8 AUGUST – SAINTS CYRIACUS, LARGUS AND SMARAGDUS (Martyrs)

Cyriacus, a deacon, underwent a long imprisonment together with Largus, Sisinitis and Smaragdus, and worked many miracles. Among others, by his prayers, he freed Arthemia, a daughter of Diocletian, from the possession of the devil. He was sent to Sapor, king of Persia, and delivered his daughter, Jobia, in like manner from the devil. He baptised the king, her father, and 430 others, and then returned to Rome. There he was seized by command of the emperor Maximiau, and dragged in chains before his chariot. Four days afterwards he was taken out of prison, boiling pitch was poured over him, he was stretched on the rack, and at length he was put to death by the axe, with Largus, Smaragdus, and 20 others at Sallust’s Gardens on the Via Salaria. A priest named John buried their bodies on that same way, on the 17th of the Calends of April, but on the 6th of the Ides of August, Pope Saint Marcellus I and the noble lady Lucina wrapped them in linen with precious spices, and translated them to Lucina’s estate on the Via Ostiensis, seven miles from Rome. Afterwards they were brought to Rome and placed in the Church of Santa Maria in Via Lata (the Title of a Cardinal-deacon).

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Today a precursor of Laurence appears on the Cycle: the deacon Cyriacus whose power over the demon made Hell tremble, and entitles him to a place among the Saints called Helpers. He and his companions in martyrdom form one of the noblest groups of Christ’s army in that last and decisive battle in which the eagerness of the faithful to show that they knew how to die won victory for the Cross. Rome, baptised in the blood she had shed, found herself Christian in spite of herself. All her honours were now to be lavished on the very men whom in the time of her folly she had put to the sword. Such are thy triumphs, O Wisdom of God!

Mention of the three martyrs celebrated today is to be found in the most authentic calendars of the Church that have come down to us from the fourth century. If then, as Baronius acknowledges, there is some reason for calling in question certain details of the legend, their cultus is none the less immemorial on Earth, and the unwavering devotion of which they are the objects, especially in the sanctuaries enriched with their holy relics, proves that they have great power before the throne of the Lamb.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Anzarba in Cilicia, St. Marinus, an aged man, who was scourged, racked and lacerated, and died by being exposed to wild beasts, in the time of the emperor Diocletian and the governor Lysias.

Also the holy martyrs Eleutherius and Leonides, who underwent martrydom by fire.

In Persia, St. Hormisdas, a martyr, under king Sapor.

At Cyzicum in Hellespont, St. Æmilian, bishop, who ended his life in exile after having suffered much from the emperor Leo for the worship of holy images.

In Crete, St. Myron, a bishop renowned for miracles.

At Vienne in France, St. Severus, priest and confessor, who undertook a painful journey from India in order to preach the Gospel in that city, and converted a great number of pagans to the faith of Christ by his labours and miracles.

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

Thanks be to God.

8 AUGUST – SAINT MARY OF THE CROSS (Virgin) (AUSTRALIA ONLY)

Today is the feast day of Australia’s first and only saint, Mary of the Cross, who was canonised by Pope Benedict XVI on 17 October 2010.

Mary Helen MacKillop (baptised Maria Ellen), the oldest of eight children, was born in Melbourne, Victoria, in 1842 to Alexander MacKillop and Flora MacDonald who had migrated to Australia from Scotland.

With Father Julian Tenison Woods, Mary founded the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart (the Josephites), a congregation of female religious which was approved by Pope Leo XIII in 1888. The congregation established many schools for the education of children from poor families, particularly in rural areas.

In 1871 Adelaide Archbishop Lawrence Bonaventure Sheil excommunicated Mary for supposed disobedience and closed most of her schools, but the sentence was later rescinded and Mary was completely exonerated by an episcopal commission.

Mary died on the 8th of August 1909 in the Josephite convent in North Sydney and was interred at the nearby Gore Hill Cemetery. In 1914 her body was exhumed and translated to a vault in a newly built memorial chapel in Mount Street in Sydney.

Saint Mary of the Cross is the patroness of the city of Brisbane and of the Knights of the Southern Cross, a fraternal order of laymen which promotes the Catholic way of life and operates many aged care facilities throughout Australia.

 

7 AUGUST – SAINT CAJETAN (Confessor)

Cajetan was born to the noble family of the Lords of Thienna near Vicenza in Lombardy in 1480. His mother immediately dedicated him to the Blessed Virgin Mary. His innocence appeared so wonderful from his very childhood that everyone called him “the Saint.” He took the degree of Doctor in canon and civil law at Padua, and then went to Rome where Pope Julius II made him a prelate. When he received the priesthood, such a fire of divine love was kindled in his soul that he left the court to devote himself entirely to God. He renounced the dignities offered to him in Rome and devoted himself to the service of the poor and sick of Vicenza. With Peter Caraffa (who became Pope Paul IV) he founded the Congregation of Regular Clerks of the Divine Providence (called the Theatines, from Theate (Chieti) in the Abruzzi, where Caraffa was Bishop). This Congregation was one of the most prominent among the fruits of the revival of Catholic piety in the sixteenth century and was characterised by absolute trust in Divine Providence.

During the sack of Rome, Cajetan was cruelly treated by the soldiers to make him deliver up his money which the bands of the poor had long ago carried into the heavenly treasures. He endured with the utmost patience stripes, torture and imprisonment. He persevered unfalteringly in the kind of life he had embraced, relying entirely on Divine Providence. God never failed him, as was sometimes proved by miracle. He was a great promoter of assiduity at the divine worship, of the beauty of the House of God, of exactness in holy ceremonies, and of the frequentation of the most Holy Eucharist. More than once he detected and foiled the wicked subterfuges of heresy. He would prolong his prayers for eight hours, without ceasing to shed tears. He was often rapt in ecstasy and was famous for the gift of prophecy. At Rome, one Christmas night, while he was praying at our Lord’s crib, the Mother of God was pleased to lay the infant Jesus in his arms.

Cajetan would spend whole nights in chastising his body with disciplines, and could never be induced to relax anything of the austerity of his life: for he would say, he wished to die in sackcloth and ashes. At length he fell into an illness caused by the intense sorrow he felt at seeing the people offend God by a sedition, and at Naples, after being refreshed by a heavenly vision, he passed to heaven in 1547 and was canonised by Pope Clement X in 1671. Saint Cajetan (known in Italy as San Gaetano) is the patron of the unemployed, those seeking work, gamblers and good fortune.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Cajetan appeared in all his zeal for the sanctuary at the time when the false reform was spreading rebellion throughout the world. The great cause of the danger had been the incapacity of the guardians of the Holy City, or their connivance by complicity of heart or of mind with pagan doctrines and manners introduced by an ill-advised revival. Wasted by the wild boar of the forest, could the vineyard of the Lord recover the fertility of its better days? Cajetan learned from Eternal Wisdom the new method of culture required by an exhausted soil. The urgent need of those unfortunate times was that the clergy should be raised up again by worthy life, zeal and knowledge. For this object men were required, who being clerks themselves in the full acceptance of the word, with all the obligations it involves, should be to the members of the holy hierarchy a permanent model of its primitive perfection, a supplement to their shortcomings, and a leaven, little by little raising the whole mass. But where, save in the life of the counsels with the stability of its three vows, could be found the impulse, the power, and the permanence necessary for such an enterprise? The inexhaustible fecundity of the religious life was no more wanting in the Church in those days of decadence than in the periods of her glory. After the monks, turning to God in their solitudes and drawing down light and love upon the earth seemingly so forgotten by them; after the mendicant Orders, keeping up in the midst of the world their claustral habits of life and the austerity of the desert: the regular clerks entered upon the battlefield by which their position in the fight, their exterior manner of life, their very dress, they were to mingle with the ranks of the secular clergy; just as a few veterans are sent into the midst of a wavering troop, to act upon the rest by word and example and dash. Like the initiators of the great ancient forms of religious life, Cajetan was the Patriarch of the Regular Clerks. Under this name Clement VII, by a brief dated 24th June 1524, approved the institute he had founded that very year in concert with the Bishop of Theati, from whom the new religious were also called Theatines. Soon the Barnabites, the Society of Jesus, the Somasques of Saint Jerome Aemilian, the Regular Clerks Minor of Saint Francis Carracciolo, the Regular Clerks ministering to the sick, the Regular Clerks of the Pious Schools, the Regular Clerks of the Mother of God, and others, hastened to follow in the track, and proved that the Church is ever beautiful, ever worthy of her Spouse, while the accusation of barrenness hurled against her by heresy, rebounded upon the thrower.

Cajetan began and carried forward his reform chiefly by means of detachment from riches, the love of which bad caused many evils in the Church. The Theatines offered to the world a spectacle unknown since the days of the Apostles, pushing their zeal for renouncement so far as not to allow themselves even to beg, but to rely on the spontaneous charity of the faithful. While Luther was denying the very existence of God’s Providence, their heroic trust in It was often rewarded by prodigies.

Who has ever obeyed so well as you, O great Saint, that word of the Gospel: “Be not solicitous therefore saying: What will we eat? or what will we drink? or with what will we be clothed?” (Matthew vi 31). You understand, too, that other divine word: “The workman is worthy of his meat” (Matthew x. 10) and you knew that it applied principally to those who labour in word and doctrine (1 Timothy v. 17). You did not ignore the fact that other sowers of the word had before you founded on that saying the right of their poverty, embraced for God’s sake, to claim at least the bread of alms. Sublime right of souls eager for opprobrium in order to follow Jesus and to satiate their love! But Wisdom, who gives to the desires of the Saints the bent suitable to their times, caused the thirst for humiliation to be overruled in you by the ambition to exalt in your poverty the holy Providence of God. This was needed in an age of renewed paganism, which, even before listening to heresy, seemed to have ceased to trust in God.

Alas! Even of those to whom the Lord had given Himself for their possession in the midst of the children of Israel, it could be truly said that they sought the goods of this world like the heathen. It was your earnest desire, O Cajetan, to justify our Heavenly Father and to prove that He is ever ready to fulfil the promise made by His adorable Son: “Seek therefore the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew vi. 33). Circumstances obliged you to begin in this way the reformation of the sanctuary to which you were resolved to devote your life. It was necessary, first, to bring back the members of the holy militia to the spirit of the sacred formula of the ordination of clerks, when, laying aside the spirit of the world together with its livery, they say in the joy of their hearts: “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup: it is you, O Lord, that will restore my inheritance to me” (Psalms xv. 5).

The Lord, O Cajetan, acknowledged your zeal and blessed your efforts. Preserve in us the fruit of your labour. The science of sacred rites owes much to your sons. May they prosper in renewed fidelity to the traditions of their father. May your patriarchal blessing ever rest upon the numerous families of Regular Clerks which walk in the footsteps of your own. May all the ministers of holy Church experience the power you still have, of maintaining them in the right path of their holy state, or, if necessary, of bringing them back to it. May the example of your sublime confidence in God teach all Christians that they have a Father in Heaven whose Providence will never fail His children.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Arezzo in Tuscany, the birthday of St. Donatus, bishop and martyr, who among other miraculous deeds, made whole again by his prayers (as is related by the blessed Pope Gregory), a sacred chalice which had been broken by pagans. Being apprehended by the imperial officer Quadratian in the persecution of Julian the Apostate, and refusing to sacrifice to idols, he was struck with the sword and thus consummated his martyrdom. With him suffered also the blessed monk Hilarinus, whose feast is celebrated on the sixteenth of July, when his body was taken to Ostia.

At Rome, the holy martyrs Peter and Julian, with eighteen others.

At Milan, St. Faustus, a soldier, who obtained the palm of martyrdom after many combats in the time of Aurelius Commodus.

At Coino, the passion of the holy martyrs Carpophorus, Exanthus, Cassius, Severinus, Secundus and Licinius, who were beheaded for the confession of Christ.

At Nisibis in Mesopotamia, St. Dometius, a Persian monk, who was stoned to death with two of his disciples under Julian the Apostate.

At Rouen, the holy bishop St. Victricius. While yet a soldier under Julian the Apostate, he threw away his military belt for Christ, and after being subjected by the tribune to many torments, was condemned to capital punishment. But the executioner who had been sent to put him to death being struck blind, and the confessor’s chains being loosened, he made his escape. Afterwards being made bishop, by preaching the word of God he brought to the faith of Christ the barbarous people of Belgic Gaul, and finally died a confessor in peace.

At Chalons in France, St. Donation, bishop.

At Messina in Sicily, St. Albert, confessor, of the Order of Carmelites, renowned for miracles.

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

Thanks be to God.

6 AUGUST – SAINTS SIXTUS II (Pope and Martyr) and FELICISSIMUS and AGAPITUS (Martyrs)

Sixtus II, a native of Athens, was first a philosopher, and then a disciple of Christ. He ruled the Church of Rome for only 11 months and 12 days. In the persecution of Valerian, he was accused of publicly preaching the faith of Christ, and was seized and dragged to the temple of Mars, where he was given his choice between death and offering sacrifice to the idols. As he firmly refused to commit such an impiety, he was led away to martyrdom. As he went, Saint Laurence met him, and with great sorrow, spoke to him in this manner: “Where do you go, Father, without your son? To where are you hastening, O holy priest, without your deacon?” Sixtus answered: “I am not "forsaking you, my son. A greater combat for the faith of Christ awaits you. In three days you will follow me, the Deacon will follow his Priest. In the meanwhile distribute among the poor whatever you have in the treasury.” Sixtus was put to death that same day, the eighth of the Ides of August, together with the Deacons Felicissimus and Agapitus, and the Subdeacons Januarius, Magnus, Vincent and Stephen. The Pope was buried in the cemetery of Callixtus, but the other martyrs in the cemetery of Praextatus.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

“Xistum in cimiterio animadversum sciatis octavo iduum augustarum, die. Know that Sixtus has been beheaded in the cemetery on the 8th of the Ides of August.” These words of Saint Cyprian mark the opening of a glorious period, both for the cycle and for history. From this day to the feast of Saint Cyprian himself, taking in that of the deacon Laurence, how many holocausts in a few weeks does the earth offer to the Most High God! One would think that the Church, on the feast of our Lord’s Transfiguration, was impatient to join her testimony as Bride, to that of the Prophets, of the Apostles, and of God Himself. Heaven proclaims Him well-beloved, the Earth also declares its love for Him: the testimony of blood and of every sort of heroism is the sublime echo wakened by the Father’s voice through all the valleys of our lowly Earth, to be prolonged through out all ages.

Let us then today salute this noble Pontiff, the first to go down into the arena opened wide by Valerian to all the soldiers of Christ. Among the brave leaders who, from Peter down to Melchiades, have headed the struggle by which Rome was both vanquished and saved, none is more illustrious as a martyr. He was seized in the Catacomb lying to the left of the Via Appia in the very chair in which, in spite of the recent edicts, he was presiding over the assembly of the brethren. And after the sentence had been pronounced by the judge he was brought back to the sacred crypt. There in that same chair, in the midst of the martyrs sleeping in the surrounding tombs their sleep of peace, the good and peaceful Pontiff received the stroke of death. Of the seven deacons of the Roman Church, six died with him. Laurence alone was left, inconsolable at having this time missed the palm, but trusting in the invitation given him to be at the heavenly altar in three days’ time.

Two of the Pontiff’s deacons were buried in the cemetery of Praetextatus, where the sublime scene had taken place. Sixtus and his blood-stained chair were carried to the other side of the Via Appia into the crypt of the Popes where they remained for long centuries an object of veneration to pilgrims. When Damasus in the days of peace adorned the tombs of the saints with his beautiful inscriptions, the entire cemetery of Callixtus, which includes the burial place of the Popes, received the title “of Caecilia” and “of Sixtus,” two glorious names inscribed by Rome upon the venerable diptychs of the Mass. Twice over on this day did the Holy Sacrifice summon the Christians to honour at each side of the principal way to the Eternal City the triumphant victims of the 8th of the Ides of August.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Burgos in Spain, in the monastery of St. Peter of Cardegna, of the Order of St. Benedict, two hundred monks with their abbot Stephen, who were put to death for the faith of Christ by the Saracens and buried in the monastery by Christians.

At Alcala in Spain, the holy martyrs Justus and Pastor, brothers. While they were yet schoolboys, they threw aside their books in school, and spontaneously ran to martyrdom. By order of the governor Dacian, they were arrested, beaten with rods, and as they exhorted each other to constancy, were led out of the city, and had their throats cut by the executioner.

At Rome, St. Hormisdas, pope and confessor.

At Amida, St. James, a hermit renowned for miracles.

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

Thanks be to God.

6 AUGUST – THE TRANSFIGURATION OF OUR LORD

 

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

“O God, who in the glorious transfiguration of your only-begotten Son, confirmed the mysteries of the faith by the testimony of the fathers: and who, in the voice which came from the bright cloud, did in a wonderful manner fore-signify our adoption as sons: mercifully vouchsafe to make us fellow-heirs of that King of glory, and the sharers of His bliss.” Such is the formula which sums up the prayer of the Church and shows us her thoughts on this day of attestation and of hope.

We must first notice that the glorious transfiguration has already been twice brought before us on the sacred cycle, viz., on the second Sunday of Lent and on the preceding Saturday. What does this mean but that the object of the present solemnity is not so much the historical fact already known as the permanent mystery attached to it: not so much the personal favour bestowed on Simon Peter and the sons of Zebedee, as the accomplishment of the great message then entrusted to them for the Church? “Tell the vision to no man, till the Son of man be risen from the dead” (Matthew xvii. 9). The Church, born from the open side of the Man-God on the Cross, was not to behold Him face-to-face on Earth. After His Resurrection when he had sealed His alliance with her in the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven, it is on faith alone that her love was to be fed. But by the testimony which takes the place of sight, her lawful desires to know him were to be satisfied. Wherefore, for her sake, giving truce one day of His mortal life to the ordinary law of suffering and obscurity He had taken on Him for the world’s salvation, He allowed the glory which filled His blessed soul to transpire.

The King of Jews and Gentiles revealed Himself on the mountain where His calm splendour eclipsed forever more the lightnings of Sinai: the covenant of the eternal alliance was declared, not by the promulgation of a law of servitude graven on stone, but by the manifestation of the Lawgiver Himself, coming as Bride groom to reign in grace and beauty over hearts. Elias and Moses, representing the prophets and the Law by which His coming was prepared, from their different starting points met beside Him like faithful messengers reaching their destination. They did homage to the Master of their now finished mission, and effaced themselves before Him at the voice of the Father: “This is my beloved Son!” Three witnesses, the most trustworthy of all, assisted at this solemn scene: the disciple of faith, the disciple of love, and that other son of thunder who was to be the first to seal with his blood both the faith and the love of an Apostle. By His order they kept religiously, as beseemed them, the secret of the King, until the day when the Church could be the first to receive it from their predestined lips.

But did this precious mystery take place on the 6th of August? More than one Doctor of sacred rites affirms that it did. At any rate it was fitting to celebrate it in the month dedicated to eternal Wisdom. It is she, the brightness of eternal light, the unspotted mirror and image of God’s goodness (Wisdom vii. 26) who, shedding grace on the Son of man, made Him on this day the most beautiful among all His brethren and dictated more melodiously than ever to the inspired singer the accents of the Epithalamium: “My heart has uttered a good word: I speak my works to the king” (Psalm xliv. 2, 3). Seven months ago the mystery was first announced by the gentle light of the Epiphany, but by the virtue of the mystical seven here revealed once more, the beginnings of blessed hope which we then celebrated as children with the child Jesus have grown together with Him and with the Church: and the latter, established in unspeakable peace by the full growth which gives her to her Spouse, calls upon all her children to grow like her by the contemplation of the Son of God, even to the measure of the perfect age of Christ. We understand then why the Liturgy of today repeats the formulas and chants of the glorious Theophany: “Arise, be enlightened, O Jerusalem: for your light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you” (Isaias lx. 1). It is because on the mountain together with our Lord the Bride also is glorified, having the glory of God.

While the face of Jesus shone as the sun, His garments became white as snow (Matthew xvii. 2). Now these garments so snow-white, as Saint Mark observes, that no fuller on Earth could have bleached them so, are the just men, the royal ornament inseparable from the Man-God, the Church, the seamless robe woven by our sweet Queen for her Son out of the purest wool and most beautiful linen that the valiant woman could find. Although our Lord personally has now passed the torrent of suffering and entered forever into His glory, nevertheless the bright mystery of the Transfiguration will not be complete until the last of the elect, having passed through the laborious preparation at the hands of the Divine Fuller and tasted death, has joined in the Resurrection of our adorable Head.

O Face of our Saviour that ravishes the heavens, then will all glory, all beauty, all love shine forth from you. Expressing God by the perfect resemblance of true Son by nature, you will extend the good pleasure of the Father to that reflection of His Word, which constitutes the sons of adoption and reaches in the Holy Ghost even to the lowest fringes of His garment which fills the temple below Him. According to the doctrine of the Angel of the schools, the adoption of sons of God, which consists in being conformable to the image of the Son of God by nature, is wrought in a double manner: first by grace in this life, and this is imperfect conformity. And then by glory in patria, and this is perfect conformity, according to the words of Saint John: “We are now the sons of God ; and it has not yet appeared what we will be. We know that when He will appear, we will be like Him: because we will see Him as He is” (1 John iii. 2). The word of eternity, “You are my Son, this day have I begotten you,” has had two echoes in time, at the Jordan and on Thabor. And God, who never repeats Himself, did not herein make an exception to the rule of saying but once what he says. For although thee terms used on the two occasions are identical, they do not tend, as Saint Thomas says, to the same end, but show the different ways in which man participates in the resemblance of the eternal filiation. At the baptism of our Lord, where the mystery of the first regeneration was declared, as at the Transfiguration which manifested the second, the whole Trinity appeared: the Father in the voice, the Son in His Humanity, the Holy Ghost under the form, first of a dove, and afterwards of a bright cloud: for if in baptism this Holy Spirit confers innocence symbolised by the simplicity of the dove, in the Resurrection He will give to the elect the brightness of glory and the refreshment after suffering which are signified by the luminous cloud.

But without waiting for the day when our Saviour will renew our very bodies conformable to the bright glory of His own divine Body, the mystery of the Transfiguration is wrought in our souls already here on Earth. It is of the present life that Saint Paul says, and the Church sings today: “God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Christ Jesus” (2 Corinthians iv. 6). Thabor, holy and divine mountain rivalling Heaven, how can we help saying with Peter: “It is good for us to dwell on your summit!” For your summit is love, it is charity which towers above the other virtues, as you tower in gracefulness, and loftiness, and fragrance over the other mountains of Galilee, which saw Jesus passing, speaking, praying, working prodigies, but did not know Him in the intimacy of the perfect. It is after six days, as the Gospel observes, and therefore in the repose of the seventh which leads to the eighth of the Resurrection, that Jesus reveals Himself to the privileged souls who correspond to His love. The Kingdom of God is within us when, leaving all impressions of the senses as it were asleep, we raise ourselves above the works and cares of the world by prayer, it is given us to enter with the Man-God into the cloud: there beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, as far as is compatible with our exile, we are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthians iii. 18). “Let us then,” cries Saint Ambrose, “ascend the mountain. Let us beseech the Word of God to show Himself to us in His splendour, in His beauty, to grow strong and proceed prosperously, and reign in our souls. For behold a deep mystery! According to your measure, the Word diminishes or grows within you. If you reach not that summit, high above all human thought, Wisdom will not appear to you. The Word shows Himself to you as in a body without brightness and without glory.”

If the vocation revealed to you this day be so great and so holy, “reverence the call of God,” says Saint Andrew of Crete: “do not ignore yourself, despise not a gift so great, show not yourself unworthy of the grace, be not so slothful in your life as to lose this treasure of Heaven. Leave Earth to the earth, and let the dead bury their dead. Disdaining all that passes away, all that dies with the world and the flesh, follow even to Heaven, without turning aside, Christ who leads the way through this world for you. Take to your assistance fear and desire, lest you faint or lose your love. Give yourself up wholly. Be supple to the Word in the Holy Ghost, in order to attain this pure and blessed end: your deification, together with the enjoyment of unspeakable goods. By zeal for the virtues, by contemplation of the truth, by wisdom, attain to Wisdom, who is the principle of all, and in whom all things subsist.”

The feast of the Transfiguration has been kept in the East from the earliest times. With the Greeks it is preceded by a Vigil and followed by an Octave, and on it they abstain from servile work, from commerce, and from law-suits. Under the graceful name of Rose-flame, rosae coruscatio, we find it in Armenia at the beginning of the fourth century, supplanting Diana and her feast of flowers by the remembrance of the day when the divine Rose unfolded for a moment on earth its brilliant corolla. It is preceded by a whole week of fasting, and counts among the five principal feasts of the Armenian cycle, where it gives its name to one of the eight divisions of the year. Although the Menology of this Church marks it on the sixth of August like that of the Greeks and the Roman Martyrology, it is nevertheless always celebrated there on the seventh Sunday after Pentecost. And by a coincidence full of meaning, they honour on the preceding Saturday the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, a figure of the Church.

The origin of today’s feast in the West is not so easy to determine. But the authors who place its introduction into our countries as late as 1457 when Callixtus III promulgated by precept a new Office enriched with indulgences, overlook the fact that the Pontiff speaks of the feast as already widespread and “commonly called of the Saviour.” It is true that in Rome especially the celebrity of the more ancient feast of Saint Sixtus II, with its double Station at the two cemeteries which received respectively the relics of the Pontiff-Martyr and those of his companions, was for a long time an obstacle to the acceptance of another feast on the same day. Some Churches, to avoid the difficulty, chose another day in the year to honour the mystery. As the feast of our Lady of the Snow, so that of the Transfiguration had to spread more or less privately, with various Offices and Masses, until the supreme authority should intervene to sanction and bring to unity the expressions of the devotion of different Churches. Callixtus III considered that the hour had come to consecrate the work of centuries. He made the solemn and definitive insertion of this feast of triumph on the universal Calendar the memorial of the victory which arrested, under the walls of Belgrade in 1456, the onward march of Mahomet II, conqueror of Byzantium, against Christendom. Already in the ninth century, if not even earlier, martyrologies and other liturgical documents furnish proofs that the mystery was celebrated with more or less solemnity, or at least with some sort of commemoration, in divers places. In the twelfth century Peter the Venerable, under whose government Cluny took possession of Thabor, ordained that in all the monasteries or churches belonging to his Order, the Transfiguration should be celebrated with the same degree of solemnity as the Purification of our Lady, and he gave for his reason, besides the dignity of the mystery, the “custom, ancient or recent, of many Churches throughout the world, which celebrate the memory of the said Transfiguration with no less honour than the Epiphany and the Ascension of our Lord.”

On the other hand at Bologna in 1233, in the juridical instruction preliminary to the canonisation of Saint Dominic, the death of the Saint is declared to have taken place on the feast of Saint Sixtus, without mention of any other. It is true, and we believe this detail is not void of meaning, that a few years earlier, Sicardus of Cremona thus expressed himself in his Mitrale: “We celebrate the Transfiguration of our Lord on the day of Saint Sixtus.” Is not this sufficient indication that while the feast of the latter continued to give its traditional name to the eighth of the Ides of August, it did not prevent a new and greater solemnity from taking its place beside it, preparatory to absorbing it altogether? For he adds: “Therefore on this same day, as the Transfiguration refers to the state in which the faithful will be after the resurrection, we consecrate the Blood of our Lord from new wine, if it is possible to obtain it, in order to signify what is said in the Gospel: ‘I will not drink from henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I will drink it with you new in the kingdom of my Father.’ But if it cannot be procured, then at least a few ripe grapes are pressed over the chalice, or else grapes are blessed and distributed to the people.”

The author of the Mitrale died in 1215, yet he was only repeating the explanation already given in the second half of the preceding century by John Beleth, Rector of the Paris University. We must admit that the very ancient benedictio uvoe found in the Sacramentaries on the day of Saint Sixtus has nothing corresponding to it in the life of the great Pope which could justify our referring it to him. The Greeks, who have also this blessing of grapes fixed for the 6th August, celebrate on this day the Transfiguration alone, without any commemoration of Sixtus II. Be it as it may, the words of the Bishop of Cremona and of the Rector of Paris prove that Durandus of Mende, giving at the end of the thirteenth century the same symbolical interpretation, did but echo a tradition more ancient than his own time.

Epistle – 2 Peter i. 16‒19

Dearly beloved, we have not by following artificial fables made known to you the power and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. But we were eyewitnesses of His greatness. For He received from God the Father, honour and glory: this voice coming down to Him from the excellent glory: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear Him”. And this voice we heard brought from Heaven, when we were with him in the holy mount. And we have the more firm prophetical word: whereunto you do well to attend, as to a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns, and the day star arises in your hearts.

Thanks be to God.

Gospel – Matthew xvii. 1‒9

After six days Jesus took with Him Peter and James, and John His brother, and brought them up into a high mountain apart. And He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun and His garments became as white as snow. Behold there appeared to them Moses and Elijah talking with Him. And Peter answering, said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here: if you wish, let us make here three tabernacles, one for you, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” As he was still speaking a bright cloud overshadowed them and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.” The disciples hearing, fell on their faces and were very much afraid. Jesus came and touched them, and said to them, “Arise, and fear not.” Lifting up their eyes saw no-one but only Jesus. And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, “Tell the vision to no man, till the Son of man is risen from the dead.”

Praise be to you, O Christ.

5 AUGUST – DEDICATION OF OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS: BASILICA OF SANTA MARIA MAGGIORE

According to tradition, on the night of the 4th of August 352 AD the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Pope Liberius and a Roman patrician couple and admonished them all to build a church on the Esquiline Hill on the spot where, next morning, they would fine a patch of snow covering the exact area to be built over. Being childless, John and his wife vowed their wealth to Our Lady and built the Basilica at their own personal expense. Between 432 and 440 Pope Sixtus III rebuilt it and dedicated it to the Blessed Virgin Mary who the Council of Ephesus of 431 had proclaimed to be the Mother of God. Pope Eugenius III completely renewed the interior and erected a facade and portico. Pope Nicholas IV further restored the Basilica and enlarged it by adding a number of chapels. Pope Clement X rebuilt the apse and Pope Benedict XIV added the main facade by Carlo Rainaldi. It was first called the ‘Basilica Liberiana’ after Pope Liberius (or ‘the Basilica of Saint Mary, which anciently was called the Liberian, by the Market of Livia’). From the seventh century it became known as Santa Maria del Presepio, and in the tenth century it was renamed Santa Maria della Neve. Since the fourteenth century the Basilica has been known by its present name, appropriately as it is the oldest and largest Roman sanctuary dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Dedication of the Church of Our Lady of the Snows is commemorated on 5 August each year with Pontifical High Mass.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Rome, delivered from slavery by Peter on the first of this month, offers to the world a wonderful spectacle. O Wisdom, who, since the glorious Pentecost, has spread over the whole world, where could it be more true to sing of you that you have trodden the proud heights under your victorious feet?

On Seven Hills had pagan Rome set up her pageantry and built temples to her false gods. Seven Churches now appear at the summits on which purified Rome rests her now truly eternal foundations. By their very site, the basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, of Saint Laurence and Saint Sebastian, placed at the four outer angles of the city of the Caesars, recall the long siege continued for three centuries around the ancient Rome, while the new Rome was being founded. Helena and her son Constantine, recommencing the work of the foundations of the holy City, carried the trenches further out. Nevertheless, the churches which were their own peculiar work, viz., Holy Cross in Jerusalem and Saint Saviour’s on the Lateran, are still at the very entrance of the pagan stronghold, close to the gates and leaning against the ramparts, just as a soldier setting foot within a tremendous fortress which has been long invested advances cautiously, surveying both the breach through which he has just passed, and the labyrinth of unknown paths opening before him.

Who will plant the standard of Sion in the centre of Babylon? Who will force the enemy into his last retreat and, casting out the vain idols, set up His palace in their temples? O you to whom was said this word of the Most High: “You are my Son, I will you the Gentiles for your inheritance,” you mighty One, with your sharp arrows routing armies, listen to the cry re-echoing from the whole redeemed world: “With your comeliness and your beauty set out, proceed prosperously and reign!” But the Son of the Most High has a Mother on Earth. The song of the Psalmist inviting Him to the triumph extols also the Queen standing at His right hand in a vesture of gold. If it is from His Father that He holds His power, it is from His Mother that He receives His crown, and He leaves her in return the spoils of the mighty. Go forth then, you daughters of the new Sion, and behold King Solomon in the diadem with which His Mother crowned Him on the joyful day when, taking possession through her of the capital of the world, He espoused the Gentile race. Truly that was a day of joy when Mary, in the name of Jesus, claimed her right as sovereign and heiress of the Roman soil! To the East, at the highest point of the eternal City, she appeared on that blessed morning literally like the rising dawn: beautiful as the moon shining by night; more powerful than the August sun, surprised to see her tempering His heat, and doubling the brightness of His light with her mantle of snow; more terrible than an army, for from that date, daring what neither Apostles nor Martyrs had attempted, and what Jesus Himself would not do without her, she dispossessed the deities of Olympus of their usurped thrones. As was fitting, the haughty Juno whose altar disgraced the Esquiline, the false queen of these lying gods was the first to flee before Mary’s face, leaving the splendid columns of her polluted sanctuary to the only true Queen of Earth and Heaven.

Forty years had passed since the days of Saint Sylvester when the “image of our Saviour, depicted on the walls of the Lateran, appeared for the first time to the Roman people.” Rome, still half pagan, beheld today the Mother of our Saviour. Under the influence of the pure symbol at which she gazed in surprise, she felt die down within her the evil ardour which made her once the scourge of nations, whereas now she was to become their mother; and in the joy of her renewed youth she beheld her once sullied hills covered with the white garment of the Bride. Even from the times of the Apostolic preaching, the elect, who gathered in large numbers in Rome in spite of herself, knew Mary and paid to her in those days of martyrdom a homage such as no other creature could ever receive: witness in the catacombs those primitive frescoes of our Lady, either alone or holding her divine Child, but always seated, receiving from her place of honour the praise, messages, prayers or gifts of prophets, Archangels, and kings. In the Trastevere, where in the reign of Augustus a mysterious fountain of oil had sprung up announcing the coming of the Anointed of the Lord, Pope Callixtus in 222 had built a church in honour of her who is ever the true fons olei, the source from which sprang Christ, and together with Him all unction and all grace. The basilica raised by Liberius, the beloved of our Lady, on the Esquiline, was not then the most ancient monument dedicated by the Christians of Rome to the Mother of God. But it at once took, and has always kept, the first place among our Lady’s churches in the city, and indeed in the world, on account of the solemn and miraculous circumstances of its origin.

“Have you entered,” said the Lord to Job, “into the storehouses of the snow, or have you beheld the treasures of the hail which I have prepared for the time of the enem, against the day of battle and war?” (Job xxxviii. 22, 23) On the 5th August, then, at God’s command the treasures were opened, and the snow was scattered like birds lighting upon the earth, and its coming was the signal for the lightnings of His judgements on the gods of the nations. The Tower of David now dominates over all the towers of the earthly city. From her impregnable position our Lady will never cease her victorious sallies till she has taken the last hostile fort. How beautiful will your steps be in these warlike expeditions, O daughter of the prince, O Queen, whose standard, by the will of your adorable Son, must wave over the whole world rescued from the power of the cursed serpent! The ignominious goddess, overthrown from her impure pedestal by one glance of yours, left Rome still dishonoured by the presence of many vain idols. But you, all-conquering Lady, continued your triumphal march. The Church of Saint Mary in Aracoeli replaced on the Capitol the odious temple of Jupiter. The sanctuaries and groves dedicated to Vesta, Minerva, Ceres and Proserpine hastened to take the title of one who had been shown in their fabulous history under disfigured and degraded forms. The deserted Pantheon awaited the day when it was to receive the noble and magnificent name of Saint Mary ad Martyres. What a preparation for your glorious Assumption is the series of earthly triumphs which this day inaugurates!

The Basilica of Saint Mary of the Snow, called also of Liberius, from its founder, and also of Sixtus, after Sixtus III who restored it, owed to this last the honour of becoming the monument of the divine Maternity proclaimed at Ephesus. The name of Saint Mary Mother, which it received on that occasion, became under Theodore I, who enriched it with the most precious relic, Saint Mary of the Crib: all these noble titles were after wards gathered into that of Saint Mary Major, which is amply justified by the facts we have related, by universal devotion, and by the pre-eminence always assigned to it by the Sovereign Pontiffs. Though the last in order of time of the seven churches on which Christian Rome is founded, it nevertheless ranked in the Middle Ages next to that of Saint Saviour. In the procession of the greater Litanies on April 25th the ancient Roman Ordo assigned to the Cross of Saint Mary’s its place between that of Saint. Peter’s, below it, and that of the Lateran, which followed it. The important and numerous liturgical Stations appointed at the Basilica on the Esquiline testify to the devotion of the Romans and of all Catholics towards it. It was honoured by having councils celebrated and Vicars of Christ elected within its walls. The Pontiffs for a time made it their residence, and were accustomed on the Ember Wednesdays, when the Station was always held there, to publish there the names of the Cardinal Deacons or Cardinal Priests whom they had resolved to create.

As to the annual solemnity of its dedication, which is the object of the present feast, there can be no doubt that it was celebrated on the Esquiline at a very early date. It was, however, not yet kept by the whole Church in the thirteenth century, for Pope Gregory IX in the bull of canonisation of Saint Dominic, whose death occurred on the 6th August, anticipated his feast on the 5th of the month as being at that time vacant, whereas the 6th was already occupied, as we will see tomorrow by another solemnity. It was Pope Paul IV who in 1558 definitively fixed the feast of the holy founder on the 4th August, and the reason he gives is that the feast of Saint Mary of the Snow having since been made universal and taking precedence of the other, the honour due to the holy patriarch might be put in the shade if his feast continued to be kept on the same day.

WHAT recollections, O Mary, does this feast of your greatest basilica awaken within us! And what worthier praise, what better prayer, could we offer you today than to remind you of the graces we have received within its precincts, and implore you to renew them and confirm them forever ? United with our Mother-Church in spite of distance, have we not, under its shadow, tasted the sweetest and most triumphant emotions of the Cycle now verging on to its term? On the first Sunday of Advent, it was here that we began the year, as in the place “most suitable” for saluting the approach of the Divine Birth, which was to gladden heaven and earth and manifest the sublime portent of a Virgin Mother. Our hearts were overflowing with desire on that holy Vigil when from early morning we were invited to the bright basilica where the mystical Rose was soon to bloom and fill the world with its fragrance. The grandest of all the churches which the people of Rome have erected in honour of the Mother of God, it stood before us rich in its marble and gold, but richer still in possessing, together with the portrait of our Lady painted by Saint Luke, the humble yet glorious Crib of Jesus, of which the inscrutable designs of God have deprived Bethlehem. During that blessed night an immense concourse of people assembled in the basilica awaiting the happy moment when that monument of the love and the humiliation of a God was to be brought in, carried on the shoulders of the priests as an ark of the New Covenant, whose welcome sight gives the sinner confidence and makes the just man thrill with joy. Alas, a few months passed away, and we were again in the noble sanctuary, this time compassionating our holy Mother whose heart was filled with poignant grief at the foresight of the sacrifice which was preparing. But soon the august basilica was filled once more with new joys, when Rome justly associated with the Paschal solemnity the memory of her who, more than all other creatures, had merited its joys, not only because of the exceptional share she had had in all the sufferings of Jesus, but also because of the unshaken faith with which during those long and cruel hours of His lying in the tomb she had awaited His Resurrection. Dazzling as the snow which fell from Heaven to mark the place of your predilection on Earth, O Mary, a white-robed band of neophytes coming up from the waters formed your graceful court and enhanced the triumph of that great day. Obtain for them and for us all, O Mother, affections as pure as the white marble columns of your loved church, charity as bright as the gold glittering on its ceiling, works shining as the Paschal Candle, that symbol of Christ the conqueror of death, which offered you the homage of its first flames.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Rome, during the persecution of Diocletian, the martyrdom of twenty three holy martyrs who were beheaded on the Via Salaria and buried at the foot of Cucumer hill.

At Augsburg, the birthday of St. Afra, martyr. After being converted from paganism by the instructions of bishop St. Narcissus, and being baptised with all her household, she was delivered to the flames for the confession of Christ.

At Ascoli in the Marches of Ancona, St. Emygdins, bishop and martyr, who was consecrated bishop by Pope St. Marcellus, and sent there to preach the Gospel. He received the crown of martyrdom for the confession of Christ under the emperor Diocletian.

At Antioch, St. Eusignius, a soldier, who at the age of one hundred and ten years, because he reproached Julian the Apostate for forsaking the faith of Constantine the Great, under whom he had served, and for having degenerated from his ancestors’ piety, was decapitated by his command.

Also the holy martyrs Cantidius, Cantidian, and Sobel, Egyptians.

At Chalons in France, St. Memmius, a Roman citizen, who, being consecrated bishop of that city by the blessed Apostle St. Peter, brought to the truth of the Gospel the people committed to his care.

At Autun, blessed Cassian, bishop.

At Teano, St. Paris, bishop.

In England, St. Oswald, king, whose life is related by the Venerable Bede.

The same day, St. Nonna, mother of blessed Gregory Nazianzen.

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

Thanks be to God.

4 AUGUST – SAINT DOMINIC (Confessor)

Dominic was born at Calaruega, in Spain, of the noble family of the Guzmans, and went through his liberal and theological studies at Palencia. He made great progress in learning, and became a Canon Regular of the Church, of Osma, and afterwards instituted the Order of Friars Preachers. While his mother was with child, she dreamt she was carrying in her womb a little dog holding a torch in his mouth with which, as soon as he was born, he would set fire to the world. This dream signified that he would kindle Christian piety among the nations by the splendour of his sanctity and teaching. Events proved its truth, for he fulfilled the prophecy both in person, and later on by the brethren of his Order. His genius and virtue shone forth especially in confounding the heretics who were attempting to infect the people of Toulouse with their baneful errors. He was occupied for seven years in this undertaking. Then he went to Rome for the Council of Lateran, with the bishop of Toulouse, to obtain from Pope Innocent III the confirmation of the Order he had instituted. But while the matter was under consideration, the Pope advised Dominic to return to his disciples and choose a rule. On his return to Rome, he obtained the confirmation of the Order of Preachers from Pope Honorius III, the immediate successor of Pope Innocent III. In Rome itself he founded two monasteries, one for men and the other for women. He raised three dead to life, and worked many other miracles, in consequence of which the Order of Preachers began to spread in a wonderful manner. Monasteries were built by his means in every part of the world, and through his teaching numbers of men embraced a holy and religious manner of life. In 1221 he fell into a fever at Bologna. When he saw he was about to die, calling together his brethren and children, he exhorted them to innocence and purity of life, and left them as their true inheritance the virtues of charity, humility, and poverty. While the brethren were praying round him, at the words, “Come to his aid, you Saints of God, run to meet him, O you Angels,” he fell asleep in the Lord, on the eighth of the Ides of August. Pope Gregory IX. placed him among the Saints.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

“The father of the Preachers,” said the Eternal Father to Saint Catherine of Siena, “established his principle on the light, by making it his aim and his armour. He took upon him the office of the Word my Son, sowing my word, dispelling darkness, enlightening the Earth. Mary, by whom I gave him to the world, made him the extirpator of heresies.”

The Order called to become the chief support of the Sovereign Pontiff in uprooting pernicious doctrines ought, if possible, to justify that name even more than its Patriarch: the first of the tribunals of Holy Church, the Holy Roman Universal Inquisition, the Holy Office, truly invested with the Office of the Word with his two-edged sword to convert or to chastise, could find no instrument more trusty or more sure. Little thought the virgin of Siena, or the illustrious author of the Divina Commedia, that the chief title of the Dominican family to the grateful love of the people would be discussed in a certain apologetic school, and there discarded as insulting, or dissembled as unpleasant. The present age glories in a liberalism which has given proofs of its power by multiplying rains, and which rests on no better philosophical basis than a strange confusion between licence and liberty: only such intellectual grovelling could have failed to understand that in a society which has faith for the basis of its institutions as well as the principle of salvation for all, no crime could equal that of shaking the foundation on which thus rest both social interest and the most precious possession of individuals. Neither the idea of justice, nor still less that of liberty, could consist in leaving to the mercy of evil or evil men, the weak who are unable to protect themselves. This truth was the axiom and the glory of chivalry: the brothers of Peter the Martyr devoted their lives to protect the safety of the children of God against the surprises of the strong armed one, and the “business that walks about in the dark” (Psalms xc. 6). It was the honour of the “saintly flock led by Dominic along a way, where they thrive well who do not go astray” (Dante, Paradiso, Canto x.).

Who could be truer knights than those athletes of the faith taking their sacred vow in the form of allegiance and choosing for their Lady her who, terrible as an army, alone crushes heresies through out the whole world. To the buckler of truth and the sword of the word, she who keeps in Sion the armour of valiant men added for her devoted liege men the Rosary, the special mark of her own militia. She, as being their true commander-in-chief, assigned them the habit of her choice, and in the person of Blessed Reginald anointed them with her own hands for the battle. She herself too watched over the recruiting of the holy band, attracting to it from among the elite youth of the universities, souls the purest, the most generously devoted, and of the noblest intellect. At Paris, the capital of theology, and Bologna, of law and jurisprudence, masters and scholars, disciples of every branch of science, were pursued and overtaken by the sweet Queen amid incidents more heavenly than earthly. How graceful were those beginnings in which Dominic’s virginal serenity seemed to surround all his children! It was indeed in this the Order of light that the Gospel word was seen verified: “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God” (Matthew v. 8).

Eyes enlightened from above beheld the foundations of the Friars Preachers under the figure of fields of lilies. And Mary, by whom the Splendour of Eternal Light came down to us, became their heavenly mistress and led them from every science to wisdom, the friend of pure hearts. She came accompanied by Cecilia and Catherine, to bless their rest at night, and covered them all with her royal mantle beside the throne of our Lord. After this we are not astonished at the freshness and purity which continued even after Saint Dominic, under the generalship of Jordan of Saxony, Raymund of Pennafort, John the Teutonic and Humbert de Romans, in those Lives of the Brethren, and Lives of the Sisters, so happily handed down to us. It is instructive to note that in the Dominican family, apostolic in its very essence, the Sisters were founded ten years before the Brethren, which shows how, in the Church of God, action can never be fruitful unless preceded and accompanied by contemplation, which obtains for it every blessing and grace.

Notre Dame de Prouille, at the foot of the Pyrenees, was not only by this right of primogeniture, the beginning of the whole Order. It was here also that the first companions of Saint Dominic made with him their choice of a Rul, and divided the world among them, going from here to found the Convents of Saint Romanus at Toulouse, Saint James at Paris, Saint Nicholas at Bologna, Saint Sixtus and Saint Sabina in the Eternal City. About the same period, the establishment of the Militia of Jesus Christ, placed under the direction of the Friars Preachers secular persons who undertook to defend, by all the means in their power, the goods and liberty of the Church against the aggressions of heresy. When the sectaries had laid down their arms leaving the world in peace for a time, the association did not disappear: it continued to fight with spiritual arms, and changed its name into that of Third Order of Brothers and Sisters of Penance of Saint Dominic.

* * * * *

HOW many sons and daughters surround you on the Sacred Cycle! This very month, Rose of Lima and Hyacinth keep you company, and your coming has long since been heralded in the Liturgy by Raymund of Pennafort, Thomas of Aquinas, Vincent Ferrer, Peter the Martyr, Catherine of Siena, Pius V and Antoninus. And now at length appears in the firmament the new star whose brightness dispels ignorance, confounds heresy, increases the faith of believers. O Dominic, your blessed mother who preceded you to Heaven, now penetrates in all its fullness the happy meaning of that mysterious vision which once excited her fears. And that other Dominic, the glory of ancient Silos, at whose tomb she received the promise of your blessed birth, rejoices at the tenfold splendour given by you for all eternity to the beautiful name he bequeathed you. But what a special welcome you receive from the Mother of all grace, who heretofore, embracing the feet of her angered Son, stood surety that you would bring back the world to its Saviour! A few years passed away and error, put to confusion, felt that a deadly struggle was engaged between itself and thy family. The Lateran Church saw its walls, which were threatening to fall, strengthened for a time, and the two Princes of the Apostles who had bidden you go and preach, rejoice that the word has gone forth once more into the whole world.

Stricken with barrenness, the nations which the Apocalypse likens to great waters, seemed to have become once for all corrupt. The prostitute of Babylon was setting up her throne before the time when, in imitation of Eliseus, putting the salt of Wisdom into the new vessel of the Order founded by you, you cast this divine salt into the unhealthy waters, neutralised the poison of the beast so soon risen up again, and in spite of the snares which will never cease, rendered the earth habitable once more. How clearly your example shows us that they alone are powerful before God and over the people, who give themselves up to Him without seeking anything else, and only give to others out of their own fullness. Despising, as your historians tell us, every opportunity and every science where Eternal Wisdom was not to be seen, your youth was charmed with her alone. And she, who prevents those that seek her, inundated you from your earliest years with the light and the anticipated sweetness of Heaven. It is from her that overflowed on you that radiant serenity which so struck your contemporaries, and which no occurrence could ever alter. In heavenly peace you drank long draughts from the ever-flowing fountain springing up into eternal life, but while your inmost soul was thus slaking the thirst of its love, the divine source produced a marvellous fecundity, and its streams becoming yours, your fountains were conveyed abroad in the streets, you divide your waters. You had welcomed Wisdom and she exalted you. Not content to adorn your brow with the rays of the mysterious star, she gave you also the glory of patriarchs, and multiplied your years and your works in those of your sons. In them you have not ceased to be one of the strongest stays of the Church. Science has made your name wonderful among the nations, and because of it their youth is honoured by the ancients. May it ever be for them, as it was for their elders, both the fruit of Wisdom and the way that leads to her. May it be fostered by prayer, for your holy Order so well keeps up the beautiful traditions of prayer, as to approach the nearest, in that respect, to the ancient monastic Orders. To praise, to bless and to preach will be to the end its loved motto, for its apostolate must be, according to the word of the Psalm, the overflowing of the abundance of sweetness tasted in communication with God. Thus strengthened in Sion, thus blessed in its glorious role of propagator and guardian of the truth, your noble family will ever deserve to hear, from the mouth of our Lady herself, that encouragement above all praise: Fortiter, fortiter, viri fortes! “Courage, courage, you men of courage!”

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Thessalonica, the birthday of blessed Aristarchus, a disciple and inseparable companion of the blessed Apostle St. Paul, who writes to the Colossians: “My fellow-prisoner Aristarchus salutes you.” He was consecrated bishop of the Thessalonians by the same Apostle, and after long sufferings under Nero, crowned by Christ, rested in peace.

At Rome, on the Via Latina, the martyrdom of blessed Tertullinus, priest and martyr, in the time of emperor Valerian. After being cruelly beaten with rods, after having his sides burned, his mouth shattered, after being stretched on the rack and scourged with whips, he completed his martyrdom by being beheaded.

At Constantinople, the holy martyr Eleutherius, of the senatorial rank, who was put to the sword for Christ in the persecution of Maximian.

In Persia, in the time of king Sapor, the holy martyr Ia and her companions, who, with nine thousand Christian captives, underwent martyrdom after having been subjected to various torments.

At Cologne, St. Protasius, martyr.

At Verona, St. Agabius, bishop and confessor.

At Tours, St. Euphronius, bishop.

At Rome, St. Perpetua, who was baptised by the blessed Apostle St. Peter. She converted to the faith her son Nazarius and her husband Africanus, buried the remains of many holy martyrs, and finally went to our Lord endowed with an abundance of merit.

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

Thanks be to God.

3 AUGUST – THE INVENTION OF SAINT STEPHEN (First Martyr)

During the reign of the emperor Honorius, the bodies of Saint Stephen the Protomartyr, Gamaliel, Nicodemus and Abibas were found near Jerusalem. They had long lain buried, unknown and neglected, when they were revealed by God to a priest named Lucian. While he was asleep, Gamaliel appeared to him as a venerable and majestic old man, and showed him the spot where the bodies lay, commanding him to go to Bishop John of Jerusalem, and persuade him to give these bodies more honourable burial.On hearing this, the Bishop of Jerusalem assembled the neighbouring Bishops and clergy, and went to the spot indicated. The tombs were found, and from them exhaled a most sweet odour. At the rumour at what had occurred, a great crowd came together and many of them who were sick and weak from various ailments went away perfectly cured. The sacred body of Saint Stephen was then earned with great honour to the holy church of Sion. Under Theodosius the younger it was carried to Constantinople, and from there it was translated to Rome under Pope Pelagius I and placed in the tomb of Saint Laurence the Martyr, in Agro Verano.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Urged by the approach of Laurence’s triumph, Stephen rises to assist at his combat. It is a meeting full of beauty and strength, revealing the work of Eternal Wisdom in the arrangement of the sacred Cycle. But the present feast has other teachings also to offer us.

The first resurrection of which we spoke above continues for the Saints. After Nazarius and Celsus, and all the martyrs whom the victory of Christ has shown to be partakers of His glory according to the divine promise, the standard-bearer of the white robed army Himself rises glorious from His tomb to lead the way for new triumphs. The fierce auxiliaries of God’s anger against idolatrous Rome, after reducing the false gods to powder, must in their turn be subjugated. And this second victory will be the work of the martyrs aiding the Church by their miracles, as the first was that of their faith despising death and tortures. The received method of writing history in our days ignores such considerations. That is no reason why we should follow the fashion: the exactitude of its data, on which the science of this age plumes itself, is but one more proof that falsehood is as easily nurtured by omissions as by positive misstatements. Now the more profound the present silence on the question, the more certain it is that the very years which beheld the barbarians invading and overturning the empire were signalised by an effusion of virtue from on high, comparable in more than one respect to that which marked the times of the Apostolic preaching. Nothing less was required to reassure the faithful on the one hand, and on the other to inspire with respect for the Church these brutal invaders, who knew do right but might, and felt nothing but disdain for the race they had conquered.

The divine intention in surrounding the fall of Rome in 410 with discoveries of Saints’ bodies was clearly manifested in the most important of these inventions, the one we celebrate today. The year 415 had opened. Italy, Gaul and Spain were being invaded, Africa was about to share their fate. Amid the universal ruin, the Christians, in whom alone resided the hope of the world, put up their petitions at every sanctuary to obtain at least, according to the expression of the Spanish priest Avitus, “that the Lord would inspire with gentleness those whom he suffered to prevail.” It was then that took place that marvellous revelation which the severe critic Tillemont, convinced by the testimony of all the chronicles, histories, letters and discourses of the time, allows to be “one of the most celebrated events of the fifth century.” Through the intermediary of the priest Lucian, John, Bishop of Jerusalem, received from Saint Stephen the first Martyr and his companions in the tomb, a message couched in these terms: “Make haste to open our sepulchre, that by our means God may open to the world the door of His clemency, and may take pity on his people in the universal tribulation.” The discovery, accomplished in the midst of prodigies, was published to the whole world as the sign of salvation. Saint Stephen’s relics, scattered everywhere in token of security and peace, wrought astonishing conversions. Innumerable miracles, “like those of ancient times,” bore witness to the same faith of Christ which the martyr had confessed by his death four centuries earlier.

Such was the extraordinary character of this manifestation, so astonishing was the number of resurrections of the dead, that Saint Augustine, addressing his people, deemed it prudent to lift their thoughts from Stephen the servant to Christ His Master. “Though dead,” said he, “he raises the dead to life, because in reality he is not dead. But as heretofore in his mortal life, so now, too, he acts solely in the name of Christ. All that you see now done by the memory of Stephen, is done in that name alone, that Christ may be exalted, Christ may be adored, Christ may be expected as Judge of the living and the dead.”

Let us conclude with this praise addressed to Saint Stephen a few years later by Basil of Seleucia, which gives so well in a few words the reason of the feast: “There is no place, no territory, no nation, no far-off land, that has not obtained the help of your benefits. There is no one, stranger or citizen, barbarian or Scythian, that does not experience, through your intercession, the greatness of heavenly realities.”

What a precious addition to your history in the sacred Books is furnished us, O Protomartyr, by the story of your invention! We now know who were those “God fearing men who buried Stephen and made great mourning over him.” Gamaliel, the master of the Doctor of the Gentiles, had been before his disciple conquered by our Lord. Inspired by Jesus to whom in dying you commended your soul, He honoured after your death the humble soldier of Christ with the same cares which had been lavished by Joseph of Arimathea, the noble counsellor, on the Man-God, and laid your body in the new tomb prepared for himself. Soon Nicodemus, Joseph’s companion in the pious work of the great Friday, hunted by the Jews in that persecution in which you were the first victim, found refuge near your sacred relics, and dying a holy death was laid to rest beside you. The respected name of Gamaliel prevailed over the angry synagogue. While the family of Annas and Caiphas kept in its hands the priestly power through the precarious favour of Rome, the grandson of Hillel left to his descendants pre-eminence in knowledge, and his eldest line remained for four centuries the depositories of the only moral authority then recognised by the dispersed Israelites. But more fortunate was he in having, by hearing the Apostles and yourself, O Stephen, passed from the science of shadows to the light of the realities, from the Law to the Gospel, from Moses to Him whom Moses announced. More happy than the eldest born, was the beloved son Abibas, baptised with his father at the age of twenty, and who, passing away to God, filled the tomb next to yours with the sweet odour of heavenly purity. How touching was the last will of the illustrious father when, his hour being come, he ordered the grave of Abibas to be opened for himself, that father and son might be seen to be twin brothers born together to the only true light!

The munificence of our Lord had placed you in death, O Stephen, in worthy company. We give thanks to the noble person who showed you hospitality for your last rest, and we are grateful to him for having, at the appointed time, himself broken the silence kept concerning him by the delicate reserve of the Scriptures. Here again we see how the Man-God wills to share His own honours with His chosen ones. Your sepulchre, like His, was glorious. And when it was opened, the earth shook, the bystanders believed that Heaven had come down, the world was delivered from a desolating drought, and amid a thousand evils hope sprang up once more. Now that our West possesses your body and Gamaliel has yielded to Laurence the right of hospitality, rise up once more, O Stephen, and together with the great Roman deacon deliver us from the new barbarians, by converting them, or wiping them off the face of the Earth given by God to His Christ!

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Constantinople, the birthday of St. Hermellus, martyr.

In the East Indies near Persia, the martyrdom of holy monks and other Christians who were put to death after suffering various torments, during the persecution of the Church of God by king Abenner.

At Naples in Campania, St. Aspren, bishop, who was cured of a sickness by the blessed Apostle St. Peter, and after being baptised, was made bishop of that city.

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

At Anagni, St. Peter, bishop, who rested in the Lord after gaining great renown for monastical observance and pastoral vigilance.

At Philippi in Macedonia, St. Lydia, a dealer in purple, who was the first to believe in the Gospel when the blessed Apostle St. Paul preached in that city.

At Beroea in Syria, the holy women Marana and Cyra.

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

Thanks be to God.

3 AUGUST – EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

In the Middle Ages, this Sunday was called the sixth and last Sunday after the Natalis of the Apostles, that is, the Feast of Saint Peter. It was indeed the last for the years when Easter had been kept as late in April as was possible. But it was only the first after that Feast of Saint Peter when Easter immediately followed the spring equinox.

We have already noticed the variable character of this last portion of the liturgical cycle which was the result of Easter being kept on a different day each year, and that, in consequence of this variation, this week might be either the second of the reading from the Sapiential Books or, what was of more frequent occurrence, the Books of Kings were still providing the Lessons for the divine Office. In this latter case, it is the ancient Temple raised by Solomon, the King of Peace, to the glory of Jehovah, that engages the Church’s attention today. We will find that the portions of the Mass which are chanted on this Sunday are closely connected with the Lessons read in last night’s Office.

Let us then turn our reverential thoughts once more to this splendid monument of the ancient Covenant. The Church is now going through that month which immediately preceded the events so momentous to Jerusalem. She would do honour today to the glorious and divine past which prepared her own present. Let us, like her, enter into the feelings of the first Christians who were Judah’s own children they had been told of the impending destruction foretold by the Prophets and an order from God bade them depart from Jerusalem. What a solemn moment that was when the little flock of the elect, the only ones in whom was kept up the faith of Abraham and the knowledge of the destinies of the Hebrew people, had just begun their emigration and looked back on the city of their fathers to take a last farewell!

They took the road to the east. It led towards the Jordan beyond which God had provided a refuge for the remnant of Israel (Isaias x. 20-23). They halted on the incline of Mount Olivet from where they had a full view of Jerusalem. In a few moments that hill would be between them and the city. Not quite forty years before, the Man-God had sat Himself down on that same spot (Mark xiii. 1-3), taking His own last look at the city and her Temple. Jerusalem was seen in all her magnificence from this portion of the Mount which afterwards would be visited and venerated by our Christian pilgrims. The city had long since recovered from its ruins and had, at the time we are speaking of, been enlarged by the princes of the Herodian family, so favourably looked on by the Romans. Never in any previous period of her history had Jerusalem been so perfect and so beautiful as she then was when our fugitives were gazing on her. There was not, as yet, the slightest outward indication that she was the city accursed of God.

There, as a queen in her strength and power, she was throned amid the mountains of which the Psalmist had sung (Psalm cxxiv. 2). Her towers (Psalm cxxi. 7) and palaces seemed as though they were her crown. Within the triple enclosure of the walls built by her latest kings, she enchased those three hills, the grandest, not only of Judea, but of the whole world: first there was Sion with her unparalleled memories, then Golgotha that had not yet been honoured with the Holy Sepulchre and which nevertheless was even then attracting to herself the Roman legions who were to wreak vengeance on this guilty land, and lastly Moriah, the sacred mount of the old world on whose summit was raised that unrivalled Temple which gave Jerusalem to be the queen of all the Cities of the East, for as such even the Gentiles acknowledged her (Pliny, Natural History v. 15).

At sunrise when in the distance there appeared the sanctuary towering upwards of a hundred cubits above the two rows of porticoes which formed its double enclosure: when the sun cast his morning rays on that facade of gold and white marble: when there glittered the thousand gilded spires which mounted from its roof — it seemed, says Josephus, that it was a hill capped with snow which gradually shone and reddened with the morning beams. The eye was dazzled, the soul was amazed, religion was roused within the beholder, and even the pagans fell down prostrate. Yes, when the pagan came here, either for conquest or for curiosity, if he ever returned, it was as a pilgrim. Full of holy sentiments, he ascended the hill and, having reached the summit, he entered by the golden gate into the gorgeous galleries which formed the outward enclosure of the Temple. In the Court of the Gentiles he met with men from every country. His soul was struck by the holiness of a place where he felt that there were preserved in all purity the ancient religious traditions of the human race and, he being profane, stood afar off assisting at the celebrations of the Hebrew worship, such as God had commanded it to be, that is, with all the magnificence of a divine ritual. The white column of smoke from the burning victims rose up before him as Earth’s homage to God, its creator and saviour. From the inner courts there fell on his ear the harmony of the sacred chants, carrying as they did to Heaven both the ardent prayer of those ages of expectation and the inspired expression of the world’s hope.

And when, from the midst of the Levite choirs and the countless priests who were busy in their ministry of sacrifice and praise, the High Priest, with his golden crown on his head, came forth holding the censer in his hand and entering himself alone within the mysterious veil which curtained off the Holy of Holies, the stranger, though he had but a glimpse of all those splendid symbols of religion, yet confessed himself overpowered and acknowledged the incomparable greatness of that invisible Deity, whose majesty made all the vain idols of the Gentiles seem to him paltry and foolish pretences. The princes of Asia, and the greatest kings considered it an honour to be permitted to contribute, both by personal gifts of their own making, and by sums taken from the national treasuries, towards defraying the expenses of the holy place (Malachias iii. 2, 3).

The Roman Generals and the Caesars themselves kept up the traditions of Cyrus (1 Esedras vi. 7) and Alexander in this respect. Augustus ordered that every day a bull and two lambs should be presented, in his name, to the Jewish priests, and be immolated on Jehovah’s altar for the well-being of the empire. His successors insisted on the practice being continued, and Josephus tells us that the beginning of the war was attributable to the sacrificers refusing any longer to accept the imperial offerings. But if the majesty of the Temple thus impressed the very pagans right up to its last days, there were reasons for an intensity of veneration and love on the part of a faithful Jew which he alone could realise. He was the inheritor of the submissive faith of the Patriarchs. As such he was well aware that the prophetic privileges of his fatherland were but an announcement to the whole world that it was one day to be blessed with the more real and lasting benefits of which he, the Jew, possessed but a figure. He quite understood that the hour had come when the children of God would not confine their worship within the narrow limits of one mountain or one city (John iv. 21, 23). He knew that God’s true temple was then actually being built up on every hill of the Gentile world (Isaias ii. 2), and that in its immensity it took in all those countries of the Earth into which the Blood that flowed first from Calvary had won its way. And yet, we can easily understand what a sharp pang of anguish thrilled through his patriot heart now that God was about to consummate, before the astonished universe, the terrible consumption (Isaias x. 23) of the ungrateful people whom he had chosen for his portion his inheritance (Deuteronomy xxxii. 9). Who is there that would not share in the grief of these holy ones of Jacob, few in number as the ears of corn gathered by the gleaner (Isaias xvii. 5) and now bidding an eternal farewell to that holy, but now accursed, city? These true Israelites might well weep. They were leaving forever, leaving to devastation and ruin, their homes, their country and, dearest of all, that Temple which for ages had sanctified the glory of Israel, and gave Judah the right and title to be the noblest of the nations of the Earth (Deuteronomy iv. 6-8).

There was something even beyond all this: it was that their dear Jerusalem had been the scene of the grandest mysteries of the law of grace. Was it not in yonder Temple that, as the Prophets expressed it, God had manifested the Angel of the Testament (Malachias ii. 1) and given peace? The honour of that Temple is no longer the exclusive right of an isolated people, for the Desired of all nations (Aggeus ii.1), by His going into it, has brought it a grander glory than all the ages of expectation and prophecy have imparted (Aggeus ii. 8, 10). It was under the shadow of those walls that Mary — she that was to be the future Seat of Wisdom Eternal — prepared within her soul and body a more august sanctuary for the divine Word, than was that, whose cedared and golden wainscoting made it so exquisite a shelter for the infant maiden. Yes, it was there that, when but three years old, Mary joyously mounted up the fifteen steps which separated the Court of women from the Eastern Gate, offering to God the pure homage of her immaculate heart. Here, then, on the summit of Moriah began, in the person of their Queen, the long line of consecrated virgins who, to the end of time, will come offering after Her their love to the King (Psalm xliv. 15, 16). There, also, the new Priesthood found its type and model in the divine Mother’s presenting, in that holy Temple, the world’s Victim Jesus, the new-born child of her chaste womb. In that same dwelling made by the hands of men, in those halls where sat the Doctors, Eternal Wisdom too seated Himself under the form of a child of twelve, instructing the very Teachers of the Law by His sublime questions and divine answers (Luke ii. 46, 47). Every one of those Courts had seen the Word Incarnate giving forth treasures of goodness, power and heavenly doctrine. One of those porticoes was the favourite one where Jesus used to walk (John x. 23) and the infant Church made it the place of its early assemblies (Acts iii. 11; v. 12).

Truly then, this Temple is holy with a holiness possessed by no other spot on Earth. It is holy for the Jew of Sinai. It is holy for the Christian, be he Jew or Gentile, for here he finds that the Law ends, because here are verified all its figures (Romans x. 4). With good reason did our Mother the Church in her Office for this night repeat the words which were spoken by God to Solomon: “I have sanctified this House which you have built, to put my name there forever, and my eyes and my heart will be always there” (3 Kings ix. 3). How then is it that dark forebodings are come terrifying the watchmen of the Holy Mount? Strange apparitions, fearful noises, have deprived the sacred edifice of that calm and peace which become the House of the Lord. At the feast of Pentecost, the priests who were fulfilling their ministry have heard in the Holy place a commotion like that of a mighty multitude, and many voices crying out together: “Let us go hence!” On another occasion, at midnight, the heavy brazen gate which closed the sanctuary on the eastern side, and which took twenty men to move it, has opened of itself. Temple, Temple, let us say it, with them that witnessed these threatening prodigies, why are you thus troubled? Why do you work your own destruction? Alas, we know what awaits you! The Prophet Zacharias foretold it when he said: “Open your gates, Libanus, and let fire devour your cedars! (Zacharias xi. 1).

God — has He forgotten His promises of infinite goodness? No. But let us think on the terrible and just warning which He added to the promise He made to Solomon when he had finished building the Temple: “But if you and your children, revolting will turn away from following me, and will not keep my commandments and my ceremonies which I have set before you, I will take away Israel from the face of the land, which I have given them; and the Temple which I have sanctified to my name, I will cast out of my sight; and Israel will be a proverb, and a by-word among all people. And this house will be made an example of. Every one that will pass by it will be astonished, and will hiss and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land, and to this house?’”

O Christian soul! You that by the grace of God have become a temple (1 Corinthians iii. 16, 17) more magnificent, more beloved in His eyes, than that of Jerusalem, take a lesson from these divine chastisements and reflect on the words of the Most High as recorded by Ezechiel: “The Justice of the just will not deliver him, in whatever day he will sin... Yes, if I will say to the just that he will surely live, and he, trusting in his justice, commits iniquity, all his justices will be forgotten, and in his iniquity, which he has committed, in the same will he die” (Ezechiel xxxiii. 12, 13).

With the Greeks, the multiplication of the five loaves and two fishes is the subject of the Gospel for this Sunday: they count it the eighth of Saint Matthew.

Epistle – Romans xii. 12‒17

Brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh; for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you will live. For whoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. You have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons by which we cry, “Abba” (Father). For the Spirit Himself gives testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons of God; and if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and joint heirs with Christ.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The Apostle and Doctor of the Gentiles here goes on forming to the Christian life the new recruits whom his own voice and that of his fellow apostles, dispersed as they are throughout the world, are every day leading, by hundreds, to the fount of salvation. Although the Church is all attention to the events which are preparing for Judea, yet is she full of maternal solicitude for the great work of the training those children whom she has given to her divine Spouse. While Israel is obstinate in his fatal refusal to accept the Messiah, another family is growing up in his place. And, by its docility, richly repays our Lord for all the rebellion and slights offered him by the children He had first made His chosen ones. They were the ancient people, and are jealous of others being now called to the same privilege. The contradictions of which Christ complains in the Psalm (Psalm xvii. 44-46) are anything but over and yet, thanks to the Church, the Man-God is already the Head of the Gentiles.

Admirable is the fruitfulness of the Bride: for wonderful is the power of sanctification which she is using all through the world of various nations. Scarcely has she sprung into her beauteous existence than she offers to her Lord and her King a new empire consolidated in unity of love. She presents Him with a generation that is all pure in the intelligence and practice of every virtue. It is quite true that the Holy Ghost acts directly on the souls of the newly baptised, but there is a something else to be considered in the divine plan. It is this: the Word having been made flesh, and having taken to Himself a Bride (which is the visible Church on Earth) whom He has made His associate in the work of man’s salvation, He has willed that the invisible operation of the divine Spirit who proceeds from Him (the Word) will not be in its normal state unless there be added to it the extrinsic co-operation and intervention of this His Bride. Not only is the Church the depository of those all-potent formulas and mysterious rites which change man’s heart into a new soil, cleansing it from thorns and weeds, making it able to produce a hundred-fold, but she also sows the seed of the divine husbandman into that same soil (Luke viii. 11) by her countless modes of teaching the Truth. To the Holy Ghost, indeed, a magnificent share is due of that fecundity and that social life of the Church. Still, her portion of work is exquisite. It deals with the elect taken as individuals, and consists especially in getting them to profit of the divine energies of the Sacraments which she administers, and in developing the germs of salvation which her teaching plants in their souls.

How important, then, and sublime will ever be that mission which is confided to those men who are set over particular churches, as teachers or directors of souls. They represent, to these isolated congregations, the common Mother of all the Faithful, for, in her name, they really provide for the Holy Spirit those elements upon whom He is to make His all-powerful action felt. For that very same reason, woe to those times when the dispensers of the divine word, having themselves nought but halved or false principles, give but weak shrivelled seed to the souls entrusted to them! The Holy Ghost is not bound to supply their insufficiency. Ordinarily speaking, He will not supply it, for such is not the way established by Christ for the sanctification of the members of His Church.

The common Mother, however, has a supplementary aid for such of her children as may be thus treated — it is her Liturgy. There they will find, not only the holy Sacrifice which will support them and the graces of the Sacrament of love which will nourish spiritual life within them — but, moreover, the surest rule of conduct, and the sublimest teachings of every virtue. Such souls as these have perhaps got the idea that the poor subjective system they have made for themselves is the royal road to perfection. But if they be of an earnest good will, desirous to find the best way, God will some happy day lead them to find, and, finding, to appreciate the inexhaustible and divinely given treasures of the Church’s Liturgy. Possessing and enriching themselves with these, they will soon put aside what the Prophet Isaias terms, bread without strength, and water without power (Isaias iii. 1; xxx. 20). The same Prophet would thus urge them in the Church’s name to what is best: “All you that thirst, come to the waters! And you that have no money, make haste, buy and eat. Come! Buy wine and milk, without money, and without any price. Why do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which cloth not satisfy you? Hearken diligently to me, and eat that which is good, and your soul will be delighted in fatness!” (Isaias iv. 1, 2).

And truly there is a fact which should rouse, both to attention and gratitude, any Christian who longs to be enlightened as to the best way of getting to Heaven: this fact is that the Church herself has made a selection, for our reading, from the treasury of the Scriptures and in her Missal, which she puts into our hands, she has inserted practical teachings from the same divine Books which she knew were best suited to the wants of her children. A Christian who is humbly and devoutly assiduous in the study of this admirable book of the Liturgy, will abound in spiritual knowledge. His guide will say to him, and with a well-grounded assurance: “This is the way! Walk in it! And go not aside, neither to the right, nor to the left” (Isaias xxx. 20). We have no need to wonder at all this, for in the guidance of souls the Church is far superior to the most learned Doctors and to the greatest Saints, all of whom were humble disciples in her school.

Let us put together the few lines which have been read to us as the Epistles of the last three Sundays, and were taken from that written by Saint Paul to the Romans: and, to say nothing of their infallible truth as being inspired by the Holy Ghost, could we have had any exposition of the principles of revealed morality which could have been compared to it? Clearness, simplicity of diction, earnest vehemence of exhortation — all are perfect in these few words, and yet they are but the outward expression of the sublimest truths of Christian dogma. Let us make the barest possible summary of what these three Epistles have taught us, and we will see how grand they are. Christ Jesus, foundation of man’s salvation; His death and burial made, in Baptism, the regeneration of man; His Life in God, the model of our own; the disgrace of our enslaved bodies, removed; the sanctifying fruitfulness of every virtue substituted in our members for the poisonous roots of all vices; and, on this very Sunday, the pre-eminence of the spirit over the flesh; the duties incumbent on our spirit, if she is to maintain her superiority; what man must do, if he would preserve the liberty bestowed on him by the Spirit of love, and prove himself to be, what he really is, a son of God and joint-heir of Christ. Yes, these are the splendid realities which are henceforth to light up in us the law of the spirit of life (that is, the law of the life we are to live by the Spirit) in Christ Jesus (Romans viii. 2). These are the axioms of the science of salvation now taught to the whole world, which are to be substituted for both the weaknesses of the Jewish law and the empty ethics of philosophers.

For, the leading idea which pervades the whole of this sublime Epistle to the Romans is this: man, unaided by grace, is incapable of producing perfect justice and absolute good. Experience has proved it, Saint Paul teaches it, the Fathers will, later on, unanimously assert it, and the Church, in her Councils, will define it. True, by the mere powers of his fallen nature, man may come to the knowledge of some truths and to the practise of some virtues. But without grace he can never know, and still less observe, the precepts of even the natural law, if you take them as a whole. From Jesus, then, from Jesus, alone comes all justice. Not only supernatural justice, which supposes the infusion of sanctifying grace in the sinner’s soul, is wholly from Him. But even that natural justice, of which men are so proud and which they say is quite enough without anything else —even that soon leaves one who does not cling to Christ by faith and love. Our modern world has a pompous phrase about “the independence of the human mind.” Let them who pretend to acknowledge no other goodness but that, go on with their boasting of being moral and honest men. But, as to us Christians, we believe what our mother the Church teaches us. And agreeably to such teaching, we believe, that “a moral and honest man,” that is to say, a man who lives up to all the duties which nature puts on him, can only be that here below by a special aid of our Redeemer and Saviour, Christ Jesus.

With Saint Paul, therefore, let us be proud of the Gospel (Romans i. 16) for, as he calls it, it is the power of God, not only to justify the ungodly (Romans iv. 5), but also to enrich souls that thirst after what is right with an active and perfect justice. The just man, says the same Apostle, lives by faith, and according to the growth of his faith, so is his growth in justice (Romans i. 17) Without faith in Christ, the pretension to reach perfection in good, by one’s own self and works, produces nothing but the stagnation of pride and the wrath of God (Romans i. 18). The Jews are a proof of it. Proud of their Law which gave them light greater than that enjoyed by the Gentiles (Romans ii. 17-20), and wishing to make their whole virtue consist in their having possession of that Law, they have rejected Him who was the end of the Law and the source of all holiness (Romans x. 3, 4). They have refused to accept the Christ who not only delivered them from their previous misery (Romans iii. 25) but also brought them the knowledge of what would save them, and the strength to fulfil it (Romans viii. 3, 4). They have continued in their iniquity, adding sin upon sin to that contracted from their First Parents, and thus treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath (Romans ii. 5). Now is being fulfilled the prediction of Isaias, whose words might very appropriately have been used by the faithful few of Israel, whom we have been today looking at when they were fleeing from Jerusalem: “Except the Lord of hosts had left us seed, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like Gomorrhah” (Isaias i. 9).

What, then, shall we say? asks the Apostle (Romans ix. 30-33). And he answers his own question thus: “That the Gentiles, who followed not after justice, have attained to justice, that is, the justice that comes from faith. But Israel, by following after the law of justice, is not come to the law of justice. Why so? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were of works: for they stumbled at the stumbling-stone, as it is written: ‘Behold! I lay in Sion a stumbling-stone and a rock of scandal; and whoever believes in Him, will not be confounded’” (Isaias viii. 14; xxviii. 16).

Gospel – Luke xvi. 1‒9

At that time Jesus spoke to His disciples this parable: “There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and the same was accused to him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him and said to him: ‘How is it that I hear this of you? Give an account of your stewardship: for now you can be steward no longer.’ And the steward said to himself: ‘What am I to do, because my lord takes away from me the stewardship? To dig I am not able; to beg I am ashamed. I know what I will do, that when I am removed from the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.’ Therefore, calling together every one of his lord’s debtors, he said to the first: ‘How much do you owe my lord?’ But he said: ‘An hundred barrels of oil.’ And he said to him: ‘Take your bill and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another: ‘And how much do you owe?’ Who said: ‘A hundred quarters of wheat.’ He said to him: ‘Take your bill and write eighty.’ And the lord commended the unjust steward, for as much as he had done wisely: for the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. And I say to you: Make friends of the mammon of iniquity, that when you will fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.”

Praise be to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The several parts of the parable here proposed to us are easy to be understood, and convey a deep teaching. God alone is rich by nature, for to Him alone belongs the direct and absolute dominion over all things: they are his, because He made them (Psalms xxiii.2; lxxxviii). But, by sending His Son into the world under a created form, He, by this temporal mission, appointed him Heir to all the works of His hands (Psalm viii. 6-8) just as truly as He already was owner of the riches of the divine nature because of His eternal generation. The rich man, then, of our Gospel is Jesus who in His sacred Humanity, united to the Word, is heir of all things (Hebrews i. 2; ii. 8) and as such all things of the Most High God, created or uncreated, finite or infinite, belong to Him. To Him belong the heavens which proclaim his glory (Psalm xviii. 2, 6) and which, as long as they last (Psalm ci. 27) clothe Him with their garment of light (Psalm ciii. 2). To Him the ocean, whose surges are but a voice that speaks His praise (Psalm cxii. 2) and hushes the fury of its tempests when He bids it be still (Mark iv. 39, 40), to Him the Earth, which gladly offers Him the homage of all its fullness (Psalm xxiii. 1), the grass and flowers of the meadows, the varied fruits, the fertile loveliness of the fields (Psalm xlix. 11), the birds of the air and the fishes which inhabit the rivers, or that sport in the paths of the sea (Psalm viii. 9) the huge oxen as well as the tiniest insect that lives —the wild beasts of forest or mountain (Psalm xlix. 9, 10), all are His, all are subject to His rule. Silver, too, is His, and gold is His (Aggeus ii. 9) and man too is His, and would have been eternally His servant had not this Jesus mercifully vouchsafed to divinise him, and make him a partaker of His own eternal happiness and riches.

Instead of our being His slaves or servants, He would have us be his Brothers. And when He returned from this world to His Father, whom He had also made to be ours by the grace He had infused into us (John xx. 17), He sent us the Holy Ghost who should bear testimony to us that we are the Sons of God (Romans viii. 16) and be to us the pledge of our sacred inheritance — Heaven (Ephesian i. 14). Ineffable riches of the world to come! Inheritance the fullest that ever was! Our Jesus Himself is all joy at the sight of it and, in the Psalm of His Resurrection, He gives expression to that joy. We, His members and joint-heirs, have a right to repeat those words after Him and say: “The lines are fallen to me in goodly places; for my inheritance is goodly to me! for the Lord Himself is my portion! I will bless Him for His having given me to understand my happiness!” (Psalm xv. 5-7).

But, in order that we may attain to those eternal riches, there is a condition imposed on us: we must turn to profit the visible domain of Christ. We must see that it is used in His service. The future rewards we are to have in Heaven depend on the more or less fidelity with which we have employed our share of these inferior good things, for they are entrusted to us, to each of us in the measure which seemed good in God’s eyes. What a divine agreement has been drawn up for us! What perfect adjustment between justice and love! Our Lord Jesus Christ has divided His property into two portions. He gives the eternal portion unreservedly to us. It is the only one that is truly great, the only one that is capable of contenting our infinite longings. As to the other portion which, in itself, would not be worthy of the attention of beings that are made for the contemplation of the divine essence, He could not think of allowing us to set our hearts on it, neither will He permit us to have absolute dominion over it. The real possession of temporal goods belongs, therefore, to Him alone. The ownership of earthly riches, which He permits to the future joint-heirs of His own blissful eternity, is subject to numberless restrictions during their lifetime and, at their death, exhibits its essentially precarious tenure by its not being able to follow its owner beyond the grave.

For the fool, as well as for the wise man, the day will come when his soul will be required of him (Luke xii. 20) and when the rich man, as well as the poor, will be brought before his Maker, exactly as he was on the day of his first entrance into the world (Job i. 21), and it will be said to him: “Give an account of your stewardship!” At that dread hour the rule observed for the judgement will be that which our Lord revealed to us during His mortal life: “To whoever much is given, of him much will be required; and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more” (Luke xii. 48). Woe, at that hour, to the servant who has comported himself as though he were the absolute master! Woe to the steward who, disregarding the trust assigned to him, has done just what his own whim suggested with the goods of which he was only the dispenser! (Luke xii. 42). When that the light of eternity will be on him, he will understand the error of his foolish pride. He will see the shameful injustice of a life which the world, perhaps, thought a very decent one, but which was spent without the slightest regard to the intentions for which God gave him the riches, which were his boast. He will then be entirely deprived of them all. Neither will it be then in his power to make a better use of them for the future, that is, a use more in accordance with the designs of God. If he might, at least, make some restitution for the goods he has abused! If he might sue for aid from those with whom he lived on Earth! But, no, when time is over, labour is over too. He has nothing to show for all his riches. He is powerless and when he goes before that dread tribunal where every man is afraid that he cannot put his own accounts right, whom can he get to help him? (Matthew xxv. 9).

Happy, therefore, if now that time is still granted him, he would allow the thousand calls of God (Psalm xciv. 8) to awaken him from his false conscience! Happy, if, like the steward mentioned in our Gospel, he would profit of the days he has still to live, and would say to himself those words of Job: “What will I do, when God will rise to judge? (Job xxxi. 14). And, when He will examine, what will I answer Him? (Luke xii. 42). This very Judge whom he so rightly fears now most mercifully points out to him how he may escape the punishment due to his past maladministration. Let him imitate the prudence of the unjust steward, and he will have praise for it from his Lord: not only, like him, because of his prudence, but because, by his thus spending over God’s servants the riches that were entrusted to his care, far from thereby robbing his divine Master, he acts in strict accordance with His wishes. “Who think you,” asks our Lord, “is the faithful and wise steward, whom his Lord sets over his family, to give them, in due time, their measure of wheat and oil? (Esdras v. 11) Alms, whether corporal or spiritual, secure us powerful friends for that awful day of our death and judgement. It is to the poor that the kingdom of heaven belongs (Matthew v. 3) so that, if we spend the riches of this present life in solacing the sufferings of those poor ones now that they are living here below, afterwards, they will not fail to make us a return by receiving us into their future homes, the everlasting dwellings of Heaven.

Such is the immediate and obvious meaning of the parable given to us today. But if we would go further, if we would understand the whole intention of the Church in her choice of the present Gospel, we must listen to Saint Jerome whose homily for last night’s Office is put before us as the official interpretation of the sacred text. Let us first listen to the words of Scripture which the Saint quotes, they immediately follow those of our Gospel: “He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in that which is greater; and he that is unjust in that which is little, is unjust also in that which is greater. If, then, you have not been faithful in the unjust mammon, who will trust you with that which is the true?” (Luke xvi. 10-14). These words, says Saint Jerome, were said in the presence of the Scribes and Pharisees. They felt that the parable was intended for them, and they derided the divine preacher. The one that was unjust in that which is little, is the jealous Jew, who, in the limited possession of the present life, refuses to his fellow-men the use of those goods which were created for all. If, then, you avaricious Scribes are convicted of maladministration in the management of temporal riches, how can you expect to have confided to you the true, the eternal, riches of the divine word, and the teaching of the Gentiles? Terrible question, which our Lord leaves thus unanswered. Let these unjust Stewards, the depositories of the figurative Law, deride Jesus as much as they please and pretend that His question does not refer to them. But they will soon be giving the true answer: the answer will be the ruin of Jerusalem.