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| December 22nd - St. Frances Cabrini and St. Ischyrion |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-21-2020, 11:48 PM - Forum: December
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Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini
Foundress
(1850-1917)
Dear to the hearts of American Catholics in many regions of the United States, Saint Frances Cabrini, foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, patroness of immigrants, was the first citizen of the United States to be canonized. Born in Lombardy, Italy, the youngest of thirteen children, she was fired with missionary zeal as a little girl, through family reading of the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith. She gave up sweets because she would also be without them in China, where she aspired to go.
She earned a teacher's certificate and applied to two Orders having missionary houses, but was rejected for reasons of health. Reluctantly, at the request of her bishop, she tried to save an orphanage and make of its staff a religious community, but after six hard years the work collapsed. And Frances, by then thirty years old, initiated her own missionary community with seven of her associates from the orphanage. Bishop Scalabrini suggested they work with Italian immigrants, especially in the United States, as the Congregation of Saint Charles which he had founded was doing; but Mother Cabrini's heart was set on China. She asked counsel of Pope Leo XIII. Go not to the East, he told her, but to the West.
Founding schools, hospitals and charitable works of every kind, she would cross the ocean thirty times, bringing bands of young Italian Sisters to North and South America. Her amusing community letter, during her second trip to New York, gives a typical picture of these missionary voyages: This morning all the Sisters woke up very ill. Some of them thought they were going to die... Those who trusted my words rose and tried to eat, and presently were looking quite well. The others who thought death was at hand stayed in their rooms awaiting it...
Her letters are filled with the practical motherly instruction of a foundress who knew she was loved and imitated by her Sisters. When you are corrected do not justify yourself. Remain silent and practice virtue, whether you are right or wrong, otherwise we may dream of perfection but will never attain it. (Oct. 17-20, 1892) Love is not loved, my daughters! Love is not loved! (Aug. 21, 1890) Renounce yourselves entirely if you wish to enjoy peace... She who is not holy will make no one holy. (Oct. 17, 1892)
Explaining why she did not accompany some Sisters on a boat excursion she wrote, I admit my weakness, I am afraid of the sea. And if there is no very holy motive in view, I have no courage to go where I fear danger, unless sent by obedience. For then, of course, one's movements are blessed by God.
Mother Cabrini died at sixty-seven, suddenly and alone in one of her Chicago hospitals, while preparing Christmas presents for 500 children.
Saint Ischyrion
Martyr in Alexandria
(† 250)
Ischyrion was a subordinate officer serving under a magistrate in Egypt. His master commanded him to offer sacrifice to the idols, and because he refused to commit that sacrilege, reproached him in the most abusive and threatening language. Giving way to passion and superstition, the commanding officer at length worked himself up to such a degree of frenzy as to run a stake into the entrails of the meek servant of Christ, who by his patient constancy attained to the glory of martyrdom.
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| Digital Davos 2021 to Reveal ‘Great Reset Initiative’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-21-2020, 04:42 PM - Forum: Great Reset
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World Economic Forum: Digital Davos 2021 to Reveal ‘Great Reset Initiative’
Breitbart | 21 Dec 20200
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has revealed its Davos 2021 Agenda, confirming the annual gathering of political and business elites next month will be a digital event heralding the public unveiling of its Great Reset Initiative.
In a preview to the digital “Davos Dialogues”, the WEF asserts, “The time to rebuild trust and to make crucial choices is fast approaching as the need to reset priorities and the urgency to reform systems grow stronger around the world.”
The need for “global leaders to come together to design a common recovery path and shape the Great Reset” in the post-cornavirus world has never been stronger, it adds.
It then continues to set out the exact plan of WEF action to reshape the modern world in a pattern of its own design. The WEF says:
Quote:An entire week of global programming will be dedicated to helping leaders choose innovative and bold solutions to stem the pandemic and drive a robust recovery over the next year.
The Davos Agenda will also mark the launch of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset Initiative and begin the preparation of the Special Annual Meeting in the spring. Each day will focus on one of the five domains of the Great Reset Initiative.
As Breitbart News reported, there has been much discussion as to the exact form the much-discussed Great Reset Initiative will take.
Last month in a WEF panel discussion, former Secretary of State John Kerry laid out one possible element.
He said President-elect Joe Biden is ready to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement — which threatens to eliminate more than a million American jobs — and be a driver of the ”Great Reset” whereby unelected global bureaucrats are looking to alter the world’s economy by abolishing money, private property, and democracy for the sake of a “New World Order,” according to James Delingpole.
Quote:Delingpole: The Great Reset Is Not a Conspiracy Theory https://t.co/FiMeqD6KaP
“The notion of a reset is more important than ever before,” Kerry said. “I personally believe … we’re at the dawn of an extremely exciting time.”
Kerry dismissed the U.S. rejoining the Parish Climate Agreement as being “not enough.”
“I know Joe Biden believes this. It’s not enough just to rejoin [the Paris Climate Agreement] for the United States. It’s not enough for us to do just the minimum of what [the agreement] requires,” Kerry said. He went on:
Quote:The Biden administration will focus on every sector of the American economy. There will be a 2035 goal to achieve net neutrality with respect to power and production … we’re ready to come back in and help to lead and raise the ambition in Glasgow to accelerate this incredible capacity for a transformation in the private sector.
According to the WEF’s own publicity, the Davos Agenda will feature:- Heads of state and of government from the G20 and international organizations giving special addresses on the state of the world.
- Industry leaders and public figures discussing in leadership panels how to advance and accelerate public-private collaboration on critical issues such as coronaviorus vaccination schemes and climate change, among others.
- The Forum’s core communities, including its international business council, sharing their insight and recommendations from global, regional and industry initiatives in impact sessions.
The Davos Agenda will be held between 25—29 January, 2021.
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| Dom Guéranger: The Practice During Christmas |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-21-2020, 10:41 AM - Forum: Christmas
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PRACTICE DURING CHRISTMAS
The time has now come for the faithful soul to reap the fruit of the efforts she made during the penitential weeks of Advent to prepare a dwelling-place for the Son of God, who desires to be born within her.The Nuptials of the Lamb are come, and his Spouse hath prepared herself [Apoc. xix 7]. Now the Spouse is the Church; the Spouse is also every faithful soul. Our Lord gives his whole self to the whole flock, and to each sheep of the flock with as much love as though he loved but that one. What garments shall we put on, to go and meet the Bridegroom? Where shall we find the pearls and jewels wherewith to deck our soul for this happy meeting? Our holy Mother the Church will tell us all this in her Liturgy. Our best plan for spending Christmas is, undoubtedly, to keep close to her, and do what she does; for she is most dear to God, and being our Mother, we ought to obey all her injunctions.
But, before we speak of the mystic Coming of the Incarnate Word into our souls; before we tell the secrets of that sublime familiarity between the Creator and the Creature; let us, first, learn from the Church the duties which human nature and each of our souls owes to the Divine Infant, whom the Heavens have at length given to us as the refreshing Dew we asked them to rain down upon our earth. During Advent, we united with the Saints of the Old Law, in praying for the coming of the Messias, our Redeemer; now that he is come, let us consider what is the homage we must pay him.
The Church offers to the Infant-God, during this holy season, the tribute of her profound adoration, the enthusiasm of her exceeding joy, the return of her unbounded gratitude, and the fondness of her intense love. These four offerings, adoration, joy, gratitude, and love, must be also those of every Christian to his Jesus, his Emmanuel, the Babe of Bethlehem. The prayers of the Liturgy will express all four sentiments in a way that no other Devotions could do. But, the better to appropriate to ourselves these admirable formulas of the Church, let us understand thoroughly the nature of each of these four sentiments.
The first of our duties at our Saviour’s Crib is Adoration. Adoration is Religion’s first act; but there is something in the Mystery of our Lord’s Birth which seems to make this duty doubly necessary. In heaven the Angels veil their faces, and prostrate themselves before the throne of Jehovah; the Four-and-Twenty Elders are for ever casting their crowns before the throne [Apoc. iv 10] of the Lamb; what, then, shall we do – we who are sinners, and unworthy members of the Tribe of the Redeemer – now that this same great God shows himself to us, humbled for our sakes, and stript of all his glory? now that the duties of the creature to his Creator are fulfilled by the Creator himself? now that the eternal God bows down not only before the Sovereign Majesty of the Godhead, but even before sinful man, his creature?
Let us endeavour to make, by our profound adorations, some return to the God who thus humbles himself for us; let us thus give him back some little of that whereof he has deprived himself out of love for us, and in obedience to the will of his Father.It is incumbent on us to emulate, as far as possible, the sentiments of the Angels in heaven, and never to approach the Divine Infant without bringing with us the incense of our soul’s adoration, the protestation of our own extreme unworthiness, and lastly, the homage of our whole being. All this is due to the infinite Majesty of the Babe of Bethlehem, who is the more worthy of every tribute we can pay him, because he has made himself thus little for our sakes. Unhappy we, if the apparent weakness of the Divine Child, or the familiarity wherewith he is ready to caress us, should make us negligent in this our first duty, or forget what he is, and what we are!
The example of his Blessed Mother will teach us to be thus humble. Mary was humble in the presence of her God, even before she became his Mother; but, once his Mother, she comported herself before him who was her God and her Child with greater humility than ever. We too, poor sinners, sinners so long and so often, we must adore with all the power of our soul him who has come down so low: we must study to find out how by our self-humiliation to make him amends for this Crib, these swathing-bands, this eclipse of his glory. And yet all our humiliations will never bring us so low as that we shall be on a level with his lowliness. No; only God could reach the humiliations of God.
But our Mother, the Church, does not only offer to the Infant God the tribute of her profound adoration. The mystery of Emmanuel, that is, of God with us, is to her a source of singular joy. Look at her sublime Canticles for this holy Season, and you will find the two sentiments admirably blended – her deep reverence for her God, and her glad joy at his Birth. Joy! did not the very Angels come down and urge her to it? She therefore studies to imitate the blithe Shepherds, who ran for joy to Bethlehem [St Luke ii 16], and the glad Magi, who were well-nigh out of themselves with delight when, on quitting Jerusalem, the star again appeared and led them to the Cave where the Child was [St Matt. ii 10]. Joy at Christmas is a Christian instinct, which originated those many Carols, which, like so many other beautiful traditions of the ages of Faith, are unfortunately dying out amongst us; but which Rome still encourages, gladly welcoming each year those rude musicians, the Pifferari, who come down from the Apennines, and make the streets of the Eternal City re-echo with their shrill melodies.
Come, then, faithful Children of the Church, let us take our share in her joy! This is not the season for sighing or for weeping. For unto us a Child is born! [Isa. ix 6]. He for whom we have been so long waiting is come; and he is come to dwell among us [St John i 14]. Great, indeed, and long was our suspense; so much the more let us love our possessing him. The day will too soon come when this Child, now born to us, will be the Man of Sorrows [Isa. liii 3], and then we will compassionate him; but at present we must rejoice and be glad at his coming and sing round his Crib with the Angels. Heaven sends us a present of its own joy: we need joy, and forty days are not too many for us to get it well into our hearts. The Scripture tells us that a secure mind is like a continual feast [Prov. xv 15], and a secure mind can only be where there is peace; now it is Peace which these blessed days bring to the earth; Peace, say the Angels, to men of good will!
Intimately and inseparably united with this exquisite mystic joy is the sentiment of gratitude. Gratitude is indeed due to him who, neither deterred by our unworthiness nor restrained by the infinite respect which becomes his sovereign Majesty, deigned to be born of his own creature, and have a stable for his birth-place. Oh! how vehemently must he not have desired to advance the work of our salvation, to remove everything which could make us afraid of approaching him, and to encourage us, by his own example, to return, by the path of humility, to the heaven we had strayed from by pride!
Gratefully, therefore, let us receive the precious gift – this Divine Babe, our Deliverer. He is the Only- Begotten Son of the Father, that Father who hath so loved the world as to give his only Son [St John iii 16]. He, the Son, unreservedly ratifies his Father’s will, and comes to offer himself because it is his own will[Isa. liii 7]. How, as the Apostle expresses it, hath not the Father with him given us all things? [Rom. viii 32]. O gift inestimable! How shall we be able to repay it by suitable gratitude, we who are so poor as not to know how to appreciate it? God alone, and the Divine Infant in his Crib, know the value of the mystery of Bethlehem, which is given to us.
Shall our debt, then, never be paid? Not so: we can pay it by love, which, though finite, gives itself without measure, and may grow for ever in intensity. For this reason, the Church, after She has offered her adorations and hymns and gratitude, to her Infant Saviour, gives him also her tenderest Love. She says to him: ‘How beautiful art thou, my Beloved One, and how comely! [Cant. i 15]. How sweet to me is thy rising, O Divine Sun of Justice! How my heart glows in the warmth of thy beams! Nay, dearest Jesus, the means thou usest for gaining me over to thyself are irresistible – the feebleness and humility of a Child!’ Thus do all her words end in love; and her adoration, praise, and thanksgiving, when she expresses them in her Canticles, are transformed into love.
Christians! let us imitate our Mother, and give our hearts to our Emmanuel. The Shepherds offer him their simple gifts, the Magi bring him their rich presents, and no one must appear before the Divine Infant without something worthy his acceptance. Know, then, that nothing will please him, but that which he came to seek – our love.It was for this that he came down from heaven. Hard indeed is that heart which can say, He shall not have my love!
These, then, are the duties we owe to our Divine Master in this his first Coming, which, as St Bernard says, is in the flesh and in weakness, and is for the salvation, not for the judgement, of the world.
As regards that other Coming, which is to be in majesty and power on the Last Day, we have meditated upon it during Advent. The fear of the Wrath to come should have roused our souls from their lethargy, and have prepared them, by humility of heart, to receive the visit of Jesus in that secret Coming which he makes to the soul of man. It is the ineffable mystery of this intermediate Coming that we are now going to explain.
We have shown elsewhere how the time of Advent belongs to that period of the spiritual life which is called, in Mystic Theology, the Purgative Life, during which the soul cleanses herself from sin and the occasions of sin, by the fear of God’s judgements, and by combating against evil concupiscence. We are taking it for granted that every faithful soul has journeyed through these rugged paths, which must be gone through before she could be admitted to the Feast to which the Church invites all mankind, saying to them, on the Saturday of the Second Week of Advent, these words of the Prophet Isaias: Lo! this is our God: we hare waited for him, and he will save us. We have patiently waited for him, and we shall rejoice and be joyful in his Salvation! [Isa. xxv 9]. As in the house of our heavenly Father there are many mansions [St John xiv 2], so likewise, on the grand Solemnity of Christmas, when those words of Isaias are realized, the Church sees, amongst the countless throng who receive the Bread of Life, a great variety of sentiments and dispositions. Some were dead, and the graces given during the holy Season of Advent have restored them to life: others, whose spiritual life had long been healthy, have so spent their Advent that its holy exercises have redoubled their love of their Lord, and their entrance into Bethlehem has been to them a renewal of their soul’s life.
Now every soul that has been admitted to Bethlehem, that is to say, into the House of Bread, and has been united with him who is the Light of the World – that soul no longer walks in darkness. The mystery of Christmas is one of Illumination; and the grace it produces in the soul that corresponds with it, places her in the second stage of the mystic Life, which is called the Illuminative Life. Henceforward, then, we need no longer weary ourselves watching for our Saviour’s arrival; he has come, he has shone upon us, and we are resolved to keep up the light, nay, to cherish its growth within us, in proportion as the Liturgical Year unfolds its successive seasons of mysteries and graces. God grant that we may reflect in our souls the Church’s progressive development of this divine Light; and he led by its brightness to that Union which crowns both the year of the Church, and the faithful soul which has spent the year under the Church’s guidance!
But, in the mystery of Christmastide, this Light is given to us, so to speak, softened down; our weakness required that it should be so. It is indeed the Divine Word, the Wisdom of the Father, that we are invited to know and imitate; but this Word, this Wisdom, are shown us under the appearance of a Child. Let nothing keep us from approaching him. We might fear were he seated on a throne in his palace; but he is lying on a crib in a stable! Were it the time of his Fatigues, his Bloody Sweat, his Cross, his Burial, or even of his Glory and his Victory, we might say we had not courage enough: but what courage is needed to go near him in Bethlehem, where all is sweetness and silence, and a simple Little Babe! Come to Him, says the Psalmist, and be enlightened! [Ps. xxxiii 6].
Where shall we find an interpreter of the twofold mystery which is wrought at this holy season – the mystery of the Infancy of Jesus in the soul of man, and the mystery of the infancy of man’s soul in his Jesus? None of the Holy Fathers has so admirably spoken upon it as St Leo: let us listen to his grand words.
Quote:‘Although that Childhood, which the majesty of the Son of God did not disdain to assume, has developed, by growth of age, into the fulness of the perfect man, and, the triumph of his Passion and Resurrection having been achieved, all the humiliations he submitted to for our sakes are passed; nevertheless, the Feast we are now keeping brings back to us the sacred Birth of the Virgin Mary’s Child, Jesus our Lord. So that whilst adoring his Birth, we are, in truth, celebrating our own commencement of life; for the Generation of Christ is the origin of the Christian people, and the Birth Day of him that is our Head is the Birth Day of us that are his Body. It is true, that each Christian has his own rank, and the children of the Church are born each in their respective times; yet the whole mass of the Faithful, once having been regenerated in the font of Baptism, are born, on this Day of Christmas, together with Christ; just as they are crucified together with him in his Passion, and have risen together with his Resurrection, and in his Ascension are placed at the right hand of the Father. For every believer, no matter in what part of the work he may be living, is born again in Christ; his birth according to nature is not taken into account; he becomes a new man by his second birth; neither is he any longer called of the family of his father in the flesh, but of the family of our Redeemer, who unto this was made a Son of Man, that we might become the Sons of God.’ [Sixth Sermon On the Nativity of our Lord, Ch. 2].
Yes, this is the Mystery achieved in us by the holy Season of Christmas! It is expressed in those words of the passage from St John’s Gospel which the Church has chosen for the third Mass of the great Feast: As many as received him, he gave them power to be made the Sons of God, to them that believe in his name; who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God [St John i 22]. So that all they who, having purified their souls, freed themselves from the slavery of flesh and blood, and renounced everything which is of man, inasmuch as man means sinner, wish now to open their hearts to the Divine Word, that is, to the LIGHT which shineth in darkness, which darkness did not comprehend [Ibid. i 5], these, I say, are born with Jesus; they are born of God; they begin a new life, as did the Son of God himself in this mystery of his Birth in Bethlehem.
How beautiful are these first beginnings of the Christian Life! How great is the glory of Bethlehem, that is, of our holy Mother the Church, the true House of Bread! for in her midst there is produced, during these days of Christmas, and everywhere throughout the world, a countless number of sons of God. Oh! the unceasing vitality of our mysteries! As the Lamb, who was slain from the beginning of the world [Apoc. xiii 8], sacrifices himself without ceasing, ever since his real sacrifice; so also, once born of the Holy Virgin his Mother, he makes it a part of his glory to be ceaselessly born in the souls of men. We are not, therefore, to think for a moment that the dignity of Mary’s divine Maternity is lessened, or that our souls enjoy the same grand honour which was granted to her: far from that, ‘Let us,’ as Venerable Bede says, ‘raise our voice from amid the crowd, as did the woman in the Gospel, and say to our Saviour, with the Catholic Church, of which that woman was the type: Blessed is the Womb that bore thee, and the Breasts that gave thee suck!’ [Commentary on St Luke, Bk. 4, Ch. 49].
Mary’s prerogative is indeed incommunicable, and it makes her the Mother of God, and the Mother of men. But we must also remember the answer made by our Saviour to the woman, who spoke those words: Yea rather, said Jesus, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it [St Matt. xii 50], Quote:‘hereby declaring,’ continues Venerable Bede, ‘that not only is she blessed, who merited to conceive in the flesh the Word of God, but they also who endeavour to conceive this same Word spiritually, by the hearing of faith, and to give him birth and nourish him by keeping and doing what is good, either in their own or their neighbour’s heart. For the Mother of God herself was Blessed in that she was made, for a time, the minister to the wants of the Incarnate Word; but much more Blessed was she, in that she was and ever will be the keeper and doer of the love due to that same her Son.’
Is it not this same truth which our Lord teaches us on that other occasion, where he says: Whosoever shall do the will of my Father that is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother? [St Matt xii 50]. And why was the Angel sent to Mary in preference to all the rest of the daughters of Israel, but because she had already conceived the Divine Word in her heart by the vehemence of her Undivided love, the greatness of her profound humility and the incomparable merit of her virginity? Why again, is this Blessed among women holy above all creatures, but because, having once conceived and brought forth a Son of God, she continues for ever his Mother, by her fidelity in doing the will of the heavenly Father, by her love for the uncreated light of the Divine Word, and by her union as Spouse with the Spirit of sanctification?
But no member of the human race is excluded from the honour of imitating Mary, though at a humble distance, in this her spiritual Maternity: for, by that real birth which she gave him in Bethlehem, which we are now celebrating, and which initiated the world into the mysteries of God, this ever Blessed Mother of Jesus has shown us how we may bear the resemblance of her own grand prerogative. We ought to have prepared the way of the Lord [St Matt. iii 3; Isa. xl 3] during the weeks of Advent; and if so, our hearts have conceived him: therefore now our good works must bring him forth, that thus our heavenly Father, seeing not us ourselves, but his own Son Jesus now living within us, may say of each of us, in his mercy, what he heretofore said in very truth of the Incarnate Word: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased [St Matt. iii 17].
Let us give ear to the words of the Seraphic St Bonaventure, who in one of his sermons for Christmas Day thus explains the mystery of the birth of Jesus in the soul of man:
Quote:‘This happy birth happens when the soul, prepared by long thought and reflection, passes at length to action; when the flesh being made subject to the spirit, good works are produced in due time: then do interior peace and joy return to the soul. In this birth there is neither travail nor pain nor fear; everything is admiration and delight and glory. If then, O devout soul! thou art desirous for this birth, imagine thyself to be like Mary. Mary signifies bitterness; bitterly bewail thy sins: it signifies illuminatrix, be thou illumined by thy virtues: and lastly, it signifies Mistress; learn how to be mistress and controller of thy evil passions. Then will Christ be born of thee, and oh! with what happiness to thyself ! For it is then that the soul tastes and sees how sweet is her Lord Jesus. She experiences this sweetness when, in holy meditation, she nourishes this Divine Infant; when she covers him with her tears; when she clothes him with her holy longings; when she presses him to her heart in the embrace of holy tenderness; when, in a word, she cherishes him in the warmth of her glowing love. O happy Crib of Bethlehem in thee I find the King of glory: but happier still than thou, the pious soul which holds within itself him whom thou couldst hold but corporally!’
![[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3...%3DApi&f=1]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.78orIRzt3sKlEwl9kdWHLAAAAA%26pid%3DApi&f=1)
Now that we may pass on from this spiritual conception to the birth of our Lord Jesus; in other words, that we may pass from Advent to Christmas, we must unceasingly keep the eyes of our soul on him who wishes to be born within us, and in whom the world is born to a new life. Our study and ambition should be, how best to become like Jesus, by imitating him; for, though the imitation must needs be imperfect, yet we know from the Apostle that our heavenly Father himself gives this as the sign of the elect – that they are made like to the image of his Son [Rom. viii 29].
Let us, therefore, hearken to the invitation of the Angels, and go over to Bethlehem [St Luke ii 15]. We know what sign will be given to us of our Jesus – a Child wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and laid in a crib [Ibid. ii 22]. So that you, O Christians must become children; you must not disdain to be tied in the bonds of a spiritual childhood; you must come down from your proud spirit, and meet your Saviour who has come down from heaven, and with him hide yourselves in the humility of the crib. Thus will you begin, with him, a new life. Thus will the Light that goeth forwards and increaseth even to perfect day [Prov. iv 18] illumine your path the whole remaining length of your Journey. Thus the sight of God which leaves room for faith, which you receive at Bethlehem, will merit for you the face-to-face vision on Thabor, and prepare you for the blissful UNION, which is not merely Light, but the plenitude and repose of Love.
So far we have been speaking only of the living members of the Church, whether they began the life of grace during the holy Season of Advent, or were already living in the grace of the Holy Ghost when the ecclesiastical year commenced, and spent their Advent in preparing to be born with Jesus to a new year of higher perfection. But how shall we overlook those of our Brethren who are dead in sin; and so dead, that neither the coming of their Emmanuel, nor the example of the Christians throughout the universal Church earnestly preparing for that coming, could rouse them? No, we cannot forget them: we love them, and come to tell them (for even now they may yield to grace, and live), that there hath appeared the goodness and kindness of God our Saviour [Tit. iii 4]. If this volume of ours should perchance fall into the hands of any of those who have not yielded to the solicitations of grace, which press them to be converted to the sweet Babe of Bethlehem, their Lord and their God; who, instead of spending the weeks of Advent in preparing to receive him at Christmas, lived them out, as they began them, in indifference and in sin: we shall, perhaps, be helping them to a knowledge of the grievousness of their state, by reminding them of the ancient discipline of the Church, which obliged all the Faithful, under pain of being considered as no longer Catholics, to receive Holy Communion on Christmas Day, as well as on Easter and Whit Sundays. We find a formal decree of this obligation given in the fifteenth Canon of the Council of Agatha (Agde) held in 506. We would also ask these poor sinners to reflect on the joy the Church feels at seeing, throughout the whole world, the immense number of her children, who still, in spite of the general decay of piety, keep the Feast of the birth of the Divine Lamb, by the sacramental participation of his Body and Blood.
Sinners! take courage; this Feast of Christmas is one of grace and mercy, on which all, both just and sinners, meet in the fellowship of the same glad Mystery. The heavenly Father has resolved to honour the Birthday of his Son, by granting pardon to all save those who obstinately refuse it. Oh! how worthy is the Coming of our dear Emmanuel to be honoured by this divine amnesty!
Nor is it we that give this invitation; it is the Church herself. Yes, it is she that with divine authority invites you to begin the work of your new life on this day whereon the Son of God begins the career of his human life. That we may the more worthily convey to you this her invitation, we will borrow the words of a great and saintly Bishop of the Middle Ages, the pious Rabanus Maurus, who, in a homily on the Nativity of our Lord, encourages sinners to come and take their place, side by side with the just, in the stable of Bethlehem, where even the ox and the ass recognize their Master in the Babe who lies there.
Quote:‘I beseech you, dearly beloved Brethren, that you receive with fervent hearts the words our Lord speaks to you through me on this most sweet Feast, on which even infidels and sinners are touched with compunction; on which the wicked man is moved to mercy, the contrite heart hopes for pardon, the exile despairs not of returning to his country, and the sick man longs for his cure; on which is born the Lamb who taketh away the sins of the world, that is, Christ our Saviour. On such a Birthday, he that has a good conscience rejoices more than usual; and he whose conscience is guilty fears with a more useful fear … Yes, it is a sweet Feast, bringing true sweetness and forgiveness to all true penitents. My little children, I promise you without hesitation that every one who, on this day, shall repent from his heart, and return not to the vomit of his sins, shall obtain all whatsoever he shall ask; let him only ask with a firm faith, and not return to sinful pleasures.
‘On this day are taken away the sins of the entire world: why needs the sinner despair? … On this day of our Lord’s Birth let us, dearest Brethren, offer our promises to this Jesus, and keep them, as it is written: Vow ye, and pay to the Lord your God [Ps. lxxv 12]. Let us make our promises with confidence and love; he will enable us to keep them. … And when I speak of promises, I would not have anyone think that I mean the promise of fleeting and earthly goods. No – I mean, that each of us should offer what our Saviour redeemed, namely, our soul. “But how,” someone will say, “how shall we offer our souls to him, to whom they already belong?” I answer: by leading holy lives, by chaste thoughts, by fruitful works, by turning away from evil, by following that which is good, by loving God, by loving our neighbour, by showing mercy (for we ourselves were in need of it, before we were redeemed), by forgiving them that sin against us (for we ourselves were once in sin), by trampling on pride, since it was by pride that our first parent was deceived and fell.’ [Fourth Homily On the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ.]
It is thus our affectionate Mother the Church invites sinners to the Feast of the Divine Lamb; nor is she satisfied until her House be filled [St Luke x 2]. The grace of a New Birth, given her by the Sun of Justice, fills this Spouse of Jesus with joy. A new year has begun for her, and, like all that have preceded it, it is to be rich in flower and fruit. She renews her youth as that of an eagle. She is about to unfold another Cycle, or Year, of her mysteries, and to pour forth upon her faithful children the graces of which God has made the Cycle to be the instrument. In this season of Christmas, we have the first-fruits of these graces offered to us; they are the knowledge and the love of our Infant God: let us accept them with attentive hearts, that so we may merit to advance, with our Jesus, in wisdom and age and grace before God and men [Ibid. ii 52].
The Christmas Mystery is the gate of all the others of the rest of the year; but it is a gate which we may all enter, for, though most heavenly, yet it touches earth; since, as St Augustine beautifully remarks in one of his sermons for Christmas [Eleventh Sermon On the Nativity of our Lord]:
Quote:‘We cannot as yet contemplate the splendour of him who was begotten of the Father before the Day Star [Ps. cix 3]; let us, then, visit him who was born of the Virgin in the night- hour. We cannot understand how his Name continued before the sun [Ibid. lxxi 17]; let us, then, confess that he hath set his tabernacle in her that is purer than the sun [Ibid. xviii 6]. We cannot as yet see the Only-Begotten Son dwelling in the Father’s Bosom; let us, then, think on the Bridegroom that coming out of his bridechamber [Ibid].We are not yet ready for the banquet of our heavenly Father; let us, then, keep to the Crib of Jesus, our Master
[Isa. i 3].
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| Dom Guéranger: The Mystery of Christmas |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-21-2020, 09:19 AM - Forum: Christmas
- Replies (2)
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THE MYSTERY OF CHRISTMAS
Everything is Mystery in this holy season.The Word of God, whose generation is before the day-star [Ps. cix 3], is born in time – a Child is God – a Virgin becomes a Mother, and remains a Virgin – things divine are commingled with those that are human – and the sublime, the ineffable antithesis, expressed by the Beloved Disciple in those words of his Gospel, THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH, is repeated in a thousand different ways in all the prayers of the Church;- and rightly, for it admirably embodies the whole of the great portent which unites in one Person the nature of Man and the nature of God.
The splendour of this Mystery dazzles the understanding, but it inundates the heart with joy. It is the consummation of the designs of God in time. It is the endless subject of admiration and wonder to the Angels and Saints; nay, is the source and cause of their beatitude. Let us see how the Church offers this Mystery to her children, veiled under the symbolism of her Liturgy.
The four weeks of our preparation are over – they were the image of the four thousand years which preceded the great coming – and we have reached the twenty-fifth day of the month of December, as a long desired place of sweetest rest. But why is it that the celebration of our Saviour’s Birth should be the perpetual privilege of this one fixed day; whilst the whole liturgical Cycle has, every year, to be changed and remodelled, in order to yield that ever-varying day which is to be the feast of his Resurrection – Easter Sunday?
The question is a very natural one, and we find it proposed and answered, even so far back as the fourth century; and that, too, by St Augustine, in his celebrated Epistle to Januarius. The holy Doctor offers this explanation: We solemnize the day of our Saviour’s Birth, in order that we may honour that Birth, which was for our salvation; but the precise day of the week, on which he was born, is void of any mystical signification. Sunday, on the contrary, the day of our Lord’s Resurrection, is the day marked, in the Creator’s designs, to express a mystery which was to be commemorated for all ages. St Isidore of Seville, and the ancient Interpreter of Sacred Rites who, for a long time, was supposed to be the learned Alcuin, have also adopted this explanation of the Bishop of Hippo; and our readers may see their words interpreted by Durandus, in his Rationale.
These writers, then, observe that as, according to a sacred tradition, the creation of man took place on a Friday, and our Saviour suffered death also on a Friday for the redemption of man; that as, moreover, the Resurrection of our Lord was on the third day after his death, that is, on a Sunday, which is the day on which the Light was created, as we learn from the Book of Genesis – ‘the two Solemnities of Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection,’ says St Augustine, ‘do not only remind us of those divine facts; but they moreover represent and signify some other mysterious and holy thing.’ [Epist. ad Januarium.]
And yet we are not to suppose that because the Feast of Jesus’ Birth is not fixed to any particular day of the week, there is no mystery expressed by its being always on the twenty-fifth of December. For firstly we may observe, with the old Liturgists, that the Feast of Christmas is kept by turns on each of the days of the week, that thus its holiness may cleanse and rid them of the curse which Adam’s sin had put upon them. But secondly, the great mystery of the twenty-fifth of December, being the Feast of our Saviour’s Birth, has reference, not to the division of time marked out by God himself, which is called the Week; but to the course of that great Luminary which gives life to the world, because it gives it light and warmth. Jesus, our Saviour, the Light of the World [St John viii 12], was born when the night of idolatry and crime was at its darkest; and the day of his Birth, the twenty-fifth of December, is that on which the material Sun begins to gain his ascendency over the reign of gloomy night, and show to the world his triumph of brightness.
In our ‘Advent’ we showed, after the Holy Fathers, that the diminution of the physical light may be considered as emblematic of those dismal times which preceded the Incarnation. We joined our prayers with those of the people of the Old Testament; and, with our holy Mother the Church, we cried out to the Divine Orient, the Sun of Justice, that he would deign to come and deliver us from the twofold death of body and soul. God has heard our prayers; and it is on the day of the Winter Solstice – which the Pagans of old made so much of by their fears and rejoicings – that he gives us both the increase of the natural light, and him who is the Light of our souls.
St Gregory of Nyssa, St Ambrose, St Maximus of Turin, St Leo, St Bernard, and the principal Liturgists, dwell with complacency on this profound mystery, which the Creator of the universe has willed should mark both the natural and the supernatural world. We shall find the Church also making continual allusion to it during this season of Christmas, as she did in that of Advent.
Quote:‘On this the Day which the Lord hath made,’ says St Gregory of Nyssa, ‘darkness decreases, light increases, and Night is driven back again. No, brethren, it is not by chance, nor by any created will, that this natural change begins on the day when he shows himself in the brightness of his coming, which is the spiritual Life of the world. It is Nature revealing, under this symbol, a secret to them whose eye is quick enough to see it; to them, I mean, who are able to appreciate this circumstance of our Saviour’s coming. Nature seems to me to say: Know, O Man! that under the things which I show thee Mysteries lie concealed. Hast thou not seen the night, that had grown so long, suddenly checked? Learn hence, that the black night of Sin, which had reached its height by the accumulation of every guilty device, is this day stopped in its course. Yes, from this day forward its duration shall be shortened, until at length there shall be naught but Light. Look, I pray thee, on the Sun; and see how his rays are stronger, and his position higher in the heavens: learn from that how the other Light, the Light of the Gospel, is now shedding itself over the whole earth.’ [Homily On the Nativity.]
Let us, my Brethren, rejoice,’ cries out St Augustine: Quote:[Sermon On the Nativity of our Lord, iii] ‘this day is sacred, not because of the visible sun, but because of the Birth of him who is the invisible Creator of the sun. … He chose this day whereon to be born, as he chose the Mother of whom to be born, and he made both the day and the Mother. The day he chose was that on which the light begins to increase, and it tvpifies the work of Christ, who renews our interior man day by day.For the eternal Creator having willed to be born in time, his Birthday would necessarily be in harmony with the rest of his creation.’
The same holy Father, in another sermon for the same Feast, gives us the interpretation of a mysterious expression of St John Baptist, which admirably confirms the tradition of the Church. The great Precursor said on one occasion, when speaking of Christ: Quote:He must increase, but I must decrease [St John iii 30]. These prophetic words signify, in their literal sense, that the Baptist’s mission was at its close, because Jesus was entering upon his. But they convey, as St Augustine assures us, a second meaning: ‘John came into this world at the season of the year when the length of the day decreases; Jesus was born in the season when the length of the day increases.’ [Sermon In Natali Domini, xi]. Thus, there is mystery both in the rising of that glorious Star, the Baptist, at the summer solstice: and in the rising of our Divine Sun in the dark season of winter.
[It is almost unnecessary to add that this doctrine of the Holy Fathers which is embodied in the Christmas Liturgy is not in any degree falsified by the fact that there are some parts of God’s earth where Christmas falls in a season the very opposite of Winter. Our Lord selected, for the place of his Birth, one which made it Winter when he came upon earth; and by that selection he stamped the Mystery taught in the text on the season of darkness and cold. Our brethren in Australia, for example, will have the Mystery without the Winter, when they are keeping Christmas; or, more correctly, their faith and the Holy Liturgy will unite them with us, both in the Winter and the Mystery of the great Birth in Bethlehem. – Translator’s Note.]
There have been men who dared to scoff at Christianity as a superstition, because they discovered that the ancient Pagans used to keep a feast of the sun on the winter solstice! In their shallow erudition they concluded that a Religion could not be divinely instituted, which had certain rites or customs originating in an analogy to certain phenomena of this world: in other words, these writers denied what Revelation asserts, namely, that God only created this world for the sake of his Christ and his Church. The very facts which these enemies of our holy Religion brought forward as objections to the true Faith are, to us Catholics, additional proof of its being worthy of our most devoted love.
Thus, then, have we explained the fundamental Mystery of these Forty Days of Christmas, by having shown the grand secret hidden in the choice made by God’s eternal decree, that the twenty-fifth day of December should be the Birthday of God upon this earth. Let us now respectfully study another mystery: that which is involved in the place where this Birth happened.
This place is Bethlehem. Out of Bethlehem, says the Prophet, shall he come for/h that is to be the Ruler in Israel [Mich. v 2]. The Jewish Priests are well aware of the prophecy, and a few days hence will tell it to Herod [St Matt. ii 5]. But why was this insignificant town chosen in preference to every other to be the birth-place of Jesus? Be attentive, Christians, to the mystery! The name of this City of David signifies the House of Bread: therefore did he, who is the living Bread come down from heaven[St John vi 41], choose it for his first visible home. Our Fathers did eat manna in the desert and are dead [Ibid. vi 49]; but lo! here is the Saviour of the world, come to give life to his creature Man by means of his own divine Flesh, which is meat indeed [Ibid. vi. 56]. Up to this time the Creator and the creature had been separated from each other; henceforth they shall abide together in closest union. The Ark of the Covenant, containing the manna which fed but the body, is now replaced by the Ark of a New Covenant, purer and more incorruptible than the other: the incomparable Virgin Mary, who gives us Jesus, the Bread of Angels, the nourishment which will give us a divine transformation; for this Jesus himself has said: He that eateth my flesh abideth in me, and I in him [Ibid. vi 57].
It is for this divine transformation that the world was in expectation for four thousand years, and for which the Church prepared herself by the four weeks of Advent. It has come at last, and Jesus is about to enter within us, if we will but receive him [Ibid. i 12]. He asks to be united to each one of us in particular, just as he is united by his Incarnation to the whole human race; and for this end he wishes to become our Bread, our spiritual nourishment. His coming into the souls of men at this mystic season has no other aim than this union. He comes not to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by him [Ibid. iii 17], and that all may have life, and may have it more abundantly [Ibid. x 10]. This divine Lover of our souls will not be satisfied, therefore, until he have substituted himself in our place, so that we may live not we ourselves, but he in us; and in order that this mystery may be effected in a sweeter way, it is under the form of an Infant that this Beautiful Fruit of Bethlehem wishes first to enter into us, there to grow afterwards in wisdom and age before God and men [St Luke ii 40, 52].
And when, having thus visited us by his grace and nourished us in his love, he shall have changed us into himself, there shall be accomplished in us a still further mystery. Having become one in spirit and heart with Jesus, the Son of the heavenly Father, we shall also become sons of this same God our Father. The Beloved Disciple, speaking of this our dignity, cries out: Behold! what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be the Sons of God! [St John iii 1]. We will not now stay to consider this immense happiness of the Christian soul, as we shall have a more fitting occasion, further on, to speak of it, and show by what means it is to be maintained and increased.
There is another subject, too, which we regret being obliged to notice only in a passing way. It is, that, from the day itself of our Saviours Birth even to the day of our Lady’s Purification, there is, in the Calendar, an extraordinary richness of Saints’ Feasts, doing homage to the master feast of Bethlehem, and clustering in adoring love round the Crib of the Infant-God. To say nothing of the four great Stars which shine so brightly near our Divine Sun, from whom they borrow all their own grand beauty – St Stephen, St John the Evangelist, the Holy Innocents, and our own St Thomas of Canterbury: what other portion of the Liturgical Year is there that can show within the same number of days so brilliant a constellation?
The Apostolic College contributes its two grand luminaries, St Peter and St Paul: the first in his Chair of Rome; the second in the miracle of his Conversion. The Martyr-host sends us the splendid champions of Christ, Timothy, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Vincent, and Sebastian. The radiant line of Roman Pontiffs lends us four of its glorious links, named Sylvester, Telesphorus, Hyginus and Marcellus. The sublime school of holy Doctors offers us Hilary, John Chrysostom, and Ildephonsus; and in their company stands a fourth Bishop – the amiable Francis de Sales. The Confessor-kingdom is represented by Paul the Hermit, Anthony the conqueror of Satan, Maurus the Apostle of the Cloister, Peter Nolasco the deliverer of captives, and Raymond of Pennafort, the oracle of Canon Law and guide of the consciences of men. The army of defenders of the Church deputes the pious King Canute, who died in defence of our Holy Mother, and Charlemagne, who loved to sign himself ‘the humble champion of the Church.’ The choir of holy Virgins gives us the sweet Agnes, the generous Emerentiana, the invincible Martina. And lastly, from the saintly ranks which stand below the Virgins – the holy Widows – we have Paula, the enthusiastic lover of Jesus’ Crib. Truly, our Christmastide is a glorious festive season! What magnificence in its Calendar! What a banquet for us in its Liturgy!
A word upon the symbolism of the colours used by the Church during this season. [color=#71101d]White is her Christmas Vestment; and she employs this colour at every service from Christmas Day to the Octave of the Epiphany. To honour her two Martyrs, Stephen and Thomas of Canterbury, she vests in red; and to condole with Rachel wailing her murdered Innocents, she puts on purple: but these are the only exceptions. On every other day of the twenty she expresses, by her white Robes, the gladness to which the Angels invited the world, the beauty of our Divine Sun that has risen in Bethlehem, the spotless purity of the Virgin-Mother, and the clean heartedness which they should have who come to worship at the mystic Crib.
During the remaining twenty days, the Church vests in accordance with the Feast she keeps; she varies the colour so as to harmonize either with the red Roses which wreathe a Martyr, or with the white Amaranths which grace her Bishops and her Confessors, or again, with the spotless Lilies which crown her Virgins. On the Sundays which come during this time – unless there occur a Feast requiring red or white or, unless Septuagesima has begun its three mournful weeks of preparation for Lent – the colour of the Vestments is green. This, say the interpreters of the Liturgy, is to teach us that in the Birth of Jesus, who is the flower of the fields [Cant. i 1],we first received the hope of salvation, and that after the bleak winter of heathendom and the Synagogue, there opened the verdant spring-time of grace.
With this we must close our mystical interpretation of those rites which belong to Christmas in general. Our readers will have observed that there are many other sacred and symbolical usages, to which we have not even alluded; but as the mysteries to which they belong are peculiar to certain days, and are not, so to speak, common to this portion of the Liturgical Year, we intend to treat fully of them all, as we meet with them on their proper Feasts.
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| Dom Guéranger: The History of Christmas |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-21-2020, 08:41 AM - Forum: Christmas
- Replies (5)
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THE HISTORY OF CHRISTMAS
We apply the name of Christmas to the forty days which begin with the Nativity of our Lord, December 25, and end with the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, February 2. It is a period which forms a distinct portion of the Liturgical Year, as distinct, by its own special spirit, from every other, as are Advent, Lent, Easter, or Pentecost. One same Mystery is celebrated and kept in view during the whole forty days. Neither the Feasts of the Saints, which so abound during this Season; nor the time of Septuagesima, with its mournful Purple, which often begins before Christmastide is over, seem able to distract our Holy Mother the Church from the immense joy of which she received the good tidings from the Angels [St Luke ii 10] on that glorious Night for which the world had been longing four thousand years. The Faithful will remember that the Liturgy commemorates this long expectation by the four penitential weeks of Advent.
The custom of celebrating the Solemnity of our Saviour’s Nativity by a feast or commemoration of forty days’ duration is founded on the holy Gospel itself; for it tells us that the Blessed Virgin Mary, after spending forty days in the contemplation of the Divine Fruit of her glorious Maternity, went to the Temple, there to fulfil, in most perfect humility, the ceremonies which the Law demanded of the daughters of Israel, when they became mothers.
The Feast of Mary’s Purification is, therefore, part of that of Jesus’ Birth; and the custom of keeping this holy and glorious period of forty days as one continued Festival has every appearance of being a very ancient one, at least in the Roman Church. And firstly, with regard to our Saviour’s Birth on December 25, we have St John Chrysostom telling us, in his Homily for this Feast, that the Western Churches had, from the very commencement of Christianity, kept it on this day. He is not satisfied with merely mentioning the tradition; he undertakes to show that it is well founded, inasmuch as the Church of Rome had every means of knowing the true day of our Saviour’s Birth, since the acts of the Enrolment, taken in Judea by command of Augustus, were kept in the public archives of Rome. The holy Doctor adduces a second argument, which he founds upon the Gospel of St Luke, and he reasons thus: we know from the sacred Scriptures that it must have been in the fast of the seventh month [Lev. xxiii 24 and following verses. The seventh month (or Tisri) corresponded to the end of our September and beginning of our October. -Tr.] that the Priest Zachary had the vision in the Temple; after which Elizabeth, his wife, conceived St John the Baptist: hence it follows that the Blessed Virgin Mary having, as the Evangelist St Luke relates, received the Angel Gabriel’s visit, and conceived the Saviour of the world in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, that is to say, in March, the Birth of Jesus must have taken place in the month of December.
But it was not till the fourth century that the Churches of the East began to keep the Feast of our Saviour’s Birth in the month of December. Up to that period they had kept it at one time on the sixth of January, thus uniting it, under the generic term of Epiphany, with the Manifestation of our Saviour made to the Magi, and in them to the Gentiles; at another time, as Clement of Alexandria tells us, they kept it on the 25th of the month Pachon (May 15), or on the 25th of the month Pharmuth (April 20). St John Chrysostom, in the Homily we have just cited, which he gave in 386, tells us that the Roman custom of celebrating the Birth of our Saviour on December 25 had then only been observed ten years in the Church of Antioch. It is probable that this change had been introduced in obedience to the wishes of the Apostolic See, wishes which received additional weight by the edict of the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian, which appeared towards the close of the fourth century, and decreed that the Nativity and Epiphany of our Lord should be made two distinct Festivals. The only Church that has maintained the custom of celebrating the two mysteries on January 6 is that of Armenia; owing, no doubt, to the circumstance of that country not being under the authority of the Emperors; as also because it was withdrawn at an early period from the influence of Rome by schism and heresy.
The Feast of our Lady’s Purification, with which the forty days of Christmas close, is, in the Latin Church, of very great antiquity; so ancient, indeed, as to preclude the possibility of our fixing the date of its institution. According to the unanimous opinion of Liturgists, it is the most ancient of all the Feasts of the Holy Mother of God; and as her Purification is related in the Gospel itself, they rightly infer that its anniversary was solemnized at the very commencement of Christianity. Of course, this is only to be understood of the Roman Church; for as regards the Oriental Church, we find that this Feast was not definitely fixed to February 2 until the reign of the Emperor Justinian, in the sixth century. It is true that the Eastern Christians had previously to that time a sort of commemoration of this Mystery, but it was far from being a universal custom, and it was kept a few days after the Feast of our Lord’s Nativity, and not on the day itself of Mary’s going up to the Temple.
But what is the characteristic of Christmas in the Latin Liturgy? It is twofold: it is joy, which the whole Church feels at the coming of the divine Word in the Flesh; and it is admiration of that glorious Virgin, who was made the Mother of God. There is scarcely a prayer, or a rite, in the Liturgy of this glad Season, which does not imply these two grand Mysteries: an Infant-God, and a Virgin-Mother.
For example, on all Sundays and Feasts which are not Doubles, the Church, throughout these forty days, makes a commemoration of the fruitful virginity [The Collect, Deus qui salutis aeternae beatae Mariae Virginiate fecunda humano generi, etc.] of the Mother of God, by three special Prayers in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. She begs the suffrage of Mary by proclaiming her quality of Mother of God and her inviolate purity [V. Post partum, Virgo, inviolata permansisti. R. Dei Genitrix, intercede pro nobis.], which remained in her even after she had given birth to her Son. And again the magnificent Anthem, Alma Redemptoris, composed by the Monk Herman Contractus, continues, up to the very day of the Purification, to be the termination of each Canonical Hour. It is by such manifestations of her love and veneration that the Church, honouring the Son in the Mother, testifies her holy joy during this season of the Liturgical Year, which we call Christmas.
Our readers are aware that, when Easter Sunday falls at its latest – that is, in April – the Ecclesiastical Calendar counts as many as six Sundays after the Epiphany. Christmastide (that is, the forty days between Christmas Day and the Purification) includes sometimes four out of these six Sundays; frequently only two; and some times only one, as in the case when Easter comes so early as to necessitate keeping Septuagesima, and even Sexagesima Sunday, in January. Still, nothing is changed, as we have already said, in the ritual observances of this joyous season, excepting only that on those two Sundays, the fore-runners of Lent, the Vestments are purple, and the Gloria in excelsis is omitted.
Although our holy Mother the Church honours with especial devotion the Mystery of the Divine Infancy during the whole season of Christmas; yet, she is obliged to introduce into the Liturgy of this same season passages from the holy Gospels which seem premature, inasmuch as they relate to the active life of Jesus. This is owing to there being less than six months allotted by the Calendar for the celebration of the entire work of our Redemption: in other words, Christmas and Easter are so near each other, even when Easter is as late as it can be, that Mysteries must of necessity be crowded into the interval; and this entails anticipation. And yet the Liturgy never loses sight of the Divine Babe and his incomparable Mother, and never tires in their praises, during the whole period from the Nativity to the day when Mary comes to the Temple to present her Jesus.
The Greeks, too, make frequent commemorations of the Maternity of Mary in their Offices of this Season: but they have a special veneration for the twelve days between Christmas Day and the Epiphany, which, in their Liturgy, are called the Dodecameron. During this time they observe no days of Abstinence from flesh-meat; and the Emperors of the East had, out of respect for the great Mystery, decreed that no servile work should be done, and that the Courts of Law should be closed, until after January 6.
From this outline of the history of the holy season, we can understand what is the characteristic of this second portion of the Liturgical Year, which we call Christmas, and which has ever been a season most dear to the Christian world. What are the Mysteries embodied in its Liturgy will be shown in the following chapter.
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| The Two Advents of Our Lord Jesus Christ by Blessed Jacobus of Voragine |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-21-2020, 08:31 AM - Forum: Advent
- Replies (2)
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The Two Advents of Our Lord Jesus Christ
by Blessed Jacobus of Voragine [Author of The Golden Legend]
The Advent of Our Lord is celebrated for four weeks to signify that His coming is fourfold: He came to us in the flesh, He comes into our hearts, He comes to us at death, and He will come at the Last Judgment. The fourth week is not completed, because the glory of the elect to be bestowed at the last coming of Our Lord will never end.
While the coming of Our Lord is fourfold, the Church turns especially to two of them, the coming of Our Lord in the flesh and His coming at the Last Judgment. Thus, the Advent fast is in part a fast of rejoicing because of Christ's coming in the flesh, the Incarnation; at the same time it is in part a fast of contrition, looking to the supreme coming of Christ at the Last Judgment.
I - Regarding Our Lord's coming in the flesh, two things should be considered: how it is opportune and how it is useful.
The first coming of Our Lord should give us joy
1. It is opportune first, because man, condemned by nature to have an incomplete knowledge of God, had fallen into the worst errors of idolatry and was reduced to cry out, "Enlighten my eyes."' Second, Our Lord came in the fullness of time as St. Paul says in the Epistle to the Galatians. Third, He came when the entire world was sick, as St. Augustine says: "The great Physician came when mankind was lying ill through the whole world."
This is why the Church, in the seven antiphons sung before the Lord's Nativity, remembers the different kinds of illnesses and how opportune this divine remedy is. Before the Son of God came in the flesh, we were ignorant and blind, subject to eternal punishment, slaves of the devil, shackled by our sinful habits, enveloped in darkness, exiled from our true motherland. This is why those antiphons proclaim Our Lord as our Master, our Redeemer, our Liberator, our Guide, our Enlightener and our Savior.
2. Regarding the usefulness of the coming of Christ, diverse authorities define it in different ways. Jesus Christ Himself in the Gospel of St. Luke tells us that He came for seven reasons: to console the poor, to cure the afflicted, to liberate the captives, to enlighten the ignorant, to forgive the sinners, to redeem the human genre and to recompense each one according to his merits. And St. Bernard says: “We suffer from a threefold illness: We are easy to seduce, slow to act and weak to resist. Hence the coming of Our Lord is necessary first to enlighten our blindness and second to help our weakness.”
II - Regarding the second coming, that is, the Last Judgment, we should consider the circumstances
that will precede it and those that will accompany it.
The second coming of Our Lord for the Final Judgement should raise our contrition
1. Three kinds of circumstances will precede the Last Judgment: terrible signs, the imposture of the Antichrist, and an immense fire on the earth.
A. Five types of signs will precede the Last Judgment for, as St. Luke says: “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars; on the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. (21:25) We can find a commentary on all these things in the Apocalypse.
St. Jerome, in his turn, found 15 signs preceding the Last Judgment in the annals of the Hebrews:
On the first day, the ocean will rise above the mountains and will stand upright, immobile like a wall;
On the second day, the ocean will sink so low that one will barely be able to see it;
On the third day, sea monsters will appear on the waves and will utter roars that will rise up to heaven;
On the fourth day, the water in the ocean will boil;
On the fifth day, the trees and all plants will exude a dew of blood;
On the sixth day, all the buildings will fall down;
On the seventh day, the stones will break into four pieces, which will clash against one another;
On the eighth day, a universal earthquake will lay every man and animal low on the ground;
On the ninth day, the earth will be leveled and the mountains and hills will be reduced to dust;
On the tenth day, men will leave their hidden places and wander like madmen, without being able to speak to each other;
On the eleventh day, the bones of the dead will come out of their graves;
On the twelfth day, the stars will fall from the firmament;
On the thirteenth day, all living beings will die to be resurrected afterwards with the dead;
On the fourteenth day, the sky and earth will burn;
On the fifteenth day, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and all will be resurrected.
B. The Last Judgment will be preceded by the imposture of the Antichrist, who will try to deceive men in four ways:
- By a false interpretation of the Scriptures trying to prove that he is the promised Messiah;
- By the working of miracles;
- By the distribution of gifts;
- By the infliction of tortures.
C. The Last Judgment will be preceded by a violent fire, lit by God himself to renew the world, to punish the reprobate and to bring attention to the group of the elect.
![[Image: dWNrZXIuanBn]](https://imgs.search.brave.com/XN4AEU2JzIctqd3g2NYis9061CkOzMmYwIlExXap3ws/rs:fit:736:900:1/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWFn/ZXMuZmluZWFydGFt/ZXJpY2EuY29tL2lt/YWdlcy1tZWRpdW0t/bGFyZ2UtNS90aGUt/YW5nZWwtcHJvY2xh/aW1pbmctdGhlLWVu/ZC1vZi10aW1lLWph/bWVzLWp1c3R1cy10/dWNrZXIuanBn)
The Angel will announce the signs of the end
2. Regarding the circumstances that will accompany the Last Judgment, the first to be named is the separation of the good from the evil ones. For it is known that the Judge will come in the Valley of Josaphat and place the good at His right and evil ones at His left. This does not signify, as St. Jerome observes, that all men will have to be in that small valley, but only that it will be the center of the Judgment. This does not exclude that God, if He so desires, may place in that space an infinite number of men [since their resurrected bodies will no longer take up space].
Next comes the question of knowing the categories into which men will be divided when the Final Judgment comes. St. Gregory admits four categories: two for the reprobates and two for the elect. Among the reprobates will be those who will be condemned and those who were already condemned, about whom it was said: “The one who does not believe, will be judged previously.” Among the elect will be those who will judge the others sitting alongside the Judge.
At the Final Judgment the signs of the Passion will be present: the Cross, the instruments of the Passion and His scars; St John Chrysostom says that “The Cross and His scars will be more brilliant than the rays of the sun.”
The Judge will be inflexibly severe. He will bend neither from fear, since He is Almighty, nor from gifts, because He is richness itself, nor from hatred because He is goodness itself, nor from love because He is justice itself, nor from error because He is wisdom itself. Against this Wisdom neither the allegations of lawyers, nor the sophisms of philosophers, nor the phrases of orators, nor the ruses of hypocrites will prevail.
The Judge will be as severe as the prosecutor will be implacable. In other words, the sinner will face three prosecutors: the Devil, sin and the entire world, because, as St. Chrysostom says: “On that day, sky and earth, water, sun and moon, day and night, the whole world will raise against us before God, in testimony of our sins.”
Three witnesses will also testify against us, all three infallible: First, God, who said to us through the voice of Jeremy: “I am at the same time judge and witness;” second, our conscience, and third, our guardian Angel, for we read in the book of Job: “Heavens (that is, the Angels) will reveal his iniquity.”
Finally, the sentence will be irrevocable. Indeed, the sentence is irrevocable for three reasons: the excellence of the Judge, the evidence of the crime; the impossibility of reversing the chastisement. For in the sentence pronounced against us in the Last Judgment, there will be no King, Emperor or Pope to whom we can appeal the judgment pronounced against us.
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| Fourth Week of Advent |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-21-2020, 08:13 AM - Forum: Advent
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Monday of the Fourth Week of Advent
Prope est jam Dominus; venite, adoremus.
The Lord is now nigh; come, let us adore.
Quote:De Isaia Propheta. Cap. xli.
Et tu, Israël, serve meus, Jacob quem elegi, semen Abraham amici mei: in quo apprehendi te ab extremis terræ, et a longinquis ejus vocavi te, et dixi tibi: Servus meus es tu, elegi te, et non abjeci te. Ne timeas, quia ego tecum sum; ne declines, quia ego Deus tuus; confortavi te, et auxiliatus sum tibi, et suscepit te dextera Justi mei. Ecce confundentur et erubescent omnes qui pugnant adversum te; erunt quasi non sint, et peribunt viri qui contradicunt tibi. Quæres eos, et non invenies, viros rebelles tuos; erunt quasi non sint, et veluti consumptio homines bellantes adversum te. Quia ego Dominus Deus tuus, apprehendens manum tuam, dicensque tibi: Ne timeas; ego adjuvi te. Noli timere, vermis Jacob, qui mortui estis ex Israël; ego auxiliatus sum tibi, dicit Dominus, et redemptor tuus Sanctus Israël. Ego posui te quasi plaustrum triturans novum, habens rostra serrantia; triturabis montes, et comminues, et colles quasi pulverem pones. Ventilabis eos, et ventus tollet, et turbo disperget eos; et tu exsultabis in Domino, in Sancto Israel laetaberis.
From the Prophet Isaias. Ch. xli.
But thou Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend: In whom I have taken thee from the ends of the earth, and from the remote parts thereof have called thee, and said to thee: Thou art my servant, I have chosen thee, and have not cast thee away. Fear not, for I am with thee: turn not aside, for I am thy God: I have strengthened thee, and have helped thee, and the right hand of my just one hath upheld thee. Behold all that fight against thee shall be confounded and ashamed, they shall be as nothing, and the men shall perish that strive against thee. Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find the men that resist thee: they shall be as nothing: and as a thing consumed the men that war against thee. For I am the Lord thy God, who take thee by the hand, and say to thee: Fear not, I have helped thee. Fear not, thou worm of Jacob, you that are dead of Israel: I have helped thee, saith the Lord: and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel. I have made thee as a new thrashing wain, with teeth like a saw: thou shall thrash the mountains, and break them in pieces: and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them: and thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, in the Holy One of Israel thou shalt be joyful.
It is thus thou raisest us up from our abject lowliness, O Eternal Son of the Father! It is thus thou consolest us under the fear we so justly feel by reason of our sins. Thou sayest to us: Israel, my servant! Jacob, whom I have chosen! seed of Abraham, in whom I have called thee from the remote parts of the earth! fear not, for I am with thee. But O divine Word, how low thou hast had to come, that thou mightest be thus with us! We could never have come to thee, for between us and thee there was fixed an immense chaos. Nay, we had not so much as the desire to see thee, so dull of heart had sin made us; and had we desired it, our eyes could never have borne the splendor of thy majesty.
Then it was that thou didst descend to us in person, yet so that our weakness could look fixedly upon thee, because veiled under the cloud of thy humanity. “Who could doubt,” says St. Bernard, “of there being some great cause pending, seeing that so great a Majesty deigned to come down, from so far off, into so unworthy a place? Oh yes, there is some great thing at stake, for the mercy is great, and the commiseration is extreme, and the charity is abundant. And why, think you, did he come? He came from the mountain to seek the hundredth sheep that was lost.
![[Image: ?u=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F_INe...f=1&nofb=1]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F_INeOZkUzSgY%2FS8tiQSBQsiI%2FAAAAAAAANXk%2Fc8zYwJxGkR0%2Fs640%2FJesus0William_Dyce_Good_Shepherd.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)
O wonderful condescension, a God seeking! O wonderful worth of man, that he should be sought by God! If man should therefore boast, he is surely not unwise; for he boasts not for aught that he sees in himself as of himself, but for his very Maker making such account of him. All the riches and all the glory of the world, and all that men covet in it, all is less than this glory, nay, is nothing, when compared to it. What is man, O Lord, that thou shouldst magnify him? or why dost thou set thy Heart upon him?” Delay not, then, Good Shepherd! show thyself to thy sheep. Thou knowest them; not only hast thou seen them from heaven, thou also lookest on them with love, from the womb of Mary where thou still art concealed. They also wish to know Thee; they are impatient to behold thy divine features, to hear thy voice, and to follow thee to the pastures thou hast promised them.
Hymn for the Time of Advent
(Composed by St. Ambrose. It is in the Ambrosian Breviary, for the Sixth Sunday of Advent)
It is a Mystery of the Church, it is a Hymn that we sing to Christ, the Word of the Father, become the Son of a Virgin.
Among women, thou alone, O Mary! wast chosen in this world, and wast made worthy to carry in thy holy womb Him who was thy Lord.
This is a great mystery, that is given to Mary: that she should see the God, who created all things, become her own child!
How truly art thou full of grace, ever glorious Virgin! for of thee is born the Christ, by whom all things were made.
Come then, ye people, let us pray to the Virgin Mother of God, that she would obtain for us peace and indulgent mercy.
Glory be to thee, O Lord, who was born of the Virgin! and to the Father and the Holy Ghost, for everlasting ages.
Amen.
Prayer From the Ambrosian Missal
(In the Mass of the Fifth Sunday of Advent)
O God, who, seeing man fallen a prey to death, didst resolve to redeem him by the Coming of thine Only Begotten Son; grant, we beseech thee, that they who confess his glorious Resurrection, may deserve to be forever with their Redeemer. Who with thee, liveth and reigneth forever. Amen
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| December 21st - St. Thomas the Apostle |
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Posted by: Stone - 12-21-2020, 07:48 AM - Forum: December
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December 21 – Saint Thomas, Apostle
Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Gueranger (1841-1875)
The Church announces to us today, in her Office of Lauds, these solemn words:
Nolite timere: quinta enim die veniet ad vos Dominus noster.
Fear not: for on the fifth day, our Lord will come to you.
This is the last Feast the Church keeps before the great one of the Nativity of her Lord and Spouse. She interrupts the Greater Ferias in order to pay her tribute of honor to Thomas, the Apostle of Christ, whose glorious martyrdom has consecrated this twenty-first day of December, and has procured for the Christian people a powerful patron that will introduce them to the divine Babe of Bethlehem. To none of the Apostles could this day have been so fittingly assigned as to St. Thomas. It was St. Thomas whom we needed; St. Thomas, whose festal patronage would aid us to believe and hope in that God whom we see not, and who comes to us in silence and humility in order to try our Faith. St. Thomas was once guilty of doubting, when he ought to have believed; and only learned the necessity of Faith by the sad experience of incredulity: he comes then most appropriately to defend us, by the power of his example and prayers, against the temptations which proud human reason might excite within us. Let us pray to him with confidence. In that heaven of Light and Vision, where his repentance and love have placed him, he will intercede for us and gain for us that docility of mind and heart which will enable us to see and recognize Him who is the Expected of Nations and who, though the King of the world, will give no other signs of his majesty than the swaddling clothes and tears of a Babe. But let us first read the Acts of our holy Apostle. The Church has deemed it prudent to give us them in an exceedingly abridged form, which contains only the most reliable facts, gathered from authentic sources; and thus, she excludes all those details which have no historic authority.
Quote:Thomas the Apostle, who was also named Didymus, was a Galilean. After he had received the Holy Ghost, he travelled through many provinces, preaching the Gospel of Christ. He taught the principles of Christian faith and practice to the Parthians, Medes, Persians, Hircanians, and Bactrians. He finally went to the Indies, and instructed the inhabitants of those countries in the Christian religion. Up to the last, he gained for himself the esteem of all men by the holiness of his life and teaching, and by the wonderful miracles he wrought. He stirred up, also, in their hearts, the love of Jesus Christ. The King of those parts, a worshipper of idols, was, on the contrary, only the more irritated by all these things. He condemned the Saint to be pierced to death by javelins: which punishment was inflicted at Calamina, and gave Thomas the highest honour of his Apostolate, the crown of martyrdom.
The Great Antiphon of St. Thomas
O Thoma! Didyme! qui Christum meruisti cernere; te precibus rogamus altisonis, succurre nobis miseris; ne damnemur cum impiis, in Adventu Judicis.
Oremus.
Da nobis, quæsumus, Domine, beati Apostoli tui Thomæ solemnitatibus gloriari: ut ejus semper et patrociniis sublevemur, et Fidem congrua devotione sectemur. Per Dominum, &c. Amen.
O Thomas! Didymus! who didst merit to see Christ; we beseech thee, by most earnest supplication, help us miserable sinners, lest we be condemned with the ungodly, at the Coming of the Judge.
Let Us Pray.
Grant, O Lord, we beseech thee, that we may rejoice on the solemnity of thy blessed Apostle, Thomas; to the end that we may always have the assistance of his prayers, and zealously profess the faith he taught. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The following Prayer is from the Matins of the Gothic, or Mozarabic, Breviary.
Domine Jesu Christe, qui posuisti in capite Martyris tui Thomae Apostoli coronam de lapide pretioso, fundamento fundatam; ut non confundatur, quia te credidit; coronetur, quia pro te animam posuit: sit ergo intercessionibus ejus in nobis famulis tuis fides vera, qua te etiam coram persecutoribus promptissima devotione confiteamur: quatenus interveniente tanto martyre, coram te et Angelis tuis minime confundamur. Amen.
O Lord Jesus Christ, who hast placed on the head of thy Martyr, Thomas the Apostle, a crown made of that precious stone, that is founded in the foundation; that so he might not be confounded, because he believed in thee; nor be uncrowned, because he laid down his life for thee; may there be, by his intercession, in us thy servants, that true Faith, whereby we may confess thee with most ready hearts before persecutors: that thus, by the same great Martyr’s intercession, we may not be confounded before thee and thy Angels. Amen.
The Greek Church celebrates, with her usual solemnity, the Feast of St. Thomas; but she keeps it on the sixth of October. We extract the following stanzas from her Hymns.
HYMN OF ST. THOMAS
{Taken from the Menoea of the Greeks,)
Domini palpato latere, bonorum assecutus es summitatem; nam velut spongia hinc hausisti latices, fontem bonorum, aeternamque potasti vitam, mentibus expellens ignorantiam, divinaque Dei cognitionis dogmata scaturire faciens.Tua incredulitate et tua fide stabilisti tentatos, nunciare incipiens omni creaturae Deum ac Dominum, carne pro nobis in terris indutum, crucem mortemque subeuntem, clavis perforatum, cujus lancea latus apertum, ex quo vitam haurimus.
Indorum omnem terram fulgere fecisti, sacratissime, ac Deum videns Apostole! Quum enim illuminasses filios luminis et diei, horum, in Spiritu, sapiens, idolica evertisti templa, et sublimasti os in charitate Dei, ad laudem et gloriam Ecclesiae, beate intercessor pro animabus nostris.
Divina videns, Christi Sapientiae spiritualis demonstratus es crater mysticus, O Thoma Apostole, in quem fidelium animae laetantur, et Spiritus sagena populos eruisti ex abysso ignorantiae: unde ex Sion sicut fluvius devenisti charitatis, tua divina scaturire faciens dogmata in omnem creaturam. Christi passionis imitatus, latere pro ipso perforatus, induisti immortalitatem: illum deprecare misereri animabus nostris.
When thy hand touched Jesus’ side, thou didst find the perfection of good things; for, as a mystic sponge, thou didst thence imbibe the water of life, the fount of all that is good, and didst drink in everlasting life; whereby thou didst cleanse men’s minds from ignorance, giving them to drink of the divine dogmas of the knowledge of God.Thou didst, by thine own incredulity and thy after-faith, confirm such as were tempted: for thou didst proclaim to all men, how He, that is thy Lord and thy God, became incarnate on this earth for us, was nailed to the Cross and suffered death, and had his side opened with a spear, whence we draw life.
Thou didst make all the Indies shine with much light, O most holy Apostle, thou contemplator of the Divinity! For after thou hadst enlightened these people, and made them to be children of the light and day, thou, by the Spirit of God, didst wisely overthrow the temples of their idols, and didst elevate the people to the love of God, making them an honour and a glory to the Church, O thou that helpest us by thy intercession!
By the vision thou hadst of divine things, thou becamest, O Apostle Thomas! the mystic cup of the Wisdom of Christ, which gives joy to the souls of the faithful. Thou wast the spiritual net, drawing men from the sea of ignorance. Hence is it, that thou camest from Sion as a stream of charity, watering the world with the divine dogmas. Thou didst imitate the passion of Jesus, thou wast pierced in thy side, thou hast put on immortality. Pray to God, that he have mercy on our souls.
![[Image: Peter_Paul_Rubens_-_Martyrdom_of_St_Thom...1024&ssl=1]](https://i1.wp.com/sensusfidelium.us/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Peter_Paul_Rubens_-_Martyrdom_of_St_Thomas.jpg?resize=702%2C1024&ssl=1)
O glorious Apostle Thomas! who didst lead to Christ so many unbelieving nations, hear now the prayers of the faithful, who beseech thee to lead them to that same Jesus, who, in five days, will have shown himself to his Church. That we may merit to appear in his divine presence, we need, before all other graces, the light which leads to him. That light is Faith; then, pray that we may have Faith. Heretofore, our Saviour had compassion on thy weakness, and deigned to remove from thee the doubt of his having risen from the grave; pray to him for us, that he will mercifully come to our assistance, and make himself felt by our heart. We ask not, O holy Apostle, to see him with the eyes of our body, but with those of our faith, for he said to thee, when he showed himself to thee: Blessed are they who have not seen, and have believed! Of this happy number, we desire to be. We beseech thee, therefore, pray that we may obtain the Faith of the heart and will, that so, when we behold the divine Infant wrapped in swaddling-clothes and laid in a manger, we may cry out: My Lord! and my God! Pray, O holy Apostle, for the nations thou didst evangelise, but which have fallen back again into the shades of death. May the day soon come, when the Sun of Justice will once more shine upon them. Bless the efforts of those apostolic men, who have devoted their labours and their very lives to the work of the Missions; pray that the days of darkness may be shortened, and that the countries, which were watered by thy blood, may at length see that kingdom of God established amongst them, which thou didst preach to them, and for which we also are in waiting.
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| January 31st - St. John Bosco |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-20-2020, 04:29 PM - Forum: January
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Saint John Bosco
Founder
(1815-1888)
Saint John Bosco accomplished what many people considered an impossibility; he walked through the streets of Turin, Italy, looking for the dirtiest, roughest urchins he could find, then made good men of them. His extraordinary success can be summed up in the words of his patron Saint, Francis de Sales: The measure of his love was that he loved without measure.
John's knowledge of poverty was firsthand. He was born in 1815 in the village of Becchi in the Piedmont district of northern Italy, and reared on his parents' small farm. When his father died, Margaret Bosco and her three sons found it harder than ever to support themselves, and while John was still a small boy he had to join his brothers in the farm work. Although his life was hard, he was a happy, imaginative child. Even as a boy, John found innocent fun compatible with religion. To amuse his friends he learned how to juggle and walk a tightrope; but he would entertain them only on condition that each performance begin and end with a prayer.
As he grew older, John began to think of becoming a priest, but poverty and lack of education made this seem impossible. A kindly priest recognized his intelligence, however, and gave him his first encouragement, teaching him to read and write. By taking odd jobs in the village, and through the help of his mother and some charitable neighbors, John managed to get through school and find admittance to the diocesan seminary of nearby Turin. As a seminarian he devoted his spare time to looking after the ragamuffins who roamed the slums of the city. Every Sunday he taught them catechism, supervised their games and entertained them with stories and tricks; before long his kindness had won their confidence, and his Sunday School became a ritual with them.
After his ordination in 1841, he became assistant to the chaplain of an orphanage at Valocco, on the outskirts of Turin. This position was short-lived, for when he insisted that his Sunday-school boys be allowed to play on the orphanage grounds, they were turned away, and he resigned. He began looking for a permanent home for them, but no decent neighborhood would accept the noisy crowd. At last, in a rather tumbledown section of the city, where no one was likely to protest, the first oratory was established and named for Saint Francis de Sales. At first the boys attended school elsewhere, but as more teachers volunteered their time, classes were held at the house. Enrollment increased so rapidly that by 1849 there were three oratories in various places in the city.
For a long time Don Bosco had considered founding an Order to carry on his work, and this idea was supported by a notoriously anticlerical cabinet minister named Rattazzi. Rattazzi had seen the results of his work, and although an Italian law forbade the founding of religious communities at that time, he promised government support. The founder-priest went to Rome in 1858 and, at the suggestion of Pope Pius IX, drew up a Rule for his community, the Society of Saint Francis de Sales (Salesians). Four years later he founded an Order for women, theDaughters of Mary, Help of Christians, to care for abandoned girls. Finally, to supplement the work of both congregations, he organized an association of lay people interested in aiding their work.
Exhausted from touring Europe to raise funds for a new church in Rome, Don Bosco died on January 31, 1888. He was canonized in 1934 by Pope Pius XI. The work of John Bosco continues today in over a thousand Salesian oratories throughout the world. No modern Saint has captured the heart of the world more rapidly than this smiling peasant-priest from Turin, who believed that to give complete trust and love is the most effective way to nourish virtue in others.
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| January 30th - St. Martina |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-20-2020, 04:26 PM - Forum: January
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Saint Martina
Martyr
(† 226)
Saint Martina, a Roman virgin, was the child of a noble Christian consul, of whom it was said that he was extremely merciful towards the poor, and very zealous for faith in the Most Holy Trinity. His daughter lost both her parents while she was still very young, and for love of Christ she distributed all she inherited to the poor, that she might be more free to hasten towards martyrdom, during the persecution which had recently begun.
Under the emperor Alexander Severus she was discovered in a church one day by three officers of a search party, and commanded to follow them to a temple of Apollo. She cheerfully agreed, saying she would do so after praying for a short time and taking leave of her bishop. The officers reported their important capture to the emperor, believing she would readily renounce her faith. But when he ordered her to speak, she replied that she would sacrifice to none other than the true God, and never to idols, the handiwork of men. She was tortured by iron hooks, but her executioners were thrown to the ground amid a great light as she prayed, and arose converted, like Saint Paul, to the Christian faith.
She was tormented again the following day before the emperor, cruelly scourged while attached by her hands and feet to posts. When, one day later, she was taken to a temple of Diana, the demon left amid horrible screams. Fire from heaven fell and burnt the idol, which in tumbling crushed many of its priests and pagan worshipers. Saint Martina, after suffering other tortures and being spared by an enraged lion and a fiery furnace, was finally beheaded. Her death occurred on January 1st during the fourth year of Alexander Severus.
Her relics were found in 1634, during the papacy of Urban VIII, near the Mamertine Prison, with those of several other martyrs. All were placed in a beautiful church dedicated to Saint Martina in the Roman Forum. Urban VIII spared no efforts in promoting her veneration; and through his solicitude the Office was enhanced with hymns for Matins and Lauds. In these we read that her soul rose to heaven, where she was seen afterwards upon a royal throne, while the Blessed sang praises to God.
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| January 29th - St. Francis de Sales |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-20-2020, 04:24 PM - Forum: January
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Saint Francis de Sales
Bishop, Doctor of the Church
(1567-1622)
Saint Francis de Sales was born in 1567 near Annecy, of noble and pious parents, and studied with brilliant success at Paris and Padua. On his return from Italy he gave up the grand career which his father had destined for him in the service of the state, and became a priest.
When the duke of Savoy resolved to restore the shattered Church in the Chablais, Francis offered himself for the work and set out on foot with his Bible and breviary, accompanied by one companion, his cousin Louis of Sales. It was a work of toil, privation and danger. Every door and every heart was closed against him. He was rejected with insult and threatened with death, but nothing could daunt him or resist him indefinitely. And before long the Church blossomed into a second spring. It is said that he converted 72,000 Calvinists.
He was compelled by the Pope to become Coadjutor Bishop of Geneva, and succeeded to that see in 1602. Saint Vincent de Paul said of him, in praise of his gentleness, How good God must be, since the bishop of Geneva, His minister, is so good! At times the great meekness with which he received heretics and sinners almost scandalized his friends, and they protested when he received insults in silence. One of them said to him, Francis of Sales will go to Paradise, of course; but I am not so sure about the Bishop of Geneva: I am almost afraid his gentleness will play him a shrewd turn! Ah, said the Saint, you would have me lose in one instant all the meekness I have been able to acquire by twenty years of efforts? I would rather account to God for too great gentleness than for too great severity. God the Father is the Father of mercy; God the Son is a Lamb; God the Holy Ghost is a Dove; are you wiser than God? When a hostile visitor said to him one day, If I were to strike you on the cheek, what would you do? Saint Francis answered, with his customary humility, Ah! I know what I should do, but I cannot be sure of what I would do.
With Saint Jane Frances of Chantal, Saint Francis founded at Annecy the Order of the Visitation nuns, which soon spread over Europe. Though poor, he refused provisions and dignities, and even the great see of Paris. He died at Avignon in 1622.
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| January 28th - St. Peter Nolasco |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-20-2020, 04:23 PM - Forum: January
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Saint Peter Nolasco
Founder
(1189-1256)
In the early thirteenth century the Moors still held much of Spain, and in sudden raids from the sea they carried off thousands of Christians, holding them as slaves in Granada and in their citadels along the African coast. A hero of these unfortunates was Saint Peter Nolasco, born about the year 1189 near Carcassonne in France. When he went to Barcelona to escape the heresy then rampant in southern France, he consecrated the fortune he had inherited to the redemption of the captives taken on the seas by the Saracens. He was obsessed with the thought of their suffering, and desired to sell his own person to deliver his brethren and take their chains upon himself. God made it known to him how agreeable that desire was to Him.
Because of these large sums of money he expended, Peter became penniless. He was without resources and powerless, when the Blessed Virgin appeared to him and said to him: Find for Me other men like yourself, an army of brave, generous, unselfish men, and send them into the lands where the children of the Faith are suffering. Peter went at once to Saint Raymond of Pennafort, his confessor, who had had a similar revelation and used his influence with King James I of Aragon and with Berengarius, Archbishop of Barcelona, to obtain approbation and support for the new community. On August 10, 1218, Peter and two companions were received as the first members of the Order of Our Lady of Ransom, dedicated to the recovery of Christian captives. To the three traditional vows of religion, its members joined a fourth, that of delivering their own persons to the overlords, if necessary, to ransom Christians.
The Order spread rapidly. Peter and his comrades traveled throughout Christian Spain, recruiting new members and collecting funds to purchase the captives. Then they began negotiations with the slave-owners. They penetrated Andalusia, crossed the sea to Tunis and Morocco, and brought home cargo after cargo of Christians. Although Peter, as General of the Order, was occupied with its organization and administration, he made two trips to Africa where, besides liberating captives, he converted many Moors. He died after a long illness on Christmas night of 1256; he was canonized by Pope Urban VIII in 1628. His Order continues its religious services, now devoted to preaching and hospital service.
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| January 27th - St. John Chrysostom |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-20-2020, 04:21 PM - Forum: January
- Replies (1)
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Saint John Chrysostom
Bishop of Constantinople, Doctor of the Church
(344-407)
Saint John Chrysostom, born in Antioch in 344, was endowed with a superior genius strengthened by a brilliant education. In order to break with a world which admired and courted him, in 374 he retired for six years to a neighboring mountain, having found Christ through his friendship with Saint Basil. After acquiring the art of Christian silence, he returned to Antioch and there labored as a priest under the direction of its bishop. His eloquence was such that the entire city, up to a hundred thousand listeners, came to hear him, a young man not yet thirty years old. He fled this popularity and adopted the monastic life for fourteen years, until he was taken forcibly to Constantinople, to be consecrated Patriarch of the imperial city in 398.
The effect of his sermons was everywhere marvelous. He converted a large number of pagans and heretics by his eloquence, then in its most brilliant luster, and constantly exhorted his Catholic people to frequent the Holy Sacrifice. In order to remove all excuse for absence he abbreviated the long liturgy then in use. Saint Nilus relates that Saint John Chrysostom, when the priest began the Holy Sacrifice, very often saw many of the Blessed coming down from heaven in shining garments, eyes intent, and bowed heads, in utter stillness and silence, assisting at the consummation of the tremendous mystery.
Beloved as he was in Constantinople, his denunciations of vice made him numerous enemies. In 403 these procured his banishment; and although he was almost immediately recalled, it was not more than a reprieve. In 404 he was banished to Cucusus in the deserts of the Taurus mountains. His reply to the hostile empress was: Chrysostom fears only one thing — not exile, prison, poverty or death — but sin.
In 407, at sixty-three years old his strength was waning, but his enemies were impatient and transported him to Pytius on the Euxine, a rough journey of nearly 400 miles. He was assiduously exposed to every hardship — cold, wet clothing, and semi-starvation, but nothing could overcome his cheerfulness and his consideration for others. On the journey his sickness increased, and he was warned that his end was near. Thereupon, exchanging his travel-stained clothes for white garments, he received Viaticum, and with his customary words, Glory be to God for all things. Amen, passed to Christ. He does not have the title of martyrdom, but possesses all its merit and all its glory. He is the author of the famous words characterizing Saint Paul, object of his admiration and love: The heart of Paul was the Heart of Christ.
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| January 26th - St. Polycarp |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-20-2020, 04:20 PM - Forum: January
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Saint Polycarp
Bishop, Martyr
(70-167)
Saint Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, was a disciple of Saint John. He wrote to the Philippians, exhorting them to mutual love and to hatred of heresy. When the apostate Marcion met Saint Polycarp at Rome, he asked the aged Saint if he knew him. Yes, Saint Polycarp answered, I know you for the first-born of Satan. These were the words of a Saint, most loving and most charitable, and specially noted for his compassion to sinners. He abhorred heresy, because he loved God and man so well.
In 167 persecution broke out in Smyrna. When Polycarp heard that his pursuers were at the door, he said, The Will of God be done; and meeting them, he begged to be left alone for a little time, which he spent in prayer for the Catholic Church throughout the world. He was brought to Smyrna early on Holy Saturday; and as he entered, a voice was heard from heaven, Polycarp, be strong. When the proconsul urged him to curse Christ and go free, Polycarp answered, Eighty-six years I have served Him, and He never did me wrong; how can I blaspheme my King and Saviour? When he threatened him with fire, Polycarp told him this fire of his lasted but a short time, while the fire prepared for the wicked lasted forever.
At the stake he thanked God aloud for letting him drink of Christ's chalice. The fire was lighted, but it did him no harm; therefore he was stabbed to the heart, and his dead body was burnt. Then, say the writers of his acts, we took up the bones, more precious than the richest jewels or gold, and deposited them in a fitting place, at which may God grant us to assemble with joy, to celebrate the birthday of the martyr to his life in heaven!
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| January 25th - The Conversion of St. Paul |
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Posted by: Elizabeth - 12-20-2020, 04:19 PM - Forum: January
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The Conversion of Saint Paul
Apostle to the Gentiles
(36 A.D.)
The great Apostle Paul, named Saul at his circumcision, was born in Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia, and was by that privilege a Roman citizen, to which quality a great distinction and several exemptions were granted by the laws of the Empire. He was early instructed in the strict observance of the Mosaic law, and lived up to it in the most scrupulous manner. In his zeal for the Jewish law, which he believed to be the divine Cause of God, he became a violent persecutor of the Christians. He was one of those who combined to murder Saint Stephen, and then he presided in the violent persecution of the faithful which followed the holy deacon's martyrdom. By virtue of the power he had received from the high priest, he dragged the Christians out of their houses, loaded them with chains, and thrust them into prison. In the fury of his zeal he applied for a commission to seize in Damascus all Jews who confessed Jesus Christ, and to bring them in bonds to Jerusalem, that they might serve as examples for the others.
But God was pleased to manifest in him His patience and mercy. While Saul was journeying to Damascus, he and his party were surrounded by a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, and suddenly the chief was struck to the ground. And then a voice was heard saying, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me? And Saul answered, Who art Thou, Lord? and the voice replied, I am Jesus, whom you persecute. This mild admonition of Our Redeemer, accompanied with a powerful interior grace, cured Saul's pride, assuaged his rage, and wrought at once a total change in him. Therefore, trembling and astonished, he cried out, Lord, what wilt Thou have me do? Our Lord ordered him to proceed on his way to the city of Damascus, where he would be informed of what was expected of him. Saul, arising from the ground, found that although his eyes were open, he saw nothing.
He was led into the city, where he was lodged in the house of a Christian named Judas. To this house came by divine appointment a holy man named Ananias, who, laying his hands on Saul, said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your journey, has sent me that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost. Immediately something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he recovered his sight; then he arose and was baptized. He stayed a few days with the disciples at Damascus, and began immediately to preach in the synagogues that Jesus was the Son of God. Thus a blasphemer and a persecutor was made an Apostle, and chosen as one of God's principal instruments in the conversion of the world.
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