2 JULY – THE VISITATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Our Lady’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth already engaged our attention while we were preparing for the Christmas Festival. But it is only fitting to return again to an event so important in our Lady’s life. The mere commemoration of this mystery made on Ember Friday in Advent would be insufficient to bring forward all it contains of deep teaching and holy joy. Since in the course of centuries, the Holy Liturgy has been gaining more and more completeness, it is but natural that this precious mine should come to be further opened in honour of the Virgin Mother. The Order of Saint Francis, it would seem, as well as certain particular Churches such as Rheims and Paris, for example, had already taken the initiative when Urban VI, in 1389, instituted today’s solemnity. The Pope counselled a fast on the vigil of the feast and ordered that it should be followed by an octave. He granted for its celebration the same indulgences as Urban IV had in the previous century attached to the festival of Corpus Christi. The Bull of promulgation stopped by the Pontiff’s death was again taken up and published by Boniface IX, his successor on the Chair of Peter.

We learn from the Lessons of the Office formerly composed for this feast that the end of its institution was, as Urban conceived it, to obtain the cessation of the Schism then desolating the Church. The Papacy exiled from Rome for seventy years had barely re-entered it when Hell, infuriated at a return which crossed all its plans ever opposed to those of Christ, had taken revenge by ranging under two leaders the Flock of the one Sheepfold. So deep was the obscurity with which miserable intrigues contrived to cover the authority of the legitimate Shepherd that numbers of Churches, in all good faith, began to hesitate and ended at last in preferring the deceptive staff of a hireling. Thicker yet was the darkness to grow till night should be so dense that for a moment the conflicting mandates of three Popes would simultaneously spread through the world, while the Faithful, struck with stupor, would be at utter loss to discern accurately which was the true Voice of Christ’s Vicar. Never had the Bride of the Son of God been in a more piteous situation. But Our Lady, to whom the true Pontiff had turned at the first rising of the storm, deceived not the Church’s confidence. During all those years while the unfathomable Justice of the Most High let the powers of Hell hold sway, She stood for the defence of Holy Church, trampling the head of the old serpent so thoroughly under Her victorious foot, that despite the terrific confusion he had stirred up, his filthy spume could not sully the faith of the people. Their attachment was steadfast to the unity of the Roman See whoever might be, in the midst of their uncertainty, its veritable occupant. Thus the West, divided in fact but, in principle ever one and undivided, spontaneously, as it were, re-united herself as soon as God’s moment came for the return of light.

However, the hour having arrived for the Queen of Saints to assume the offensive. She would not content Herself with merely re-establishing at its former post the army of the Elect. Hell now must expiate his audacity by being forced to yield back to Holy Church those conquests which for centuries had seemed his forever. The tail of the dragon had not yet ceased to whisk at Basle when Florence already beheld the heads of the Greek schism — the Armenians and Ethiopians, the cavillers of Jerusalem, of Syria, and of Mesopotamia, all compensating by their unhoped for adhesion to the Roman Pontiff for the anguish just suffered in the West. It was now to be shown that such a return of nations, in the very midst even of the tempest, was indeed the work of Her who had been called on by the Pilot half a century before to succour the Barque of Peter. Even they of the factious assembly of Basle gave proof of this in a way which has unfortunately been too much overlooked by historians who undervalue the high importance that liturgical facts hold in the history of Christendom. When about to separate, these last abettors of the schism devoted the forty-third session of their pretended Council to the promulgation of this very feast of the Visitation in the first establishment of which Urban VI had, from the outset, placed all his hopes. Notwithstanding the resistance of some of the more obstinate, the schism may, from that hour, be said to have ended: the storm was subsiding. The name of Mary, invoked thus by both sides, shone resplendent as the sign of peace amidst the clouds (Genesis ix. 12-17) even as the rainbow in its sweet radiance unites both extremities of the horizon. “Look upon it,” says the Holy Ghost, “and bless Him that made it: it is very beautiful in its brightness. It encompasses the heaven about, with the circle of its glory, the Hands of the Most High have displayed it” (Ecclesiasticus xliii. 12-13).

But, it may be asked, why was the feast of the Visitation specially chosen, more than any other, as the monument of restored peace? The answer seems to be suggested in the very nature of the mystery itself and in the manner of its accomplishment. Here more particularly does Mary appear as the Ark of the Covenant, bearing within her the Emmanuel, the living Testimony of a more true reconciliation — of an alliance more sublime between Earth and Heaven than that limited compact of servitude entered into between Jehovah and the Jews amid the roar of thunder. By her means, far better than through Adam, all men are now brethren, for He whom she hides within her is to be the first-born of the great family of the sons of God. Scarce is He conceived than there begins for Him the mighty work of universal propitiation. Arise, then Lord, into your resting place, you and the Ark which you have hast sanctified, from which your own sanctity will pour down upon our Earth! (Psalms cxxxi. 8). During the whole of her rapid passage from Nazareth to the mountains of Judea, she will be protected by wings of Cherabim jealously eager to contemplate her glory. Amid his truest warriors, amidst Israel’s choirs of singing men, David conducted the figurative Ark from the house of Abinadab to that of Obed-Edom (2 Kings vi.), but better far, the escort deputed by the Eternal Father for this sacred Ark of the New Covenant, troops of the noblest princes of the heavenly phalanx.

Favoured with benediction was that Levite’s house while for three months it sheltered the Most High hidden on the golden Propitiatory. More favoured still, the home of the Priest Zachary harbouring for the same lapse of time Eternal Wisdom enshrined in the virginal womb in which that union, so ambitioned by His Love, had just been accomplished. Yet beneath Zachary’s roof, blessed as it was, the enemy of God and man was still holding one captive: the angelic embassy that had announced John’s miraculous conception and birth could not exempt him from the shameful tribute that every son of Adam must pay to the prince of deaths on entering into this life. As formerly at Azotus, so now, Darjon may not remain standing erect in face of the Ark (1 Kings v.) Mary appears and Satan at once overturned, is subjected to utter defeat in John’s soul, a defeat that is not to be his last, for the Ark of the Covenant will not stay its victories till the reconciliation of the last of the Elect be effected.

Let us then hymn this day with songs of gladness, for this Mystery contains the germ of every victory gained by the Church and her sons: henceforth the sacred Ark is borne at the head of every combat waged by the new Israel. Division between man and his God is at an end, between the Christian and his brethren! The ancient Ark was powerless to prevent the scission of the Tribes — henceforth if schism and heresy do hold out for a few short years against Mary, it will be but to evince more fully her glorious triumph, at last. In all ages, because of Her, even as today, under the very eyes of the enemy now put to confusion, little ones will rejoice. All, even the desolate, will be filled with benediction, and Pontiffs will be perfected. Let us join the tribute of our songs to John’s exulting gladness, to Elizabeth’s sudden exclamations, to Zachary’s canticle. Yes, therewith let all earth re-echo! Thus in by-gone days was the Ark hailed, as it entered the Hebrew camp. Hearing their shout the Philistines thereby learned that help had come from the Lord ; and seized with terror, they groaned aloud saying: “Woe to us, for there was no such great joy yesterday and the day before: Woe to us!” (1 Kings iv. 5-8). Verily this day the whole human race, together with John, leaps for joy and shouts with a great shout. Verily this day has the old enemy good reason to lament: the heel of the woman (Genesis iii. 15), as she stamps him down, makes his haughty head to wince for the first time: and John, set free, is hereby the precursor of us all. More happy are we, the new Israel, than was the old, for our glory will never be taken away. Never will be wrested from us that sacred Ark which has led us dry-shod across the River (Josue iii-iv) and has levelled fortresses to the dust at its approach (Josue vi.).

Justly then is this day on which an end is put to the series of defeats begun in Eden the day of new canticles for a new people! But who may intone the hymn of triumph save She to whom the victory belongs? “Arise, arise, Debbora, arise, arise and utter a canticle (Judith v. 12). The valiant men ceased and rested in Israel, until Mary arose, the true Debbora, until a Mother arose in Israel (Judith v. 7). ‘It is I, it is I,’ says she, ‘that will sing to the Lord, I will sing to the Lord, the God of Israel (Judith v. 3). O Magnify the Lord with me, as says my grand-sire David, and let us extol His Name together (Psalms xxxiii. 4). My heart has rejoiced, like that of Anna, in God my Saviour (1 Kings ii. 1). For even as in his handmaid Judith, by me He has fulfilled His mercy (Judith xiii. 18) so that my praise will not depart out of the mouth of men who will be mindful of the power of the Lord forever (Judith xiii. 25-31; xv. 11). For mighty is He that has done great things in me (Exodus xv. 2-3-11). There is none holy as He (1 Kings ii. 2). Even as by Esther, he has throughout all generations saved those who feared him (Esther ix. 28). In in the power of His arm (Judith ix. 11) He has turned against the impious one the projects of his own heart, driving proud a man out of his seat and uplifting the humble. The bow of the mighty is overcome, and the weak are girt with strength. The abundance of them that were rich has passed to the hungry and they are filled (1 Kings ii. 4-5). He has remembered His people and has had pity on His inheritance (Esther x. 12). Such indeed was the promise that Abraham received and our fathers have handed down to us: and He has done to them even as He had promised” (Esther xiii. 15; xiv. 5).

Daughters of Sion and all you who groan in the thraldom of Satan, the hymn of deliverance has sounded in our land! Following in Her train, who bears within her the Pledge of alliance, let us form into choirs, better than Mary, Aaron‘s sister, and by yet juster title, does she lead the concerts of Israel (Exodus xv. 20-21), So sings she on this day of triumph, and the burthen of her song gathers into one all the victorious chants which erstwhile, in the ages of expectation, preluded this divine canticle of hers. But the past victories of the elect people were but figures of that which is gained by our glorious Queen on this day of her manifestation. For she, beyond Deborah, Judith or Esther, has truly brought about the deliverance of her people. In her mouth the accents of her illustrious predecessors pass from the burning aspiration of the prophetic age to the calm ecstasy which denotes her being already in possession of the long expected God. A new era is meetly inaugurated by sacred chants: divine praise receives from Mary that character which henceforth it is never to lose, not even in eternity.

The preceding considerations have been suggested by the special motive which led the Church to institute this feast in the fourteenth century. Again, in our own day has Mary shown that this date is indeed for her a day of victory, for on the Second of July in 1849, Rome was restored to the exiled Pontiff Pius IX. But we should far exceed the limits of our present scope were we to strive to exhaust the teachings of this vast mystery, the Visitation.

Epistle – Canticles ii. 9‒15

Behold he comes, leaping upon the mountains, skipping over the hills. My beloved is like a roe or a young hart. Behold he stands behind our wall; looking through the windows, looking through the lattices. Behold my beloved speak to me, Arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come. For winter is now past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers have appeared in our land, the time of pruning is come, the voice of the turtle is heard in our land: the fig-tree has put forth her green figs, the vines in flower yield their sweet smell. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come. My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hollow places of the wall, show me your face, let your voice sound in my ears, for your voice is sweet and your face comely.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The Church introduces us into the depth of the Mystery. What she has just been reading to us is but the explanation of that word of Elizabeth’s which sums up the whole of today’s feast: “When your voice sounded in my ear, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.” Voice of Mary, voice of the turtle, putting winter to flight and announcing spring-tide, flowers and fragrance! At this sweet sound, John’s soul, a captive in the darkness of sin, casts off the badge of slavery and suddenly developing germs of highest virtues appears beauteous as a bride decked in nuptial array: and therefore, how Jesus hastes to this well-beloved soul! Between John and the Bridegroom, what ineffable out-pourings! What sublime dialogues pass between them, from womb to womb of Mary and Elizabeth! Admirable Mothers! Sons yet more admirable! In this happy meeting, the sight, the hearing, the voice of the Mothers belong less to themselves than to the blessed fruit each bears within her. Thus their senses are the lattices through which the Bridegroom and Friend of the Bridegroom see one another, understand one another, speak one to the other!

The animal man, it is true, understands not this language (1 Corinthians ii. 14) “Father,” the Son of God will soon exclaim: “1 give you thanks for that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to little ones” (Matthew xi. 25). “Let him, therefore, that has ears to hear, hear (Matthew xi. 15; xii. 9), but Amen, I say to you, unless you become as little children, you will not enter into the kingdom of Heaven (Matthew xviii. 3) nor know its mysteries (Matthew xiii. 11).” Wisdom will nevertheless be justified by her children, as the Gospel says (Matthew xi. 19). The simple-hearted in quest of light, with all the straightforwardness of humility, let pass unheeded those mocking flickers that sport across the marshes of this world. They know right well that the first ray of the Eternal Sun will disperse these thin phantoms, leaving sheer emptiness before those who run in pursuit of them. For their part, these wise little ones already feed on that which eye has not seen, nor ear heard (1 Corinthians ii. 9), having a foretaste, here below, of eternal delights.

Ineffably is John the Baptist experiencing all this. Accosted by the divine Friend who has been beforehand in seeking him, his soul at once awakens to full ecstasy. Jesus on His side, is now making His first conquest. For it is to John that is first addressed among all creatures (Mary of course excepted) the sacred Nuptial-song uttered in the Soul of the Word made Flesh, making His divine Heart throb with emotion. Yes, it is today (our Epistle tells us so), that in concert with the Magnificat, the divine Canticle of Canticles is likewise inaugurated in the entire acceptance that the Holy Ghost wishes to give it. Never more fully than on this happy day will the sacred ravishments of the Spouse be justified. Never will they find a more faithful response! Let us warm ourselves at these celestial fires. Let us join our enthusiasm to that of Eternal Wisdom who makes His first step, this day, in His royal progress towards mankind. Let us unite with our Jesus in imploring the Precursor at last to show himself. Were it not ordered otherwise from on High, his inebriation of love would verily have made him at once break down the wall that held him from appearing, then and there, to announce the Bridegroom. For well knows he that the sight of his countenance, preceding the Face of the Lord Himself, will excite the whole Earth to transports. He knows that sweet will his own voice be, when once it has become the organ of the Word calling the Bride to Him.

Gospel – Luke i. 39‒47

At that time, Mary rising up, went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judah. And she entered into the house of Zachary, and saluted Elizabeth. And it came to pass that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the infant leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit; and she cried out with a loud voice, and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the Fruit of your womb. And whence is this to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, as soon as the voice of your salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed are you that have believed, because those things will be accomplished that were spoken to you by the Lord.” And Mary said: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Saviour.”

Praise be to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Mary, having learned from the Archangel that Elizabeth was about to become a mother, is pre-occupied with the thought of the services that will soon be needed by her cousin and the infant. She therefore starts at once on her journey across the mountains, amidst which stands the house of Zachary. Thus does the charity of Christ (2 Corinthians v. 14) act, thus does it press, when it is genuine. There is no state of soul in which, under pretext of more exalted perfection, the Christian may be allowed to forget his brethren. Mary had just contracted the highest union with God, and our imagination might perhaps be inclined to picture her, as it were, in a state of powerlessness, lost in ecstasy during these days in which the Word, taking Flesh of her flesh, is inundating her, in return, with the floods of His Divinity. The Gospel, however, is explicit on this subject: it particularly says that it was in those days (Luke i. 39) even, that the humble Virgin, hitherto quietly hid in the secret of the Lord’s face (Psalms xxx. 21) rose up to devote herself to all the bodily as well as the spiritual needs of a neighbour in such condition. Does that mean to say that works are superior to prayer, and that contemplation is not the better part? No, certainly not, for indeed never did Our Lady so directly and so fully adhere to God with her whole being as at this very time. But the creature when, he has attained the summits of the unitive life, is all the more apt and fitted for exterior works, inasmuch as no lending of himself thereunto can distract him from the immoveable centre in which he is fixed.

A signal privilege is this, resulting from that division of the spirit and the soul (Hebrews iv. 12), to which all attain not, and which marks one of the most decisive steps in the spiritual life. For it supposes a purification of man’s entire being so perfect, that in very truth he is no other than one spirit with the Lord (1 Corinthians vi. 17). It entails so absolute a submission of the powers, that without clashing one with the other, they yield, each in its particular sphere, obedience simultaneously, to the Divine Breathing.

So long as the Christian has not yet crossed this last defile, defended with such obstinacy by nature to the last, so long as he has not yet won that holy liberty of the children of God (Romans viii. 21; 2 Corinthians iii. 17), he cannot possibly turn to man without in some way quitting God. Not that he ought, on that account, to neglect his duties towards his neighbour, in whom God wishes us to see no other than Himself. But, nevertheless, blessed is he who (like Mary,) loses nothing of the better part the while he attends to his obligations towards others! Yet how few are such privileged souls! And what an illusion it is to persuade ourselves to the contrary!

We will return to these thoughts on the day of Our Lady’s triumphant Assumption, but the Gospel to which we have just been listening makes it a duty for us, even now, to draw the attention of the reader to this point. Our Lady has especially on this feast a claim to be invoked as the model of those who devote themselves to works of mercy. And if to all it is by no means given to keep their spirit, at the same moment, more than ever immersed in God — all, nevertheless, ought constantly to strive to approach by the practice of recollection and divine praise to those luminous heights on which their Queen shows herself this day in all the plenitude of her ineffable perfections.

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have hymned, in graceful compositions, the mystery of this day. The following one, by its warm expressions of tender piety towards the Mother of God, more particularly excited the rage of the pretended Reformers. What specially roused their spleen was the call to unity which it addresses to the erring. According to what we were saying above as to the motive which prompted Holy Church to establish this festival of the Visitation, Mary is in like manner invoked, in other formulae of this period, proper to the same feast, as the light which dissipates clouds, which puts an end to schisms.

“Come, sovereign Lady, Mary, visit us, illumine our sickly souls, by the example of your duties performed in life.

Come, Co-redemptrix of the world, take away the filth of sin, by visiting your people, remove their peril of chastisement.

Come, Queen of nations, extinguish the flames of the guilty, rectify whatever is wrong, give us to live innocently.

Come, and visit the sick, Mary, fortify the strong with the vigour of your holy impetuosity, so that brave courage droop not.

Come, Star, Light of the ocean waves, shed your ray of peace upon us; let the heart of John exult with joy before the Lord.

Come, Regal Sceptre, lead back the crowd of erring ones to the unity of the faith, in which the heavenly Citizens are saved.

Come, and right willingly implore for us the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that we may be directed aright, in the actions of this life.

Come, let us praise the Son, let us praise the Holy Spirit, let us praise the Father, One God, who gives us succour. Amen.”

Who is she that comes forth beautiful as the morning rising, terrible as an army set in array? (Canticles vi. 9) Mary, this is the day that your exquisite brightness for the first time gladdens our Earth. You bear within you the Sun of Justice, and His early beams striking first the mountain tops while the vales below are yet left in darkness, he at once illumines the Precursor, than whom a greater has not been born of woman. The divine Luminary, swift on his ascending course, will soon bathe the lowly valleys in his radiant fires. But how full of grace and beauty are these his first gleams peering through the veiling cloud! For you, Mary, are the light cloud, the hope of Earth, the terror of Hell (3 Kings xviii. 44; Isaias xix. 1): contemplating from afar, through its heavenly transparency, the mystery of this day, Elias the father of prophets, and Isaias their prince, did both of them descry the Lord. They beheld you speeding your way across the mountains, and they blessed God, “for,” says the Holy Ghost, “when winter has congealed the waters into crystal, withered the valleys, and consumed as with fire the green mountains, a present remedy to all is the speedy coming of a cloud” (Ecclesiasticus xliii. 21-24).

Hasten, then, Mary! Come to all of us, and let not the mountains alone enjoy your benign influence. Bend down to those lowly ignoble regions in which the greater part of mankind but vegetates, helpless to scale yonder mountain heights. Yes, let your kindly visit reach down even to the deepest abyss of human perversity well near bordering on the gulf of Hell — let the beams of saving light reach even there. Oh would that from the thraldom of sin, from the plain where the vulgar throng is swaying to and fro, we were drawn to follow in your train! How beauteous are your footsteps along these our humble pathways (Canticles vii. 1), how aromatic the perfumes with which you inebriate Earth this day! (Canticles i. 5). You were all unknown — no, you were even an enigma to yourself, you fairest among the daughters of Adam — until this your first going forth led you to our poor hovels (Canticles i. 7) and manifested your power. The desert, suddenly embalmed with heavenly fragrance, hails the passage, not of the figurative Ark, but of the “Litter of the true Solomon” in these days of the sublime Nuptials which He has vouchsafed to contract (Canticles iii. 6-11). What wonder then, if at rapid pace, you speed across the mountains, since you are bearing the Bridegroom who, as a giant, strides from peak to peak (Psalms xviii. 6-7).

Far different are you, Mary, from her who is portrayed in the Divine Canticle as hesitating, in spite of the heavenly call, to betake herself to active work, foolishly captivated by the sweets of mystic repose, in such way as to dream of finding it elsewhere than in the absolute good pleasure of the Beloved! You are not one, at the Voice of the Spouse, to make difficulties about cladding yourself again with the garment of toil, of exposing your feet, were it never so little, to be soiled with the dusty roads of earth (Canticles v. 2-6). No. rather: scarce has He given Himself to you immeasurably, as none else can know, than (ever on your guard against the mistake of remaining all absorbed in selfish enjoyment of His love) you yourself invites Him to begin at once the great work which brought Him down from Heaven to Earth: “Come, my Beloved, let us go forth into the fields, let us get up early to see if the vineyard flourish, to hasten the budding out of the fruits of salvation in souls. There, there it is that I wish to be all yours” (Canticles vii. 10-13). And, leaning on Him, no less than He upon you, without thereby losing anything of heavenly delights, you traverse our desert (Canticles viii. 5), and the Holy Trinity perceives between this Mother and her Son sympathies, harmonious agreements, unknown until then even to Her. And the friends of the Bridegroom, hearing your sweet voice (Canticles viii. 13) on their side also, comprehend His love and partake in your joy. With Him, with you, O Mary, age after age will behold souls innumerable who swift footed even as the mystic roe and the young hart, will flee away from the valleys and gain the mountain heights where, in the warm sunshine, Heaven’s aromatic spices are ever fragrant (Canticles viii. 14).

Bless, Mary, those whom the better part so sweetly attracts. Protect that Order whose glory is to honour in a special manner your Visitation. Faithful to the spirit of their illustrious founders, they still continue to justify their sweet title by perfuming the Church on Earth with the fragrance of that humility, gentleness, and hidden prayer, which made this day’s mystery so dear to the angels [two thousand] years ago. In fine, Lady, forget not the crowded ranks of those whom grace presses, more numerously than ever, nowadays, to tread in your footsteps, mercifully seeking out every object of misery. Teach them the way in which alone it is possible to devote themselves to their neighbour, without in any way quitting God: for the greater glory of God and the happiness of man, multiply such faithful copies of you. May all of us, having followed in the degree measured out to us by Him who divides His gifts to each one as He wills (1 Corinthians xii. 11) meet together in our Home yonder, to sing in one voice together with you an eternal Magnificat.

On this day according to the ROMAN MARTYOLOGY:

At Rome, on the Via Aurelia, the birthday of the holy martyrs Processus and Martinian, who were baptised by the blessed Apostle St. Peter in the Mamertine Prison. After being struck on the mouth, racked, scourged with thongs and whips tipped with pieces of metal, and being beaten with rods and exposed to the flames, they were beheaded in the days of Nero, and thus obtained the crown of martyrdom.

Also at Rome, three holy soldiers, who were converted to Christ by the martyrdom of the blessed Apostle St. Paul, and with him merited to be made partakers of heavenly glory.

The same day, the holy martyrs Ariston, Crescentian, Eutychian, Urbanus, Vitalis, Justus, Felicissimus, Felix, Marcia and Symphorosa, who were all crowned with martyrdom when the persecution of the emperor Diocletian was raging.

At Winchester in England, St. Swithin, bishop, whose sanctity was illustrated by the gift of miracles.

At Bamberg, the holy bishop Otho, who preached the Gospel to the people of Pomerania and converted them to the faith.

At Tours, the demise of St. Monegundes, a pious woman.

And in other places, many other holy martyrs, confessors and virgins.

Thanks be to God.

1 JULY – THE MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD

O Blood of my crucified Jesus, dwell in my soul to purify it.
O Blood of my crucified Jesus, dwell in my heart to inflame it.
O Blood of my crucified Jesus, dwell in my mind to enlighten it.
O Blood of my crucified Jesus, dwell in my thoughts to elevate them.

O Blood of my crucified Jesus, dwell in my every action to sanctify them, in every power and faculty of my being, that all within me may exalt your might, proclaim your benefits and publish your mercies.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

John the Baptist has pointed out the Lamb, Peter has firmly fixed his Throne, Paul has prepared the Bride: this their joint work, admirable in its unity, at once suggests the reason for their feasts occurring almost simultaneously on the Cycle. The Alliance being now secured, all three fall into shade, while the Bride herself, raised up by them to such lofty heights, appears alone before us holding in her hands the sacred Cup of the nuptial feast.

This gives the secret of today’s Solemnity, revealing how its illumining the heavens of the holy Liturgy at this particular season is replete with mystery. The Church, it is true, has already made known to the sons of the New Covenant, and in a much more solemn manner, the price of the Blood that redeemed them, Its nutritive strength, and the adoring homage which is Its due. Yes, on Good Friday Earth and Heaven beheld all sin drowned in the saving Stream when Its eternal flood-gates at last gave way beneath the combined effort of man’s violence and of the Love of the Divine Heart. The Festival of Corpus Christi witnessed our prostrate worship before the Altars on which is perpetuated the Sacrifice of Calvary and where the outpouring of the Precious Blood affords drink to the humblest little ones, as well as to the mightiest potentates of Earth, lowly bowed in adoration before It.

How is it then that Holy Church is now inviting all Christians to hail in a particular manner the Stream of Life ever gushing from the Sacred Fount? What else can this mean but that the preceding solemnities have by no means exhausted the Mystery? The peace which the Blood has made to reign in the high places as well as in the low; the impetus of Its wave bearing back the sons of Adam, from the yawning gulf, purified, renewed and dazzling white in the radiance of their heavenly apparel; the Sacred Table outspread before them, on the waters’ brink, and the Chalice brimful of inebriation — all this preparation and display would be objectless, all these splendours would be incomprehensible, if man were not brought to see in it the wooings of a Love that could never endure its advances to be outdone by the pretensions of any other. Therefore, the Blood of Jesus is set before our eyes at this moment as the Blood of the Testament, the Pledge of the Alliance proposed to us by God (Exodus xxiv. 8; Hebrews ix. 20), the Dower stipulated upon by Eternal Wisdom for this divine Union to which He is inviting all men, and the consummation of which in our soul is being urged forward with such vehemence by the Holy Ghost.

“Having therefore, Brethren, a confidence in the entering into the Holies by the Blood of Christ,” says the Apostle, “a new and living way which He has dedicated for us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh, let us draw near with a pure heart in fullness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with clean water, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He is faithful that has promised. Let us consider one another to provoke to charity and to good works (Hebrews x. 19-24). And may the God of peace who brought again from the dead the great pastor of the sheep, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Blood of the everlasting Testament, fit you in all goodness, that you may do His will: doing in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom is glory for ever and ever. Amen!” (Hebrews xiii. 20-21).

Nor must we omit to mention here that this Feast is a monument of one of the most brilliant victories of Holy Church in our own age. Pius IX had been driven from Rome in 1848 by the triumphant revolution. But the following year, just about this very season, was his power re-established. Under the aegis of the Apostles, on June 28th and the two following days, the eldest daughter of the Church, faithful to her past glories, swept the ramparts of the Eternal City. And on July 2nd, Mary’s festival, the victory was completed. Not long after this, a twofold decree notified to the City and the world the Pontiff's gratitude and the way in which he intended to perpetuate, in the sacred Liturgy, the memory of these events. On August 10th, from Gaeta itself, the place of his exile in the evil day, Pius IX, before returning to re-assume the government of his States, addressing himself to the invisible Head of the Church, confided her in a special manner to His divine care by the institution of this day’s Festival, reminding Him that it was for His Church that He vouchsafed to shed all His Precious Blood.

Then, when the Pontiff re-entered his capital, turning to Mary, just as Pius V and Pius VII had done under other circumstances, he, the Vicar of Christ, solemnly attributed the honour of the recent victory to Her who is ever the “Help of Christians,” for on the Feast of Her Visitation it had been gained. And he now decreed that this said Feast of July 2nd should be raised from the rite of double-major to that of second class throughout the whole world. This was but a prelude to the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which the immortal Pontiff had already in project, by which the crushing of the serpent’s head would be completed.

Epistle – Hebrews ix. 11-15

Brethren, Christ being come, a High Priest of the good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, neither by the blood of goats or of calves, but by His own Blood, entered once into the Holies, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and of oxen, and the ashes of an heifer being sprinkled, sanctify such as are defiled, to the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the Blood of Christ, who, through the Holy Ghost, offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God? And therefore He is the Mediator of the New Testament; that by means of His death, for the redemption of those transgressions which were under the former Testament; those that are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance; in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The Epistle that has just been read to us is the confirmation of what we were saying above as regards the special character of this Festival. It was by His own Blood that the Son of God entered into Heaven. This divine Blood continues to be the means by which we also may be introduced into the eternal Alliance. Thus the Old Covenant founded, as it was, on the observance of the precepts of Sinai, had likewise by blood consecrated the people and the Law, the tabernacle and the vessels it was to contain. But the whole was but a figure. “Now,” says Saint Ambrose, “it behoves us to tend to Truth. Here below, there is the shadow. Here below, there is the image. Up yonder, there is the Truth. In the Law was but the shadow. The image is to be found in the Gospel. The Truth is in Heaven. Formerly a lamb was immolated. Now Christ is sacrificed, but He is so only under the signs of the Mysteries, whereas in Heaven it is without veil. There alone, consequently, is full perfection to which our thoughts should cleave, because all perfection is in Truth without image and without shadow. Yes, there alone is rest: to there, even in this world, do the sons of God tend; without indeed attaining fully thereunto, they get nearer and nearer, day by day, for there alone is to be found that peace which forms saints.”

“Lord God,” cries out in his turn another illustrious Doctor, the great Saint Augustine, “give us this peace, the peace of repose, the peace of the seventh day, of that Sabbath whose sun never sets. Yes, verily the whole order of nature and of grace is very beautiful to your servitors, and goodly are the realities they cover. But these images, these successive forms, bide only a while, and their evolution ended, they pass away. The days you filled with your creations are composed of morning and of evening, the seventh alone excepted, for it declines not, because you have forever sanctified it in your own Rest. Now what is this Rest, save that which you takes in us when we ourselves repose in you, in the fruitful peace which crowns the series of your graces in us? sacred Rest, more productive than labour! The perfect alone know you, they who suffer the divine Hand to accomplish within them the Work of the Six Days.”

And therefore, our Apostle goes on to say, interpreting, by means of other parts of Scripture, his own words just read to us by holy Church, “and therefore, if today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Hebrews iii.) The Blood Divine has rendered us participators of Christ: it is our part not to squander, as though it were worthless, this immense treasure, this initial incorporation which unites us to Christ, the divine Head. But let us abandon ourselves, without fear and without reserve, to the energy of this precious leaven whose property it is to transform our whole being into Him. Let us be afraid lest we fall short of the promise referred to in our today’s Epistle, that promise of our entering into God’s Rest, as Saint Paul himself tells us. It regards all Believers, he says, and this divine Sabbath is for the whole people of the Lord. Therefore, to enter in it, let us make haste. Let us not be like those Jews whose incredulity excluded them forever from the promised land (Hebrews iii.- iv.).

Gospel – John xix. 30-35

At that time, when Jesus had taken the vinegar, He said: “It is consummated.” And bowing His head He gave up the ghost. Then the Jews (because it was the Parasceve) that the bodies might not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day (for that was a great Sabbath day), besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. The soldiers therefore came, and they broke the legs of the first, and of the other that was crucified with him. But after they were come to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. But one of the soldiers with a spear opened His side, and immediately there came out blood and water. And he that saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true.

Praise to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

On that stupendous day, Good Friday, we heard for the first time this passage from the Beloved Disciple. The Church, as she stood mourning at the foot of the Cross on which on her Lord had just died, was all tears and lamentation. Today, however, she is thrilling with other sentiments, and the very same narration that then provoked her bitter tears now makes her burst out into anthems of gladness and songs of triumph. If we would know the reason of this, let us turn to those who are authorised by her to interpret to us the burden of her thoughts this day. They will tell us that the new Eve is celebrating her birth from out the Side of her sleeping Spouse, that from the solemn moment when the new Adam permitted the soldier’s lance to open His Heart, we became in very deed, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Be not then surprised, if holy Church sees nothing but love and life in the Blood which is gushing forth.

And you, soul, long rebellious to the secret touches of choicest graces, be not disconsolate. Say not: “Love is no more for me!” However far away the old enemy may by wretched wiles have dragged you, is it not still true that to every winding way: yes, alas, perhaps even to every pit-fall, the streamlets of this Sacred Fount have followed you? Think you, perhaps, that your long and tortuous wanderings from the merciful course of these ever pursuant waters may have weakened their power? Do but try. Do but, first of all, bathe in their cleansing wave. Do but quaff long draughts from this Stream of Life. Then weary soul, arming yourself with faith, be strong, and mount once more the course of the divine Torrent. For, as in order to reach you, It never once was separated from its Fountain-Head, so likewise be certain that by so doing, you needs must reach the very Source Itself. Believe me, this is the whole secret of the Bride, namely, that from wherever she may come, she has no other course to pursue than this, if she would fain hear the answer to that yearning request expressed in the Sacred Canticle: “Show me, you whom my soul loves, where you rest in the midday.” (Canticles i. 6) So much so indeed, that by re-ascending the sacred Stream, not only is she sure of reaching the Divine Heart, but moreover she is ceaselessly renewing in its waters that pure beauty which makes her become, in the eyes of the Spouse, an object of delight and of glory to Him (Ephesians v. 27). For your part, carefully gather up today the testimony of the Disciple of love, and congratulating Jesus, with the Church, His Bride and your Mother, on the brilliancy of her purpled robe, take good heed likewise to conclude with Saint John: “Let us then love God, since He has first loved us” (1 John iv. 19).

On this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

On Mount Hor, the demise of St. Aaron, the first priest of the Levitical Order.

In England, the holy martyrs Julius and Aaron, who suffered after St. Alban in the persecution of Diocletian.

In the same country, a great number being at that time tortured in different manners and barbarously lacerated, ended their combat, and attained to the joys of the heavenly city.

At Mechlin, the martyrdom of St. Rumold, son of an Irish king, and bishop of Dublin.

At Sinuessa, the holy martyrs Castus and Secundinus, bishops.

At Vienne, St. Martin, bishop and a disciple of the Apostles.

At Clermont in Auvergne, St. Gal, bishop.

In the diocese of Lyons, the decease of St. Domitian, abbot, who was the first to lead there a heremitical life. After having assembled in that place many servants of God, and gained great renown for virtues and miracles, he was gathered to his fathers at an advanced age.

In the diocese of Rheims, St. Theodoric, priest and a disciple of the blessed bishop Remigius.

At Angouleme, St. Eparchius, abbot.

At Emesa, St. Simeon, surnamed Salus, confessor, who feigned to be an idiot for Christ, but God manifested his high wisdom by great miracles.

At Vicenza, the demise of St. Theobald, of the Counts of Campania, hermit, who was added to the number of the saints by Pope Alexander III on account of his holiness and miracles.

And in other places, many other holy martyrs, confessors and virgins.

Thanks be to God.

JULY – THE MONTH OF THE MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD

Like devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, devotion to His Precious Blood is one of the oldest forms of Catholic piety, and over the centuries many holy men and women have had a particular devotion to it. The modern form of the devotion is attributed to Saint Catherine of Siena who lived in the fourteenth century and has been described as the “Prophetess of the Precious Blood.”

In the nineteenth century that the devotion to the Precious Blood was vigorously promoted and given Papal support. In 1815, at the request of Pope Pius VII, the Italian priest Gaspare del Bufalo established a society of secular priests, the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, to give missions and spread devotion to the Precious Blood.

Gaspare del Bufalo died in 1837. In 1841 the Rule for his Congregation was approved by Pope Gregory XVI, and in 1849 Pope Pius IX approved the Feast of the Most Precious Blood to be celebrated throughout the universal Church on the first Sunday in July. Pope Saint Pius X moved the Feast to the first day of July and Pope Pius XI raised it to the rank of First Class double.

The Church set aside the month of July, following immediately after the month dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as the month of the Precious Blood:

“The Precious Blood is the wealth of the Sacred Heart. The Sacred Heart is the symbol of the Precious Blood; yet not its symbol only, but its palace, its home, its fountain. It is to the Sacred Heart that it owes the joy of its restlessness and the glory of its impetuosity. It is to the Sacred Heart that it returns with momentary swiftness, and assails it, as a child assails his mother, for fresh powers, for new vigour, and for the continuance of its unwearied impulses. The devotion to the Precious Blood is the devotion which unveils the physical realities of the Sacred Heart. The devotion to the Sacred Heart is the figurative expression of the qualities, dispositions, and genius of the Precious Blood - only that the figure is itself a living and adorable reality.”

Father Frederick William Faber, The Precious Blood (1860) 342.

The ends of devotion to the Precious Blood are:

• the adoration and glorification of this divine Blood;
• thanksgiving to Jesus for having paid so precious a price for our redemption;
• reparation for the insults offered to His Blood in the Passion, and to this day by our coldness and infidelity;
• invocation of this redemptive and Eucharistic Blood to plead for us that we might obtain pardon and mercy and an increase of love;
• oblation of the Precious Blood for the wants of the Church and for the suffering souls in Purgatory.

 
LITANY OF THE MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD

Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
God, the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us.
God, the Holy Ghost, have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, One God, have mercy on us.
Blood of Christ, only-begotten Son of the Eternal Father, save us.
Blood of Christ, Incarnate Word of God, save us.
Blood of Christ, of the New and Eternal Testament, save us.
Blood of Christ, falling on the Earth in the Agony, save us.
Blood of Christ, shed profusely in the Scourging, save us.
Blood of Christ, flowing forth in the Crowning with Thorns, save us.
Blood of Christ, poured out on the Cross, save us.
Blood of Christ, price of our salvation, save us.
Blood of Christ, without which there is no forgiveness, save us.
Blood of Christ, Eucharistic drink and refreshment of souls, save us.
Blood of Christ, stream of mercy, save us.
Blood of Christ, victor over demons, save us.
Blood of Christ, courage of Martyrs, save us.
Blood of Christ, strength of Confessors, save us.
Blood of Christ, bringing forth Virgins, save us.
Blood of Christ, help of those in peril, save us.
Blood of Christ, relief of the burdened, save us.
Blood of Christ, solace in sorrow, save us.
Blood of Christ, hope of the penitent, save us.
Blood of Christ, consolation of the dying, save us.
Blood of Christ, peace and tenderness of hearts, save us.
Blood of Christ, pledge of eternal life, save us.
Blood of Christ, freeing souls from Purgatory, save us.
Blood of Christ, most worthy of all glory and honour, save us.
Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

V. You have redeemed us, O Lord, in your Blood.
R. And made us, for our God, a kingdom.

Let us pray. Almighty and everlasting God, who appointed your only-begotten Son the Redeemer of the world, and has willed to be appeased by His Blood: grant us, we beseech you, so to venerate (with solemn worship) the price of our redemption and by its power be so defended against the evils of this life, that we may enjoy the fruit thereof forever more in Heaven. Through the same Our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end.

R. Amen.

30 JUNE – THE APOSTLE SAINT PAUL (Martyr)

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

Whereas the Greeks on this day are uniting in one Solemnity, “the Memory,” as they express it, “of the illustrious Saints, the Twelve Apostles, worthy of all praise,” let us follow in spirit the Roman populace who are gathered around the Successor of Peter, and are making the splendid Basilica on the Via Ostiense re-echo with songs of victory while he is offering to the Doctor of the Gentiles the grateful homage of the City and of the world.

On the twenty fifth of January we beheld Stephen leading to Christ’s mystic crib, the once “ravenous wolf of Benjamin” (Genesis xlix. 27) tamed at last, but who in the morning of his impetuous youth, had filled the Church of God with tears and bloodshed. His evening did indeed come when, as Jacob had foreseen, Saul, the persecutor, would outstrip all his predecessors among Christ’s disciples in giving increase to the Fold, and in feeding the Flock, with the choicest food of his heavenly doctrine.

By an unexampled privilege, Our Lord, though already seated at the Right Hand of His Father, vouchsafed not only to call, but personally to instruct this new disciple so that he might one day be numbered among His Apostles. The ways of God can never be contradictory one to another. Hence this creation of a new Apostle may not be accomplished in a manner derogatory to the divine constitution already delivered to the Christian Church by the Son of God. Therefore, as soon as the illustrious Convert emerges from those sublime contemplations during which the Christian dogma has been poured into his soul, he must needs go to Jerusalem to see Peter, as he himself relates to his disciples in Galatia. “It behoved him,” says Bossuet, “to collate his own Gospel with that of the Prince of the Apostles.”

From that moment, aggregated as a co-operator in the preaching of the Gospel, we see him at Antioch (in the Acts of the Apostles) accompanied by Barnabas, presenting himself to the work of opening the Church to the Gentiles, the conversion of Cornelius having been already effected, be it remembered, by Peter himself. He passes a whole year in this city, reaping an abundant harvest. After Peter’s imprisonment in Jerusalem, at his subsequent departure for Rome, a warning from on high makes known to those who preside over the Church at Antioch that the moment is come for them to impose hands on the two missionaries, and confer on them the sacred character of Ordination.

From that hour, Paul attains the full stature of an Apostle, and it is clear that the mission to which he had been preparing is now opened. At the same time, in Saint Luke’s narrative, Barnabas almost disappears, retaining but a very secondary position. The new Apostle has his own disciples, and he henceforth takes the lead in a long series of peregrinations marked by as many conquests. His first is to Cyprus, where he seals an alliance with ancient Rome analogous to that which Peter contracted at Caesarea. In the year 43, when Paul landed in Cyprus, its pro-consul was Sergius Paulus, illustrious for his ancestry, but still more so for the wisdom of his government. He wished to hear Paul and Barnabas: a miracle worked by Paul under his very eyes convinced him of the truth of his teaching, and the Christian Church counted, that day, among her sons one who was heir to the proudest name among the noble families of Rome. Touching was the mutual exchange that took place on this occasion. The Roman Patrician had just been freed by the Jew from the yoke of the Gentiles. In return the Jew until then called Saul received and thenceforth adopted the name of Paul, as a trophy worthy of the Apostle of the Gentiles.

From Cyprus Paul travelled successively to Cilicia, Pamphylia, Pisidia and Lycaonia, everywhere preaching the Gospel and founding Churches. He then returned to Antioch in the year 47, and found the Church there in a state of violent agitation. A party of Jews, who had come over to Christianity from the ranks of the Pharisees, while consenting indeed to the admission of Gentiles into the Church, were maintaining that this could only be on condition of their being likewise subjected to Mosaic practices, such as circumcision, distinction of meats, etc. The Christians who had been received from among the Gentiles were disgusted at this servitude to which Peter had not subjected them, and thus the controversy became so hot that Paul deemed it necessary to undertake a journey to Jerusalem where Peter had lately arrived, a fugitive from Rome, and where the Apostolic College was at that moment furthermore represented by John, as well as by James the bishop of the city. These being assembled to deliberate on the question, it was decreed, in the name and under the influence of the Holy Ghost, that the exacting of anything relative to Jewish rites should be utterly forbidden in the case of Gentile converts. It was on this occasion too, that Paul received from these “Pillars,” as he styles them, the confirmation of this his Apostolate super-added to that of the Twelve, and to be specially exercised in favour of the Gentiles. By this extraordinary ministry deputed to the nations, the Christian Church definitively asserted her independence of Judaism, and the Gentiles could now freely come flocking into her bosom.

Paul then resumed his course of apostolic journeys over all the Provinces he had already evangelised, in order to confirm the Churches. Thence, passing through Phrygia, he came to Macedonia, stayed a while at Athens, and then on to Corinth, where he remained a year and a half, At his departure, he left in this city a flourishing Church by which he excited against him the fury of the Jews. From Corinth, Paul went to Ephesus where he stayed two years. So great was his success with the Gentiles there that the worship of Diana was materially weakened, whereupon a tumult ensuing, Paul thought the moment come for his departure from Ephesus. During his abode there he made known to his disciples a thought that had long haunted him: he must needs see Rome. The Capital of the Gentile world was indeed calling the Apostle of the Gentiles. The rapid growth of Christianity in the Capital of the Empire had brought face-to-face and in a manner more striking than elsewhere, the two heterogeneous elements which formed the Church of that day: the unity of Faith held together in one fold, those that had formerly been Jews, and those that had been pagans.

Now it so happened that some of both of these classes, too easily forgetting the gratuity of their common vocation to the Faith, began to go so far as to despise their brethren of the opposite class, deeming them less worthy than themselves of that Baptism which had made them all equal in Christ. On the one side, certain Jews disdained the Gentiles, remembering the polytheism which had sullied their past life with all those vices which come in its train. On the other side, certain Gentiles contemned the Jews, as coming from an ungrateful and blinded people, who had so abused the favours lavished on them by God as to crucify the Messiah. In the year 53, Paul already aware of these debates, profited of a second journey to Corinth to write to the Faithful of the Church in Rome that famous Epistle in which he emphatically sets forth how gratuitous is the gift of Faith, and maintains how Jew and Gentile alike being quite unworthy of the divine adoption, have been called solely by an act of pure Mercy. He likewise shows how Jew and Gentile, forgetting the past, have but to embrace one another in the fraternity of one same Faith, thus testifying their gratitude to God through whom both of them have been alike prevented by Grace. His Apostolic dignity so fully recognised, authorised Paul to interfere in this matter, though touching a Christian centre not founded by him.

While awaiting the day when he could behold with his own eyes the Queen of all Churches, lately fixed by Peter on the Seven Hills, the Apostle was anxious once again to make a pilgrimage to the City of David. Jewish rage was just at that moment rampant in Jerusalem against him. National pride being more specially piqued, in that he the former disciple of Gamaliel, the accomplice of Stephen’s murder, should now invite the Gentiles to be coupled with the sons of Abraham under the one same Law of Jesus of Nazareth. The Tribune Lysias was scarce able to snatch him from the hands of these bloodthirsty men ready to tear him to pieces. The following night Christ appeared to Paul saying to him: “Be constant, for as you have testified of Me in Jerusalem, so must you bear witness also at Rome.”

It was not, however, till after two years of captivity that Paul, having appealed to Caesar, landed in Italy, at the beginning of the year 56. Then at last, the Apostle of the Gentiles made his entry into Rome. The trappings of a victor surrounded him not. He was but a humble Jewish prisoner led to the place where all appellants to Caesar were mustered. Yet was he that Jew whom Christ Himself had conquered on the way to Damascus. No longer Saul, the Benjamite, he now presented himself under the Roman name of Paul. Nor was this a robbery on his part, for after Peter, he was to be the second glory of Rome, the second pledge of her immortality. He brought not the primacy with him indeed, as Peter had done — for that had been committed by Christ to one alone — but he came to assert in the very centre of the Gentile world the divine delegation which he had received in favour of the nations, just as an affluent flows into the main stream, which mingling its waters with its own, at last empties them united into the ocean. Paul was to have no successor in his extraordinary mission, but the element which he had deposited in the Mistress, the Mother Church, was of such value that in course of ages the Roman Pontiffs, heirs to Peter’s monarchical power, have ever appealed to Paul’s memory as well, pronouncing their mandates in the united names of the “Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.”

Instead of having to await in prison the day on which his cause was to be heard, Paul was at liberty to choose a lodging place in the city. He was obliged, however, to be accompanied day and night by a soldier to whom, according to the usual custom, he was chained, but only in such a way as to prevent his escape: all his movements being otherwise left perfectly free, he could easily continue to preach the Word of God. Towards the close of the year 57, in virtue of his appeal to Caesar, the Apostle was at last summoned before the praetorium, and the successful pleading of his cause resulted in his acquittal. Being now free, Paul revisited the East, confirming on his Evangelical course the Churches he had previously founded. Thus Ephesus and Crete once more enjoyed his presence. In the one he left his disciple Timothy as bishop, and in the other Titus.

But Paul had not quitted Rome forever: marvellously illumined as she had been, by his preaching, the Roman Church was yet to be gilded by his parting rays and purpled by his blood. A heavenly warning, as in Peter’s case, bade him also return to Rome where martyrdom was awaiting him. This fact is attested by Saint Athanasius. We learn the same also from Saint Asterius of Ameseus who remarks that the Apostle entered Rome once more, “in order to teach the very masters of the world, to turn them into his disciples, and by their means to wrestle with the whole human race.” “There, Paul finds Peter engaged in the same work. He at once yokes himself to the same divine chariot with him, and sets about instructing the children of the Law within the Synagogues, and the Gentiles outside.” At length Rome possesses her two Princes conjointly: the one seated on the eternal chair, holding in his hands the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the other surrounded by the sheaves he has garnered from the fields of the Gentile world. They will now part no more. Even in death, as the Church sings, they will not be separated. The period of their being together was necessarily short, for they must needs render to their Master the testimony of blood before the Roman world should be freed from the odious tyranny under which it was groaning.

Their death was to be Nero’s last crime. After that he was to fade from sight, leaving the world horrors stricken at his end, as shameful as it was tragic. It was in the year 65, that Paul returned to Rome. once more signalising his presence there by the manifold works of his Apostolate. From the time of his first labours there, he had made converts even in the very palace of the Caesars: being now returned to this former theatre of his zeal, he again finds entrance into the imperial abode. A woman who was living in criminal intercourse with Nero, as likewise a cup-bearer of his, were both caught in the Apostolic net, for it were hard indeed to resist the power of that mighty word. Nero, enraged at “this foreigner’s” influence in his very household, was bent on Paul’s destruction. Being first of all cast into prison, his zeal cooled not, but he persisted the more in preaching Jesus Christ. The two converts of the imperial palace having abjured, together with paganism, the manner of life they had been leading, this two-fold conversion of theirs did but hasten Paul’s martyrdom. He was well aware that it would be so, as can be seen in these lines addressed to Timothy: “I labour even to bands, as an evil doer. But the word of God is not bound. Therefore, I endure all things for the sake of the elect. For I am even now ready to be sacrificed, like a victim already sprinkled with the lustral water, and the time of my dissolution is at hand. I have fought the good " fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. As to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice which the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me in that day” (2 Timothy).

On the 29th of June 67 AD, while Peter having crossed the Tiber by the Triumphal bridge was drawing near to the cross prepared for him on the Vatican plain, another martyrdom was being consummated on the left bank of the same river. Paul, as he was led along the Via Ostiensis, was also followed by a group of the Faithful who mingled with the escort of the condemned. His sentence was that he should be beheaded at the Salvian Waters. A two miles’ march brought the soldiers to a path leading eastwards, by which they led their prisoner to the place fixed upon for the martyrdom of this, the Doctor of the Gentiles. Paul fell on his knees, addressing his last prayer to God. Then having bandaged his eyes, he awaited the death-stroke. A soldier brandished his sword, and the Apostle’s head, as it was severed from the trunk, made three bounds along the ground. Three fountains immediately sprang up on these several spots. Such is the local tradition, and to this day, three fountains are to be seen on the site of his martyrdom, over each of which an altar is raised.

* * * * *

To you, O Paul, we turn this day! Happily fixed as we are on Peter, the Rock that supports the Church, could we possibly forget you by whose labours our forefathers the Gentiles became part of the City of God? Sion, once the well-beloved, rejected the Stone and stumbled against it. Tell us then the mystery of this other Jerusalem come down from Heaven, the materials of which were nevertheless drawn up from the abyss! Compacted together in admirable masonry, they proclaim the glory of the skilful Architect who laid them on the Corner-Stone. And precious stones of such surpassing brilliancy are they, as to out-shine all the gems of the Daughter of Sion. To whom is this new-comer indebted for all her beauty, for all these her bridal honours? How have the sons of the forsaken one come out from the unclean dens where their mother dwelt, a companion of dragons and of leopards? (Canticles iv. 8). It is because the Voice of the Spouse was heard saying: “Come, my Bride, come from Libanus; from the top of Amana, from the top of Sanir and Hermon.”

Nevertheless, the Spouse in His own Sacred Person, while He lived here below, never quitted the ancient Land of Promise, and His mortal accents never once fell on the ear of her who dwelt beyond the confines of Jacob. But, Paul, did you not exclaim: “How will they call on Him, how believe Him of whom they have not heard? (Romans x. 14). Yet whoever knows your love of the Spouse has nothing to fear, mindful that you yourself, holy Apostle, have proposed the problem and can solve it. Lo, this is the answer — we sang it on the day of Christ’s triumphant Ascension: “"When the beauty of the Lord will arise above the heavens, He will be mounted on a cloud, and the wing of the wind will be His swift steed; and, clad in light, He will dart from pole to pole across the heavens, giving His gifts to the children of men.”

You yourself, Paul, are this cloud, this wing of the wind bearing the Bridegroom’s message to the nations. Yes, you were expressly chosen from on high to teach the Gentiles, as those pillars of the Church, Peter James, and John, have attested (Galatians ii. 7-9). How beauteous your feet, when having quitted Sion, you appeared on our mountains and cried out to the Gentiles: “This God will reign” (Isaias lii. 7). How sweet your voice, when it murmured in the ear of the poor forsaken one the heavenly call: “Hearken, daughter, and see, and incline the ear of your heart” (Psalms xliv. 11). How tender the pity you evinced to her who had long lived a stranger to the Covenant, without promise, without a God in this world! (Ephesians ii. 12).

Alas, afar off indeed was she whom it behoved you to lead to the Lord Jesus and to bring so near Him, that He and she should form but one body! You experienced, in this immense labour, both the pains of childbirth and the cares of a mother giving the breast to her new-born babe. You had to bear the tedious delay of the growth of the Bride to ward from her every defilement, to inure her gradually to the dazzling light of the Spouse, until, at last, rooted and founded in charity, and having reached to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ she might indeed be His glory, and be filled by Him to all the plenitude of God. But what a toil to bring up this new creation from the original slime to the throne of the heavenly Adam at the Right Hand of the Father! Often repulsed, betrayed, put in chains, misunderstood in the most delicate sentiments of thine Apostolic heart, you had nothing for your salary save untold anguish and suffering. Yet, fatigue, watchings, hunger, cold, nakedness, abandonment, open violence, perfidious attacks, perils of all kinds, far from abating, did but excite your zeal. Joy super-abounded in you, for these sufferings were the filling up of those which Jesus had endured to purchase that alliance so long ambitioned by Eternal Wisdom. After His example, you too had but one end to which tended all your strength and gentleness: along the dusty Roman roads, or tempest-tossed into the depth of the sea, in the city or the desert, borne aloft on ecstatic wing into the third heavens, or bowed beneath the whips of the Jews and the sword of a Nero: everywhere bearing the embassy of Christ you boldly defied alike life and death, powers of Earth and powers of Heaven, to stay the Might of the Lord or of His Love by which you were upheld in your vast enterprise. Then as if aware by anticipation, of the amazement that would be excited by these enthusiastic outpourings of your great soul, you uttered this sublime cry: “Would to God that you could bear with some little of my folly: but hear with me, for I am jealous of you with the jealousy of God. For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians xi. 1-2).

Yesterday, Paul, your work was ended. Having given all, you at length gave yourself. The sword, by striking off your sacred head, accomplished Christ’s triumph as you had predicted. Peter’s death fixes the throne of the Spouse in its predestined place, but to you is the Bride, the Gentile world, indebted for that she is now able, as she sits at the right hand of the Spouse, to turn to the rival Synagogue exclaiming: “I am black, but beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem. Therefore has the King loved me and chosen me to be His Queen! (Canticles i. 4; iv. 8).

Praise then be to you, Apostle, now and forever! Eternity itself will not suffice to exhaust the gratitude of us, the “Nations.” Accomplish your work in each one of us during all ages . Permit not that by the falling off of any one among those called by Our Lord to complete His Mystic Body, the Bride be deprived of one single increase on which she might have counted. Uphold and brace against despondency the Preachers of the Sacred Word, all those who by the pen or by any title whatever, are continuing your work of light. Multiply those valiant Apostles who are ever narrowing on our globe the boundaries of darkness. You promised to remain with us, to be ever watchful of Faith’s progress in souls, and to cause the pure delights of divine union to be ever developing there. Keep your promise. Because of your going away to Jesus, your word is nonetheless plighted to those who like ourselves could not know you here below. For to those who have not seen your face in the flesh, you have left, in one of your immortal Epistles, the assurance that you will take care “that their hearts be comforted, being instructed in charity, and to all riches of fullness of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God the Father and of Christ Jesus, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossian ii. 1-3).

During this season of the sacred Cycle, the reign of the Holy Spirit who forms saints (Romans viii.), grant that Christians of good will may be brought to understand how, by their very Baptism, they are put in possession of that sublime vocation which is too often imagined to be the happy lot of but a chosen few. Oh would that they could seize this grand yet very simple idea which you have given of the mystery in which is contained the absolute and universal principle of Christian Life (Romans vi.): that, having been buried with Jesus under the waters, and thereby incorporated with Him, they must necessarily be bound by every right and title, to become saints, to aim at union with Jesus in His Life, since they have been granted union with Him in His Death. “You are dead and your life is hidden with Christ in God!” (Colossians iii. 3). These were the words addressed by you to our forefathers: O then repeat them to us likewise, for you gave them as a truth intended for all without distinction! Suffer not, Doctor of us, Gentiles, that the Light grow dim among us, to the great detriment of the Lord and of His Bride.

Epistle – Galatians i. 11‒20

I give you to understand, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For neither did I receive it of man: nor did I learn it but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion: how that, beyond measure, I persecuted the church of God and wasted it. And I made progress in the Jews’ religion above many of my equals in my own nation, being more abundantly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased Him who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles: immediately I condescended not to flesh and blood. Neither went I to Jerusalem, to the apostles who were before me: but I went into Arabia, and again I returned to Damascus. Then, after three years, I went to Jerusalem to see Peter: and I tarried with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles I saw none, saving James the brother of the Lord. Now the things which I write to you, behold, before God, I lie not.

Thanks be to God.

Gospel – Matthew x. 16‒22

Behold I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be therefore wise as serpents and simple as doves. Simple... that is, harmless, plain, sincere, and without guile. But beware of men. For they will deliver you up in councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues. And you will be brought before governors, and before kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the Gentiles: But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what to speak: for it will be given you in that hour what to speak: For it is not you that speaks, but the Spirit of your Father that speaks in you. The brother also will deliver up the brother to death, and the father the son; and the children will rise up against their parents, and will put them to death. And you will be hated by all men for my name’s sake: but he who perseveres to the end will be saved.

Praise be to you, O Christ.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Limoges in France, St. Martial, bishop, with two priests, Alpinian and Austriclinian, whose lives were distinguished for miracles.

The same day, the saints Caius, priest, and Leo, subdeacon.

At Alexandria, the passion of St. Basilides, under the emperor Severus. He protected from the insults of profligate men the saintly virgin Potamioena, whom he was leading to execution, and received from her the reward of his pious action. For, at the end of three days, she appeared to him and placing a crown on his head, not only converted him to Christ, but by her prayers made of him, after a short combat, a glorious martyr.

At Rome, St. Lucina, a disciple of the Apostles, who relieved the necessities of the saints with her goods, visited the Christians detained in prison, buried the martyrs, and was laid by their side in a crypt constructed by herself.

In the same city, St. Æmiliana, martyr.

In the territory of Viviers, St. Ostian, priest and confessor.

And in other places, many other holy martyrs, confessors and virgins.

Thanks be to God.

29 JUNE – SAINTS PETER AND PAUL (Apostles and Martyrs)

O Roma felix, quae duorum Principium
Es consecreta glorioso sanguine:
Horum cruore purpurata caeteras,
Excellis orbis una pulchritudines.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

“Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Behold the hour when the answer which the Son of Man exacted of the Fisher of Galilee re-echoes from the Seven Hills and fills the whole Earth. Peter no longer dreads the triple interrogation of his Lord. Since that fatal night on which, before the first cock-crow, the Prince of the Apostles had denied his Master, tears have not ceased to furrow the cheeks of this same Vicar of the Man-God. Lo, the day when at last his tears will be dried! From that gibbet to which, at his own request, the humble disciple has been nailed head downwards, his bounding heart repeats now at last without fear the protestation which ever since the scene enacted on the brink of Lake Tiberias has been silently wearing his life away. “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you” (John xxi).

Sacred day on which the oblation of the first of Pontiffs assures to the West the rights of Supreme Priesthood! Day of triumph in which the effusion of a generous life-blood wins for God the conquest of the Roman soil, in which upon the cross of his representative, the Divine Spouse concludes His eternal alliance with the Queen of nations!

This tribute of death was all unknown to Levi. This dower of blood was never exacted of Aaron by Jehovah: for who is it that would die for a slave? The Synagogue was no Bride! (Galatians iv. 22-31). Love is the sign which distinguishes this age of the new dispensation from the Law of servitude. Powerless, sunk in cringing fear, the Jewish priest could but sprinkle with the blood of victims substituted for himself, the horns of the figurative altar. At once both Priest and Victim, Jesus expects more of those whom He calls to a participation of the sacred prerogative which makes Him Pontiff, and that for ever according to the order of Melchisedech (Psalms cix. 4). “I will not now call you servants: for the servant knows not what his lord does”: thus says He to these men whom He has just raised above angels at the last Supper. “But I have called you friends, because all things whatever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you (John xv. 15). As the Father has loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love” (John xv. 9).

Now, in the case of a Priest admitted thus into partnership with the Eternal Pontiff, love is not complete save when it extends itself to the whole of Mankind ransomed by the great Sacrifice. And, mark it well: this entails upon him, more than the obligation common to all Christians, of loving one another as fellow members of one Head, for by his Priesthood he forms part of that Head, and by this very title, charity should assume in him something in depth and character of the love which this divine Head bears towards His members. But more than this. What, if to the power he possesses of immolating Christ, to the duty incumbent on him of the joint offering of himself likewise, in the secret of the Mysteries, the plenitude of the Pontificate be added, imposing the public mission of giving to the Church that support she needs, that fecundity which the heavenly Spouse exacts of her? Then it is, that (according to the doctrine expressed from the earliest ages by the Popes, the Councils and the Fathers) the Holy Ghost adapts him to his sublime role by fully identifying his love with that of the Spouse whose obligations he fulfils, whose rights he exercises. But then, likewise, according to the same teaching of universal tradition, there stands before him the precept of the Apostle. Yes, from throne to throne of all the Bishops, whether of East or West, the Angels of the Churches pass on the word: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church and delivered Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her” (Ephesians v. 25-26).

Such is the divine reality of these mysterious nuptials, that every age of sacred history has blasted with the name of adultery the irregular abandoning of the Church first espoused. So much is there exacted by such a sublime union that none may be called to it who is not already abiding steadfast on the lofty summit of perfection, for a Bishop must ever hold himself ready to justify in his own person that supreme degree of charity of which Our Lord says: “Greater love than this no man has, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John xv. 13). Nor does the difference between the hireling and the true Shepherd end there (John x. 11-18). This readiness of the Pontiff to defend to death the Church confided to him, to wash away even in his own blood every stain that disfigures the beauty of this Bride (Ephesians v. 27), is itself the guarantee of that contract by which he is wedded to this chosen one of the Son of God, and it is the just price of those purest of joys reserved to him: “These things have I spoken to you,” says Our Lord when instituting the Testament of the New Alliance, “that My joy may he in you and your joy may be filled” (John xv. 11).

If such should be the privileges and obligations of the Heads of the Churches, how much more so in the case of the universal Pastor! When regenerated man was confided to Simon, son of John, by the Incarnate God, His chief care was in the first place to make sure that he would indeed be the Vicar of His love: that, having received more than the rest, he would love more than all of them: that being the inheritor of the love of Jesus for His own who were in the world, he would love, as He had done, even to the end (John xiii. 1). For this very reason, the establishing of Peter on the summit of the Hierarchy coincides in the Gospel narrative with the announcement of his martyrdom (John xxi. 18). Pontiff-king, he must needs follow even to the cross his Supreme Hierarch (John xxi. 19-22).

The Feasts of his two Chairs, that of Antioch and that of Rome, have recalled to our minds the Sovereignty by which he presides over the government of the whole world, and the Infallibility of the doctrine which he distributes as food to the whole flock. But these two feasts, and the Primacy to which they bear witness on the sacred Cycle, call for that completion and further sanction afforded by the teachings included in today’s festival. Just as the power received by the Man-God from His Father (Matthew xxviii. 18) and the full communication made by Him of this same power to the visible Head of His Church had but for end the consummation of glory, the one object of the Thrice-Holy God in the whole of His work (John xvii. 4), so likewise all Jurisdiction, all Teaching, all Ministry here below, says Saint Paul, has for end the consummation of the Saints (Ephesians iv. 12) which is but one with the consummation of this sovereign Glory: now, the sanctity of the creature and the glory of God, Creator and Saviour, taken together, find their full expression only in the Sacrifice which embraces both Shepherd and flock in one same Holocaust.

It was for this final end of all Pontificate, of all Hierarchy, that Peter, from the day of Jesus’ Ascension, traversed the earth. At Joppa, when he was but opening the career of his Apostolic labours, a mysterious hunger seized him: “Arise, Peter, kill and eat,” said the Spirit, and at that same hour, in symbolic vision were presented before his gaze, all the animals of earth and all the birds of heaven (Acts x. 9-16). This was the gentile world which he must join to the remnant of Israel on the divine Banquet-board. Vicar of the Word, he must share his vast hunger. His preaching, like a two-edged sword, will strike down whole nations before him. His charity, like a devouring fire, will assimilate to itself the peoples. Realising his title of Head, the day will come when as true Head of the world, he will have formed (from all mankind, become now a prey to his avidity) the Body of Christ in his own person. Then like a new Isaac, or rather, a very Christ, he will behold rising before him, the mountain where the Lord sees, awaiting the oblation (Genesis xxii. 14).

Let us also “look and see,” for this future has become the present, and even as on the great Friday, so now we a ready know how the Drama is to end. A final scene all bliss, all triumph: for herein deicide mingles not its wailing note to that of Earth’s homage, and the perfume of sacrifice which earth is exhaling does but fill the heavens with sweet gladness. Divinised by virtue of the adorable Victim of Calvary, it might indeed be said, this day that earth is able now to stand alone. Simple son of Adam as he is by nature, and yet nevertheless true Sovereign Pontiff, Peter advances bearing the world: his own sacrifice is about to complete that of the Man-God, with whose dignity he is invested (Colossians i. 24). Inseparable as she is from her visible Head, the Church likewise invests him with her own glory (1 Corinthians xi. 7). Far from her now are the horrors of that midday darkness which shrouded her tears when, for the first time, the cross was up-reared. She is all song, and her inspired Lyric celebrates “the beauteous Light Eternal that floods with sacred fires this Day which opens out to the guilty a free path to Heaven” (Hymn of Vespers).

What more could the day of the Sacrifice of Jesus Himself ? But this is because by the power of this other cross which is rising up, Babylon becomes today the Holy City. The while Sion sits accursed for having once crucified her Saviour, vain is it on the contrary for Rome to reject the Man-God, to pour out the blood of his Martyrs like water in her streets. No crime of Rome’s is able to prevail against the great fact fixed forever at this hour: the cross of Peter has transferred to her all the rights of the cross of Jesus, leaving to the Jews the curse, she now becomes the True Jerusalem.

Such being then the meaning of this day, it is not surprising that Eternal Wisdom should have willed to enhance it still further by joining the sacrifice of Paul to that of Peter. More than any other, Paul advanced by his preachings,the building up of the body of Christ (Ephesians iv. 12). If on this day holy Church has attained such full development as to be able to offer herself in the person of her visible Head as a sweet smelling sacrifice, who better than Paul may deservedly perfect the oblation, furnishing from his own veins the sacred libation? (Colossians i. 24; 2 Corinthians xxi. 15). The Bride having attained fullness of age (Ephesians iv. 13), his own work is likewise ended (2 Corinthians xi. 2). Inseparable from Peter in his labours by faith and love, he will accompany him also in death. Both quit this Earth, leaving her to the gladness of the divine Nuptials sealed in their blood while they ascend together to that eternal abode in which that union is consummated (2 Corinthians v.).

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Since the terrible persecution of the year 64, Rome had become for Peter a sojourn fraught with peril, and he remembered how his Master had said to him, when appointing him Shepherd of both lambs and sheep: “Follow me” (John xxi.). The Apostle, therefore awaited the day when he must mingle his blood with that of s0 many thousands of Christians whom he had initiated into the faith, and whose Father he truly was. But before quitting earth, Peter must triumph over Simon the Magician, his base antagonist. This heresiarch did not content himself with seducing souls by his perverse doctrines. He sought even to mimic Peter in the prodigies operated by him. So he proclaimed that on a certain day he would fly in the air. The report of this novelty quickly spread through Rome, and the people were full of the prospect of such a marvellous sight. If we are to believe Dion Chrysostom, Nero seems even to have entertained at his court this wondrous personage who pledged himself to soar aloft in mid-air. More than that, the Emperor would even with his own presence honour this rare sight. The imperial lodge was reared upon the Via Sacra, where the scene was to be enacted. But cruel for the impostor did this deception prove. “Scarce had this Icarus begun to poise his flight,” says Suetonius, “than he fell close to Nero’s lodge which was bathed in his blood.”

The gravest writers of Christian antiquity are unanimous in attributing to the prayer of Peter, this humiliation inflicted on the Samaritan Juggler in the very midst of Rome where he had dared to set himself up as the rival of Christ’s Vicar. The disgrace of the heresiarch, as well as his blood, had fallen on the Emperor himself. Curiosity and ill-will but needed, therefore, to be combined, in order to attract personally upon Peter an attention that might prove disastrous. Moreover, be it remembered there was yet another danger, and to this Saint Paul alludes, namely the peril of fake brethren. To understand this term and justly to appreciate the situation, we must bear in mind how inevitable are the clashing of certain characters in a society so numerous as was already that of the Christians in Rome, and how discontent is necessarily caused to vulgar minds when sometimes existing circumstances demand higher interests to be exclusively consulted, in the always difficult question of choosing persons to offices of trust, or to special confidence. These things well borne in mind, it will be easy to account for what Saint Clement, an eye-witness of the Apostle’s martyrdom, attests in a letter to the Corinthians, viz. That “rivalries and jealousies” had a large share in the tragic end brought about, through the suspicions at last conceived by the authorities, against “this Jew.”

The filial devotedness of the Christians of Rome took alarm and they implored Saint Peter to elude the danger for a while by instant flight. “Although he would have much preferred to suffer,” says Saint Ambrose, Peter set out along the Appian Way. Just as he reached the Capuan gate, Christ suddenly presented himself, seemingly about to enter the City. “Lord, where are you going?” cried out the Apostle. “To Rome,” Christ replied, “to be there crucified again.” The disciple understood his Master. He at once retraced his steps, having no thought now save to await his hour of martyrdom. This Gospel-like scene expresses the sequel of our Lord’s designs upon the venerable old man. With a view to founding the Christian Church in unity, He had extended to His disciples His own prophetic name of the “Rock,” or “Stone” (Petrus). Now, to the Cross itself, was He about to make him His participator.

Rome having replaced Jerusalem must likewise have her Calvary. In his flight, Peter dropped from his leg a bandlet which a disciple picked up with much respect. A monument was afterwards raised on the spot where this incident occurred: it is now the Church of Saints Nereus and Achilles anciently called Titulus fascioloe, the Title of the handlet. According to the designs of Providence, the humble fasciola was to recall the memory of that momentous meeting at the gates of Rome where Christ in person stood face to face with His Apostle, the visible Head of His Church, and announced that the hour of his sacrifice on the cross was at hand. From that moment, Peter set everything in order with a view to his approaching end. It was at this time he wrote his Second Epistle, which is as it were his last testament and loving farewell to the Church. In it he declares that the close of his life is near, and compares his body to a temporary shelter, a tent, which one takes down, to journey further on. “The laying away of this my tabernacle is at hand, according as our Lord Jesus Christ also has signified to me” (2 Peter i. 14). These his words are evidently an allusion to the apparition on the Appian way. But before quitting this world Peter must provide for the transmission of his pastoral charge and for the needs of Holy Church, now about to be widowed of her visible Head. To this he refers in these words: “And I will do my endeavour that after my decease you may also often have, whereby you may keep a memory of these things” (2 Peter i. 15).

Into whose hands are those keys to pass, which he received from Christ, as a sign of his dominion over the whole Flock? Linus had been for more than ten years the Auxiliary of the holy Apostle in the midst of the Christians of Rome. The still further increase of the Faithful induced Peter to give Linus a colleague in the person of Cletus. Yet on neither of these two did the choice of Peter fall at this solemn moment in which he was about to fulfil the promise contained in his farewell letter to provide for the continuance of his ministry. Clement, whose nobility of birth recommended him to the consideration of the Romans, while at the same time, his zeal and learning merited the esteem of the Faithful, was the one on whom the Prince of the Apostles fixed his choice. During these last days still remaining to him, Peter imposed hands on Clement, and having invested him with the Episcopal character, enthroned him in his own Chair, declaring his intention to have him for his Successor. These facts related in the Liber Pontificalis are confirmed by the testimony of Tertullian and Saint Epiphanius.

Thus the quality of Bishop of Rome entailed that of Universal Pastor, and Peter must needs leave the heritage of the divine keys to him who should next occupy the See he held at the moment of death. So had Christ ordained, and a heavenly inspiration had led Peter to choose Rome for his last station: Rome prepared long beforehand, by Providence, to universal Empire. Hence, at the moment when the Supremacy of Peter passed to one of his disciples, no astonishment was manifested in the Church. It was well known that the Primacy was and must necessarily be a local heritage, and none ignored the fact that Rome herself was that spot made choice of by Peter, long years before. Nor after Peter’s death did it ever occur to the mind of any of the Christians to seek the centre of Holy Church either at Jerusalem, or at Alexandria, or at Antioch, or elsewhere. The Christians in Rome made great account of the paternal devotedness he had lavished on their city. Hence their alarms, to which the Apostle once consented to yield.

Saint Peter’s Epistles so redolent of affection, bear witness to the tenderness of soul with which he was, to a very high degree, gifted. He is ever the Shepherd all devotedness to his sheep, fearing above all else anything savouring of a domineering tone. He is ever the Vicar effacing himself so that nothing may transpire save the dignity and rights of Him whom he represents. This exquisite modesty is further increased in Peter by the remembrance which haunts his whole life, (as ancient writers say), of the sin he had committed and which he continues to deplore up to these closing days of extreme old age. Faithful ever to that transcending love of which his divine Master had required him to make a triple affirmation before confiding to him the care of His Flock, he endured unflinchingly the immense labours of his office of Fisher of men. One circumstance of his life which relates to this its closing period reveals most touchingly the devotedness wherewith he clung to Him who had vouchsafed both to call him to follow Him, and to pardon his fragility. Clement of Alexandria has preserved this detail, as follows.

Before being called to the Apostolate, Peter had lived in the conjugal state. From that time forth, his wife became but a sister in his regard. She nevertheless continued in his company, following him about from place to place in his various journeys, in order to render him service (1 Corinthians ix.). She was in Rome while Nero’s persecution was raging, and the honour of martyrdom thus sought her out. Peter watched her as she stepped forth on her way to triumph, and at that moment, his solicitude broke out in this one exclamation: “Oh! Bethink you of the Lord.” These two Galileans had seen the Lord, had received Him into their house, had made Him their guest at table. Since then, the Divine Pastor had suffered on the cross, had risen again, had ascended into Heaven, leaving the care of His Flock to the Fisherman of Lake Genezareth. What else then would Peter have his wife do at this moment, save to recall such sweet memories and to dart forwards to Him whom she had erstwhile known here below in His Human Features, and who was now about to crown her hidden life with immortal glory!

The moment for entering into this same glory came at last for Peter himself. “When you will be old,” mysteriously had his Master said to him, “you will stretch forth your hands, and another will gird you, and lead you where you would not” (John xxi.). So Peter was to attain an advanced age. Like his Master, he must stretch forth his arms on a cross. He must know captivity and the weight of chains with which a foreigner’s hand will load him. He must be subjected, in its violent form, to death from which nature recoils, and drink the chalice from which even his Divine Master Himself prayed to be spared. But like his Master also, he will arise strong in the divine aid, and will press forwards to the cross. Lo, this oracle is about to be accomplished to the letter. On the day fixed by God’s decree, pagan power gave orders for the Apostle’s arrest. Details are wanting as to the judicial procedure which followed, but the constant tradition of the Roman Church is that he was incarcerated in the Mamertine Prison.

By this name is known the dungeon constructed at the foot of the Capitoline hill, by Ancus Martius, and afterwards completed by Servius Tullus, from which it is also called Carcer Tullianus. Two outer staircases, called the Steps of Sighs, led to this frightful den. An upper dungeon gave immediate entrance to that which was to receive the prisoner and never to deliver him up alive, unless he were destined to a public execution. To be put into this horrible place, he had to be let down by cords through an opening above, and by the same was he finally drawn up again, whether dead or alive. The vaulting of this lower dungeon was high and its darkness was utter and horrible so that it was an easy task to guard a captive detained in it, especially if he were laden with chains.

On the twenty-ninth of June, in the year 67, Peter was at length drawn up to be led to death. According to Roman law, he must first be subjected to the scourge, the usual prelude to capital punishment. An escort of soldiers conducted the Apostle to his place of martyrdom outside the city walls, as the laws required. Peter was marched to execution, followed by a large number of the Faithful drawn by affection along his path, and for his sake defying every peril. Beyond the Tiber, facing the Campus Martins there stretches a vast plain which is reached by the bridge named the Triumphal, by which the city is put in communication with the Via Triumphalis and the Via Cornelia, both of which roads lead to the north. On its further side from the river the plain is bounded on the left, by the Janiculum, and beyond that in the background, by the Vatican hills whose chain continues along to the right in the form of an amphitheatre. Along that bank of the Tiber the land is occupied by immense gardens, which three years previously had been made by Nero the scene of the principal immolation of the Christians, just at this same season also. To the West of the Vatican Plain and beyond Nero’s gardens, was a circus of vast extent, usually called by his name, although in reality it owes its origin to Caligula, who placed in its centre an obelisk which he had transported from Egypt. Outside the Circus, towards its furthest end, rose a temple to Apollo, the protector of the public games. At the other end, the declivity of the Vatican hills begins, and about the middle, facing the Obelisk, was planted a turpentine tree well known to the people. The spot fixed upon for Peter’s execution was close to this said turpentine tree. There, likewise, was his tomb already dug. No other spot in all Rome could be more suitable for so august a purpose.

From remotest ages, something mysterious had hovered over the Vatican. An old oak, said by the most ancient traditions to be anterior to the foundation of Rome, was there held in great reverence. There was much talk of Oracles heard in this place. Moreover, where could a more choice resting place be found for this Old Man who had just conquered Rome, than a mound beneath this venerated soil, opening upon the Triumphal Way and the Cornelian Way, thus uniting the memories of victorious Rome and the name of the Cornelii which had now become inseparable from that of Peter? There is something supremely grand in this taking possession of these places by the Vicar of the Man-God. The Apostle having reached the spot and come up to the instrument of death, implored of his executioners to set him on it, not in the usual way, but head downwards, in order, said he, that the servant be not seen in the same position once taken by the Master. His request was granted, and Christian tradition in all ages renders testimony to this fact which moreover adds further evidence to the deep humility of so great an Apostle. Peter, with outstretched arms, prayed for the city, prayed for the whole world, the while his blood flowed down on that Roman soil, the conquest of which he had just achieved. At this moment Rome became for ever the new Jerusalem. When the Apostle had gone through the whole round of his sufferings, he expired, but he was to live again in each one of his Successors to the end of time.

* * * * *

“The crowd is pressing more than usual, clad in festal garb. Tell me, my friend, what means this concourse: all Rome is swaying to and fro, mad as it were, with joy? Because this day recalls a memory of a triumph the most gorgeous: Peter and Paul, both of them Victors in a death sublime, have ennobled this day with their blood. Tiber, henceforth sacred, since he flows betwixt their tombs set on either bank, was witness of the cross and of the sword. Double trophy, double riches, claiming homage of the Queen-City. Double solemnity on one day! Wherefore, behold the people of Romulus, in two streams crossing one another, athwart the city! Let us haste our speed that we may be able to share in the two feasts. Let us lose not one of these sacred hymns. First, let us pursue the way which leads to the Adrian bridge. Beyond gilded roofs, mark the spot where Peter reposes. There, at early dawn, the Pontiff offers his first vows. Hastening on and reaching the left bank, he comes presently to Paul’s tomb, there to offer once again the Holy Sacrifice. So remember, thus is honoured this twice sacred day.”

It is Prudentius, the great Christian poet of the fourth century who has just come forward in the above words as witness of the enthusiasm with which the solemnity of the Apostles was celebrated in Rome at his time. Theodoret and Saint Asterius of Amasea tell us that the piety of the Faithful on this feast was not less demonstrated in such distant Churches as those of Syria and Asia. In the codes which bear their name, Theodosius and Justinian lay down or repeat the prohibition of toil or trade, of law-suits or profane shows on the day of the Martyrdom of the Apostles, the “Masters of Christendom.” In this respect even schism and heresy have not been suffered in the East to prevail over gratitude and love. Nearer home too, yes, in the very midst of the ruin brought about by the pretended reform in Protestant England, its Book of common Prayer still marks this feast of June 29th and a fast too, on its Vigil. Nevertheless, by a strange phenomenon, little in keeping with the tendencies of the Establishment, Saint Paul is discarded on this day, leaving all the festal honours to Saint Peter of whom only is mention made in the day’s service: of him whose successor the Bishop of Rome is, whereas this same Anglican calendar retains no memory of Saint Paul save the feast of his Conversion, January 25th.

The poem of Prudentius cited above brings to light a certain degree of difficulty formerly experienced by the Roman people in order not to lose any part of the double station proper to this day. The distance was great indeed, from the Vatican Basilica to that on the Ostian Way, and the two streams of people, to which the poet alludes, prove significantly that a great number of pilgrims, from the impossibility of their being present at both Masses, were reduced to the necessity of making choice of one or other. Added to this difficulty, let us remember that the preceding night had not been without fatigue, if at that same period, as certainly was the case in later ages, the Matins of the Apostles begun at dusk had been followed by those of the Martyrs at the first cock-crow. Saint Gregory the Great, wishing therefore to spare his people and clergy an accumulation of services which turned rather to the detriment, than to the increase of honour paid to the two Princes of the Apostles, put off, till the morrow, the Station on the Ostian Way with its Solemn Commemoration of the Doctor of the Gentiles. Consequently, it is not surprising that, save the Collect common to the two Apostles, the formulae chanted at the Mass which is about to follow, relate exclusively to Saint Peter: this Mass was formerly, only the first of the day, namely the one which was celebrated in the early morning at the Tomb of the Vicar of the Man-God.

Epistle – Acts xii. 1‒11

In those days, king Herod stretched forth his hands to afflict some of the Church, and he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. Seeing that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to take up Peter also, Now it was in the days of the Azymes, and when he had apprehended him, he cast him into prison, delivering him to four files of soldiers to be kept, intending after the Pasch to bring him forth to the people. Peter therefore was kept in prison; but prayer was made without ceasing by the Church to God for him. And when Herod would have brought him forth, the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains; and the keepers before the door kept the prison. Behold an Angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shined in the room, and he striking Peter on the side, raised him up, saying: “Arise quickly,” and the chains fell off from his hands. And the angel said to him, “gird yourself and put on your sandals,” and he did so: and he said to him, “Cast your garment about you and follow me.” Going out he followed him, and he knew not that it was true which was done by the Angel, but he thought he saw a vision. Passing through the first and the second ward, they came to the iron gate that lead to the city, which of itself opened to them. Going out, they passed on through one street, and immediately the angel departed from him. Peter coming to himself said, “Now I know in very deed that the Lord has sent His angel, and has delivered me out of the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the people of the Jews.”

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

It would be difficult to insist more than does today’s Liturgy, on the episode of Peter’s captivity in Jerusalem. Several Antiphons and all the Capitula of this Office are drawn from there. The Introit has just sung the same, and here our Epistle comes giving us every line of that which seems to interest the attention of Mother Church in so special a manner today. The secret of her preference can easily be divined. This Festival celebrates the fact that Peter’s death confirms the Queen of the Gentile world in her august prerogatives of Sovereign Lady, Mother and Bride. But then, the starting point of all this greatness of hers was the solemn moment in which the Vicar of the Man-God, shaking the dust from off his feet (Luke x. 11) over Jerusalem, turned his face westwards and transferred to Rome those rights that the Synagogue had repudiated. Now it was on quitting Herod’s prison that all this happened. “And going out of the city,” says the Acts, “he went into another place” (Acts xii. 17). This other place, according to the testimony of history and tradition, is no other than Rome, then about to become the new Sion where Simon Peter arrived some weeks afterwards. Thus, catching up the Angel’s word, the Gentile Church sings this night in one of her Responsories at Matins: “Peter, arise, and put on your garments: gird yourself with strength to save the nations, for the chains have fallen from off your hands.”

Just as in by-gone days Jesus slept in the barque that was on the point of sinking, so Peter was sleeping quietly on the eve of the day doomed for his death. Tempests and dangers of all kinds are not spared, in the course of ages, to Peter’s successors. But never is there seen on the barque of Holy Church the dire dismay which held aghast the companions of Our Lord on that vessel tossed as it was by the wild hurricane. Faith was then lacking in the breasts of the disciples, and its absence was that which caused their terror (Mark iv. 40). Since the Descent of the Holy Ghost, however, this precious faith, from which all other gifts flow, can never be lost in the Church. Faith it is that imparts to Superiors the calmness of their Divine Master. Faith maintains in the hearts of the Christian people that uninterrupted prayer, whose humble confidence silently triumphs over the world and the elements, yes even, over God Himself. Should the barque of Peter near the abyss, should the Pilot Himself seem to sleep, never will Holy Church imitate the disciples in the storm of Lake Genezareth. Never will she set herself up as judge of the due means and moments for Divine Providence, nor deem it lawful for her to find fault with Him who is watching over all: remembering that she possesses within her a better and a surer means than any other, of bringing to a solution, and that without display or commotion, crises the most extreme: never ignoring, that if intercessory prayer but falter not, the Angel of the Lord will surely come at the given hour to awaken Peter and break his chains asunder.

Oh how far more potent are a few souls that in their unobtrusive simplicity know how to pray, than all the policy and all the soldiers of a thousand Herods put together! That small community assembled in the house of Mary, Mother of Mark (Acts xii. 12) were few indeed in numbers, but there, day-by-day and night-by-night, arose one continual prayer. Fortunately that fatal naturalism was unknown there, which under the specious pretext of not tempting God, refrains from asking of Him the impossible whenever there is question of the Church’s interests. This pest of naturalism is a domestic enemy harder far to grapple with at a critical moment than the crisis itself! To be sure, the precautions taken by Herod Agrippa not to suffer his prisoner to escape his hands, do credit to his prudence, and certainly it was an impossible thing asked for by Holy Church when she begged the deliverance of Peter at such a moment: so much so indeed, that even those who were praying, when their prayers were heard, did not at first believe their own eyes! But the prevailing force of their strength was just in that, namely, to hope against all hope (Romans iv. 18). for what they themselves knew to be holy foolishness (Acts xii. 14-15) that is to say, to submit in prayer the judgement of reason to the sole views of Faith!

Gospel – Matthew xvi. 13‒19

At that time Jesus came into the quarters of Caesarea Philippi, and He asked His disciples saying, “Who do men say the Son of Man is?” They said, “Some, John the Baptist, and other some Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” Jesus said to them, “But who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answering said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven, and I say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it; and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you will bind on earth will be bound also in heaven, and whatever you will loose on earth will be loosed also in heaven.”

Praise be to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

In the Epistle, Rome has celebrated the day on which Judah’s obstinacy in rejecting the Vicar of the Man-God won for the Gentile Church the honours of the Bride. See how in joyous gratitude she now recalls the memory of that blissful moment when first Earth hailed the Spouse by His divine title: “You are Christ, Son of the Living God!” O happy word awaited for centuries, and for which John the Baptist has been preparing the Bride! But the Precursor himself had quitted the world ere its accents awakened an echo in Earth too long dormant. His role was to bring the Word and the Church face-to-face. After that he was to disappear, as indeed he did, leaving the Bride to the spontaneity of her own effusions. Now is not the pure gold of the Divinity with which His Head is adorned the first of the Beloved’s excellencies pointed out by the Bride in the Sacred Canticle? (Canticles v. 11; 1Corinthians xi. 3) Thus, therefore, does she speak on the plains of Caesarea Philippi, and her organ is Simon Bar-Jonah, who for having thus rendered her heart’s full utterance, remains for ever the “Mouth of Holy Church.”

Faith and love with one accord, hereupon, constitute Peter Supreme and most ancient summit of Theologians, as Saint Denis calls him, in his book of the Divine Names. First verily, both in order of time and in plenitude of dogma, he resolves the problem, the insolvable formula of which had stretched to the utmost the theology of Prophetic times. “The words of him that gathers the peoples,” said the wise man, “the words of the son of him who scatters truths, the vision which the man spoke with whom God is, and who being strengthened by God abiding with him said: ‘I have not learned wisdom... Who has ascended up into heaven, and descended, so that he may know the name of Him who made the earth? And what is the name of His Son? Who can tell it?’” (Proverbs xxx. 1-4). Then, after this mysterious exordium leading up to the mysterious question, the wise man without pursuing it further, concludes with a confiding reserve yet mingled with timidity: “Every Word of God is fire-tried: he is a buckler to them that hope in him. Add not anything to his words, lest you be reproved and found a liar” (Proverbs xxx. 5-6).

What then, Peter, are you more wise than Solomon? And can that which the Holy Ghost declared to be above all science be confided as a secret to a poor fisherman? Yes, even so. None know the Father, but the Son (Matthew xi. 27), yet the Father Himself has revealed to Simon the Mystery of His Son, and the word which attests it may not be gainsaid. For that word is no lying addition to divine Dogma: it is the oracle of Heaven which, passing through human lips, raises its happy interpreters above the level of mere flesh and blood. Like Christ, whose Vicar it causes him to become, his one mission is to be Heaven’s faithful echo here below (John xv. 15), transmitting to men only what he received (John xvii. 18) — that is, the Word of the Father (John xvii. 14). Here we have the entire Mystery of the Church, at once of Heaven and of Earth, and against which Hell may not prevail.

* * * * *

O PETER, we also hail your glorious tomb! Well does it behove us, your chosen sons of the West, to celebrate with faith and love the glories of this day. If all nations are moved at the tidings of your triumphant death, if all tongues proclaim that from Rome perforce must the Law of the Lord come forth to the whole world, is it not because this death of yours has turned Babylon into that City of divine oracles hailed by the son of Amos in his prophecy? (Isaias ii. 1-5). Is it not because the mountain prepared in distant ages to bear the House of the Lord begins to peer from out the mist, and now stands forth in full daylight to the eyes of the nations? The site of the new Sion is forever fixed, for on this day is the cornerstone laid (Isaias xxviii. 16) and Jerusalem is to have no other foundation than this tried and precious Stone.

Peter, on you must we build, for fain are we to be dwellers in the Holy City. We will follow our Lord’s counsel (Matthew vii. 24-27) by raising our structure upon the rock so that it may resist the storm and may become an eternal abode. Our gratitude to you, who has vouchsafed to uphold us, is all the greater since this our senseless age pretends to construct a new social edifice which it would fix on the shifting sands of public opinion, and hence realises nothing save downfall and ruin! Is the stone rejected by our modem architects any the less head of the corner? And does not its strength appear in the fact (as it is written) that having rejected and cast it aside, they stumble against it and are hurt, yes, broken? (1 Peter ii. 6, 8). Standing erect amid these ruins, firm upon the foundation, the rock against which the gates of Hell cannot prevail, we have all the more right to extol this day on which the Lord has, as our Psalm says, established the Earth (Psalms xcii. 1). The Lord did indeed manifest His greatness when He cast the vast orbs into space and poised them by laws so marvellous that the mere discovery of them does honour to science. But His reign, His beauty, His power, are far more stupendous when He lays the basis prepared by Him to support that temple of which a myriad worlds scarce deserve to be called the pavement. Of this immortal day did Eternal Wisdom sing, when divinely foretasting its pure delights, and preluding our gladness, he thus led on our happy chorus: “When the mountains with their huge bulk were being established, and when the earth was being balanced on its poles, when he established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters, when he laid the foundations of the earth, I was with him, forming all things; and was delighted every day playing before him at all times; playing in the world, for my delights are to be with the children of men” (Proverbs viii.).

Now that Eternal Wisdom is raising up on you, Peter, the House of her mysterious delights (Proverbs ix.). Where else could we possibly find Her, or be inebriated with her chalice, or advance in her love? Now that Jesus has returned to Heaven and given us you to hold His place, is it not henceforth from you that we have the words of Eternal Life? (John vi. 69). In you is continued the mystery of the Word made Flesh and dwelling among us. Hence, if our religion, our love of the Emmanuel hold not on to you, they are incomplete. You yourself also having joined the Son of Man at the Right Hand of the Father, the cultus paid to you on account of your divine prerogatives reaches the Pontiff, your Successor, in whom you continue to live by reason of these very prerogatives: a real cultus, extending to Christ in His Vicar, and which consequently cannot possibly be fitted into a subtile distinction between the See of Peter, and him who occupies it. In the Roman Pontiff, you are ever, Peter, the one sole Shepherd and support of the world. If our Lord has said: “No one comes to the Father but by Me” (John xiv. 6), we also know that none can reach the Lord, save by you. How could the rights of the Son of God, the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, suffer in such homages as these paid by a grateful Earth to you? No, we cannot celebrate your greatness without at once, turning our thoughts to Him, likewise, whose sensible sign you are, an august Sacrament, as it were. You seem to say to us, as before to our fathers by the inscription on your ancient statue: CONTEMPLATE THE GOD WORD, THE STONE DIVINELY CUT IN THE GOLD, UPON WHICH BEING FIRMLY FIXED I CANNOT BE SHAKEN! (1 Peter ii. 25).

Today is the principal patronal feast of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, a Clerical Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right. Its members are priests who do not take religious vows but work together for (1) the formation and sanctification of priests by way of the liturgical books approved by Pope John XXIII in 1962, and (2) the pastoral deployment of the priests in the service of the Roman Catholic Church. See http://www.fssp.org/

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Argenton, St. Marcellus, martyr, who was beheaded for the faith of Christ together with the soldier Anastasius.

At Genoa, the birthday of St. Syrius, bishop.

At Narni, St. Cassius, bishop of that city, of whom St. Gregory related, that he permitted scarcely any day of his life to pass without offering the victim of propitiation to Almighty God, and he was well worthy to do it, for he distributed in alms all he possessed, and his devotion was such that abundant tears flowed from his eyes during the holy sacrifice. At last, he came to Rome on the birthday of the Apostles, as was his yearly custom, and after having solemnly celebrated Mass and given the Lord’s body and the kiss of peace to all, he departed for heaven.

In Cyprus, St. Mary, mother of John, surnamed Mark.

In the territory of Sens, St. Benedicta, virgin.

And in other places, many other holy martyrs, confessors and virgins.

Thanks be to God.