27 JUNE – OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HELP

The title of Our Lady of Perpetual Help was given to the Blessed Virgin Mary by Blessed Pope Pius IX in association with the thirteenth century Byzantine icon which was brought to Rome from Crete at the end of the fifteenth century. The Blessed Virgin Mary herself chose the location for her sanctuary, having revealed to a little child that “I desire to have my home between my beloved Church of Saint Mary Major and that of my dear adopted son, John” (St. John Lateran). It was in the Via Merulana that Pope Cletus lived, and it was there in his house that he built an oratory dedicated to Saint Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist, and accommodated pilgrims visiting the tombs of the Apostles. In the fourth century the oratory was replaced by a church which was restored and re-consecrated by Pope Paschal II in 1110.

In the fifteenth century Pope Sixtus IV gave the church to Irish friars of the Augustinian Order, and in 1499 the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help was installed above the high altar. During the Napoleonic invasion of Rome, the Church of Saint Matthew and its monastery were destroyed, but the miraculous icon was saved and placed for safe-keeping at the monastery of Saint Eusebius where the friars of Saint Matthew’s remained until Rome was liberated in 1814 and Pope Pius VII returned from his imprisonment in France. The Pope then gave the friars the nearby palace and Church of Santa Maria in Posterula, and the icon was placed in their private oratory. In 1854 Blessed Pope Pius IX decided that the Father-General of the Redemptorists should reside in Rome. In the following year construction of a church and monastery of Saint Alphonsus began on the Via Merulana.

In December 1865 later Blessed Pope Pius IX ordered the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help to be returned to its place between the Basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore and San Giovanni in Laterano, “a stone's throw” from its original location in the old Church of Saint Matthew. On the 26th of April 1866 the icon was welcomed back after a grand public procession, and the festivities ended on the 29th of April with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and the singing of the Te Deum. The Church soon became one of the most venerated of all the Roman sanctuaries of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The shrine became so remarkable for its miracles and wonders and the number of pilgrims visiting, that the Vatican Chapter of Saint Peter decided to bestow on the holy icon its honour of Coronation.

On 23 June 1867, after a Pontifical Mass and the solemn singing of the 'Te Deum,' the Patriarch of Constantinople ascended the high altar holding two gold crowns, placing one diadem on the head of the infant Jesus and the other on the head of his Blessed Mother. Each year the Coronation is commemorated by the Redemptorists with a special Office and Mass. There are more than 3,000 authentic copies of the icon, each of which has been blessed by the Pope and sealed and signed by the Father-General of the Redemptorists.

Almighty and everlasting God who has given us to venerate an image of your most blessed Mother under the special invocation of Our Perpetual Help, grant graciously, that amid all the changes of this our way and life, we may be so defended by the constant protection of that same Immaculate and ever-Virgin Mary, as to be able to obtain the reward of your eternal redemption. Through Our Lord ...

On this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

In Galatia, St. Crescens, a disciple of the blessed Apostle St. Paul. In passing through Gaul he converted many to the Christian faith by his preaching. Returning to the people for whom especially he had been made bishop, he maintained, to the end of his life, the Galatians in the service of the Lord, and finally consummated his martyrdom under Trajan.

At Cordova, St. Zoilus, and nineteen other martyrs.

At Caesarea in Palestine, in the persecution of Diocletian under the governor Urbanus, St. Anectus, martyr. For having exhorted others to suffer martyrdom and overthrown idols by his prayers, he was scourged by ten soldiers, had his hands and feet cut off, and by decapitation merited the crown of martyrdom.

At Constantinople, St. Sampson, a priest who harboured the poor.

At Warasdin in Hungary, the holy king Ladislas, greatly renowned to this day for miracles.

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

Thanks be to God.

27 JUNE – THE MOST SACRED HEART OF JESUS

In 1875 Blessed Pius IX consecrated the Catholic Church to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and in 1899 Pope Leo XIII dedicated the whole of mankind to the Sacred Heart, raising the Feast of the Sacred Heart to the rite of Double of the First Class. Finally, in 1929 Pope Pius XI composed a new Office and Mass for the Feast of the Sacred Heart.

Our Lord made the following promises to those who practice devotion to His Sacred Heart:

I will grant them the graces necessary for their state of life.

I will establish peace in their families.

I will comfort them in their afflictions.

I will be their safe refuge during life, and especially at death.

I will give abundant blessings on all their undertakings.

Sinners will find a fountain and a boundless ocean of mercy in My Heart.

Tepid souls will become fervent.

Fervent souls will quickly achieve great perfection.

I will bless every place where the picture of My Sacred Heart is exposed and honoured.

I will give to priests the power to touch the hardest hearts.

I will grant to all those who receive Communion on the First Fridays, for nine consecutive months, the grace of final repentance.

They will not die in my displeasure, nor without receiving the sacraments, and my Heart will be their secure refuge in that last hour.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

A new ray of light shines today in the heaven of holy Church, and its light brings warmth. The divine Master given to us by our Redeemer, that is, the Paraclete Spirit, who has come down into this world, continues His teachings to us in the sacred Liturgy. The earliest of these His divine teachings was the mystery of the Trinity. And we have worshipped the Blessed Three: we have been taught who God is, we know Him in His own nature, we have been admitted by faith into the sanctuary of the infinite Essence. Then, this Spirit, the mighty wind of Pentecost (Acts ii. 2), opened to our souls new aspects of the truth which it is His mission to make the world remember (John xiv. 26), and His revelation left us prostrate before the sacred Host, the Memorial which God Himself has left us of all His wonderful works (Psalms cx. 3).

Today it is the Sacred Heart of the Word made flesh that this Holy Spirit puts before us that we may know and love and adore It. There is a mysterious connection between these three Feasts, of Trinity, Corpus Christi and the Sacred Heart. The aim of the Holy Ghost in all three is this: to initiate us more and more into that knowledge of God by faith, which is to fit us for the face-to-face Vision in Heaven. We have already seen how God being made known to us by the first in Himself, manifests Himself to us by the second in His outward works — for the Holy Eucharist is the memorial here below in which He has brought together, and with all possible perfection, all those His wondrous works. But by what law can we pass so rapidly, so almost abruptly, from one Feast, which is all directly regarding God, to another which celebrates His works, done by Him to and for us? Then again: how came the divine thought, how came, that is, eternal Wisdom, from the infinite repose of the eternally blessed Trinity to the external activity of a love for us poor creatures which has produced what we call the Mysteries of our Redemption? The Heart of the Man-God is the solution of these difficulties. It answers all such questions and explains to us the whole divine plan.

We knew that the sovereign happiness which is in God, we knew that the life eternal communicated from the Father to the Son, and from these two to the Holy Ghost, in light and love, was to be given by the will of these Three Divine Persons to created beings. Not only to those which were purely spiritual, but likewise to that creature whose nature is the union of spirit and matter, that is, to Man. We are of this lower nature, and a pledge of this life eternal was given to us in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. It is by the Eucharist that Man, who has already been made a partaker of the divine nature (2 Peter i. 4) by the grace of the sanctifying Spirit is united to the divine Word, and is made a true member of this Only Begotten Son of the Father. Yes: though it had not yet appeared what we will be, says Saint John, still we are now the sons of God. We know that when He will appear we will be like Him, for we are called to live as the Word Himself does, in the society of that eternal Father of His, for ever and ever.

But the infinite love of the sacred Trinity which thus called us frail creatures to a participation in Its own blessed life would accomplish this merciful design by the help and means of another love, a love more like what we ourselves can feel. That is, the created love of a human soul evinced by the beatings of a heart of flesh like our own. The Angel of the great Counsel who is sent to make known to the world the merciful designs of the Ancient of days, took to Himself, in order to fulfil His divine mission, a created, a human form. And this would enable men to see with their eyes, yes, and even touch with their hands, the Word of life, that life eternal which was with the Father, but appeared even to us (1 John i. 2). This human nature which the Son of God took into personal union with Himself from the womb of the Virgin-Mother was the docile instrument of infinite love, but it was not absorbed into, or lost in, the Godhead. It retained its own substance, its special faculties, its distinct will, which Will ruled, under the influence of the divine Word, the acts and movements of His most holy Soul and adorable Body. From the very first instant of its existence, the human Soul of Christ was inundated, more directly than was any other creature, with that true light of the Word, “which enlightens every man who comes into this world” (John i. 9). It enjoyed the face-to-face vision of the divine essence, and therefore took in at a single glance the absolute beauty of the sovereign Being and the wisdom of the divine decree which called finite beings into a participation of infinite bliss. It understood its sublime mission, and conceived an immense love for man and for God. This love began simultaneously with life and filled not only His soul, but impressed its own way the Body too — the Body which was formed from the substance of the Virgin Mother by the operation of the Holy Ghost. The effect of His love told, consequently, upon His Heart of true human flesh. It set in motion those beatings which made the Blood of redemption circulate in His sacred veins.

For it was not with Him as with other men, the pulsations of whose hearts are at first the consequence of nothing but the vital power which is in the human frame, and later on when age has awakened reason into act, the ideas so produced will produce physical impressions on us which will, now and then, quicken or dull the throbbings of these our hearts. With the Man-God it was not so: His Heart, from the very first moment of its life, responded, that is, throbbed, to the law of His soul’s love, whose power to act upon His human Heart was as incessant and as intense as is the power of organic vitality — a love as burning at the first instant of the Incarnation, as it is this very hour in Heaven. For the human love which the Incarnate Word had, resulting as it did from His intellectual knowledge of God and His creatures, was as perfect as that knowledge and therefore as incapable of all progress; though, being our Brother, and our model in all things, He day-by-day made more manifest to us the exquisite sensibility of His divine Heart.

At the period of Jesus’ coming on this Earth man had forgotten how to love, for he had forgotten what true beauty was. His heart of flesh seemed to him as a sort of excuse for his false love of false goods: his heart was but an outlet by which his soul could stray from heavenly things to the husks of earth, there to waste his power and substance (Luke xv. 13). To this material world which the soul of man was intended to make subserve its Maker’s glory — to this world which by a sad perversion kept man’s soul a slave to his senses and passions — the Holy Ghost sent a marvellous power, which, like a resistless lever, would replace the world in its right position: it was the sacred Heart of Jesus, a Heart of flesh like that of other human beings, from whose created throbbings there would ascend to the eternal Father an expression of love which would be a homage infinitely pleasing to the infinite Majesty, because there was in that love of that human Heart the dignity of its union with the Word. It is a harp of sweetest melody that is ever vibrating under the touch of the Spirit of Love. It gathers up into its own music the music of all creation, whose imperfections it corrects, and supplies its deficiencies, and tunes all discordant voices into unity, and so offers to the glorious Trinity a hymn of perfect praise. The Trinity finds its delight in this Heart. It is the one only organum, as Saint Gertrude calls it, the one only instrument which finds acceptance with the Most High. Through it must pass all the inflamed praises of the burning Seraphim, just as must do the humble homage paid to its God by inanimate creation. By it alone are to come upon this world the favours of Heaven. It is the mystic ladder between man and God, the channel of all graces, the way by which man ascends to God and God descends to man.

The Holy Ghost, whose masterpiece it is, has made it a living image of Himself. For although in the ineffable relations of the divine Persons He is not the source of love, He is its substantial expression or, in theological language, the term. It is He who inclines the Holy Trinity to those works outside Itself, which first produce creatures and then, having given them being (and to some, life,) He (the Holy Spirit) pours out on them all the effusion of their Creator’s love for them. And so is it with the love which the Man-God has for God and Man — its direct and, so to say, material expression is the throbbing it produces on His sacred Heart. And again, it is by that Heart that, like the Water and Blood which came from His wounded Side, He pours out onto the world a stream of redemption and grace which is to be followed by the still richer one of glory.

“One of the soldiers,” as the Gospel tells us, “opened Jesus’ Side with a spear, and immediately there came out blood and water” (John xix. 34). We must keep before us this text and the fact it relates, for they give us the true meaning of the Feast we are celebrating. The importance of the event here related is strongly intimated by the earnest and solemn way in which Saint John follows up his narration. After the words just quoted he adds: “And he that saw it, has given testimony of it, and his testimony is true. And he knows that he says true, that you also may believe; for these things were done that the Scripture might be fulfilled” (John xix. 35, 36). Here the Gospel refers us to the testimony of the Prophet Zacharias who, after predicting the Spirit of grace being poured out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem (Zacharias xii. 10) says: “They will look on Him whom they pierced” (Zacharias xii. 10, as quoted in John xix. 37).

And, when they look on his side thus pierced, what will they see there but that great truth which is the summary of all Scripture, of all history: “God so loved the world, as to give it his Only Begotten Son; that whoever believes in him, may not perish, but may have eternal life” (John iii. 16). This grand truth was during the ages of expectation veiled under types and figures. It could be deciphered by but few, and even then, only obscurely. But it was made known with all possible clearness on that eventful day when on Jordan’s banks (Luke iii. 21, 22) the whole sacred Trinity manifested who was the Elect, the Chosen One, of the Father — the Son in whom He was so well pleased (Isaias xliii. 1). Yes, it was Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Mary. But there was another revelation of deepest interest to us which had still to be made: it was how, and in what way, would the eternal life brought by this Jesus into the world, pass from Him into each one of us?

This second revelation was made to us when the soldier’s spear opened the divine source, and there flowed from it that Water and Blood which, as the Scripture tells us, completed the testimony of the Blessed Three. “There are three,” says Saint John, who give testimony in Heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost: and these Three are One. And there are three that give testimony on earth: the Spirit, and the Water, and the Blood”: and these three are one, that is, they are one, because they concur in giving the one same testimony. “And, this,” continues Saint John, “is the testimony: that God has given to us eternal life, and that this life is in His Son” (John v. 7, 8, 11). These words contain a very profound mystery, but we have their explanation in today’s Feast which shows us how it is through the Heart of the Man-God that the divine work is achieved and how, through that same Heart, the plan which was conceived from all eternity by the Wisdom of the Father, has been realised.

To communicate His own happiness to creatures by making them, through the Holy Ghost, partakers of His own divine nature (1 Peter i. 4), and members of His beloved Son — this was the merciful design of the Father. And all the works of the Trinity outside itself tend to the accomplishment of that same. When the fullness of time had come, there appeared upon our earth He that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ —not by water only, but by water and blood. The Spirit who, together with the Father and the Son has already on the banks of Jordan given His testimony, gives it here again, for Saint John continues: “And it is the Spirit which testifies that Christ is the truth” (1 John v. 6), and that He spoke the truth when He said of Himself that He is Life (John v. 26). Yes, the Spirit, as the Gospel teaches us (John vii. 37-39), comes forth with the water from the fountains of the Saviour (Isaias xii. 3), and makes us worthy of the Precious Blood which flows together with the water. Then does mankind, thus born again of water and the Holy Ghost, become entitled to enter into the kingdom of God (John iii. 5), and the Church, thus made ready for her Spouse in those same waters of Baptism, is united to the Incarnate Word in the Blood of the sacred Mysteries. We, being members of that holy Church, have had the same union with Christ. We are bone of His bones, and flesh of His flesh (Genesis ii. 23; Ephesians v. 30). We have received the power to be made adopted Sons of God (John i. 12) and sharers, for all eternity, of the divine life which He, the Son by nature, has in the bosom of the Father.

On, then, you [the people of the Old Testament] who are ignorant of the nuptials of the Lamb, give the signal of their being accomplished. Lead the Spouse to the nuptial bed of the Cross. He will lay Himself down on that most precious wood which His mother, the Synagogue, has made to be His couch. She prepared it for Him on the eve of the day of his alliance when, from His Sacred Heart, there is to come forth his Bride, together with the Water which cleanses her, and the Blood which is to be her dower. It was for the sake of this Bride that He left His Father and the bright home of His heavenly Jerusalem. He ran as a giant in the way of His intense love. He thirsted, and the thirst of the desire gave Him no rest. The scorching wind of suffering which dried up His bones was less active than the fire which burned in His Heart, and made its beatings send forth in the agony in the Garden the Blood which, on the morrow, was to be spent for the redemption of His Bride. He has reached Calvary, it is the end of His journey. He dies, He sleeps, with His burning thirst upon Him. But the Bride, who is formed for Him during this His mysterious sleep, will soon rouse him from it. That Heart, from which she was born, has broken that she might come forth. Broken, it ceased it beat, and the grand hymn which, through it, had been so long ascending from Earth to Heaven, was interrupted, and creation was dismayed at the interruption. Now that the world has been redeemed man should sing more than ever the canticle of his gratitude. And the strings of the harp are broken! Who will restore them? Who will rewaken in the Heart of our Jesus the music of its divine throbbings?

The new-born Church, His Bride, is standing near that opened side of her Jesus. In the intensity of her first joy she thus sings to God the Father: “I will praise you, Lord, among the people, and I will sing to you among the nations” (Psalms cvii. 1-4) Then, to her Jesus: “Arise, you, my glory! my psaltery, my harp, arise!” And He arose in the early morning of the great Sunday. His Sacred Heart resumed its melody, and with it sent up to Heaven the music of holy Church, for the Heart of the Spouse belongs to His Bride, and they are now two in one flesh (Genesis ii. 24; Ephesians v. 31).

Christ being now in possession of her who has wounded His Heart (Canticles iv. 9), He gives her in return full power over that Sacred Heart of His from which she has issued. There lies the secret of all the Church’s power. In the relations existing between husband and wife, which were created by God at the beginning of the world and (as the Apostle assures us), in view of this great mystery of Christ and the Church — man is the head (1 Corinthians xi. 3) and the woman may not domineer in the government of the family. Has the woman, then, no power? She has power, and a great power. She must address herself to her husband’s heart, and gain all by love. If Adam, our first father, sinned, it was because Eve used, and for evil, her influence over his heart by misleading him, and us in him. Jesus saves us because the Church has won His Heart , and that human Heart could not be won without the divinity also being moved to mercy. And here we have the doctrine of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as far as regards the principle on which it rests. In this its primary and essential notion, the devotion is as old as the Church herself, for it rests on this truth which has been recognised in every age — that Christ is the Spouse, and the Church is His Bride.

The Fathers and holy Doctors of the early Ages had no other way than the one we have been putting before our readers, when expounding the mystery of the Church’s having been formed from Jesus’ side. And the words they used — though always marked by that reserve which was called for by so many of their hearers being as yet uninitiated — were taken as the text for the sublime and fearless developments of later Ages. “The initiated,” says Saint John Chrysostom, “know the mystery of the Saviour's fountains: from those, that is, from the Blood and the Water, the Church was formed; from those same came our Mysteries so that, when you approach the dread chalice, you must come up to it as though you were about to drink of that very Side of Christ.” “The Evangelist,” says Saint Augustine, “made use of a word which has a special import, when he said the soldier opened Jesus’ Side with a spear. He did not say, struck the Side, or wounded the Side, or anything else like that; but he said, he opened Jesus’ Side. He opened it, for that Side was like the door of life. And when it was opened, the Sacraments (the Mysteries) of the Church came through it... This was predicted by that door which Noah was commanded to make in the side of the Ark, through which were to go those living creatures which were not to be destroyed by the deluge. And all these things were a figure of the Church.”

“Enter into the rock, and hide in the pit” (Isaias ii. 10), says Isaias. And what means this, but “enter into the Side of your Lord?” as the expression is interpreted in the thirteenth century by Guerric, a disciple of Saint Bernard, and Abbot of Igny. Saint Bernard himself thus comments the verses 13 and 14 of the second Chapter of the Canticle: “Come, my dove, in the clifts of the rock, in the hollow places of the wall” (Canticles ii. 13, 14): “O beautiful clifts of the rock in which the dove takes safe shelter, and fearlessly looks at the hawk that hovers about!... And what may I see through that opening? The iron has pierced his soul, and his Heart has come near; so that, through the clift, the mystery of his Heart is made visible, that great mystery of love, those bowels of the mercy of our God.. "What else are you, Lord, but treasures of love, but riches of goodness?... I will make my way to those full store cellars. I will take the Prophet’s advice, and will leave the cities. I will dwell in the Rock, and be like the dove that makes her nest in the mouth of the hole in the highest place (Jeremias xlviii. 28). Sheltered there, like as Moses was in the hole of the Rock (Exodus xxxiii. 21), I will see my Lord as He passes by.” In the next century, we have the Seraphic Doctor, Saint Bonaventure, telling us in his own beautiful style how the new Eve was born from the Side of Christ when in His sleep, and how the spear of Saul was thrown at David and struck the wall (1 Kings xviii. 10, 11) as though it would make its way into Him, of whom David was but a type, that is, into Christ, who is the Rock (1 Corinthians x. 4) the mountain-cave where are salubrious springs, the shelter where doves build their nests.

Our readers will not expect us to do more than give them this general view of the great mystery, and tell them how the holy Doctors of the Church spoke of it. As far as Saint Bernard and Saint Bonaventure are concerned, the devotion to the mystery of Christ’s side opened on the Cross is but a part of that which they would have us show to the other wounds of our Redeemer. The Sacred Heart, as the expression of Jesus’ love, is not treated of in their writings with the explicitness with which the Church would afterwards put it before us. For this end, our Lord Himself selected certain privileged souls through whose instrumentality He would bring the Christian world to a fuller appreciation of the consequences which are involved in the principles admitted by the whole Church.

It was on the 27th of January in 1281, in the Benedictine Monastery of Helfta near Eisleben in Saxony, that our Divine Lord first revealed these ineffable secrets to one of the Community of that House, whose name was Gertrude. “She was then twenty years of age. The Spirit of God came upon her, and gave her her mission... She saw, she heard, she was permitted to touch, and what is more, she drank of, that chalice of the Sacred Heart, which inebriates the elect. She drank of it, even while in this vale of bitterness. And what she herself so richly received, she imparted to others who showed themselves desirous to listen. Saint Gertrude’s mission was to make known the share and action of the Sacred Heart in the economy of God’s glory and the sanctification of souls. And in this respect, we cannot separate her from her companion Saint Mechtilde. On this special doctrine regarding the heart of the Man-God, Saint Gertrude and Saint Mechtilde hold a very prominent position among all the Saints and mystical writers of the Church. In saying this we do not except even the Saints of these later ages by whom our Lord brought about the public, the official, worship which is now given to His Sacred Heart. These Saints have spread the devotion, now shown to it, throughout the whole Church, but they have not spoken of the mysteries it contains within it, with that set purpose, that precision, that loveliness, which we find in the Revelations of the two Saints, Gertrude and Mechtilde.

It was the Beloved Disciple, who had rested His head upon Jesus’ breast at the Supper, and perhaps heard the beatings of the Sacred Heart — the Disciple who, when standing at the foot of the Cross, had seen that Heart pierced with the soldier’s spear — yes, it was he who announced to Gertrude its future glorification. She asked him how it was that he had not spoken in his writings in the New Testament of what he had experienced when he reclined upon Jesus’ Sacred Heart: he thus replied: ‘My mission was to write for the Church, which was still young, a single word of the uncreated Word of God the Father, that uncreated Word, concerning which the intellect of the whole human race might be ever receiving abundant truth, from now till the end of the world, and yet it would never be fully comprehended. As to the sweet eloquence of those throbbings of His Heart, it is reserved for the time when the world has grown old, and has become cold in God’s love, that it may regain favour by the hearing such revelation.’” (The Legate of Divine Love. Bk. iv. Ch. 4)

“Gertrude was chosen as the instrument of that revelation, and what she has told us is exquisitely beautiful. At one time, the divine Heart is shown to her as a treasure which holds all riches within it. At another, it is a harp played upon by the Holy Spirit, and the music which comes from it gladdens the Blessed Trinity and all the heavenly court. It is a plenteous spring whose stream bears refreshment to the souls in Purgatory, strength and every other grace to them that are still struggling on this Earth, and delights which inebriate the blessed in the heavenly Jerusalem. It is a golden thurible from which there ascend as many different sorts of fragrant incense as there are different races of men, for all of whom our Redeemer died upon the Cross. It is an altar on which the Faithful lay their offerings, the elect their homage, the Angels their worship, and the eternal High Priest offers Himself as a Sacrifice. It is a lamp suspended between Heaven and Earth. It is a chalice out of which the Saints, but not the Angels, drink, though these latter receive from it delights of varied kinds. It was in this Heart, that was formed and composed the Lord’s Prayer, the Pater noster: that Prayer was the fruit of Jesus’ Heart. By that same Sacred Heart are supplied all the negligences and deficiencies which are found in the honour we pay to God and His Blessed Mother and Saints. The Heart of Jesus makes itself as our servant, and our bond, in fulfilment of all the obligations incumbent on us. In it alone,do our actions derive that perfection, that worth, which makes them acceptable in the eyes of the divine Majesty, and every grace which flows from Heaven to Earth passes through that same Heart. When our life is at its close, that Heart is the peaceful abode, the holy sanctuary, ready to receive our souls as soon as they have departed from this world. And having received them, it keeps them in itself for all eternity, and beatifies them with every delight!” (Preface to the Revelations of St. Gertrude, translated into French, from the new Latin Edition, published by the Benedictine Fathers of Solesmes).

By thus revealing to Gertrude the admirable mysteries of divine love included in the doctrine which attaches to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Holy Spirit was, so to say, forestalling the workings of Hell which, two centuries later on, were to find their prime mover in that same spot. Luther was born at Eisleben in the year 1483. He was the apostle, after being the inventor, of theories the very opposite of what the Sacred Heart reveals. Instead of the merciful God as known and loved in the previous ages, Luther would have the world believe Him to be the direct author of sin and damnation who creates the sinner for crime and eternal torments, and for the mere purpose of showing that He could do anything, even injustice! Calvin followed. He took up the blasphemous doctrines of the German apostate and rivetted the protestant principles by his own gloomy and merciless logic. By these two men the tail of the dragon dragged the third part of the stars of Heaven (Apocalypse xii. 4). In the seventeenth century the old enemy put on hypocrisy in the shape of Jansenism, changing the names of things but leaving the things unchanged, he tried to get into the very centre of the Church and there pass off his impious doctrines. Ad Jansenism which, under the pretext of safeguarding the rights of God’s sovereign dominion, aimed at making men forget that He was a God of mercy, Jansenism was a favourable system with which the enemy might propagate his so-called Reformation. That God “who so loved the world” (John iii. 16) beheld mankind discouraged or terrified, and behaving as though in Heaven there was no such thing as mercy, still less, love. This Earth of ours was to be made to see that its Creator had loved it with affectionate love, that He had taken a Heart of flesh in order to bring that infinite love within man’s reach and sight, that He made that human Heart which He had assumed do its work, that is, beat and throb from love, just as ours do, for He had become one of ourselves, and, as the Prophet words it, had taken “the cords of Adam” (Osee xi. 4): that Heart felt the thrill of joy when duty doing made us joyous. It felt a weight and pang when it saw our sorrows. It was gladsome when it found that, here and there, there would be souls to love Him in return.

How were men to be told all this? Who would be chosen to fulfil the prophecy made by Gertrude the Great? Who would come forth, like another Paul or John, and teach to the world, now grown old, the language of the divine throbbings of Jesus’ Heart? There were then living many men noted for their learning and eloquence, but they would not suit the purpose of God. God, who loves to choose the weak (and often it is that He may confound the strong) (1 Corinthians i. 27), had selected for the manifesting of the mystery of the Sacred Heart a servant of His of whose existence the world knew not: it was a Religious woman who lived in a monastery which had nothing about it to attract notice. As in the thirteenth century, He had passed by the learned men, and even the great Saints, who were then living, and selected the Blessed Juliana of liege as the instrument which was to bring about the institution of the Corpus Christi Feast — so in this present case: He would have His own Sacred Heart be glorified in His Church by a solemn Festival. And He imparts and entrusts his wish to the humble Visitandine of Paray-le-Monial, now known and venerated throughout the world under the name of Blessed Margaret-Mary. The mission thus divinely given to her was to bring forward the treasure which had been revealed to Saint Gertrude and which, all the long interval, had been known to only a few privileged souls. Sister Margaret Mary was to publish the secret to the whole world, and make the privilege cease, by telling every one how to possess it. Through this apparently inadequate instrument, the Sacred Heart of Jesus was a heavenly reaction offered to the world against the dullness which had settled on its old age: it became a touching appeal to all faithful souls that they would make reparation for all the contempt, and slight, and coldness, and sins, with which our age treats the love of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus.

“I was praying before the Blessed Sacrament on one of the days during the Octave” (of Corpus Christi, June 1675), says the Blessed Margaret, “and I received from my God exceeding great graces of His love. And feeling a desire to make some return and give Him love for love, He said to me: ‘You can not make me a greater, than by doing that which I have so often asked of you.’ He then showed me His divine Heart and said: ‘Behold this Heart which has so loved men as that it has spared nothing, even to the exhausting and wearing itself out, in order to show them its love. And instead of acknowledgement, I receive from the greater number nothing but ingratitude by their irreverences and sacrileges, and by the coldness and contempt with which they treat me in this Sacrament of love. But what is still more deeply felt by me is that they are hearts which are consecrated to me, which thus treat me. It is on this account, that I make this demand of you: that the first Friday after the Octave of the Blessed Sacrament be devoted to a special Feast in honour of my Heart. That you will go to Communion on that day and give it a reparation of honour by an act of amendment, to repair the insults it has received during the time of its being exposed on the Altar. I promise you also that my Heart will dilate itself, that it may pour forth, with abundance, the influences of its divine love upon those who will thus honour it and will do their best to have such honour paid to it.’” By thus calling His servant to be the instrument of the glorification of His Sacred Heart, our Lord made her a sign of contradiction, just as He Himself had been (Luke ii. 34). It took more than ten years for Blessed Margaret to get the better, by dint of patience and humility, of the suspicions with which she was treated by the little world around her, and of the harsh conduct of the Sisters who lived with with her in the same Monastery, and of trials of every sort. At last, on the 21st of June in 1686, the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi, she had the consolation of seeing the whole Community of Paray-le-Monial kneeling before a picture which represented the Heart of Jesus as pierced with a spear. It was the Heart by itself. It was encircled with flames and a crown of thorns, with the Cross above it, and the three Nails. That same year there was begun in the Monastery the building of a Chapel in honour of the Sacred Heart, and Blessed Margaret had the happiness of seeing it finished and blessed. She died shortly afterwards, in the year 1690. But all this was a very humble beginning: where was the institution of a Feast, properly so called? and there its solemn celebration throughout the Church?

So far back as the year 1674, our Lord had in His own mysterious way brought Margaret-Mary to form the acquaintance of one of the most saintly Religious of the Society of Jesus then living — it was Father De la Colombiere. He recognised the workings of the Holy Spirit in this His servant, and became the devoted apostle of the Sacred Heart, first of all at Paray-le-Monial, and then later on in England where he was imprisoned by the heretics of those times and merited the glorious title of Confessor of the Faith. This fervent disciple of the Heart of Jesus died in the year 1682, worn out by his labours and sufferings. But the Society, in a body, inherited his zeal for the propagation of devotion to the Sacred Heart. At once, numerous confraternities began to be formed, and everywhere there began to be built Chapels in honour of that same Heart. Hell was angry at this great preaching of God’s love. The Jansensists were furious at this sudden proclamation, at this apparition, as Saint Paul would say, “of the goodness and kindness of God our Saviour” (Titus iii. 4), and the men who were proclaiming it were aiming at restoring hope to souls in which they, the Jansenists, had sowed despondency. The big world must interfere, and it began by talking of innovations, of scandals, of even idolatry. At all events, this new devotion was, to put it mildly, a revolting dissecting of the sacred Body of Christ! Erudite pamphlets were published, some theological, some physiological, to prove that the Church should forbid the subject! Indecent engravings were circulated, and witticisms, such as indignation can make, were made, in order to bring ridicule upon those for whom the world had coined the name of Cordicoloe, or Heart-Worshippers.

But, human wisdom, or human prejudice, or even human ridicule, cannot withstand God’s purposes. He wished that human hearts should he led to love, and therefore worship, the Sacred Heart of their Redeemer. And He inspired His Church to receive the devotion which would save so many souls, though the world might not take Heaven’s view. The Apostolic See had witnessed all this and, at last, gave its formal sanction. Rome had frequently granted Indulgences in favour of the devotions privately practised towards the Sacred Heart. She had published innumerable Briefs for the establishment of local Confraternities under that title. And, in 1765, in accordance with the request made by the Bishops of Poland and the Arch-Confraternity of the Sacred Heart at Rome, Pope Clement XIII issued the first pontifical decree in favour of the Feast of the Heart of Jesus, and approved of a Mass and Office which had been drawn up for that Feast. The same favour was gradually accorded to other Churches until, at length, on the 23rd of August, 1856, Pope Pius IX of glorious memory, at the instance of all the Bishops of France, issued the Decree for the inserting the Feast of the Sacred Heart on the Calendar, and making obligatory its celebration by the universal Church.

The glorification of the Heart of Jesus called for that of its humble handmaid. On the 18th of September 1864, the Beatification of Margaret-Mary was solemnly proclaimed by the same Sovereign Pontiff who had put the last finish to the work she had begun, and given it the definitive sanction of the Apostolic See. From that time forward, the knowledge and love of the Sacred Heart have made greater progress, than they had done during the whole two previous centuries. In every quarter of the globe we have heard of Communities, Religious Orders and whole Dioceses consecrating themselves to this source of every grace, this sole refuge of the Church in these sad times. There have been pilgrimages made of thousands from every country to the favoured sanctuary of Paray-le-Monial, where it pleased the Divine Heart to first manifest Itself in its visible form to us mortals.

26 JUNE – SAINTS JOHN AND PAUL OF ROME (Martyrs)

The brothers John and Paul were Roman officers in the service of Constantia, the daughter of Constantine the Great. They were were martyred by Julian the Apostate in 362 AD after he failed to persuade them to worship pagan gods. They were beheaded in their own house during the night and were secretly buried there. Later, another group of martyrs, Terentianus, Crispus, Crispinianus and Benedicta were buried beside them. In 392 a great Basilica was built on the Caelian Hill over the site of their house and burial place. Saints John and Paul are specifically commemorated in the Canon of the Mass.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

Amid the numerous sanctuaries which adorn the capital of the Christian universe, the Church of Saints John and Paul has remained from the early date of its origin one of the chief centres of Roman piety. From the summit of the Coelian Hill it towers over the Colosseum, the dependances of which stretch subterraneously even as far as the cellarage of the house once inhabited by our Saints. They, the last of the Martyrs, completed the glorious crown offered to Christ by Rome, the chosen seat of His power. The conflict in which their blood was spilt consummated the triumph whose hour was sounded under Constantine, but which an offensive retaliation on the part of Hell, seemed about to compromise. No attack could be conceived more odious for the Church than that devised by the apostate Caesar. Nero and Diocletian had violently and with hatred declared against the Incarnate God a war of sword and torture, and without recrimination. Christians by thousands had died, knowing that the testimony thus demanded was merely the order of things, just as it had been in the case of their august Head (1 Timothy vi. 13) before a Pontius Pilate, and upon the Cross. But with the clever astuteness of a traitor, and the affected disdain of a false philosopher, Julian purposed to stifle Christianity amid the bulrushes of an oppression progressive to a nicety, and respectfully abhorrent of human blood: merely to preclude Christians from public offices, and to prohibit them from holding chairs for the teaching of youth, that was all the apostate aimed at! However, the blood which he wanted to avoid shedding, must flow, even though a hypocrite’s hands be dyed with it, for according to the divine plan, bloodshed alone can bring extreme situations to an issue, and never was Holy Church menaced with greater peril: fain would they now make a slave of her whom they had beheld still holding her royal liberty in face of executioners — fain would they now await the moment when, once enslaved, she would at last disappear of herself, in powerlessness and degradation.

For this reason the bishops of that time found vent for their indignant soul in accents such as their predecessors had spared to princes whose brute violence was then inundating the empire with Christian blood. They now retorted upon the tyrant, scorn for scorn. And the manifestations of contempt that consequently came showering in from every quarter upon the crowned fool completely unmasked at last his feigned moderation: Julian was now shown up as nothing but a common persecutor of the usual kind — blood flowed, the Church was rescued. Thus is explained the gratitude which this noble Bride of the Son of God has never ceased to manifest to these glorious Martyrs we are celebrating today: for amid the many generous Christians whose out-spoken indignation brought about the solution of this terrible crisis, none are more illustrious than they. Julian was most anxious to count them among his confidants: with this view, he made use of every entreaty, as we learn from the Breviary Lessons. Nor does it appear that he even made the renouncing of Jesus Christ a condition. Well then, it may be retorted, why not yield to the Imperial whim? Could they not do so without wounding their conscience? Surely too much stiffness would be the rather calculated to ill-dispose the prince, perhaps even fatally. Whereas to listen to him would very likely have a soothing effect on him, possibly even bring him round to relax somewhat of those administrative trammels unfortunately imposed on the Church by his prejudiced government. Yes, for anything one knew, the possible conversion of his soul, the return of so many of the misled who had followed him in his fall, might be the result! Should not such things as these deserve some consideration, should they not impose, as a duty, some gentle handling? Yes, such reasoning as this would doubtless appear to some as wise policy: such preoccupation for the apostate’s salvation could easily have had nothing in it but what was inspired by zeal for the Church and for souls. And indeed the most exacting casuist could not find it a crime for John and Paul to dwell in a court where nothing was demanded of them contrary to the divine precepts.

Nevertheless the two brothers resolved otherwise. To the course of soothing and reserve making, they preferred that of the frank expression of their sentiments, and this bold out- speaking of theirs put the tyrant in a fury and brought about their death. The Church has judged their case, and she has found them not in the wrong. Hence it is unlikely that the former path would have led them to a like degree of sanctity in God’s sight. The names of John and Paul inscribed on the sacred diptychs show well enough their credit in the eyes of the Divine Victim, who never offers Himself to the God Thrice-Holy without blending their memory with that of His own immolation. The enthusiasm excited by the noble attitude of these two valiant witnesses to the Lord still re-echoes in the Antiphons and Responsories proper to the feast. It was formerly preceded by a Vigil and fast. Together with the sanctuary which encloses their tomb, it may be said to date as far back as the very morrow of their martyrdom. Granted by a singular privilege a place in the Leonian Sacramentary, while so many other martyrs slept their sleep of peace outside the walls of the Holy City, John and Paul reposed in Rome itself, the definitive conquest of which had been won for the God of armies by their gallant combat.

That very same day of the year immediately succeeding their victorious death, Julian fell dead, uttering against Heaven his cry of rage: “Galilean, you have conquered!” From the Queen City of the universe, their renown, passing beyond the mountains, shone forth almost as soon and with nearly equal splendour in the Gauls. Returned from the scene of his own struggle in the cause of the Divinity of Jesus Christ, Hilary of Poitiers at once propagated their cultus. This great Bishop was called to our Lord, scarcely five years after their martyrdom, but he had already found time to consecrate to their name the church in which his loving hands had laid his sweet daughter Abra and her mother, awaiting the hour when he too should be joined to them in the same spot, expecting the day of the Resurrection. It was from this very church of Saints John and Paul, called later on Saint Hilary the Great’s, that Clovis on the eve of the battle of Vouille beheld streaming towards him that mysterious light, presage of the victory which would result in the expulsion of Arianism from the Gauls, and in the foundation of monarchical unity. These holy Martyrs continued in after years to show the interest they took in the advancement of the kingdom of God by the Franks. When the disastrous issue of the second Crusade was filling the soul of Saint Bernard with bitterness, for he had preached it, they appeared to him, upraised his courage, and manifested by what secrets the King of Heaven had known how to draw His own glory out of events in which man saw only failure and disaster.

* * * * *

TWO-FOLD is the triumph that thrills through Heaven and two-fold the gladness re-echoed on Earth this day, while your out-poured blood proclaims the victory of the Son of God! Verily, by the martyrdom of the Faithful does Christ triumph. The effusion of His own Blood marked the defeat of the prince of this world. The Blood of His mystical members possesses, alone and always, the power of establishing His reign. Contest has never been an evil for the Church Militant: the noble Bride of the God of armies delights in combat, for she knows right well that her Spouse came on Earth to bring not peace, but the sword. Therefore, to the end of time, will she hold up as an example to her sons, your chivalrous courage and your bold frankness, which scorned to dissimulate your utter contempt for an apostate tyrant, or to suffer you to dwell for a moment on such considerations, as might perhaps, had you listened to him at the first, have just saved your conscience, together with life. Woe to the day on which the deceptive mirage of guileful peace misleads minds, in which merely because sin, properly so called, does not stare them in the face, Christian souls stoop from the lofty stand-point of their Baptism to compromises which even a pagan world would scout. Glorious Brethren, make the children of holy Church to turn aside from that fatal error which would lead them to misconceptions of sacred traditions received by them in heritage. Maintain the “Sons of God” at the full height of those noble sentiments demanded by their heavenly origin, by the throne that awaits them, by the divine Blood they daily drink of. Far from them be all such base-born notions, such vulgarity, as would be calculated to excite against their heavenly Father the blasphemies of the “accursed city.”

Nowadays there has arisen a persecution not dissimilar to that in which you gained the crown. Julian’s plan of action is once more in vogue. If these mimics of the apostate equal him not in intelligence, they at least surpass him in hatred and hypocrisy. But God is not wanting to His Church now, any more than He was then. Obtain for us the grace to do our part in resistance, as was done by you, and the victory will be the same. Your very names, John and Paul, remind us of the Friend of the Bridegroom whose Octave is speeding its course, and of that Paul of the Cross who revived heroism of sanctity in your very house on Monte Coelio. Vouchsafe to unite your protection, powerful as indeed it is, to that which the Precursor exercises over the Mother and Mistress of all Churches, become by the very fact of her primacy the chief butt of the enemies’ attack. Uphold the new militia raised by the necessity of the times, and which is entrusted with the guardianship both of your sacred remains and of those of its glorious Founder. Remembering the power which the Church specially attributes to you, namely, that of opening or shutting the flood-gates of Heaven, be pleased to bless our harvest well near ripe for the sickle: be propitious to our reapers and assuage their painful labour. Preserve from lightning, man and his possessions, the home that shelters him, the beasts that serve him. Too often, alas, ungrateful and forgetful man would indeed deserve to incur your wrath, but prove yourselves children of Him who makes His sun to rise upon the wicked as well as upon the good, and gives His rain to fall alike upon the just and upon sinners (Matthew v. 45).

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Trent, St. Vigilius, bishop, who, while he endeavoured to root out the remains of idolatry, was overwhelmed with a shower of stones by cruel and barbarous men, and thus endured martyrdom for the name of Christ.

At Cordova in Spain, under the Saracen king Abderahman, the birthday of St. Pelagius, a young man who gloriously consummated his martyrdom for the faith by having his flesh torn to pieces with iron pincers.

At Valenciennes, the holy martyrs Salvius, bishop of Angouleme, and Superius.

Also the comemmoration of St. Anthelmus, bishop of Belley.

In Poitou, St. Maxentius, priest and confessor, renowned for miracles.

At Thessalonica, St. David, hermit.

The same day, St. Perseveranda, virgin.

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

Thanks be to God.

25 JUNE – SAINT WILLIAM OF VERCELLI (Abbot)

William was born of noble parents at Vercelli in the Piedmont in 1085. His parents died while he was still a child and he was brought up by his relatives. But scarce had be attained his fourteenth year, when already inflamed with wondrous ardour for piety, he performed the pilgrimage to the far-famed Sanctuary of Saint James at Compostella in Spain. He made the journey clad in single tunic with a double chain of iron about his loins, and with bare feet, a prey to extreme cold and heat, to hunger and thirst, and even with danger of life. After returning to Italy he was moved to perform a fresh pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre of our Lord in Jerusalem, but each time he was on the point of carrying it out, various and grave impediments intervened. Divine Providence thus drew the holy inclinations of William to even higher and holier things.

Then passing two years on Monte Solicolo in assiduous prayer and in watchings, in sleeping on the bare ground, and in fastings in which he was divinely assisted, he restored sight to a blind man, the fame of which miracle becoming gradually divulged, at last William could no longer be hidden: for which reason he thought again of undertaking a journey to Jerusalem, and joyfully set out on his way. But God appeared to him, admonishing him to desist from his purpose because he was to be more useful and profitable both in Italy and elsewhere. Ascending Mount Virgilian, since called Monte Vergine, he built a monastery on its summit, on a rugged and inaccessible spot. He there associated to himself religious men who wished to be his companions, and taught them both by word and example a manner of life conformable to the Evangelical precepts and counsels, as well as to certain rules taken for the most part from the institutions of Saint Benedict.

Other monasteries being afterwards built, the sanctity of William became more and more known, and attracted to him many other persons who were drawn by the sweet odour of his holiness and the fame of his miracles. For by his intercession, the dumb received speech, the deaf hearing, the withered new strength, and those labouring under various incurable diseases were restored to health. He changed water into wine, and performed many other wondrous deeds among which, the following must not be passed over in silence, namely, that a courtesan having been sent to make an attempt on his chastity, he rolled himself without hurt amid burning coals spread upon the ground. Roger, king of Naples being certified of this fact, was led to hold the man of God in highest veneration. After having predicted to the king and others the time of his death, resplendent in miracles and innumerable virtues, he passed away in 1042.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

Martyrs are numerous on the Cycle during the Octave of Saint John. John and Paul, Irenaeus, the very Princes of the Apostles even, come thronging in to confirm with their blood the testimony of him who made known to Earth the arrival of her long expected God. Where can names more illustrious be found, whether as regards human greatness, sacred science, or the holy hierarchy? But not alone in martyrdom’s peerless glory does our Emmanuel reveal the potency of His grace, or the victorious force of example, left to the world by His Precursor. At the very outset we have here presented to our homage one of those countless athletes of penance who succeeded to John in the desert. One of those who fleeing, like him, in early youth, a society in which their soul’s foreboding told only of peril and annoy, consecrated a lifetime to Christ’s complete triumph within them over the triple concupiscence, thus bearing witness to the Lord by deeds which the world ignores, but which make Angels to rejoice and Hell to tremble.

William was one of the chiefs of this holy militia. The Order of Monte Vergine, that owes its origin to him has deserved well of the Monastic institute and of the whole Church, in those southern parts of Italy in which God has been pleased, at different times, to raise up a dyke, as it were, against the encroaching waves of sensual pleasures, by the stern spectacle of austerest virtue. Both personally and by his disciples, William’s mission was to infuse into the kingdom of Sicily, then in process of formation, that element of sanctity on which every Christian nation must necessarily be based. In southern, just as in northern Europe, the Norman race had been providentially called in to promote the reign of Jesus Christ. Just at this moment, Byzantium, powerless to protect against Saracen invasion the last vestiges of her possessions in the West, was anxious nevertheless to hold the Churches of these lands fast bound in that schism into which she had recently been drawn by the intriguing ambition of Michael Cerularius. The Crescent had been forced to recoil before the sons of a Tancred and a Hauteville. And now, in its turn, Greek perfidy had just been outwitted and unmasked by the rude simplicity of these men who learnt fast enough how to oppose no argument to Byzantine knavery, save the sword. The Papacy, though for a moment doubtful, soon came to understand of what great avail these new-comers would be in feudal quarrels, the jar and turmoil of which were to extend far and wide for yet two centuries more, leading at last to the long struggle betwixt Sacerdotalism and Caesarism.

All through this period, as has ever been the case since the day of Pentecost, the Holy Ghost was directing every event for the ultimate good of the Church. He it was that inspired the Normans to give solidity to their conquests by declaring themselves vassals of the Holy See and thus fixing themselves on the Apostolic rock. But at the same time, both to recompense their fidelity at the very opening of their career, and to render them more worthy of the mission which would have ever been their honour and their strength, had they but continued so to understand it, this same Holy Spirit gave them Saints. Roger I beheld Saint Bruno interceding for his people in the solitudes of Calabria, and there also that blessed man miraculously saved the Duke from an ambush laid by treason. Roger II was now given another such heavenly aid to bring him back again into the paths of righteousness from which he had too often strayed, the example and exhortations of the founder of Monte Vergine.

* * * * *

FOLLOWING the footsteps of John, you understood, William, the charms of the wilderness, and God was pleased to make known by you how useful are such lives as yours, spent afar from the world and apparently wholly unconcerned with human affairs. Complete detachment of the senses disengages the soul, and makes her draw near to the Sovereign Good. Solitude, by stifling Earth’s tumult, permits the voice of the Creator to be heard. Then man, enlightened by the very Author of the world concerning the great interests that are being at that very time put into play in this work of His, becomes in the Creator’s hands an instrument at once powerful and docile for the carrying out of these very interests, in reality identical with those of the creature himself and of nations. Thus did you become, O illustrious Saint, the bulwark of a great people who found in your word the rule of right, in your example the stimulus of loftiest virtue, in your superabundant penance a compensation, in God’s sight, for the excesses of its Princes. The countless miracles which accompanied your exhortations were not without a telling eloquence of their own, in the eyes of new nations among whom success of arms had created violence and had lashed up passion to fury: that wolf, for instance, which after having devoured the ass of the monastery, was enforced by you to take its victim’s place in humble service. Or again, that hapless woman, who beholding you inaccessible to the scorching flames of that bed of burning coals, renounced her criminal life and was led by you to paths even of sanctity!

Many a revolution, upheaving the land in which you once prayed and suffered, has but too well proved the instability of kingdoms and dynasties that seek not first, and before all things else, the Kingdom of God and His Justice. Despite the oblivion, alas too frequent, into which your teaching and example have been thrown, protect the land in which God granted you graces so stupendous — that land which He vouchsafed to confide to your powerful intercession. Faith still lives in its people. Then keep it up, notwithstanding the efforts of the enemy in these sad days. But make it also to produce fruits in virtue’s field. Amid many trials, your Monastic family has been able, up to this present age of persecution, to propagate itself and to serve the Church: obtain that it, together with all other Religious families, may show itself, to the end, stronger than the tempest. Our Lady, whom you served right valiantly, is at hand to second your efforts. From that sanctuary whose name has outlived the memory of the poet (Virgil), who unconsciously sang her glories, may Mary ever smile on the thronging crowds that year by year toil up the holy mount, hailing the triumph of her virginity. May she accept at your hands our hearts’ homage and desire, although we cannot in very deed accomplish this sacred pilgrimage.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Beraea, the birthday of St. Sosipater, a disciple of the blessed Apostle St. Paul.

At Rome, St. Lucy, virgin and martyr, with twenty-two others.

At Alexandria, St. Gallicanus, ex-consul and martyr, who had been honoured with a triumph and was held in affection by the emperor Constantine. Converted by Saints John and Paul, he withdrew to Ostia with St. Hilarinus and devoted himself entirely to the duties of hospitality and to the service of the sick. The report of such an event spread through the whole world, and from all sides many persons came to see a man who had been a senator and consul, washing the feet of the poor, preparing their table, serving them, carefully waiting on the infirm, and performing other works of mercy. Driven from this place by Julian the Apostate, he repaired to Alexandria where, for refusing to sacrifice to idols, at the command of the judge Raucian, he was put to the sword and thus became a martyr of Christ.

At Sibapolis in Syria, under the governor Lysimachus in the persecution of Diocletian, St. Febronia, virgin and martyr, who was scourged and racked for defending her faith and her chastity, then torn with iron combs and exposed to fire. Finally, having her teeth plucked out and her breasts cut off, she was condemned to capital punishment and went to her spouse adorned with her sufferings as with so many jewels.

At Besançon in France, St. Antidius, bishop and martyr, who was killed by the Vandals for the faith of Christ.

At Riez, St. Prosper of Aquitaine, bishop of that city, distinguished by his erudition and piety. He valiantly combated the Pelagians in defence of the Catholic faith.

At Turin, the birthday of St. Maximus, bishop and confessor, most celebrated for his learning and sanctity.

In Holland, St. Adelbert, confessor, a disciple of the sainted bishop Willibrord.

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

Thanks be to God.

24 JUNE – THE NATIVITY OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST

John the Baptist was born to Zachariah, a priest, and his wife Elizabeth, who was the daughter of Aaron and a relative of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The angel Gabriel appeared to Zachariah and told him not to fear, that his prayer was to be answered, and his wife would bear him a son, who he must call John. Zachariah would have joy and gladness and rejoice in his son's nativity because he would be great before the Lord and be filled with the Holy Spirit, even in his mother's womb. He would not drink wine or strong drink and he would convert many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. Because Zachariah was incredulous that his wife who was advanced in age and barren would bear a child, he was struck dumb until the things the angel had spoken of would come to pass. And so, when Elizabeth delivered her son, her relatives and neighbours said he should be named after his father, but she answered he will be called John, despite the fact that none of her relatives were called by this name. They made signs to Zachariah and he wrote “John is his name” on a tablet. Immediately his mouth was opened, his tongue loosened and he spoke, blessing God. Zachariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying:

“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, because He has visited and wrought the redemption of His people. And has raised up a horn of salvation to us, in the house of David, His servant.

As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets, who are from the beginning. Salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us.

To perform mercy to our fathers and to remember His holy testament. The oath, which He swore to Abraham our father, that He would grant to us.

That being delivered from the hand of our enemies, we may serve Him without fear, in holiness and justice before Him, all our days.

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest, for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways, to give knowledge of salvation to His people to the remission of their sins.

Through the bowels of the mercy of our God, in which the Orient from on high has visited us, to enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to direct our feet into the way of peace.”

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

“The Voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord: behold your God.’” (Isaias xl. 3-9). O in this world of ours grown now so cold, who can understand Earth’s transports at hearing these glad tidings so long expected? The promised God is not yet manifested, but already have the heavens bowed down to make way for His passage. No longer is He “'the One who is to come,” He for whom our fathers, the illustrious saints of the prophetic age, ceaselessly called in their indomitable hope. Still hidden, indeed, but already in our midst, He is resting beneath that virginal cloud, compared with which the heavenly purity of Thrones and Cherubim wax dim. Yes, the united fires of burning Seraphim grow faint in presence of the single love with which He alone encompasses Him in her human heart, she that lowly daughter of Adam whom He has chosen for His mother. Our accursed Earth, made suddenly more blessed far than yonder Heaven inexorably closed erstwhile to suppliant prayer, awaits no longer anything, save that the august mystery be revealed. The hour is come for Earth to join her canticles to that Eternal Praise Divine, which henceforth is rising from the depths, and which being itself no other than the Word Himself, celebrates God condignly. But beneath the veil of humility where His Divinity, even after as well as before His birth, must still continue to hide itself from men, who may discover the Emmanuel? Who, having recognised Him in His merciful abasements, may succeed in making Him to be accepted by a world lost in pride? Who may cry, pointing out the Carpenter’s Son (Matthew xiii. 55), in the midst of the crowd: Behold Him whom your fathers have so wistfully awaited!

For such is the order decreed from on High in the manifestation of the Messiah: conformably to the ways of men, the God-Man will not intrude Himself into public life. He will await, for the inauguration of His divine ministry, some man who has preceded Him in a similar career, and who is hereby sufficiently accredited, to introduce Him to the people. Sublime part for a creature to play, to stand guarantee for his God, witness for the Word! The exalted dignity of him who was to fill such a position had been notified, as had that of the Messiah, long before his birth. In the solemn Liturgy of the Age of types, the Levite choir, reminding the Most High of the meekness of David and of the promise made to him of a glorious heir, hailed from afar the mysterious lamp prepared by God for His Christ (Psalms cxxxi. 17). Not that to give light to His steps, Christ should stand in need of external help: He, the Splendour of the Father, had only to appear in these dark regions of ours to fill them with the effulgence of the very heavens, but so many false glimmerings had deceived mankind during the night of these ages of expectation, that had the true Light arisen on a sudden, it would not have been understood, or would but have blinded eyes now become well near powerless by reason of protracted darkness to endure its brilliancy. Eternal Wisdom therefore decreed that just as the rising sun is announced by the morning-star, and prepares his coming by the gently tempered brilliancy of aurora, so Christ who is Light should be preceded here below by a star. His precursor, and His approach be signalised by the luminous rays which He Himself, (though still invisible) would shed around this faithful herald of His coming. When, in by-gone days, the Most High vouchsafed to light up before the eyes of His prophets the distant future, that radiant flash which for an instant shot across the heavens of the Old Covenant melted away in the deep night and ushered not in, as yet, the longed-for dawn. The “morning-star” of which the Psalmist sings, will know nothing of defeat: declaring to night that all is now over with her, He will dim his own fires only in the triumphant splendour of the Sun of Justice. Even as aurora melts into day, so will He confound with Light Increated his own radiance. Being of himself, like every creature, nothingness and darkness, he will so reflect the brilliancy of the Messiah shining immediately on him, that many will mistake him even for the very Christ (Luke iii. 15).

The mysterious conformity of Christ and His Precursor, the incomparable proximity which unites one to the other, are to be found many times marked down in the Sacred Scriptures. If Christ is the Word, eternally uttered by the Father, He is to be the Voice bearing this divine Utterance wherever it is to reach. Isaias already hears the desert echoing with these accents, till now unknown. And the prince of prophets expresses his joy with all the enthusiasm of a soul already beholding itself in the very presence of its Lord and God (Isaias xl.). The Christ is the Angel of the Covenant, but in the very same text in which the Holy Ghost gives Him this title, for us so full of hope there appears likewise bearing the same name of angel, the inseparable messenger, the faithful ambassador, to whom the Earth is indebted for her coming to know the Spouse: “Behold, I send my angel and he will prepare the way before my face. And presently the Lord whom you seek, and the Angel of the testament whom you desire, will come to his Temple. Behold he comes, says the Lord of hosts” (Malachias iii. 1). And putting an end to the prophetic ministry of which he is the last representative, Malachias terminates his own oracles by the words which we have heard Gabriel addressing to Zachary, when he makes known to him the approaching birth of the Precursor (Malachias iv. 5-6). The presence of Gabriel on this occasion of itself shows with what intimacy with the Son of God this child then promised will be favoured, for the very same Prince of the heavenly hosts, came again, soon afterwards, to announce the Emmanuel. Countless are the faithful messengers that press around the Throne of the Holy Trinity, and the choice of these august ambassadors usually varies according to the dignity of the instructions to be transmitted to earth by the Most High. Nevertheless, it was fitting that the same Archangel charged with concluding the sacred Nuptials of the Word with the Human Nature should likewise prelude this great mission by preparing the coming of him whom the eternal decrees had designated as the Friend of the Bridegroom (John iii. 29).

Six months later, when on his deputation to Mary he strengthens his divine message by revealing to that purest of Virgins, the prodigy which had by then already given a son to the sterile Elizabeth: this being the first step of the Almighty towards a still greater marvel. John is not yet born, but without longer delay his career is begun: he is employed to attest the truth of the angel’s promises. How ineffable this guarantee of a child hidden as yet in his mother’s womb, but already brought forward as God’s witness in that sublime negotiation which at that moment is holding Heaven and Earth in suspense! Illumined from on high, Mary receives the testimony and hesitates no longer. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” says she to the Archangel, “be it done to me according to your word” (Luke I.). Gabriel has retired, bearing away with him the divine secret which he has not been commissioned to reveal to the rest of the world. Neither will the most prudent Virgin herself tell it. Even Joseph, her virginal Spouse, is to receive no communication of the mystery from her lips. Yet fear not, the woeful sterility beneath which Earth has been so long groaning, is not to be followed by an ignorance more sorrow-stricken still, now that it has yielded its fruit (Psalms lxxxiv. 13). There is one from whom Emmanuel will have no secret, nor reserve. It were fitting to reveal the marvel to him. Scarce has the Spouse taken possession of the Sanctuary all spotless in which the nine months of His first abiding among men must run their course, yes scarce has the Word been made Flesh, than Our Lady inwardly taught what is her Son’s desire, arising, makes all haste to speed into the hill-country of Judea (Luke i. 39). “The voice of my Beloved! Behold he comes, leaping upon the mountains, skipping over the hills” (Canticles ii. 8).

His first visit is to the “Friend of the Bridegroom,” the first out-pour of His graces is to John. A distinct feast will allow us to honour in a special manner the precious day on which the divine child, sanctifying His Precursor, reveals Himself to John by the voice of Mary: the day on which Our Lady, manifested by John, leaping within the womb of his mother, proclaims at last the wondrous things operated within her by the Almighty according to the merciful promise which He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever (Luke i. 55). But the time is come when the good tidings are to spread from children and mothers through all the adjacent country, until at length they reach unto the whole world. John is about to be born, and, while still himself unable to speak, he is to loosen his father’s tongue. He is to put an end to that dumbness, with which the aged priest, a type of the old law, had been struck by the Angel. And Zachary, himself filled with the Holy Ghost, is about to publish in a new canticle, the blessed Visit of the Lord God of Israel (Luke i. 68)

Epistle – Isaias xlix. 1-7

Give ear, ye islands, and hearken, you people from afar. The Lord has called me from the womb, from the bowels of my mother He has been mindful of my name. And He has made my mouth like a sharp sword. In the shadow of His hand He has protected me, and has made me as a chosen arrow. In His quiver He has hidden me. And He said to me, “You are my servant Israel, for in you will I glory.” And now says the Lord that formed me from the womb to be His servant: “Behold I have given you to be the light of the gentiles, that you may be my salvation even to the farthest part of the earth. Kings will see, and princes will rise up, and adore for the Lord’s sake, and for the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

Isaias, in these few lines, has directly in view the announcing of Christ. The application here made by the Church to Saint John Baptist once more shows us how closely the Messiah is united with His Precursor in the work of the Redemption. Rome, once capital of the gentile world, now Mother of Christendom, delights in proclaiming on this day to the sons whom the Spouse has given her, the consoling prophecy which was addressed to them of yore, before she herself was founded upon the seven hills. Eight hundred years before the birth of John and of the Messiah, a voice had been heard on Sion and, reaching beyond the frontiers of Jacob, had re-echoed along those distant coasts where sin’s darkness held mankind in the thraldom of Hell:” Give ear, you islands, and hearken, you people from afar!” It was the Voice of Him who was to come, and of the Angel deputed to walk before Him, the voice of John and of the Messiah, proclaiming the one predestination common to them both, which as servant and as Master, made them to be objects of the self-same eternal decree. And this voice, after having hailed the privilege which would designate each (though so diversely) from the maternal womb,as objects of complacency to the Almighty, went on to utter the divinely formulated oracle which was to be promulgated in other terms over the cradle of each by the respective ministry of Zachary and of Angels. “And He said to me: ‘You are my servant Israel, for in you will I glory, in you who are indeed Israel to Me...’ And he said: ‘it is a small thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to convert the dregs of Israel, who will not hearken to you, and of whom you will bring back but a small remnant (Isaias xlix. 4-6). Behold I have given you to be the Light of the Gentiles, that you may be my salvation, even to the farthest part of the earth; to make up for the scant welcome my people will have given you, kings will see, and princes will rise up, at your word, and adore for the Lord‘s sake, because He is faithful and for the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you as the negotiator of His alliance’” (Isaias xlix. 8).

Children of the Bridegroom, let us enter into this thought of His. Let us understand what ought to be the gratitude of us Gentiles to him to whom all flesh is indebted for its knowledge of the Redeemer. From the wilderness, where his voice stung the pride of the descendants of the patriarchs, he beheld us succeeding to the haughty Synagogue. Without at all minimising the divine exactions, his stern language when addressed to the Bridegroom’s chosen ones, assumed a tone of considerateness which it never had for the Jews. “You offspring of vipers,” said he to these latter, “who has shown you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth, therefore, fruits worthy of penance, and do not begin to say, we have Abraham for our father. For I say to you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham. For in your case, already is the axe laid to the root of the tree. Every tree, therefore that brings not forth good fruit, will be cut down and cast into the fire” (Luke iii. 7-9). But to the despised publican, to the hated soldier, to all those parched hearts of the gentile world, hard and arid as the desert rock, John the Baptist announced a flow of grace that would refresh their dried up souls making them fruitful in justice: “You publicans, do nothing more than what is appointed you by the exigences of the tax-laws. You soldiers, be content with your pay (Luke iii. 12-14). The Law was given by Moses, but better is grace — grace and truth come by Jesus Christ whom I declare to you (John i. 15-17): He it is who takes away the sins of the world (John i. 29), and of His fullness we have all received” (John i. 16).

What a new horizon was here opened out before these objects of reproach, held aloof so long by Israel’s scorn! But in the eyes of the Synagogue, such a blow aimed at Judah’s pretended privilege was a crime. She had borne the biting invectives of this son of Zachary. She had even, at one moment, shown herself ready to hail him as the Christ (John i. 19), but she who vaunted herself as pure, to be invited to go hand in hand with the unclean Gentile— that she could never brook — it were too much. From that moment John was judged of by her, as His Master would afterwards be. Later on, Jesus will insist on the difference of welcome given to the Precursor by those who listened, to him. Yes, He will even make thereof the basis for His sentence of reprobation pronounced against the Jews: “Amen I say to you that the publicans and harlots will go into the kingdom of God before you, for John came to you in the way of justice and you did not believe him. But the publicans and harlots believed him: but you seeing it, did not even afterwards repent, that you might believe him” (Matthew xxi. 31-32).

Gospel – Luke i. 57-68

Elizabeth’s full time of being delivered was come, and she brought forth a son. And her neighbours and kinsfolk heard that the Lord had showed His great mercy towards her, and they congratulated with her. And it came to pass that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they called him by his father’s name, Zachary. And his mother answering said: “Not so, but he will be called John.” And they said to her: “There is none of your kindred that is called by that name.” And they made signs to his father how he would have him called. And demanding a writing-table, he wrote, saying: “John is his name,” and they all wondered. And immediately his mouth was opened, and his tongue loosed. And he spoke, blessing God. And fear came upon all their neighbours. And all these things were noised abroad over all the hill country of Judea. And all they that heard them, laid them up in their heart, saying: “What a one, think you, will this child be?” For the hand of the Lord was with him. And Zachary his father was filled with the Holy Ghost; and he prophesied, saying: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, because He has visited, and wrought the redemption of His people.”

Praise be to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

After the places hallowed by the sojourn, here below, of the Word made Flesh, there is no spot of greater interest for the Christian soul than that in which were accomplished the events just mentioned in our Gospel. The town illustrated by the birth of the Precursor is situated about two leagues from Jerusalem, to the West. Just as Bethlehem, our Saviour’s birthplace is at the same distance southwards from the Holy City. Going out by the gate of Jaffa, the pilgrim bound for Saint John of the Mountain passes, on his way, the Greek monastery of Holy Cross, raised on the spot where the trees which formed our Lord’s cross, were hewn down: then pursuing his course through the close-set woods of the mountains of Judah, he attains a summit from which he can descry the waters of the Mediterranean. The house of Obed-Edom that for three months harboured the sacred Ark of the Covenant stood here, where a by-path leads by a short cut directly to the place where Mary, the true Ark, dwelt for three happy months in the house of her cousin Elizabeth. Two sanctuaries, distant about a thousand paces one from the other, are sacred to the memory of the two great facts just related to us, by Saint Luke: in the one, John the Baptist was conceived and born. In the other, the circumcision of the Precursor took place eight days after his birth. The first of these sanctuaries stands on the site of Zachary’s town house. Its present form dates from a period anterior to the Crusades. It is a beautiful church with three naves and a cupola, measuring thirty seven feet in length. The high altar is dedicated to Saint Zachary, and another altar, on the right, to Saint Elizabeth. On the left, seven marble steps lead to a subterraneous chapel hollowed out of the rock, which is identical with the furthermost apartment of the original house: this is the sanctuary of Saint John's Nativity. Four lamps glimmer in the darkness of this venerable crypt, while six others, suspended beneath the altar-slab itself, throw light on the following inscription engraved on the marble pavement: HIC PRECURSOR DOMINI NATUS EST.

Let us unite, on this day, with the devout sons of Saint Francis, guardians of those ineffable memories. More fortunate here, than at Bethlehem with its sacred grotto, they have not to dispute with schism, the homage which they pay in the name of the legitimate Bride to the Friend of the Bridegroom on the very spot of his Nativity. Local tradition sets at some distance from this first sanctuary, as we have said, the memorable place where the circumcision of the Precursor was performed. Besides a town house, Zachary was owner of another more isolated. Elizabeth had retired there during the first months of her pregnancy to taste in silence the gift of God (Luke i. 24-25). There did the meeting between herself and Our Lady on her arrival from Nazareth take place. There the sublime exultation of the Infants and their Mothers. There, the Magnificat proclaimed to Heaven that Earth henceforth could rival, and even surpass, supernal songs of praise and canticles of love. It was fitting that Zachary’s song, the morning canticle, should be first intoned there, where that of evening had ascended like incense of sweetest fragrance. In the accounts given by ancient pilgrims it is noticed that there were here two sanctuaries placed one above the other. In the lower one Mary and Elizabeth met. In the upper story of this same country house of Zachary, the greater portion of the facts just set before us by the Church were enacted.

* * * * *

PRECURSOR of the Messiah, we share in the joy which your birth brought to the world. This birth of yours announced that of the Son of God. Now, each year, our Emmanuel assumes anew His life in the Church and in souls. And in our day, just as it was [two thousand] years ago, He wills that this birth of His will not take place without you preparing the way, now as then, for that Nativity by which our Saviour is given to each one of us. Scarce has the sacred Cycle completed the series of mysteries by which the glorification of the Man-God is consummated and the Church is founded, than Christmas begins to appear on the horizon. Already, so to speak, does John reveal by exulting demonstrations the approach of our Infant God. Sweet Prophet of the Most High, not yet can you speak, when already you outstrip all the Princes of Prophecy. But full soon the desert will seem to snatch you forever from the commerce of men. Then Advent comes, and the Church will show us that she has found you once more. She will constantly lead us to listen to your sublime teachings, to hear you bearing witness to Him whom she is expecting. From this present moment, therefore, begin to prepare our souls. Having descended anew on this our Earth, coming as you now do on this day of gladness as the messenger of the near approach of our Saviour, can you possibly remain idle one instant in face of the immense work which lies before you to accomplish in us?

To chase sin away, subdue vice, correct the instincts falsified in this poor fallen nature of ours. All this would have been done within us, as indeed it should long ago, had we but responded faithfully to your past labours. Yet, alas, it is only too true that in the greater number of us scarce has the first turning of the soil been begun: stubborn clay in which n stones and briers have defied your careful toil these many years! We acknowledge it to be so, filled as we are with the confusion of guilty souls. Yes, we confess our faults to you and to Almighty God, as the Church teaches us to do at the beginning of the great Sacrifice. But at the same time, we beseech you with her, to pray to the Lord our God for us. You proclaimed in the desert: from these very stones even, God is still able to raise up children of Abraham. Daily, do the solemn formulae of the Oblation in which is prepared the ceaselessly renewed Immolation of our Saviour, tell of the honourable and important part which is yours in this august Sacrifice. Your name, again pronounced while the Divine Victim is present on the Altar, pleads for us sinners to the God of all mercy. Would that, in consideration of your merits and of our misery, He would deign to be propitious to the persevering prayer of our mother the Church, change our hearts, and in place of evil attachments, attract them to virtue, so as to deserve for us the visit of Emmanuel!

At this sacred moment of the Mysteries, when thrice is invoked, in the words of that formula taught us by yourself, the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” He, this very Lamb, will Himself have pity on us and give us peace: peace so precious, with Heaven, with Earth, with self, which is to prepare us for the Bridegroom by making us become sons of God (John i. 12; Matthew v. 9) according to the testimony which, daily, by the mouth of the priest about to quit the altar, you continue to renew. Then, Precursor, will your joy and ours be complete. That sacred union, of which this day of your Nativity already contains for us the gladsome hope, will become, even here below and beneath the shadow of faith, a sublime reality, while still awaiting the clear vision of Eternity.

On this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Rome, in the time of Nero, the commemoration of many holy martyrs who were accused of having set fire to the city, and cruelly put to death in various manners by the emperor’s order. Some were covered with the skins of wild beasts and lacerated by dogs. Others were fastened to crosses, others again were delivered to the flames to serve as torches in the night. All these were disciples of the Apostles, and the first fruits of the martyrs, which the Roman Church, a field so fertile in martyrs, offered to God before the death of the Apostles.

In the same city, the holy martyrs Faustus and twenty three others.

At Satalis in Armenia, seven saintly brothers, martyrs: Orentius, Heros, Pharnacius, Firminus, Firmus, Cyriacus and Longinus who owe their martyrdom to the emperor Maximian. Because they were Christians, they were deprived of the military cincture by his command, separated from one another, hurried away to various places, and in the midst of painful trials, found their repose in the Lord.

In the diocese of Paris, at Creteil, the martyrdom of the Saints Agoardus and Aglibertus, with a multitude of others of both sexes.

At Autun, the demise of St. Simplicius, bishop and confessor.

At Lobbes, St. Theodulphus, bishop.

At Stilo in Calabria, St. John, surnamed Therestus, distinguished for his fidelity to the monastic rule, and for his sanctity.

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

Thanks be to God.