], because on that day the heavens will be emptied.  Because no human nor angelic creature shall remain there, for all shall come with the king for judgment.  The horn or trumpet shall sound, thunder and lightning etc., to the extent that heaven and earth shall shudder.  Note. If  heavens and earth and the creatures which never have sinned against God are not able to stand up to his coming, what will it be for sinners, who have committed so many sins against God?  Then it would be better to be in hell than to see God. 
 
   About this Job said, in the person of a sinner, "Who will grant me this, that you may protect me in hell, and hide me till your wrath passes," (Job 14:13).  But on that day the good shall stand secure, nor shall they fear.  Therefore holy mother church praying for all the faithful says, "Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death on that fearful day, when the heavens and the earth are moved, when you come to judge the world with fire."  Then Christ shall show himself as Lord and all peoples will recognize him as Lord,  David [says]: "The Lord shall be known when he executes judgments: the sinner has been caught in the works of his own hands," (Ps 9:17).  Then the blessed and the good rejoicing shall proclaim the theme in its proper form, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord."   The theme now is clear.

A061   II Sunday of Advent, sermon 3
 
St. Vincent Ferrer  -- Sermon on the Last Judgment
 
From: Angel of the Judgment: A Life of Vincent Ferrer, by S.M.C., Ave Maria Press. Chapter XI, pp. 102-117.  This entire chapter consists of the third of the sermons given on the second Sunday in Advent; on the last judgment.
  
Douay Translation of  Luke 21:25-28

25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea and of the waves;
26 Men withering away for fear, and expectation of what shall come upon the whole world. For the powers of heaven shall be moved;
27 And then they shall see the Son of man coming in a cloud, with great power and majesty.
28 But when these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand.
 
   Our sermon will. be on today's gospel, which consists entirely in the doctrine and instruction of Jesus Christ Himself. In this gospel He warns us of the great evils and tribulations which are to come at the end of the world, and tells us of the signs which will precede His coming in judgment. This subject will, I think, be of service to us. Let us begin with the Hail Mary.
 
   "There will be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars." By study of Holy Scripture and by factual experience we know that when any great and heavy affliction is about to come on the world, often some warning sign is shown in the sky or in the upper air. And this happens by the mercy of God, so that people forewarned of impending tribulation by means of these signs, through prayer and good works, may obtain in the tribunal of mercy a reversal of the sentence passed against them by God the judge in the heavenly courts; or at least by penance and amendment of life, may prepare themselves against the impending affliction.
 
   So, before the coming of any great mortality, phantom battles are seen in the sky; before famine there are earthquakes; and before a country is laid waste dreadful portents are seen. We are told of the terrible signs shown to the Jews for a length of time before the destruction of Jerusalem under Antiochus. "And it came to pass that through the whole city of Jerusalem for the space of forty days there were seen horsemen running in the air, in gilded raiment armed with spears like bands of soldiers. And horses set in ranks, running one against another, with the shakings of shields, and a multitude of men in helmets, with drawn swords, and casting of darts, and glittering of golden armor, and of harness of all sorts," (2 Macc 5:2,3). After this, Antiochus plundered the temple and slew the Jews. Therefore we read in Exodus: "And shall multiply signs and wonders in the land of Egypt," (Ex 7:3).
 
   Now among all afflictions, three of the greatest and most terrible are shortly to come upon mankind: first, the affliction of Antichrist, a man but a diabolical one; second, the destruction by fire of the terrestrial world; third, the universal judgment. And with these tribulations the world will come to an end. Therefore, according to the rule of divine Providence, as set out above, before these three, there will be warning signs in the heavens, in the sun and in the moon and in the stars, as is set out in our text.
 
   The first affliction to come on the world in a short space of time is the advent of Antichrist, a diabolical man, who will bring distress on the whole world as is implied in. today's gospel where it is said: "And upon the earth distress of nations, by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea and of the waves."
 
   In my text there are four clauses in which we are warned of the four ways in which Antichrist will deceive Christians. The first clause is this: "There will be sign, in the sun." You must know that in Holy Scripture Christ is called the Sun, and this is because, by the evidence of your own eyes, the sun is among the most beautiful of the creatures made by God. Taking the word etymologically, we have: S-O-L (Super omnia lucens), "Shining above all things." In the same way, Christ is more beautiful than all the saints, and shines above them all in the brightness of glory, not only inasmuch as He is God, but also as man. And as all the stars receive their light from the sun, who depends on nothing for its own brightness, so all the saints receive from Christ the brightness of glory, strength, sanctity, wisdom, understanding and influence. This is the reason why Christ is called the Sun, and under the same name of "Sun" God the Father sent Him into the world, saying: "But unto you who fear my name the Sun of justice shall arise" (Mal 4:2). This is not said of the natural sun. For the Church says in praise of the Virgin Mary: "For thou art happy, holy Virgin Mary, and most worthy of all praise, for out of thee has arisen the Sun of Justice, Christ, Our Lord."
 
   The first clause tells us that there will be signs in the sun in the time of Antichrist; that is, there will be signs in Christ, and the precise sign is given by Saint Matthew saying: "The sun will not give its light." Such darkening does not happen with regard to the sun itself, for it is not in the nature of the sun to be darkened in itself. But by the interposition of clouds and vapor between the sun, and the earth the sun appears to be obscured. In the same way, in the time of Antichrist, the Sun of justice will be obscured by the interposition of temporal goods and the wealth which Antichrist will bestow on the world, inasmuch as the brightness of faith in Jesus Christ and the glow of good lives will no longer shine among Christians. For, lest they should lose their dominion, temporal rulers, kings and princes will range themselves on the side of Antichrist. In like manner, prelates for fear of losing their dignities, and religious and priests to gain honors and riches, will forsake the Faith of Christ and adhere to Antichrist. Now he will be a veritable man, but so proud that, not only will he desire to have universal dominion in the whole world, but will even demand to be called a god, and will insist on receiving divine worship. This we may gather from the second Epistle of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians (2:3): "For unless there come a revolt first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and is lifted up above all that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, spewing himself as if he were a god."
 
   This will come about because Antichrist by the ministry of demons will possess all the gold and silver of the earth and seas, and pearls and all the precious stones that are in the world. As we read in Daniel (11:43) : "And he shall have power over the treasures of gold and silver and all the precious stones of Egypt." With this wealth he will gather together in arms all the nations of the world, to fight against those who oppose him. As we read in the Apocalypse (20:7) : "He shall go forth and seduce the nations which are over the four quarters of the earth, Gog, and Magog; and shall gather there together to battle the number of whom is as the sand of the sea."
 
   Observe that he will seduce the peoples, that is, with gold and silver and honors; Gog which signifies "hidden," and Magog which signifies "that which is disclosed," because both hidden and open evil are on his side. Then temporal lords and ecclesiastical prelates, for fear of losing power or position, will be on his side, since there will exist neither king nor prelate unless he wills it. For the same reason, religious, priests and laity will also uphold him. "There will indeed be signs in the Sun of justice, for then it will be obscured in the hearts of Christians, since from those hearts it will not give forth the light of Faith; all preaching of a better life will cease, owing to the interposition of the vapor and clouds of temporal goods. As we are told in Daniel (11.39) : "He will multiply glory and will give them power in many things and divide up the earth at his pleasure."
 
   I am asked why God permits this error among Christians, since He is God and the strongest cannot stand against Him? I answer by a dictum of theology taken from the Book of Wisdom (11:17) : "By what things a man sinneth, by the same also is he tormented." How do the peoples of the world sin against God today? They sin in order to gain honors, dignities and riches. Therefore, by honors, riches and dignities, God permits that Antichrist shall deceive them. If therefore you do not wish to be deceived, now with all your hearts contemn and despise all earthly goods, and long for those of heaven, considering that the goods of this world are transitory and empty, while heavenly and celestial goods are eternal. In this way you will be strong. Saint John gives this counsel: "Love not the world nor the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world the charity of the Father is not in him. And the world passeth and the concupiscence thereof" (1 Jn 2:15-17).
 
   The second clause says that there will be signs in the moon. You must understand that in the Holy Scriptures the moon signifies our holy Mother the Universal Church, which implies the world-wide union of Christians; for when men speak of the Church, they do not speak of the material building, or the stone and the walls which compose it, but of that gathering of the faithful under one Head, which is the Church in reality. The Church is signified by the moon and its five phases: first there is the new moon, then the waxing moon, next the full moon, to be followed by the waning moon, and lastly the old moon.
 
   The Church passes through these phases. The new moon signifies the Church of Christ in His own time; and as the new moon when first seen is like a bow-shaped thread with two horns following the sun, so the Church in the time of Christ had at first only two horns: Andrew and Peter who followed Christ. The waxing moon typifies the twelve Apostles, then the seventy-two disciples, then the three thousand converted by Peter on the day of Pentecost and so on. The full moon typifies the acceptance of the Gospel of Christ in every part of the world, in every kingdom and province. David says (Ps: 18.5) : "In the whole world their sound is gone forth, and their words to the ends of the earth."
 
   The waning moon typifies the inability of men to preserve what the Apostles had acquired. In the first place, the Church was lessened by the loss of the whole of India, by means of him they called John the Presbyter; the second, Assyria by means of one of their tyrants; the third, Africa by means of Mahomet; the fourth, the Greeks under their Emperor Constantine; the fifth, the Armenians with their king; the sixth, the Georgians with a certain pseudo-prophet; the seventh, the bad example of the Christians led by a certain heresiarch [Probably the Waldenses whom Vincent evangelized in the Alpine countries. We do not know the name of the individual heresiarch]; the eighth, the Italians with Bartholomew of Bari; the ninth, the French with Peter of Candia.
 
   The old moon, because the horns are reversed, typifies that the Church is no longer in the state in which Christ founded it. Christ founded the Church in great lowliness and poverty; now all this is turned round to pride, pomp and vanity, as may be easily seen in every rank of the Church. Mercy and liberality are changed into simony, usury and rapine; chastity becomes licentiousness, uncleanness and corruption; the brightness of virtue is changed into envy and malignity; temperance has become gluttony and voracity; patience has given place to anger, war and divisions among the peoples; diligence is superseded by negligence. Nothing is now left to make matters worse but an eclipse which is caused by the interposition of the earth between the sun and moon such as only occurs at full moon. As Isaiah says in 59:2: "Your sins have put a division between us." In the time of Antichrist, the Church, typified by the moon, will be eclipsed; because then she will not give her light, since Christians will no longer work miracles by reason of their sanctity; but Antichrist and his followers will work miracles, not true miracles, but false ones having the appearance of true miracles, in order that they may deceive the people. As Saint John says in the Apocalypse (13:13) : "And he did great signs, so that he made also fire to come down from heaven unto the earth in the sight of men," that is, balls of fire, such as it is within the power of the devil to send down, if God should permit this and does not prevent him; as we read in Job (1:16) : "And while he was yet speaking  another came and said: A fire of God fell from heaven and striking the sheep and the servants hath consumed them." O! The wonder of the people, this will be the downfall of many.
 
   You must know that Antichrist will perform other prodigies by the power of demons, and these will be true miracles according to the nature of things in themselves, but false in regard to the definition of miracle (i.e. by the power of God). For he will cause both images and babes of a month old to speak. The followers of Antichrist will question these statues or babies, and they will make answer concerning this lord who has come in the latter times, affirming that he is the savior. The devil will move their lips and form the words they utter when they declare Antichrist to be the true savior of the world; and in this way he will cause the destruction of many souls.
 
   And the Church, typified by the moon, will perform no miracles.
 
   Some say that such phenomena are not real miracles in the sense that raising the dead to life is a real miracle. I can give concrete examples of the dead being apparently raised to life, but such are only phantoms. For instance, in the same way as Christians raise dead people in the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, so your dead father or mother may appear to speak to you; but in these latter times Christians will not be able to work similar miracles. Christ has warned us of these false miracles and signs, saying: "There will arise false christs and false prophets." That is to say, the sons of Christians who have already made shipwreck of their faith owing to the gifts of Antichrist. As Saint Matthew says (24:24) : "And they will show great signs and wonders in so much to deceive, if possible, even the elect. Behold I have told you beforehand."
 
   Suppose someone should ask: Why does Christ permit these works of destruction of Christianity by the devil? I answer according to the rule of Theology: "By what things a man sinneth, by the same also is he tormented." Since the people of the world sin against God by having recourse to the works of the devil, such as divination and fortune telling in their necessities—for instance, in order to find things they have lost, or to obtain health or children, instead of laying their needs before the omnipotent God—therefore God permits them to be deceived by the works of the demons.
 
   If you do not wish to be deceived, then place the whole of your faith and confidence in the name of Jesus Christ., and refuse to acknowledge any miracle unless it is worked in that same name; and so you will be strong against seduction. David says (Ps 39:5) : "Blessed is the man whose hope is in the name of the Lord; and who hath not regard to vanities and lying follies." The name of the Lord is Jesus. "And thou shalt call His name Jesus," (Lk 2:21). If you should receive any wound or hurt you should sign it devoutly with the Sign of the Cross.
 
   Antichrist arrogates to himself every other name of Christ, but as many of the saints tell us, he flies from the name of Jesus. Therefore, for that reason, the name of Jesus should receive the greatest respect from all Christians. Moreover, all the names of God, according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, should be honored in a sevenfold manner. Because the name of God is great it is to be feared; because it is holy it should be venerated; because it is sweet it should be savored in meditation; it is strong to save; rich in mercy; efficacious in impetration; and hidden in order to be discovered and known. He says also that the name of the Son of God is also the name of the father in a threefold way: for by it he is honored, invoked and manifested. He also says that in all the names given is also signified the name of Jesus, which is the sign of salvation, and therefore exceedingly to be honored.
 
   The third clause says that there will be signs in the stars. In the Sacred Scriptures "star" signifies "light-giving"; and so it is the appellation of Masters, Doctors, and Licentiates in Theology. This signification is found in Daniel (12:3) : "And they that are learned shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that instruct many to justice, as stars for all eternity." In these stars, that is learned men, there will be signs in the time of Antichrist; because, as Christ says in the Gospel of Saint Matthew (24:29) : "Stars shall fall from heaven"; and this is the third combat waged by Antichrist, that of disputation. Then stars, that is the learned, shall fall from heaven, that is, from the truth of the Catholic Faith. The disputations of Antichrist with the learned will be based entirely on the text of the Old Testament, and these doctors, so far from being able to answer him, will not even be able to speak. Then the stars, the masters, will fall from heaven, that is from the heights of the Faith. For, according to Daniel (11.36) : "And the king, Antichrist, will do all according to his will and will lift up and magnify all against God, and against the God of Gods he will speak great things;" that is, the matter of his blasphemies will be insoluble so far as men are concerned.
 
   You may ask again why Christ allows this, that those who defend the Faith should fail so utterly? I answer that Christ allows this for two reasons: first, according to the rule of theology: "By what things a man sinneth, by the same is he tormented;" and this follows from the fact that masters and teachers no longer care for study of the Bible, but prefer the study of the poets and other profane works.
 
   The second reason why Christ permits this, is because of the scandalous and wicked lives and the many sins of learned. men; for in the case of many of them, the greater their knowledge the greater also is their sin and the worse their consciences; for they are proud, puffed-up, wine-bibbers and the rest. He who can bind a lioness can easily bind a sheep; if therefore the devil can hold in chains the minds of the learned by reason of their evil lives, how much easier is it for him to bind the sheep that is their tongues—so that they cannot speak.. The ignorant are in much better case, for knowledge puffeth up, if therefore you wish to be strong, embrace the counsel of the Apostle Paul (1 Cor 2:5) : "That your faith might not stand on the wisdom of men but on the power of God." Reasoning and disputation are good for strengthening the intellect, but not for fortifying belief, since faith must be held from the motive of obedience, because Christ Himself has commanded us, announcing the gospel which the Apostles preached and Holy Mother Church has ordained. Therefore, O Lord, I believe.
 
   The fourth clause tells us: "And on earth distress of nations by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea and of the waves." Behold these are the tortures which Antichrist will inflict, and on the earth distress of nations by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea and of the waves. That is the preparations for battle, the sanding of the arena before the combat, which will be the work of the lords who are already on the side of Antichrist; because then no one will dare to name Christ nor the Virgin Mary under pain of death; and the waves are those of torments which have never in the past been so dreadful as those which will be inflicted by Antichrist. In Saint Matthew, Christ warns us (24:21): "For there shall then be great tribulation such as hath not been from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall be. And unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened." We read in the Apocalypse (17:10): "And when he shall come he must remain a short time," The Doctors in general say that Antichrist will reign for three and a half years only; which is the measure of a thousand and two hundred days and ninety days; "and from the time when the continual sacrifice shall be taken away and the abomination unto desolation shall be set up, there shall be one thousand two hundred and ninety days" (Daniel: 12:11).
 
  If I am asked why Christ permits the Christians to be so terribly persecuted, I answer : "By what things a man sinneth, by the same also is he tormented." Because now, at the present time, people are offending God by wars, divisions and false flattery, by feuds and duels, so Christ permits them to be torn in pieces and slain by Antichrist. If therefore, you do not wish to be slain and destroyed, be at peace and concord now with everyone, according to the counsel of the Apostle: "Have peace with all men; revenge not yourselves, my dearly beloved; but give place to wrath, for it is written : "Revenge is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord" " (Rom 12:18).
 
   The second evil or retribution will be the conflagration of the earthly world which is mentioned in the second part of the gospel of this Sunday: "Men withering away for fear and expectation of what is to come on the whole world; for the powers of heaven will be moved."
 
   After Antichrist has been slain by lightning on Mount Olivet and his death has been made widely known through out the world, this our earth will exist for forty-five more days; I do not say years, but days. This is clearly to be seen in Daniel (12:11) : "And from the time when the continual sacrifice shall be taken away and the abomination of desolation shall be set up, there shall be one thousand, two hundred and ninety days. Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh unto the one thousand, three hundred and thirty-five days."
 
   The Doctors say that these forty-five days will be given by God for the conversion of those who have been seduced by Antichrist, but Antichrist will have left behind him so great riches and pleasure that hardly any of the nations will be converted to the Faith of Christ. For there is no savior but Christ, and yet they will not be converted.
 
   Then in the four parts of the earth, east, and west, and north, and south, fire will blaze forth by thee divine power, and as it presses forward, the whole world in succession will be set on fire until nothing of the other three elements will remain. Then, when men are made aware of the tumult and the fire and see the lightnings bursting forth from it, they will wither away for fear of the fire, and expectation of eternal damnation. The Apostle Paul, in the epistle to the Hebrews (10:27) says of this: "But a, certain dreadful expectation of the judgment and the rage of a fire shall consume the adversaries."
 
   "For the powers of heaven shall be moved." This is said to imply that the fire has no natural cause, as some people erroneously imagine, for they say that for forty years before the consummation of the world it will not rain. This fire, however, comes from the rigor of divine justice and acts through the ministry of angels, as it is shown in the saying: "For the powers of heaven shall be moved." This fire comes down, likewise, for the purification of the other three elements—earth, air and water—which have been infected and corrupted by the sins of men. Concerning this, David says (Ps 96:3): "A fire shall go before him and shall burn his enemies round about.  His lightnings have shone forth to the world; the earth saw and trembled. The mountains melted like wax at the presence of the Lord; at the presence of the Lord of all the earth."
 
   You understand how sinners are the enemies of Christ; but why do they say, "and shall burn his enemies round about," when the good as well as the bad will be destroyed by the fire? The good and the friends of God will die in the fire it is true, but they will die without pain or suffering; but the wicked and God's enemies will die in the greatest pain and torment. Therefore, the enemies of God are named.
 
   Saint Thomas Aquinas speaks beautifully of this when he says that this last fire, inasmuch as it precedes the Judgment, will act as an instrument of God's justice. It will also act like natural fire, inasmuch as, in its natural power, it will burn both wicked and good and reduce every human body to ashes. Inasmuch as it acts as an instrument of God's justice, it will act in different ways with regard to different people. For the wicked will suffer intensely through the action of the fire, but the good in whom nothing is found which must be purged away will feel no pain from the fire, just as the three children felt nothing in the fiery furnace, although the bodies of these others will not be preserved as were those of the three children. And this will come to pass by the divine power, that without pain or suffering their bodies will be resolved into ashes.
 
   But the good in whom there is some stain to be purged away will feel the pain of this fire, more or less according to the merits of each. But they will be swiftly purged for three reasons. The first reason is that in them little evil is found, for they have been already in great measure purged by the preceding tribulations and persecutions. The second is that the living will voluntarily endure the pain; and suffering willingly endured in this life remits much more quickly than suffering inflicted after death. This is seen in the case of the martyrs, for if, when they came to die, anything worthy of purgation was found, it was cut away by the pruning knife of their sufferings. And the sufferings of the martyrs were short in comparison with the pains of purgatory. The third reason is that the heat of the fire gains in intensity what it loses through the shortness of the time. But in so far as the fire is active after the judgment its power only extends over the damned, since all the bodies of the just will be impassible.
 
"This is a serious thought for those who will not do penance. In that last day, how greatly the temporal lords and prelates of the Church will desire to do penance when they see the fire. But then such repentance will avail them nothing, because they are acting not from charity, but from servile fear. Therefore, do penance now, forgive injuries, make restitution of any ill-gotten goods, live up to and confess your religion; and let priests obtain breviaries. If it were certain that in a short time this town was going to be destroyed by fire, would you not exchange all your immovable goods for something that you could take away with you? So it is with the world, which in a short while is to be destroyed by fire. Therefore place your hearts in heaven, and your lips by speaking with reverence of God, and your works by doing good. This is Christ's counsel, saying: "Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth where the rust and moth devour and thieves break in and steal." Notice the word "rust," which is Antichrist, and "moth," which is fire, for these will devour all.
 
   The third evil will be the tribulation of the universal Judgment which is mentioned in the third part of this gospel. "Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and majesty." After the destruction of the world by fire, Christ the Lord Judge, with the Virgin Mary and all the saints, will come to the judgment seated on a throne in the air. And the Archangel Michael will cry with a. loud voice, saying: "Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment."
 
   Then suddenly, by the divine power, all the dead, both good and wicked, will arise, children will rise with grown people and all will be gathered to the judgment. Even those who died in their mother's womb will be there, as Saint Thomas teaches, to accuse those through whose fault they died without Baptism. And the age at which all will rise will be thirty years.
 
   Christ Himself says concerning the General Judgment: "When the Son of Man shall come in His majesty, and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the seat of His Majesty. And all the nations shall be gathered together before Him; and He shall separate them one from another as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He shall set the sheep on His right hand and the goats on His left" (Mt 25:31-33). And the creed of Saint Athanasius: "At Whose coming all men must rise with their own bodies; and it will be rendered to every man according to his own deeds; those who have performed good works will go into eternal life, and those who have done evil into eternal fire."
 
   The sheep are the good and the goats are the wicked. Christ will say to the sheep on His right hand: "Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess ye the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." To the goats on His left He will say: "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels."
 
   The wicked will go into eternal punishment, the just into eternal life. But for the rest, no one will dwell in this world, because those things which are transitory and finite have passed away in their finite condition; movement has passed away.
 
   Therefore, the Church in the person of every Christian makes petition in the Office for the Dead: "Deliver me, O Lord, from everlasting death, in that tremendous day when the heavens and the earth are moved, when Thou shalt come to judge the world by fire."

A150   In Vigilia nativitatis Christi.  Sermo unicus 


St. Vincent Ferrer: Sermon for Christmas Eve (Mt 1:18)

 
Mt: 1:18  Now the generation of Christ was in this wise. When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child, of the Holy Ghost.
 
   "She was found with child, of the Holy Ghost," (Mt 1:18)
 
   Our whole sermon is about the impregnation of the Virgin Mary. But that you may perceive this material in your souls with the sweetness of devotion first we shall salute the pregnant Virgin, etc. [Here all recite the "Hail Mary."]
 
   "She was found," etc.  I find a great difference in sacred scripture between the conception of Christ and his birth, especially in this because the birth of Christ was not entirely hidden and secret, rather he wished that it would be announced to the world and published through the angels and through the heavens, through the star in the east, through the animals, through Eastern  kings, just as it had already been prophesied.  "I will move the heaven and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land. And I will move all nations: and the desired of all nations shall come," (Hag 2:7-8).  Note, "the heaven," that is, the holy angels. 
 
   But about his conception he wished that it would be hidden.  To no one in this world was it revealed, not to the patriarchs, not to the prophets, nor to holy persons, but only to the archangel Gabriel and to the Virgin Mary, as it had been prophesied by Isaiah, "From the ends of the earth we have heard praises, the glory of the just one. And I said: My secret to myself," (Isa 24:16).  And the prophet speaks in the person of Gabriel and the Virgin Mary.  Note, "from the ends of the earth."  The ends of the earth are taken in two ways, either locally or temporally. 
 
   With respect to the first by calculating from the center of the earth, that which is most distant from the center is the circumference.  The earth is the center, the circumference is the empyreal heaven.  Behold the ends locally from which Gabriel and the Virgin Mary heard the praises of the just one, because it is a rule in holy  theology that when he is called just, it is understood absolutely, always of the savior. 
 
   As for the second, the ends can be taken temporally.  There are seven temporal ages of the world. The first was from Adam to Noah. The second from Noah to Abraham.  Third from Abraham to Moses. The fourth from Moses to David. The fifth from David to the Babylonian captivity.  Sixth from the Babylonian exile to Christ.  The seventh and last, from Christ to the end of the world.  About which the Apostle [Paul] says: "[We are] upon whom the ends of the world are come," (1Cor 10:11).  Behold the temporal limits, about which Gabriel and the Virgin Mary speak.  "From the ends of the earth, "that is in the ultimate age of the world "we have heard praises, the glory of the just one," that is, the savior. "Tell us Angel Gabriel about these praises and the glory of the savior. Say something to us."  He responds, "My secret to me," supply "I shall keep." See how the conception of Christ was hidden and secret.  About which David said: "He shall come down like rain upon the fleece; and as showers falling gently upon the earth," (Ps 71:6).  The difference then is clear between the birth of Christ and his conception. 
 
   Nevertheless although his conception was so secret at the beginning, nevertheless it gradually became manifest, because a pregnant woman at least in giving birth reveals her pregnancy.  So it was of the Virgin whose belly and uterus had swelled, and she could no longer hide her pregnancy.  On this account the proposed theme speaks, "She was found with child."  The theme is clear. 
 
   And since I am concerned with the pregnant Virgin in this sermon, I find that the Virgin was found pregnant by her fiancé Joseph in three ways:
            First through sense experience, [per experientiam sensualem]
            Second through divine wisdom, [per sapientiam divinalem]
            Third through a special excellence. [per excellentiam specialem]
   For each of these the theme speaks, "She was found with child," (Mt 1:18) etc.
 
SENSE EXPERIENCE
 
   I say first, that the Virgin Mary was found pregnant by her espoused Joseph through sense experience.  All knowledge is had through some sense perception.  Through sight we recognize colors; through hearing, sound; through the sense of smell, odors; through taste, flavors; through touch, hard or soft, hot or cold.  If you say to someone "How do you know this?" He replies: "Because I have seen or heard it," etc. It is clear therefore that all our cognition is through the senses. The Philosopher [Aristotle], "Sense is not deceived about the proper object, especially sight unless there is a defect."  On account of this honorable judges make a great difference between eyewitnesses and hearsay [de auditu], or belief [credentia].  An eyewitness is greater.  And so Christ rebuked the Jews who refused to believe, saying, "We speak what we know, and we testify what we have seen, and you receive not our testimony," (Jn 3:11).  Note "what we know" namely, I and the holy prophets, "we speak," in this way, from sight.  The Virgin Mary was found by her espoused Joseph to be with child.  Imagine  how after Mary had conceived, filled with joy she went to visit Elizabeth her cousin [literally, her related sister], who was pregnant with John the Baptist, as the angel had told her.  She stayed with her for three months, as Luke says, (cf. Lk 1:56). 
 
   Her fiancé Joseph came to Nazareth to visit her, and saw her womb swollen, so he found her pregnant. Think how Joseph should have wondered, because he had not touched her.  Moreover, as the holy doctors say, after they had become engaged, the Virgin Mary persuaded her fiancé, who was also a virgin, that they would take a vow of virginity together.  So much the more did  he wonder when she seemed pregnant. Therefore the beginning of today's gospel says, "When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together," that is, to live together and  have relations, "she was found to be with child, of the Holy Ghost. Whereupon Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing publicly to expose her, was minded to put her away privately," (Mt 1:18-19).
 
   Think also when she was found pregnant by her parents, who did not believe that she had sinned, but they wondered what this was.  On the one hand they were thinking of her great devotion; on the other hand they saw her pregnancy.  Her mother said to her, "Daughter, what is this?" The Virgin Mary replied to her mother, this is that which pleases God, who can do to his creatures whatever he pleases.  "O daughter, what will people say, that my daughter got pregnant before she was married." 
 
   Think of the distress of the Virgin, who dared not reveal because "my secret to me."  Think of the entanglement in which Joseph found himself, who was old and poor, and the Virgin Mary,  young and stunningly beautiful.  Bernard says that Joseph, on one hand was considering the holiness of the Virgin, and that it could not be that she had sinned, and on the other hand he beheld her pregnant.  And since by nature a woman cannot conceive without a man, therefore like an olive, his heart was between two millstones.
 
SIGNS OF A BAD WOMAN
 
   And because he was prudent and wise he considered all the signs of a bad woman, which are:  1) an irreligious heart, 2) garrulousness in speech, 3) personal untidiness, 4) voraciousness in eating and drinking, 5) laziness toward work, 5) vanity of dress, and  6) contempt for her husband.  Each of these signs indicate a woman is bad.  But Joseph found none of these signs in the Virgin Mary. Rather, the total opposite; all the signs of a good woman. 
 
1)   The first sign of a dishonorable [inhonesta] woman is an irreligious heart toward God, disregarding masses and sermons, because she does not fear God.  May God keep her from being inconsiderate, because unless a woman retains a fear of God, no other fear will hold her back from evil.  Fear of God and devotion restrained Susanna lest she sin, when she said, "I am straitened on every side: for if I do this thing, it is death to me: and if I do it not, I shall not escape your hands. But it is better for me to fall into your hands without doing it, than to sin in the sight of the Lord," (Dan 13:22-23). 
 
   Joseph however was thinking about his fiancée whether she was devout, or irreligious, and he saw that he had never seen such a holy and devout woman, because she always wanted to pray, or read, or contemplate.  And on this foundation of devotion a woman should ground herself, otherwise she will fall.  "For other foundation no man can lay, but that which is laid," (1Cor 3:10).  But Joseph did not find these things in the Blessed Virgin Mary, since she was most devoted and ardent toward God.  So scripture says of her in Proverbs, "The woman that fears [God], she shall be praised," (Prov 31:30).
 
2)  The second sign is garrulous talkativeness. [garrulatio oris loquax]. God keep her from the opportunity.  Reason, because no devotion remains in the soul from words, just as no scent remains in the nutmeg jar which is left open.  Authority: "Where there are many words, there is oftentimes want," namely of goodness (Prov 14:23).  And so you should raise your little daughters lest they become talkative.  And so, 1 Tim: "Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection," (1Tim 2:11), otherwise it is a bad sign.  But a quiet woman is good.
 
null   Note the signs of taciturnity of the Blessed Virgin, because she is painted with her eyes larger than her mouth, and so she is properly represented to indicate that she had a great eye of the heart for thinking and contemplating, but a mouth small for speaking little.  Mary "kept all these words in her heart," (Lk 2:51).  Joseph considered for himself if his fiancée was loquacious, or garrulous, and he saw that she was not.   Moreover she preferred not to speak.  A sign of this, as I said, that the Virgin had large eyes and a small mouth, is clear in the portrait which St. Luke painted,  which is in Rome.
 
3)  The third sign is bodily untidiness.  When a woman goes about, lascivious, dissolute and vulgar, it seems that she has ants on her feet [formicas in pedibus!].  Ambrose:  A man's body is an image of his soul. So Solomon says, "A woman [meets him] in harlot's attire prepared to deceive souls; talkative and wandering, not bearing to be quiet, not able to abide still at home, now abroad, now in the streets, now lying in wait near the corners," (Prov 7:10-12).  And she immediately put herself at the windows etc. 
 
   But Joseph did not find this sign in the Blessed Virgin, because she never left home, unless when she went to the temple. And thus she went about totally composed.  She always had her eyes toward the ground in a gesture of holiness.  She never went dancing, but went about with downcast eyes.  So scripture says about her, "How beautiful are you, my love, how beautiful are you! your eyes are doves' eyes, besides what is hid within," (Song 4:1). The Holy Spirit says "how beautiful are you" to the Virgin twice, because she is beautiful in body and beautiful in soul.  Note, "Your eyes are doves' eyes," he does not say, "falcons' eyes."
 
4)  The fourth sign is stuffing the belly with food and drink.  It is a bad sign in a man and in a woman, because of those  nearby parts, and stimulate each other.  Hence a full belly immediately stimulates its neighbor, and because of this a gluttonous person necessarily is lustful.  Holy Scripture says of the gluttons, "They shall eat ... and shall lift up their souls to their iniquity,"
(Hos 4:8). 
 
   But the Virgin Mary ate very little, only enough to sustain the body.   She was almost always fasting.
 
 5)  The fifth sign is laziness, as when some woman says, "I will not work.  I have brought so much from my dowry to my husband."  Therefore St. Bernard [De consideratione, II, 13,22] writes, "Idleness is the mother of trifles, the stepmother of virtues," so because our body is of the  earth, it has the conditions of the earth, which if left uncultivated, brings forth thorns of lust, and weeds of bad thoughts and sins.  Also, about the body of the lazy, on this account Sacred Scripture says of the body, "Send him," -- the servant, that is, the body which is like a servant who is to be directed – "to work, that he be not idle: For idleness has taught much evil," (Sir 33:28-29). 
 
   But the Virgin was never lazy, rather she was always busy about holy works.  Jerome says that she would arise in the middle of the night and pray.  Then she spun and wove.
 
6)  Sixth is vanity and excess in dress [ornatus].  Women may dress themselves decently and honestly according to their status and condition, but when they pour all their time and zeal in dressing themselves, or their body and they don't care about their soul, God help them, because such women are vain and have a vain heart.  So Scripture says, "Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity," (Eccl 1:2).  Note the rule of the Apostle [Paul], "Women also in decent apparel: adorning themselves with modesty and sobriety, not with plaited hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly attire, but as it becomes women professing godliness, with good works," (1Tim 2:9-10).  Note "sobriety" in measure, according to the condition of their status and the ability of their husband.  But there are many women with no regard, and they should be ashamed at what they wear, like the outfit or jewelry which a prostitute wears.   And so scripture says, "Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain: the woman that fears the Lord, she shall be praised," (Prov 31:30). 
 
   But the Blessed Virgin did not care about jewelry.  She washed her face well with the pure water of tears. St. Anne, her mother was adorning her with much jewelry [dives].   Out of love for her mother she wore it in the house, but not outside the house.  But the daughters of today do just the opposite.
 
7)  The seventh sign is contempt of the husband.  It is a sign that she has her heart for another, when she argues with her husband about fashion [de genere ?] and about other things, she immediately wants him to get it for her.  According to scriptures, a woman ought to honor her husband, and so the Apostle commands, saying, "Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to use authority over the man: but to be in silence," (1Tim 2:11).  We also read in Esther 2, that Assuerus and his people were saying, "Let all wives, as well of the greater as of the lesser, give honor to their husbands...and that the husbands should be rulers and masters in their houses," (Est 2:20,22). 
 
    Neither is this sign of contempt found in the glorious Virgin, because although she was young, beautiful, noble and rich, and her spouse old, and poor, nevertheless she honored him more than any woman in the world.  All in all, Joseph found no sign of a bad woman in the Virgin Mary, but all the virtues and traits [afflictiones?, perhaps affectiones] of a good woman.
 
  On the other hand he considered whether nature would permit a woman to conceive without a man, and he saw that it seemed not.  See how perplexed he was; it was like his heart was pressed between two millstones.  On the one hand he was afraid to make her condition public, because she would have immediately been stoned to death, according to the law.  On the other hand, since he was a just man, lest he seem to consent, he thought about going away quietly and leaving her.  And so the prophecy of David was fulfilled saying, in the person of Joseph, "Fear and trembling are come upon me: and darkness has covered me.  And I said: Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest?... and I abode in the wilderness," (Ps 54:6-7,8).  As for his proposal: note "fear" of consenting in sin if he stayed with her, and "trembling" lest he defame an innocent one.  So he proposed to put her away.  It is clear, therefore, how the Virgin Mary, "was found with child," (Mt 1:18).
 
Morally.  You should take care, like Joseph, that there be no impediments when you wish to contract marriage, like parental [permission], or affinity, or something else.  And so it is an ordination of the church that it be declared.  And so scripture says, "Marriage honorable in all, and the bed undefiled," (Heb  13:4). It is honorable when there is no impediment.
 
DIVINE WISDOM
 
   Second, I say that the Virgin Mary was found to be with child, through divine wisdom.  This is based on a rule of theology, says St. Thomas in I Pars that the mysteries of God, that is the secrets, depending on his will alone cannot be known unless through his revelation.  None of you can know my heart unless I should reveal and manifest it.  How much more so with God. 
 
   But that which happens naturally can be known.  In this way doctors know the hour of death of a sick person, because although the effect is in the future, nevertheless the cause is already present.  Not so with the will of God.  And so scripture says, "For who among men is he who can know the counsel of God? or who can think what the will of God is?," (Wis 9:13).  It is added, "And who shall know your thought, unless you give wisdom, and send thy Holy Spirit from above," (Wis 9:17).  Now Joseph, when he saw that his fiancée was pregnant, could not naturally know the truth, because the conception of Christ had no natural cause.   For it did not come through the celestial constellations, nor through angelic processes, nor elemental, or human, therefore it could not have been known unless through divine revelation.  Think, therefore how Joseph, who was a holy man, just and good, turned to God in prayer about this, asking the good pleasure of God to reveal [the answer], according to that of James, "But if any of you want wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men abundantly, ... and it shall be given him," (Jas 1:5).  So Joseph did, when he wanted at night to retire, he first kneeled down in prayer, saying, "Lord, you have given me a great grace, giving me this damsel as my fiancée, but Lord, I see that she is pregnant. How is it that a woman so holy is pregnant?" and similar words.  And he wept much. 
 
   I believe also that the Blessed Virgin, on the other hand was praying to God, lovingly compassionate over her predicament, and that her saddened fiancé might be consoled.  I believe that even the mother of the Virgin was praying that they not be disgraced, etc.  Think how God listened to these devout prayers.  The Gospel says, "But while he thought on these things, behold the angel of the Lord appeared to him in his sleep, saying: Joseph, son of David, fear not to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her, is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son: and you shall call his name JESUS. For he shall save his people from their sins.  Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which the Lord spoke by the prophet, saying:  Behold a virgin shall be with child, and bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us," (Mt 1:20-23).  Think, how the angel spoke to him the prophecy of Isaiah, "Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son," (Isa 7:14), not the Father nor the Holy Spirit.  Think what kind of joy Joseph had, when he knew the truth. 
 
   From this a question emerges: Why did the Virgin not reveal it to him, when she saw his sadness, and perplexity, because he believed her – although nowadays a fiancé does not believe his fiancée.  I respond that a secret entrusted should not be revealed, where the one by whom the secret is entrusted, is good, just and holy.  Otherwise it can be revealed.  "For it is good to hide the secret of a king," (Tob 12:7).  Therefore the Virgin Mary, who had a most delicate conscience, chose not to reveal it, lest she offend the king, especially God.
 
   Note [this is] against many vain persons who, if God gives them some grace or revelation, cannot keep silence.  They immediately reveal it, and wrongly, unless about this they expressly know the will of God, especially because sometimes they believe the illusions of the devil to be divine revelations.  They are like hens who can not keep quiet until they lay an egg. About such scripture says, "He who discloses the secret of a friend loses his credit, and shall never find an  intimate friend," (Sir 27:17).  See the reason why the Virgin Mary did not reveal the secret committed to her to Joseph or to her mother, but the Holy Spirit revealed it to Elizabeth.
 
SPECIAL EXCELLENCE
 
   Third, I say that the Virgin Mary was found to be with child through a special excellence.  Generally, when women are pregnant, they are thin, pale, tired and hungry for all kinds of things.  But it was not so with the Blessed Virgin.   Some holy theologians say that from the fact that the Virgin was pregnant, rays of splendor shone forth from her face, especially when she was close  to childbirth.  This can be proved in three ways, through philosophy, through theology and through experience.
 
   As for the first, the Philosopher Aristotle says that every natural agent to the extent that it gives of the substantial form, to that extent it also gives the accidents following the form.   What gives fire, gives also heat and light.   So God the Father, of his substantial form, gave his Son to the Virgin Mary.  That the Son of God is called "form," the authority of scriptures: "Who being in the form of God,...emptied himself, taking the form of a servant," (Phil 2:6-7).  It is no wonder then that it conveys a radiance in the face etc.  And so when pregnant, the Virgin was more beautiful and more glowing.
 
   Second, it is proved theologically.  We read in Exodus 34, that because Moses had spoken with God on the mountain, rays of splendor shone forth from his face, so much so that the people could not even gaze on him.  Behold the reason.  If the face was so splendorous from just a  conversation with God, how much more therefore the face of the Virgin Mary from the conception of his Son.  The Apostle Paul makes this point saying, "Now if the ministration of death, engraved with letters upon stones, was glorious; so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses, for the glory of his countenance, which is made void:  How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather in glory?" (2Cor 3:7-8).  The "ministration of death" was the law of Moses which did not confer a life of glory. 
 
   Third, it is proved by experience, of a crystal lamp, which is beautiful in itself and bright, but if the lamp within is lighted it shall be more beautiful and even brighter.  The same with the Virgin Mary. Think how her body, beautiful and pure like a lamp, and the light inside illuminating the whole world is the Son of God.  No wonder therefore if the Virgin was then brighter and more beautiful, inasmuch as the text says that Joseph "knew her not," (Mt 1:25).  From these rays of splendor, because eternal light was in her. 
 
   Note here how Joseph, having received the divine revelation, humbly sought pardon from the Virgin for his suspicion which he had had of her, saying, "O Blessed, why did you not tell me, because I believed you.  And that she comforted him sweetly congratulating him that he would be the groom and companion of the mother of the Son of God, and his parent.  O blessed family [societas].  How reverently, then, did they both adore God incarnate in the womb of the Virgin. 
 
   And so if you wish to have this association for yourself, you should do like the merchant Valentine did, who every year on Christmas, invited [to his home] one poor old man and one woman having a little child.  They represented for him the Virgin with her son, and Joseph.  It  was revealed about him that at his death the Virgin with her son and Joseph appeared to him, saying, "Because you have received us in your house, so we receive you into our house."  About  this Christ says, in Matthew 25, "Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me," (v. 40).  And so the money which you pay out in gambling, you should for the love of Christ give to the poor.  The poor however, who do not have, nor can give money to themselves, can at least present tomorrow [Christmas day] as many "Hail Marys" as days she bore him in the womb, or how many weeks, or months. Forty weeks, nine months, 277 days.

A158   In Nativitate Christi.  Sermo unicus 


St. Vincent Ferrer: Christmas Sermon (Lk 2:11)

 
"This day, is born to you a Savior," (Lk 2:11).  Our sermon will be about the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Virgin Birth. But that you might sense the spiritual sweetness of this feast, we shall salute the glorious Mother of God. [Vincent now leads his listeners in the "Hail Mary."]
 
"There is born to us etc."  From the beginning of the world up to the birth of Christ there has never been heard such good news, nor so useful for mankind like the news of the proposed theme, "This day, is born to you a Savior," (Lk 2:11) etc.  To all who were lost and damned and sentenced to hell. The declaration of this blessed Nativity I deal with in five conclusions.
 
1.      First, that this blessed Nativity was from of old ardently desired by the saints.
2.      Second, that this blessed Nativity was cruelly unappreciated by the Jews.
3.      Third, that this blessed Nativity was celebrated powerfully by God.
4.      Fourth, that this blessed Nativity was humbly hidden by the Virgin Mary.
5.      Fifth, that this blessed Nativity was broadcast publicly by the angels saying, "This day, is born to you a Savior," (Lk 2:11).
   And anyone who, curiously, might wish to preach all five conclusions, would be excessively prolix.  And all are touched in the theme, in which there are five conditions. The first, therefore, is touched by the first saying. The second in the second. The third in the third, and so on for the others.
 
1. LONG DESIRED
 
   I say first that this blessed Nativity was ardently desired of old by holy persons.  And that you might understand better this condition listen to this story:
 
  You should know that there was a certain great and noble city, well populated, which was cruelly under siege by enemies, attacking it with every kind of weapons, to the extent that it was already running low on provisions, the longer the siege went on, nor were the enemies willing to take them alive, or to grant any mercy, moreover they killed them at once.  Aware of this, the king and lord of the city secretly sent messengers and letters to the city, telling them that he will come personally to free them when he was able.  The citizens were very happy about this and were eagerly expecting his arrival any day.
 
  Rightly so it was of this world. This great and noble city was and is human nature.  Who can number how many citizens there were and how many dwelling in her, from Adam up to the birth of Christ -- since according to some teachers more than 5,000 years have passed -- who were besieged daily by cruel enemies, namely by countless demons attacking it with diverse temptations, with catapults, pains and sufferings, since  they were lacking the spiritual food, about which Christ said, "Not in bread alone does man live, but in every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.," (Mt 4:4).  Although they had the Mosaic law, it did not give eternal life. Nor did they have drink, i.e., the promise of spiritual [gifts] which refresh souls.  And when someone went out of the city, through death, immediately without mercy he was captured and imprisoned in the prison of hell.    However, God, the Lord of this world, wishing to comfort the citizens, secretly sent messengers to them, the holy patriarchs and prophets, with his letters announcing to them  that he himself personally would come to liberate them.  Many citizens rejoiced over this and city-dwellers sent him supplications, devout prayers, that he would come and liberate the city.
 
   First came Moses saying to God the Father, "I beseech you, Lord send whom you will send," (Ex 4:13) as you have promised.  Second, David on behalf of the whole city says, "[Lord] stir up your might, and come to save us," (Ps 79:3).  Third, Solomon saying in the Holy Spirit, "Send her out of your holy heaven, and from the throne of your majesty, that she may be with me, and may labor with me," (Wis 9:10) against your enemies.   Note: "Send her,"  namely, the person of Christ in human flesh, which is sent by the Father and the Holy Spirit, in respect to humanity.  Fourth, Isaiah, saying, "Would that you would rend the heavens, and would come down," (Isa 64:1).  Others were saying, "Come, O Lord, and tarry not: forgive the sins of your people Israel," etc. (Alleluia Verse from the Advent Liturgy)

  The King, however, having heard these supplications, sent a messenger secretly to the city who would say on his behalf, " [the vision]... it/he shall appear at the end, and shall not lie: if it/he make any delay, wait for it/him: for it/he shall surely come, and it/he shall not be slack,"  (Hab 2:3).  Behold how ardently he was desired, and according to Augustine they would say, "When shall he come?   When shall he be born?  When would he appear? Do you think I shall see it?   Do you think I shall endure?   Do you think his  birth will find me here?  O, if only my eyes shall behold the one whom the eyes of the heart have revealed. O, if only my eyes shall see what I believe in the writings of God. And the closer he approached, so much the more was he desired.
  
  He begins his path of coming on the day of his conception. So he was most fervently desired by the Blessed Virgin, his mother and St. Joseph who daily checked off the calendar yearning to see the day of his entry into this world. The Virgin carried him nine months and six days, which are 277 days.  Thus in the person of Christ Holy Scripture says, "I myself also am a mortal man, like all others, ...and in the womb of my mother I was fashioned," in the figure of man, "to be flesh. In the time of ten months," (Wis 7:1-2)    Because of this the Virgin Mary and Joseph knowing his coming was near prepared themselves for receiving him devoutly. The Virgin prepared woolen and linen wrappings, as women do when they are close to childbirth. Joseph purchased an ox so that he could have a great feast on the birth of the child. But in the mean time says Luke, "There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that the whole world should be enrolled," (Lk 2:1).  So Augustus wished to enroll the world because he wanted to know how many provinces there were, how many cities, and how many people.  Note the great sadness of Joseph, when he heard the edict of the Emperor, that under penalty of death everyone must proceed to the city of their birth.  Joseph, who was of the city of Bethlehem, of the tribe of David, began to weep saying, "O woe, if I go to Bethlehem, I shall not see that blessed birth so long desired by the saints. If I do not go, I will be disobedient and will be killed, and too I shall not see the aforesaid birth."  Sadly, he went home.
 
  The Virgin Mary was comforting him, as a wife should do, saying, "O father, what are you worried about?  You should rejoice, because the savior is about to be born soon."  Then Joseph told the Virgin Mary about the edict of the Emperor and the reason for his sadness.  The Virgin replied, "Father, do not weep, because for your comfort, I shall go with you, for I am also of the offspring of David.  Joseph, on the one hand rejoiced, that the Virgin would wish to go, but on the other hand he wondered what people would say, that he was taking with him a young pregnant woman so near to childbirth.
 
   Also, what if she gives birth on the way?  The Virgin replied to him, "Father, do not worry about what people will say, because your intention is good.  It is the will of God that we go to Bethlehem, because the savior is to be born there. According to the prophecy of Micah, "And you, Bethlehem Ephrata, are a little [place] in the kingdom of Judah: out of you shall come forth one who to be the ruler in Israel," (Mic 5:2). The Virgin Mary knew the bible better than the prophet, as Origen said.
 
   They prepared themselves and left the town of Nazareth, the Virgin riding on a donkey, and Joseph leading the ass and ox.  Behold the Queen of Paradise, and those she was traveling with.  Then was fulfilled the prophecy of Haggai on this event saying, "Yet one moment [modicum], and I will move the heaven and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land. And I will move all nations: and the desired of all nations shall come and I will fill this house with glory: says the Lord of hosts," (Hag 2: 6-7).  Note, "one moment,"   because it was only a moment of time from the prophet Haggai until Christ, "and I will move the heaven,"  where he speaks of the immovable empyreal heaven.  St. Thomas says in the Prima Pars [of the Summa theologica, I, q. 106, a.1] that when some angel receives a revelation from God, immediately he revels it to the others so that nothing there is kept a secret.  So the archangel Gabriel in the holy court of the Trinity when he had the revelation of the incarnation and the nativity of the Son of God, about which he was the messenger, immediately revealed it to all the others, and so the heaven was moved out of joy and rejoicing and dancing because of the reparation of the fall.  So, "I will move the earth,"  the Virgin Mary is called the virginal earth, who was to produce  the fruit of life who was moved by the angel’s salutation, when, "troubled at his saying, thought within herself what manner of salutation this should be," (Lk 1: 29).  Then, "I shall move the sea and dry land,"  when from the edict of the Emperor the peoples would proceed to their sites, some by sea and some by land. Then "shall come the desired of all the ages," (Hag 2:7).    So much for the first conclusion.
 
2. CRUELLY UNAPPRECIATED
 
   The second conclusion says that  this blessed Nativity was cruelly unappreciated by the Jews.  History says that when Joseph and the Virgin were in the city of Bethlehem they found no hospitality nor any house nor hospice that was willing to receive them.  Three reasons are alleged for this.  First because they were the last to arrive and they had to go slowly on the way.  So whoever comes late, often seems to be angry.  Secondly although the city of Bethlehem was small, it nevertheless teemed with many in military service and citizens and nobles, all who were of the tribe of David who had been born in this city. They had made reservations in advance for their lodgings.  A third reason was avarice of the hoteliers. When they got a look at Joseph, the poor man with his pregnant wife, thought that they would fill up a whole room and that there would be little profit from them. Therefore, etc.
 
  Most likely, when Joseph entered through the gate of the city, with the Virgin riding on the donkey, he would head immediately to the first inn lest he would have to pass through the whole city seeking whether they might find a place there. When they asked who and how many were in the party they saw that there were only two, with an ox and ass, thinking, we will earn little, they told them to move on because there is no place here for you.  At the next inn, the answer was that there were no vacancies. Imagine Joseph's anxiety here and the shame of the Virgin Mary, thus going from door to door. But the Virgin patiently put up with it and comforted Joseph. Finally they came to another inn where they said that all was full for such a gentleman and for expectant one etc.
 
  Seeing that they couldn’t buy lodging, Joseph searched that out of love of God some private home would take in that pregnant woman near to childbirth, but he did not find one in the whole city, and so they said to him, "Old man, you are indeed concerned about your wife, but why did you put her in this situation, so pregnant?"  And the poor man wept. At which the Virgin [said], "Father let us be patient, and we shall find some  hospital." So they looked for a hospital seeing if they might be received out of love of God.  The nurse replied, "You are healthy, and this house is for the sick. You are not able to be received here, and so spare us."  
 
   Since  the hour was late and they had not yet found a place Joseph said, "O Lord these are my sins."  Then they found a cave [porticulum] along a public road in which there was a manger, where visitors sometimes stabled their animals.  The Virgin said, "Father, we shall stay here, because it is not right to go through the village at this hour."   Joseph said, "O woe!  We shall never find a house."   The Virgin Mary said, "Father the whole world is the house of God, so let us stay here."
 
  Then Joseph, with the greatest reverence assisted the Virgin from the donkey and entered the refuge [porticum] and Joseph rolled out a blanket [flatiatam] which he had brought on the donkey as a tent for privacy, and he went to buy some straw and charcoal because of the cold. And from a little straw he made a bed for the Queen of Heaven, saying, "O Lord what will you say to me, that I have placed your mother on such a bed,"  and in this place they stayed for at least thirteen days.  The Gloss on Matthew 2 said that the kings from the east found Christ the King still there in that cave.
 
   Behold the palace of the queen of paradise. Behold how that glorious birth was little appreciated by the Jews.  God had revealed this to Jeremiah the prophet who, weeping, said in the person of the Jews, "We have sinned against thee. O expectation of Israel, the Savior thereof in time of trouble: why will you be a stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring man turning in to lodge? Why will you be as a wandering man, as a mighty man that cannot save?" (Jer 14:7-9)  Thus this prophecy was fulfilled. So much for the second conclusion.
 
MORALITER (a moral aside)
 
   Who of you does not say now in his heart, " Oh, if I had been there then, and had known him, I would have received him into my home,"  etc.  Would that you would not be in the same condemnation or cruelty with the Jews.  Have you ever today seen a pregnant young woman in this village with Joseph and never took them in?   The  consecrated host which the priest brings forth, like Joseph, is the virgin pregnant with the Son of God.  Who of you receives him by communicating devoutly?  None, I believe.   With sincere reflection you should prepare for yourselves the home of your conscience through contrition, confession, and satisfaction. Many excuse themselves like the Bethlehemites saying: I have to welcome a great soldier, namely Sir Chicken,  Lord Kid,  and Mister Pig.  Another says I have to receive a great and noble lady, namely Lady Hen,  another Madam Partridge, etc. but they do not receive the Lord Jesus Christ. About which John in the Gospel said, "He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God," (Jn 1).
 
3. MIGHTY BIRTH
 
  The third conclusion says that this blessed Nativity came about through the celebrated power of God.  The Virgin Mary, stayed in that cave, as is said, between the cattle.  In the middle of the night the hour for her delivery arrived. The Virgin Mary sensed this, not like other women, who before they feel the onset of childbirth, have pains, miseries and suffering in the body, and their face are distorted.  But the Virgin Mary had other signs, special inspirations, consolations and heartfelt sweetness, with exquisite pleasures more than others, and her face was radiant. Joseph seeing this said, "Blessed, what is happening." She replied, "Father, now the hour of my childbirth is at hand."  
 
  Joseph got up immediately so that he might send for midwives. But the Virgin stopped him saying, "Father, just as for his conception no creature did anything, so neither for his birth."  Joseph then said, "Blessed, neither you or I are expert in this."  The Virgin said, "Father, don't worry, because God, the heavenly Father, will provide."  And so the Book of the Infancy of the Savior [Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, ch.13] which states that there were women, has been condemned by the decree of Pope Pelagius. (Cf. Jerome: On the perpetual virginity of Mary, 8): "No midwife assisted at His birth; no women's officiousness intervened."  But suddenly, like the ray of the sun passes through a glass window without breaking it, so Christ, the sun of justice passed through the gate of her virginal womb without any breaking or corruption, "like a bridegroom...from his chamber," (Ps 18:6).
 
  The Virgin received him into her own hands, on her knees, with great reverence and veneration, adoring him and saying, "O Lord, you indeed have come from heaven to earth for the salvation of men. O Lord, desired by the holy patriarchs and prophets, I adore you, because as God you are my creator, as human you are my son."  And she kissed him first on his feet as God, next on his mouth as a son, then on the hands as the creator of all things, and finally on his face as her son, saying, "O Lord you have given me such a grace."  And she adored him a hundred times over.  And as someone has reported, she said, "You are the Lord my God, you are my redeemer, you are my beloved Son."   Ambrose: "O blessed Virgin, who can open the treasures of your heart to us, as here you adore your child as God, and here you kiss him as son?"
 
   Joseph, weeping for joy, said, "Blessed, permit me to adore your son, the long desired Son of God," etc.  How he adored him saying, "O Lord you have granted me such a grace. Kings and prophets wished to see you and they did not see, and to me, a sinner, you have given such a grace that I should see you."  Then the infant began to cry because of the cold. Joseph immediately warmed the blankets and the Virgin wrapped him.  
 
   Then Joseph wanted to call for a wet nurse, but the Virgin again stopped him.  Joseph said, "Blessed, what are you doing, for you do not have milk?"  Doctors say that from the same root comes milk and children.  So a woman who does not know man, does not have milk.  The Virgin replied, "Father, God shall provide." Then the Virgin, on her knees prayed God the Father saying, "God the Father you and I have one son in common, so you who provide for all creatures ought to provide some milk for him."  Then suddenly her breasts were filled with milk, sent to her from heaven. So the church says, the Virgin, not knowing man, without pain, gives birth to the savior of the ages. The Virgin herself with full breasts nursed the very King of the Angels.  So much for the third conclusion.
 
4. HUMBLE AND HIDDEN
 
  The fourth conclusion states that this blessed Nativity happened to a Virgin, humble and hidden. History says that as soon as Christ was born, his body shone like the rising sun, and the night became as midday, and so it was light.  Think how many, who were not sleeping, and wondering about such a brightness, sought to see the source of the light and ran toward such a great spectacle of light. The Virgin sensing the excitement of the people placed the child in the manger.  Jews came to see the source of the light. Some of them said prophecy says that when the Messiah will be born, "night shall be light as day," (Ps 138:12).  Others asked if this might be he. Some said, be quiet; don't make much of it. If Herod finds out, he will kill us. So that out of fear of Herod they did not dare receive the Messiah King.  Of this light the prophet said, " The people that walked in darkness, have seen a great light: to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death," of the sin of ingratitude, "a light has risen for them,  You have multiplied the nation," to see the light, "and have not increased the joy," (Is 9:2-3), because no one brought him or the Virgin a gift. Of that light it is said, it is pointed out when it is said, and it follows, " For a child is born to us, and a son is given to us," not the Father, nor the Holy Spirit (v. 6).
 
    Here the question is raised, why did the blessed Virgin place her son in the manger between the beasts?  What if the ox with horns, and the donkey with teeth had attacked?  St. Luke wishes to excuse the Virgin saying: "She laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn," i.e. in this cave, (Lk 2:7). But one might respond to St. Luke: "Could not the Virgin who gave birth without pain and suffering, place or position him in her arms or on her breast? Why put him between animals?"  The response is, for three reasons:
            First, to fulfill the scriptural truth.
            Second, to alleviate bodily needs,
            Third, to teach us a moral lesson.
 
SCRIPTURAL TRUTH
 
  As for the first, it was prophesied that he would be placed between the animals and humbly be adored.  Think what kind of joy the blessed Virgin had when she saw her son adored by an ox and ass. And how sad when she saw him ignored by the Jews. And so was fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah saying, "Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken. I have brought up children, and exalted them: but they have despised me. The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel has not known me,"  (Isa 1:2-3).
  
BODILY NEEDS
 
  As for the second reason you have already seen how cold it could be at that time. Think if the Virgin Mary was cold, because we do not read that they brought lined coats. For this reason she placed her child in the manger so that the animals might warm him with their breath, as it was revealed by Habakkuk the prophet, who said this: "Lord I have heard your voice and I have feared. Lord I have considered your work, in the middle of two animals you shall be known," (Hab 3:2, LXX transl.).
 
MORAL LESSON
 
   As for the third reason the Virgin does this so that we might be instructed in good morals.
  • An ox is a great animal having two big horns, which signify the temporal lords and rulers of the community. The donkey which carries burdens, signifies peasants and subjects.  And the Virgin places her son in the middle, pointing out that all can indeed be saved by the saving justice of the Lord, and that not by hatred nor by love nor by fear nor by bribes they give unjustly. Vassals too by keeping faith, obedience and reverence for  their lords. 
  • Second,  the ox is a clean animal which in olden times was sacrificed to God.  So it symbolizes the priests who offer sacrifice to God.  The simple ass signifies the laity. The Virgin places her son between them, implying that all can be saved. 
  • Third, the ox, which doesn't bear burdens, signifies the rich who do not labor with their hands. The ass signifies the workers, if they be patient. 
  • Fourth, the ox which has horns signifies devout and holy people. Two horns are true prudence or adherence to the faith, and prompt obedience to commandments.  The surly ass, signifies sinners, who if they are repentant can be saved.
  • Fifth the ox, which chews the cud  and has divided hooves, signifies the learned masters and doctors who ruminate by studying; and the divided hooves means they have knowledge of the old and new testament.  The ass signifies the ignorant.  Christ is placed in the middle etc. And the text of David confirms it: "Men and beasts you will preserve, O Lord: O how you have multiplied your mercy, O God!!" (Ps 35:7-8).  Note men, both powerful and powerless, both learned, and rich, and draft animals, i.e. crude sinners and the ignorant, shall be saved by the Lord.
 
5. OPENLY PROCLAIMED
 
   The fifth conclusion says that this blessed Nativity was openly proclaimed by the angels when they appeared to the shepherds telling the good news: "For, this day is born to you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David," St. Luke writes (2:11).  A little story is told about the angels at the birth of Christ, that God the Father, from heaven, where he was throwing a big party over the birth of Christ, sent them to earth so that there might be a feast here also.  This blessed Nativity was revealed to the watching shepherds, not to the sleeping emperor Octavian, nor, in Jerusalem, to the masters and teachers, nor to the priests, but to shepherds singing their songs.
 
   Why this?  Bernard says that shepherds have five qualities in which it is shown to which persons God reveals his secrets and gives his glory. 
  • First, the shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks etc. In which it is shown that shepherds both temporal and ecclesiastical ought to watch over the flock committed to them, lest they be devoured by the wolves of especially notorious sin, because the community is not punished for secret sins. To such shepherds God reveals his glory and grace.   
  • Second, they play their flutes harmoniously, in which is shown that to devout and peaceful persons who play music through their prayers and supplications, God reveals his grace and glory.
  • Third, because they were in the desert, in the harshness of penance, etc. where eating and drinking and sleeping was hard, etc. In which it is shown, that to those who live in the rigors of penitence etc., [God reveals his grace and glory].
  • Fourth, because they were poor men, etc.  So Christ says, "But woe to you that are rich: for you have your consolation," etc. (Lk 6:24).
  • Fifth, because they were simple men, they despised no one.  To such God gives his grace.  Authority of Christ: "I confess to you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hid these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them to the little ones," (Mt 11:25).

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