3 JUNE – SAINT CLOTILDE (Queen)

Clotilde, the daughter of Cilperic, king of Burgundy, was born in Lyons in 474. After the murder of her parents she was brought up by her uncle Gondebaud, king of Burgundy, who gave her in marriage to Clovis I, the first Christian king of the Franks who was then a pagan. Having given birth to their first son, she had him baptised and was given the name of Ingomer. He died while still wearing the white robe of baptism, and Clovis bitterly complained to Clotilde that the death of his son was due to the vengeance of the gods of his fathers, irritated at this contempt offered to their divinity. But Clotilde said. “I give thanks to the Almighty Creator of all things, that He has not "judged me unworthy to give birth to a son whom He has deigned to admit to share His kingdom.”

Having given birth to a second son, she wished that he also should be baptised, and the name of Clodomir was given to him. The child having fallen ill, the king declared that the fate of the brother was to befall this son also, but he was cured by the prayers of Clotilde who persevered in exhorting Clovis to reject idolatry and adore the One God in three Persons. Clovis persisted in his paganism until, being on an expedition against the Alamani at Soissons, and one day seeing his army waver, he remembered the counsels of Clotilde and implored the help of Christ, who granted him victory. At her request Saint Remigius instructed Clovis in the Christian faith, and baptised him, anointing him likewise with the sacred chrism.

After the death of Clovis, Clotilde settled at Tours where she passed the rest of her life at the tomb of Saint Martin, giving herself up to watching, alms and other works of piety, exercising her munificence on churches and monasteries. Clodomir having been killed in the war of Burgundy, she brought up her grandchildren Theobald, Gontaire and Clodoald. Clotilde died in 545 and was buried alongside her husband in Paris in the Basilica of Saint Peter, later renamed in honour of Saint Genevieve. Whenever Paris suffered any calamity it was the custom to carry her body in procession with every demonstration of piety. During the French Revolution the relics of the saints were profaned, but the bones of Saint Clotilde were hidden by pious persons. When peace was restored to the Church her holy relics were placed in a new shrine and deposited in the Church of Saints Leu-et-Gilles in Paris.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

At this Season in which the Office of the Time is leading us to consider the early developments of Holy Church, Eternal Wisdom so arranges, now as ever, that the feasts of the Saints should complete the teachings of the moveable Cycle. The Paraclete, who has but just come down on us, is to fill the whole Earth (Wisdom i. 7). The Man-God has sent Him expressly to win over the whole Earth and to secure all time to His Church. Now, it is by subjecting kingdoms to the faith that He is to form Christ’s Empire. It is by working so that the Church may assimilate all nations to herself that He gives growth and continuance to the Bride. See, therefore, how at this season in which He has but just taken possession of the world anew. His co-operators in this His work of conquest shine out on every side in the heavens of the holy Liturgy. But the West, more than all the rest, concurs in forming the magnificent constellation that is mingling its radiant splendour with the Pentecostal fires. Indeed, what could better show the Omnipotence of the Spirit of Christ than the establishment of this Latin Christendom in these distant lands of the West? Let us then fix our delighted gaze on those two incomparable luminaries, the Princes of the Apostles, directing their rapid course from the East, speeding on our horizon up to the glorious zenith which, in a month’s time, they will attain. Yesterday, John the Beloved Disciple shed on Gaul his last and long enduring rays. Some few days previously, it was a Pope Eleutherius or a Monk Augustine who with joint action, though parted by centuries, bore the light of salvation to the far West — to the home of the Britons and of the Anglo-Saxons. The day after tomorrow Boniface will shed his luminous beams on Germany.

But today what star is this rising in such silvery beauty on the land of the Franks? The city of Lyons, prepared by the blood of martyrs for this her second glory, saw this new light make growth in her midst. Across a distance of three centuries these rays are blended with those of Blandina. Like Blandina too, Clotilde is a mother, and the maternity of a slave giving birth in her spotless virginity to Gaulish martyrs had already prepared the birth of the Franks to Christ. Clotilde had not, like Blandina, to shed her blood, but other pangs cruelly wrung her breast while she was yet so young, and served to mature her soul for the grand destinies reserved by God for the privileged children of sorrow. The violent death of her father, Chilperic, dethroned by a fratricide usurper, the sight of her brothers massacred and of her mother drowned in the Rhone, her long captivity in the Arian court of the murderer who brought heresy with him to the throne of the Burgundians, developed in her the same heroism that had upheld Blandina in the amphitheatre amid the anguish of her spiritual childbirth — a heroism that would make this niece of Gondebaud become likewise the mother of a whole nation to Christ. Let us then unite these two names in one common homage, and prostrate at the feet of the Eternal Father from Whom descends all paternity on Earth and in Heaven (Ephesians iii. 15), let us adore these ways of His all filled with tenderness and love in our regard.

God drew the visible universe out of nothingness, solely to manifest His goodness. So in like manner has He willed that man, coming from His Hands, without power as yet to recognise his Creator, should recognise at least a mother’s tender love, the first sensible ray, as it were, of Infinite Love. Irresistible is this ray, sublime in its gentleness, exquisite in its purity, giving to the mother a facility belonging only to her to complete in the soul of her child, the entire reproduction of the Divine Ideal that is to be impressed on Him. Now this she does by education. Today’s feast reveals how yet more sublime, more potent, more extensive, is maternity in the order of grace, than it is in that of nature. For when God, coming down among us, was pleased to take Flesh of a Daughter of Adam, maternity was raised in Her to the extreme limit that separates the endowments of a simple creature from the Divine Attributes.

Thus rising above the heavens, maternity at the same time embraced the world, bringing all mankind together into close union, without distinction of nation or family, in the one filiation of that Virgin-Mother. The New Adam, the perfect model of our race and our first-born (Matthew i. 26; Hebrews i. 6), willed to have us for His brethren in all fullness, brethren in Mary as in God (Romans viii. 29; Hebrews ii. 11-12). The Mother of God was then proclaimed Mother of men on Calvary. From the summit of the Cross the Man-God replaced on the brow of Mary that diadem of Eve broken by the fall beside the fatal tree. Constituted sole Mother of the living by this noble investiture (Genesis iii; John xix. 26-27), our Lady entered once again into communication with the privileges of the Father, our Father who is in Heaven. Not only was she by nature like Him, Mother of His Son, but just as all paternity flows down here below from the Eternal Father, and borrows thence super-eminent dignity, so too all maternity was nothing from that moment but an out-flow of Mary’s, and that in the truest sense — yes, a delegation of Her love, and a communication of Her august privilege by which she brings forth men to God, whose sons they are to be.

Good reason, therefore, have Christian mothers to glory in their maternity, for in that does their greatness consist. Their dignity has increased to a degree through Mary that nature could never have dreamed of. But, at the same time, under the aegis of Mary, not less real is the maternity of holy Virgins, not only in God’s eyes, but often manifested to their own: the wife too, prepared by a special call from God and by suffering is sometimes like Clotilde, endowed with a fecundity of a spiritual order a thousand times more prolific than that of Earth. Happy the fruits of this supernatural maternity which under the favour of Mary is fraught with so much greatness! Happy the nations on whom by divine munificence a mother has been bestowed! History tells how the founders of Empires have ever had the terrible prerogative of impressing on nations the distinctive character, disastrous or beneficial, which through length of ages continues to be theirs. How often does not that want of counterpoise to the preponderance of power make itself only too evident in the impetus given rather to destroy than to build up! And wherefore? Because ancient Empires never had a mother: for this noble title cannot be applied to those women who, under the name of heroines, have transmitted their names to posterity merely inasmuch as they rivalled the ambition and pomp of conquerors. To Christian times was it reserved to behold introduced into a people’s life this element of Maternity, more salutary, more efficacious in its humble gentleness than that which springs from the talents or vices, from the power or genius of their first Princes.

Even among Christians the sanctity demanded by this sublime maternity in the creature who is invested with it, makes it the exclusive property of the Catholic Church, alone holy, and of the nations that are in this Church: Empires originating in schism or heresy can have no claim to it. Brought down to a level with pagan nations in this respect, they may indeed, like them, excel in riches or in might, yes, even be called from on High to the sinister honour of being the Scourge used by God against His disobedient children. But an immense void must necessarily remain and be felt in their whole social formation and life, springing directly from Earth — sons of their own works, as is boasted nowadays, never have they benefited of the prayers, of the tears of a mother. Never has her smile lighted their first steps, soothed their childhood. Therefore, according to our Latin Poet, never will they be admitted to the divine table, nor to the intimacy of a true alliance with Heaven (Virgil). Never will true civilisation, true culture, make progress in their hands.

On the other side, believing nations are to the Church God’s kingdom, exactly what are to them the several families that, by being brought together under one social bond of unity, make up each nation. Their vocation (essentially of a supernatural order) requires in them a plenitude of life, for the development of which are exerted Divine Omnipotence, Wisdom and Love. But although nature has here the honour of furnishing us with the requisite terms and points of comparison, her process and power are so immensely surpassed at these divine heights that she can here no longer present but a feeble image, almost faulty, because so incomplete. Among baptised nations, baptised, that is, in fidelity to Christ and submission to His Vicar, France may more particularly make this cry of the royal Psalmist her own: “Lord, you have foreseen all my ways, and, long beforehand, have fixed my destiny. Your knowledge, in the work of my formation, is become wonderful to me! You have possessed my reins, my whole being with all its aspirations, all its thoughts, belongs wholly to you. For you have received me in your arms as your own work, even from my mother’s womb. My bone is not hidden from you, which you have made in secret in the womb of my mother. You who know the imperfection of my first origin” (Psalms cxxxviii.).

Time was needed to subdue the savage instincts of the warriors of Clovis, and to fit his sword to the noble destiny that awaited it in the hand of a Charlemagne, or of a Saint Louis. With good reason has it been said that the honour of this labour is due to the bishops and the monks. But to be more accurate and to prove a deeper insight of the ways used by Divine Providence, it were well, perhaps, to pass less lightly over the woman’s part, for such indeed there was in the work of conversion, and of education, which made the Frankish nation become the eldest son of the Church. Clotilde it was who led the Franks to the Baptistery of Rheims and presented to Remigius, the proud Sicambrian transformed, far less by the exhortations of the holy bishop, than by the force of prayer, the prayer of that strong woman elected by God to bear away this rich spoil from the camp of Hell. What manly energy, what devotedness to God, are displayed in every measure taken by this noble daughter of the Burgundians’ dethroned King, who while held beneath the suspicious eye of the usurper, the murderer of her family, awaits in the silence of prayer and in the exercise of charity! Heaven’s appointed hour: and when, at last, the moment comes, taking counsel of none save the Holy Ghost and her own heart, how nobly does she dart forward to conquer to Christ her betrothed, though yet a stranger to her, outdoing in valour in this instance all the warriors of her escort! Strength and beauty (Proverbs xxxi.) were indeed her covering, her adornment on her bridal day, and the heart of Clovis soon learnt that the conquests reserved to his bride far out-stripped in importance the booty he had until then seized by force of arms.

Clotilde, on the other hand, found her work already prepared on the banks of the Seine. For fifty years space had Genevieve been busy defending Paris against the pagan hordes, and only awaiting the baptism of the King of the Franks in order to open to him the city gates. Still, when on that Christmas night Clotilde gave birth to the eldest son of Holy Church in Mary’s name, the great work was far from being completed. This new-born people had yet by the slow process of a laborious education to be fashioned into the most Christian nation. This chosen one of God and Our Lady does not fall short of the maternal task. But still what anguish of heart to be endured, what tears yet to be shed over these sons of hers, whose violence, peculiar to the race, seems simply indomitable, and the very exuberance of whose rich nature yields them up to the fury of passions, urging them blindly on to crimes the most atrocious! Her grandchildren inveigled from her side and caught in the perfidious trap laid for them by their faithless uncles, are massacred. Fratricidal wars carry devastation over the whole of that territory of ancient Gaul, purged by her from paganism and heresy. Finally, another pang, but one of a more glorious kind, seems given as a compensation for the bitterness of intestine strife — her cherished daughter, Clotilde the younger, dies worn out by ill usage endured for her faith at the hand of her Arian husband. Surely all this must have shown clearly enough to the Queen of the Franks that if she was chosen by Heaven to be their mother, she was to have all the pangs, as well as the honour that title involves. Thus does Christ ever deal with His own when they have earned His confidence.

Clotilde well understood this: already a widow and deprived by death of the aid of Genevieve likewise, she had long ago retired to Tours, near to the sepulchre of the Thaumaturgus of the Gauls. There, in the secret of prayer and in the heroism of her childhood’s faith, she continued, aided by Saint Martin, the preparation of this new people for its mighty destinies. An immense work was this, and one to which no single lifetime could suffice! But though Clotilde was not to witness the desired transformation accomplished, her life was not to close until she had pressed to her heart, at Tours, her illustrious daughter-in-law Radegonde, and having by this last embrace invested her with her own sublime maternity, she sent her to Poitiers, there to continue, at the tomb of Saint Hilary, this great work of intercession. Then when at length, Radegonde herself having ended her task of suffering and love, must likewise quit this Earth, Bathilde will presently come forward, consummating the work in that remarkable seventh century, the period when the Frank, at last ready for his mission, is betrothed to Holy Church and dubbed a Knight of God!

Clotilde, Radegonde, Bathilde, all three of them, Mothers of France, bear a striking resemblance to one another. All three are prepared from the early dawn of life to the devotedness their grand mission would require by the like trials, captivity, slavery and massacre or loss of their own relatives: all three bring to the throne nothing but a dauntless love of Christ, the King, and a desire of seeing Him rule the people. All three set aside the queenly diadem as soon as may be in order to be able, prostrate before God in retirement and penitence, to attain more surely the one object of their maternal and royal ambition. Heiresses of Abraham in very deed, they found in his faith (Romans iv. 18; Hebrews xi. 11) the fecundity which made them to be mothers of those countless multitudes which the soil, watered by their tears, produced for Heaven. Even in these weakened times of ours, there is still a goodly throng ever passing from the land of the Franks to their true Home yonder, there to join the happy bands of the combatants of better days. At the sight of this ever increasing group of sons joyously pressing round their thrones, the hearts of Clotilde, Radegonde, and Bathilde, overflowing with love, give utterance in one united cry to this word of the Prophet: “Who has begotten these? I was barren and brought not forth, led away, and captive: and who has brought up these? I was destitute and alone: and these where were they?” Then the Lord answering, said: “As I live, you will be clothed with all these as with an ornament, and as a bride you will put them about you. For your deserts, and your desolate places, and the land of your destruction will now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants. The children of your barrenness will still say in your ear: “the place is too strait for me, make me more room to dwell in.” And Kings will be your nursing fathers, and Queens your nurses. And you will know that I am the Lord, for they will not be confounded that wait for Him” (Isaias xlix. 18-23).

GREAT is your glory on Earth and in Heaven, Clotilde, Mother of nations! Not only have you given to Holy Church that people of France, surnamed the most Christian, but England and Spain also claim their descent from you (in the pedigree of Faith, that is) by Bertha and Ingonda, your noble grand-daughters. Ingonda, more fortunate than your daughter Clotilde, succeeded, by the help of Saint Leander of Seville, in bringing back to the true faith her husband Hermenegilde, and even leading him to the crown of martyrdom. Bertha, Queen of Kent, welcomed Augustine to Saxon shores and through her influence was Ethelbert brought from the darkness of paganism to Baptism and the aureola of sanctity: realising thus that word of the Apostle, that the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife (1 Corinthians vii. 14).

Since those early days, in how many other parts of Europe, and on how many other more distant shores, have not the sons of your own nation, that nation of which you was Mother, propagated that light of faith which they received of you: whether brandishing the sword in defence of the right which belongs to Holy Church, the Bride of the Man-God, to teach freely and everywhere the Word of Truth: or whether, becoming themselves Missionaries and Apostles, carrying the same to infidel nations, far beyond reach of any possible protection, and at the expense of their sweat and of their blood? Happy you to be first in bringing forth to Christ the King a nation pure from every stain of heresy and vowed to holy Church from the first moment of her new birth! Rightly indeed the Church of Sainte-Marie at Rheims was the one selected on that Christmas Day 496 for this birth to God of the Frankish nation in which Our Lady, in a proportionate manner, gave you to share her own Motherhood of our race.

There especially lies our motive of confidence in recurring to you, Clotilde, in our intercessory prayer this day. Alas, how many of your sons are far from being what they should be, having such a Mother as you! But when Our Lady gave you a share in her own maternal rights, she necessarily at the same moment communicated to you also her own tender compassion for beguiled children deaf to their Mother’s voice. Take pity on these unfortunate sons, led so very far astray by strange doctrines (Hebrews viii. 9). The Christian monarchy founded by you is no more. You built it on the recognised rights of God in His Christ and in the Vicar of His Christ. Princes with short-sighted views of self interest, traitors to the mission they had received to maintain your work, imagined they were performing marvels when they allowed maxims to be spread in your France proclaiming the independence of civil power in respect of that of Holy Church. And now, by a just retribution, society has proclaimed its independence in respect of Princes! But at the same time, the infatuated populace has really no other idea but that of being its own Sovereign, and intoxicated by this false liberty which it dreams to have acquired, it goes so far as to contemn even the supreme dominion of the Creator Himself. The rights of man have usurped the rights of God as the basis of social compact, a newfangled gospel that France, now in misled proselytism, is fain to carry over the whole world in place of the true Gospel so loved of yore!

In that unhappy country poisoned by a lying philosophy, such is the excess of delirium that many who deplore the apostasy of the mass of the population and wish to remain themselves Christians, imagine they can do so, while at the same time maintaining the destructive principle of Liberalism, the very essence of revolution: let Christ have Heaven and souls, say they, but let man have Earth, together with full right of governing it as he thinks best, or as suits him best. While they fall on their adoring knees before the Divinity of our Lord Jesus in the sanctuary of their own conscience, they search the Scriptures and are too blind to see there expressed how the Man-God is and must be King of the whole Earth. In learned theses they inform us that they have probed the very depths of history and find in it nothing that can contradict their arguments. If indeed they must admit that the government of a Clovis or a Charlemagne, or a Saint Louis, do not correspond in everything to their political axioms, we must, they say, make allowances for those primitive ages: a nation cannot be expected to come in a day to the perfect age attained at last by the law of progress! Alas! Have pity, dear Mother of France, on the ravings of these poor sons of yours! Arouse once more in that noble land the faith of the Franks! Oh may the God of Clotilde, the Lord of hosts, the King of nations, show Himself once more leading on your sons to victory in the name that won for Clovis the field of Tolbiac: JESUS CHRIST!

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Arezzo in Tuscany, during the persecution of Decius under the governor Tiburtius, the holy martyrs Pergentinus and Laurentinus, brothers who, while yet children, were put to the sword after they had endured cruel torments and performed many miracles.

At Constantinople, the holy martyrs Lucillian and four boys, Claudius, Hypatius, Paul and Denis. Lucillian, formerly a pagan priest, but now a Christian, was cast into a furnace with them after undergoing many torments, but the flames being extinguished by the rain, all escaped uninjured. Finally, under the governor Silvanus they terminated their career. Lucillian by crucifixion, the children by decapitation.

In the same city, St. Paula, virgin and martyr, who was arrested while gathering the blood of the martyrs just mentioned, beaten with rods, and thrown into the fire from which she was delivered. Finally, when St. Lucillian had been crucified, she was decapitated.

At Cordova in Spain, blessed Isaac, a monk, who died by the sword for the faith of Christ.

At Carthage, St. Caecilius, the priest who converted St. Cyprian to the faith of Christ.

In the diocese of Orleans, St. Lifard, priest and confessor.

At Lucca in Tuscany, St. Davinus, confessor.

At Anagni, St. Oliva, virgin.

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

Thanks be to God.

3 JUNE – WEDNESDAY AFTER TRINITY SUNDAY

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

We have not as yet reached the Feast of the divine Memorial, not until tomorrow will we have it in all its splendour. But this evening at first Vespers the Church will begin her acclamations to the Eternal Priest. And, although the Sovereign Pontiffs have not ordained that a Vigil, properly so called, will precede the Feast of Corpus Christi, yet have they granted indulgences to a voluntary fast practised on this its eve. Let us now resume the history of the Church’s worship of the great mystery.

We have already seen how the unity of the Church is based on the Eucharist. Our Lord Jesus Christ in that Sacrament is the corner-stone on which rises, in the harmony of its several parts, the temple of living stones built to the glory of God (Ephesians ii. 21). Jesus is the High Priest (Hebrews v. 1), ordained for men, Himself being Man, that He may present to God the homage of His brethren by offering to His and their Father a Sacrifice in the name of all. And, although this homage of regenerate mankind — this Sacrifice which is the highest expression of that homage — owes its whole worth to the infinite dignity of Him who is the Head of the Church — yet the Sacrifice is only complete when there is the union of the Members with the Head. The Head must have the Body. The Church is, as the Apostle tells us, the fullness, the completion, of Him who is filled in all (Ephesians i. 22, 23). The Church perfects the Sacrifice as an integral portion of the Victim who is offered on the altar. What is true of the Church is true, likewise, of each one of us who are Members of Christ. And we are really His Members, provided we be united in the great Action of the Sacrifice by that intimate union which makes one Body of many Members.

In this consists the social influence of the Eucharist. The human family had been broken up by sin. It regains its lost unity by the Blood of the Lamb and the original intention which God had in creating the world is fulfilled. After all other beings, there came forth, out of nothing, the creature Man. He was to give a voice of praise to the whole of creation for, his own twofold nature, material and spiritual, made him the compendium of all other creatures. When he was restored by redemption he regained his position in the glorious choir of beings. The Eucharist, the Thanksgiving, the praise by excellence, is the sweet produce of the human race. The Eucharist — that grand hymn of divine Wisdom sung to the King of ages — ascends from this Earth of ours, blending the two harmonies into one: the ineffable harmony of the eternal Canticle, that is, the Word in the Father’s bosom— and the harmony of the new Canticle which is repeated by the choir of creatures to the glory of their Creator.

The Ages of Faith lived on this grand truth. They thoroughly understood the priceless worth of the gift bestowed by the Man-God upon His Church. Appreciating the honour thence accruing to our Earth, they felt themselves bound to respond to it, in the name of all creatures, by giving to the celebration of the sacred Mystery everything that ritual could impart of grandeur and solemnity. The Liturgy for the Christians of those times was exactly what is implied by the word: it was the public function, the social act, by excellence. And as such it claimed every sort of external pomp, and the presence of the whole people round the altar was looked upon as a matter of course. As to the lawfulness of what are called Private Masses, it would be easy to prove by most authentic facts of history that what the Catholic Church teaches regarding them was her teaching from the very commencement. And yet, practically, and as a general rule, the richness of ceremonial, the enthusiasm of sacred chant, the magnificence of sacred rites, were, for a long period, regarded as inseparable from the offering up of the Holy Sacrifice.

The solemnities of divine service as celebrated in any Catholic Cathedral on the greatest Feast in the Year are but a feeble image of the magnificent forms of the ancient Liturgies, such as we described them yesterday. The Church herself, whose desires for what is most perfect never vary, ever evinces a marked predilection for the remnants she has been able to keep up of her ancient forms of worship. But as far as the generality of her people is concerned, there can be no doubt of the existence of a growing feeling of indifference for the external pomp with which the Holy Sacrifice is so deservedly accompanied. Whatever demonstrations of Christian piety still exist are directed elsewhere. The cultus of the divine Presence in the Eucharist as developed in these our own times, is certainly a blow to the heresy which denies that Presence. It is, too, a joy to every Catholic who loves God. But care must be taken, lest a movement which is so profitable to individual souls, and so redounding to the glory of the Holy Sacrament, should be turned by the craft of the enemy against the Eucharist itself. Now, this might easily be the case if, in consequence of such devotion being ill-regulated, the very primary object of the Eucharistic dogma, which is Sacrifice, were permitted to lose its place, either in the appreciation, or in the practical religion, of the Faithful.

In the admirable connection existing throughout the whole body of Christian revelation, there can be no such thing as one dogma becoming a danger to another. Every new truth, or every truth presented under a new aspect, is a progress in the Church, and an acquisition for her children. But the progress is then only a true one when in its application, the new truth, or its new aspect, is not treated with such prominence as to throw a more important truth into the shade. Surely no family would ever count that gain of new property to be a boon, which would jeopardise or lessen the rich patrimony which past ages had secured. The principle is a self-evident one and must be borne in mind when studying the different phases of the history of any human society, and especially when the History of the Church is in question. If the Holy Spirit, who is ever urging the Church to what is best, incessantly adorning her for the eternal nuptial, and is decking her brow with a gradual increase of light, yet is it but too often the case that the human element of which she partakes through her members, her children, makes its weight tell upon the Bride of Christ. When that happens, she redoubles her maternal solicitude for these her children. They are too delicate to live on the summits and bear the bracing atmosphere to which their fore-fathers were accustomed. She herself continues her aspirations after what is most perfect, and approaches gradually nearer to heaven. But for the sake of her weakly children she quits the mountain paths she loved to tread in better times, for those paths kept her closer to her divine Spouse. She comes lower down, she is content to lose something of her external charms, she stoops that she may the better reach the children she has to save. This her condescension is admirable, but it certainly gives no right to the children who live in these less healthy times to think themselves better than their forefathers. Is a sick man better than the one who is in health, because the food which is indispensable for keeping up the little strength he has is given to him under new forms, and such as will suit his debilitated frame?

Because, in these our days, a certain increase of devotion towards the divine Host who dwells in our tabernacles has been observed in some souls, and the external demonstration of this devotion is under a new form, it has been asserted, that “no age ever equalled our own in the cultus of the Most Holy Sacrament!” And because of this holy enthusiasm [the nineteenth] century, which, with its restless activity, has opened out so many new methods of devotion, has been called by a certain writer, “the great age of the Eucharist!” Would to God these assertions were correct, for it is quite true, and history is rich in bearing testimony to the fact “that an age is more or less glorious according to its devotion towards the adorable Eucharist.” But it is no less true that if the different centuries be compared with each other for devotion towards the Sacrament of Love — which, at all times, is the very life of the Church — there can be no doubt but that that ought to be counted as the golden age in which our Lord’s intentions in instituting the divine Mystery were the best understood and carried out, and not that in which individual devotion was busiest.

Now leaving aside for the present all principles connected with dogma, and which will find their place more appropriately a few days later, we have history to bear witness to this fact that, so long as the western nations kept up their faith and fervour, the Church, who is the faithful and sure interpreter of her Jesus’ intentions, maintained the discipline observed in the worship practised towards the Eucharist during the early ages. After her two-fold victory over the pagan persecutions and the obstinate dogmatism of the Emperors of Byzantium, the Church, the noble depository of the New Testament, was in possession of a freedom greater than she has had at any other period. Her children, too, made it their perfection to follow her every wish. Thus free to act as she knew was best and sure to be obeyed, she kept to the way of Eucharistic worship which her Martyrs had followed and her Doctors had so enthusiastically developed in their writings: that is, she took the energies of the new children she had received by the conversion of barbarian nations, and centred them in the Sacrifice, that is, in the holy fatigues of solemn Mass, and the Canonical Hours, which are but a natural irradiation of the Sacrifice.

Nothing in those times was more Catholic, nothing less individual and private, than the Eucharistic worship thus based on the social character which pertains to the Sacrifice. It was the uppermost idea even in such of the Faithful as, through sickness or other personal reasons, were obliged to communicate, of the universal Victim, separate from the rest of the people. It was the one leading thought which made them turn their hearts and their adorations towards the gilded dove, or the ivory tower, in which were conserved, under the mysterious integrity of the Sacrament, the precious remnants of the Sacrifice. Faith in the Real Presence, a faith quite as animated and deep as any that can be witnessed in our own times, was the soul of the whole Liturgy. It was the basis of the entire system of the Church’s rites and ceremonies, all of which are unmeaning if you take away the Catholic dogma of the Eucharist. This dogma was admitted by all the children of the Church as a principle beyond discussion. It was their dearest treasure. It was a truth which was both foundation stone and roofing of the House built among men by Eternal Wisdom. To a superficial observer it might seem as though the Faithful of those early ages were less intent upon it than we now are: but is it not always the case that the rock which supports the edifice, and the timber which roofs it, call for less solicitude when the building is under no risk, either from the indifference of its inmates, or from the attacks of enemies outside?

The Church herself cannot grow decrepit, but it is a law in history that, even within her fold, and in spite of the vitality she imparts to nations, no society ever maintains itself long at its highest pitch of perfection. Men are like stars in this, that their apogee marks the period of their decline. They only seem to mount on high that they may speedily descend: and, after the fullest vigour of age, we gradually approach the impotency of the old man. So was it to be with Christendom itself, with that grand confederation which had been established by the Church in the strong unity of unfeigned charity, and of faith unalloyed by error. The Crusades were for a second time rousing the world to holy enterprise. The preaching of Saint Bernard was stirring mankind to zeal for the cause of God. The impulse was so immense that it seemed as though the event marked the culminating point of Christ’s reign on Earth, and secured perpetuity to the power of the Church. And yet, that was the very period when old signs of decay returned, and with fresh intensity. The heroic Pontiff Saint Gregory VII had stemmed the evil for a considerable time, but at the period we speak of, a relapse set in and advanced with its work of ravage till it brought about the great revolt of the fifteenth century and the general apostasy of nations.

The celebrated prophetess of the Middle Ages, Saint Hildegard, was then scanning with her eagle eye the miseries of her own day, and the still more sombre threats of the future. She that was used to write the messages of God to Pontiffs and Kings, penned these words in a Letter to Werner and his brother Priests of Kircheim. They had written to Hildegard and solicited her reply:

“It was while lying for a long time on a bed of sickness in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation one thousand one hundred and seventy, that I saw, wakeful both in body and mind, a most beautiful image having a woman’s appearance: she was all perfect in her suavity, and most dear in the charms of her beauty which was such as that the human mind could in no wise comprehend it. Her stature was so great that it reached from earth even up to Heaven. Her face, too, beamed with exceeding brightness, and her eye was fixed on Heaven. She was clad in a spotless garment, made of white silk. The mantle which covered her was adorned with most precious stones, of emerald, sapphire and likewise of beads and pearls. The shoes on her feet were of onyx. But her face was covered with dust, and her garment was rent on the right side, and her mantle had lost its elegant beauty, and her shoes were dimmed. And she, with a loud and plaintive voice, cried out towards the high heavens: ‘Hearken, Heaven, that my face is defiled! And wail, Earth, that my garment is rent! And you, abyss, tremble, because my shoes are dimmed. Foxes have holes and birds of the air nests (Matthew viii. 20), but I have not helper or comforter, nor staff on which to lean, and by which to have support... They that should have adorned me in every way have in all these things, abandoned me. For it is they that besmear my face by dragging the Body and Blood of my Spouse into the great uncleanness of the impurity of their living, and the great filth of their fornications and adulteries; and by buying and selling holy things, defiling them, as a child would be, were he put down in mire before swine... The wounds of Christ my Spouse are contaminated... Princes and a headlong people will rush on you, priests! They will cast you forth, and put you to flight, and will take your riches away from you...They will say: Let us cast out from the Church these adulterers, and extortioners, and men that are full of all wickedness! And in doing this, they will have it that they do a service to God because they say that it is by you that the Church is defiled.... By God’s permission, many nations will begin to rage against you in their judgements, and many people will devise vain things concerning you, for they will count as nothing your priestly office and your consecration. Kings of the earth will assist these in your overthrow, and they will thirst after the earthly things you possess; and the Princes in whose dominions you live will make a convention in this one plan — that they may drive you out of their territories, because you, by your most wicked deeds, have driven away the innocent Lamb from your midst. And I heard a voice from heaven, saying: This image is the Church!’”

What a fearful description of the evils brought on the Church in the twelfth century! What a prophecy of its far off results! These miseries were in keeping with the way in which the august Mystery of the Altar was treated. It has always been so. The disorders of the sanctuary necessarily brought about relaxation in the people. They grew wearied of receiving the heavenly food from hands that were but too often unworthy ones. The guests at the banquet of divine Wisdom became rare, so rare indeed that in 1215 a General Council, the Fourth of Lateran, passed the well-known law which obliges, under the severest penalties, the Faithful of both sexes to receive Communion at least once in the year. The evil became so great that the legislation of Councils and the genius of Innocent III, the last of the great Popes of the Middle Ages, would not have sufficed to arrest it, had not God given to His Church the two Saints, Dominic and Francis: they reclaimed the Priesthood and for a time brought back the people to the practice of Christian piety.

But the ancient forms of the Liturgy had perished during the interval of the crisis. The oblation in common which supposed that all communicated in the divine Victim, had given place to private foundations, and to honoraries or stipendium. In themselves they were quite lawful, but they had been so considerably increased by the introduction of the mendicant Orders that a change in the Liturgy was the consequence. Private Masses for special intentions were multiplied in order to satisfy obligations which had been contracted with individual donors, and by a necessary consequence the imposing rite of con-celebration maintained in Rome till the thirteenth century entirely disappeared in the Western Church. The Sacrifice of the Mass was no longer brought before the Faithful with the majestic ceremonial which in former times had secured to it a preponderance over the whole religion and life of the Christian people. The Holy Eucharist soon began to be given out of the time of Mass, and for reasons which were not always serious ones. More than one scholastic theologian encouraged the practice. If this scholastic had not true learning on his side, he had his sharp definitions and categorical divisions, and Communion seemed to become, in the minds of some men, a something distinct by itself in the institution of the Eucharist. This was a forerunner of what we so often find practised in our own times: Communions made isolated and furtively on principle, that is, in accordance with an ideal of spirituality which has a dread of a crowd, and a repugnance to the excitement of the Church’s ceremonies!

The notion, then, of the Sacrifice which includes the chief motive of the Presence of the Incarnate Word in the Eucharist was no longer brought before the people with the emphatic pre-eminence of former ages. As a counter result of this, the truth of this Presence of our God under the Eucharistic species gained an ascendancy over the soul in a more exclusive, and therefore, in a more impressive and direct way. It was at this period that, out of a spirit of holy fear, and from a feeling of respect, a feeling which can never be too great, several ancient usages began to be discontinued. Usages which were established at first with a view the better to realise or express the application of the Sacrifice, were afterwards suppressed as exposing the sacred species to involuntary irreverence. It was thus that the custom of giving the chalice to the laity, and communion to infants, fell into desuetude.

An immense ritual change then was brought about. The Church accepted it, although she was aware of its being, in more than one point, a degeneracy as compared with former ages. The time had come when the grand social forms of the Liturgy requiring, as they did, the strong union of Christian nations for the basis, would be but unrealities. The jealous mistrust of States against the Church, that is, against the power which was the sole bond of mutual union between the several nations, was ever on the increase and only waited for an occasion to break out into open hostility. Diplomacy became a system of rupture between one country and another, just as the Church had been the framer and maintainer of their union.

If the evil from within was thus great, still greater were the dangers to which the Faithful were exposed by the onslaughts of heresy. And yet, it is precisely in such a time as this, that is most manifested the superhuman prudence of the Church. In defence of that which is the essential element of her existence here below — in defence, that is, of Faith — she formed a rampart out of the very ruins caused by the liturgical revolution he had been compelled to accept. She sanctioned with her authority what was worthy of sanction, and thereby controlled the movement. She took advantage of the increase of devotion to the Real Presence which the movement had excited. She gave a fresh direction to her Liturgy by substituting a ceaseless expression of the dogma for the less precise, though not less complete and far grander, forms of the earlier period. It was a reply to heresy, all the stronger because of its being more direct. We have already seen how, in consequence of the covert attacks of false doctrine, there was an evident reason felt in the thirteenth century for instituting a special Feast in honour of the Eucharist as the Mystery of Faith. That reason became sheer necessity at the approach, foreseen by God alone, of the bold triumph of the sacramentarian heresy. It was necessary to forestall the attack, and by so doing to render the coming assault less hurtful to the Christian world, and less injurious to that Lord who is present in the Sacrament of His Love. The means for efficaciously realising these two ends was the development of exterior devotion to the Real Presence. The Church would thus proclaim her unshaken faith in the dogma, and the adorable Sacrament would receive, by the renewed fervour of faithful souls, a compensation for the indifference and insults of others.

Established throughout the world by the authority of the Roman Pontiffs, the Feast of Corpus Christi was therefore both in itself and in its developments, as we were observing yesterday, the commencement of a new phase in the Catholic worship of the holy Eucharist. Once the Feast was instituted, there followed Processions, Benedictions, Forty-Hours, Expositions, Watchings in adoration, each of which was an additional affirmation of the Church’s belief in the Real Presence. The piety of her children was rekindled, and to that Lord who, for our sakes, dwells under the sacramental species, there was offered that tribute of homage which is so justly His due.

2 JUNE – SAINTS MARCELLINUS, PETER AND ERASMUS (Martyrs)

During the reign of Diocletian the exorcist Peter was imprisoned in Rome by the judge Serenus because he confessed the Christian faith. He there set free Paulina, the daughter of Artemius, the keeper of the prison, from an evil spirit which tormented her. Upon this, Artemius and his wife and all their house, with their neighbours who had run together to see the strange thing, would fain be attached to the service of Christ. Peter therefore brought them to the priest Marcellinus who baptised all of them. When Serenus heard of it, he called Peter and Marcellinus before him and sharply rebuked them, adding to his bitter words, threats and terrors, unless they would deny Christ. Marcellinus answered him with Christian boldness, for which he was buffeted, separated from Peter, and shut up naked in a prison strewn with broken glass without food or light. When Peter and Marcellinus were found to increase in faith and courage, they were beheaded.

The bishop Erasmus was, in Campania, beaten with clubs and whips loaded with lead, and afterwards plunged into resin, sulphur, melted lead, boiling pitch, wax and oil. But he emerged unscathed, whole and sound, and this wonder converted many to believe in Christ. He was remanded again to prison, and bound in iron fetters. But from these he was wondrously delivered by an Angel. Lastly, being taken to Formi, Maximian caused him to be subjected to various torments, and in the end, being clad in a coat of red-hot brass, the power of God made him be more than conqueror in all these things also. Afterwards, having converted to the faith and confirmed many in it, he obtained the palm of a glorious martyrdom.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

The glory of martyrdom illumines this day with a profusion rarely met with in the Cycle, and already we seem to descry the rosy dawn of that glad day, excelling all the rest, on which Peter and Paul will consummate, in their blood, their own splendid confession. Italy and Gaul, Rome and Lyons concur in forming a legion of heroes in the service of Heaven. For today, Lyons, the illustrious daughter of Rome, is keeping the special festival of a whole phalanx of warriors headed by the veteran chief, Saint Pothinus, a disciple of Saint Polycarp, who in the second century levied the brave recruits of his battalion on the banks of the Rhone. But to the Mother Church are due the first honours. Turn we then to Marcellinus, hailing him who, begetting by his fruitful priesthood a numerous progeny, shares with them the honours of his triumph in which they had been rendered worthy by the Holy Ghost at once to partake. Let us hail, likewise, the Exorcist Peter, leading to the sacred font such a long line of pagans won over to Christ by witnessing at his hand how great is the weakness of the demons.

When Christianity appeared on earth Satan was indeed, and visibly so, the Prince of this world. To him was every altar reared. To his empire were all laws and customs subservient. From the depths of their famous temples, the demon chiefs directed the political affairs of the cities that came to consult their oracles. Under divers names, the frailest of the fallen angels found honour and influence at the domestic hearth. Others had posts assigned to them in forests, on mountains, at fountains, or on sea, occupying, in opposition to God, this world that had been created by Him for His glory, but which Satan through man’s complicity had conquered. [Thousands of] years of abandonment on the part of Heaven permitted the usurper to consolidate his conquest, and a well planned resistance was skilfully prepared against the day on which the lawful King should offer to re-enter on his rights.

The coming of the Word made Flesh was the grand signal for the asserting of the Divine Claim. The Prince of this world, personally vanquished by the Son of God, understood well enough that he must needs return to the depths of Hell. But the countless powers of darkness constituted by him would maintain the struggle through the length of ages and dispute their position inch by inch. Driven from towns by the abjurations of holy Church and the triumph of martyrs, the infernal legions would fain marshal their ranks in the wilderness. There, under the leadership of an Anthony or a Pachomius, the soldiers of Christ must wage against them ceaseless and terrific battle. In the West Benedict, the Patriarch of Monks, in his turn meets with altars to the demons, yes, with demons themselves on the heights of Cassino, as late as the sixth century. Even in the seventh, they are found contending against Saint Gall for holds on the woods, lakes and rocks of what we now call Switzerland. And at last they are heard uttering mournful complaint because, driven as they have been from the haunts of men, even such desolate spots as these are denied them. Verily, in the divine Mind, the vocation of a monk to the desert has for its end not alone flight of the world and its concerns, but likewise the pursuit of demons into their last entrenchments.

We have dwelt thus on the foregoing considerations because their importance is extreme, and is equalled only by depth of systematic ignorance persisted in on this subject. True Christians of course firmly believe, now as formerly, in the secret and wholly spiritual combat which the soul has to sustain against Hell in the privacy of one’s own conscience, but too many have no scruple in rejecting, as if belonging to the domain of imagination, whatever is related of those other combats maintained by our fathers against the demons in an exterior and more public manner. The excuse for such Christians is no doubt in the fact that they live in a land where centuries ago this war in its external phases was ended by the social victory of Christendom. But the Holy Ghost has declared that the old serpent, bound up for a thousand years, is at last to be again unchained for a while (Apocalypse xx. 2, 3). If, perchance, we be nearing this fatal epoch, it is high time to look about us: ill prepared will we be for the waging again of the old battles, by such ignorance as ours, in which we are maintained by that habit of abandoning to the conceited impertinence of the shallow science that rules the day, facts (under the name of legend), the best attested in the history of our ancestors. Yes, after all, what is History, even since the revolt of Lucifer, but the picture of the war that is being waged between God and Satan? Now if, as we have said, Satan has by divine permission invaded the exterior world as well as that of souls, must it not be needful, in order (as our Lord expresses it), to cast him out (John xii. 21) that the struggle with him be breast to breast and foot to foot, inasmuch as it has assumed an exterior and visible character?

“The Word,” says Saint Justin, “was made Flesh for two ends: to save believers, and to drive away demons.” So also the expulsion of demons from the places they occupy in this material world, and specially the bodies of men, the noblest part thereof, would appear in the Gospel to have been one of the chief characteristics of our Saviour’s power. Again, when on quitting the Earth He sent His Apostles to continue His work amid the nations, this is the very thing He singles out as a primary sign of the mission they are to fulfil (Mark xvi. 17). The world of that day made no mistake about it. Soon enough had the pagans to state the cessation of the ancient oracles, in every place the cause of a phenomenon of such import to the ancient religion was evident to all: the very demons themselves were not backward in ascribing to the Christians this their enforced silence. As regards this power of Christianity against Hell, the Apologists of the second and third centuries appeal on the subject to public testimony without fear of a contradicting voice. “Before the eyes of everyone,” says Saint Justin to the emperors, “the Christians drive out demons in the Name of Jesus Christ, not only in Rome, but in the whole universe.” The gods of Olympus beheld themselves shamefully unmasked in the presence of their confused adorers, and Tertullian might well challenge thus the magistrates of the Empire: “Let one of those men who declare themselves to be under the power of the gods be brought before your tribunals: at the commanding word of the first comer among us, the spirit by which they are possessed will be constrained to confess what he is. if he avow not himself a demon and no god, fearing to lie to a Christian, at once shed the blood of this Christian blasphemer. But no, the terror they have of Christ is the reason why the mere touch, or even breathing of one of His servants, forces them to take to flight!”

So then, we see, Baptism sufficed to give to man such power as this, and verily this was the real meaning of our Lord’s promise when speaking of those who would believe in Him, and not alone of the heads of the Church, He said: “In my name they will cast out devils” (Mark xvi. 17). At an early date, however, the Church organising the holy war, constituted among her Sons one special Order having for its direct mission the pursuit of Satan on every point of this visible world. The Exorcists were by this delegation invested with a power that must needs accelerate the downfall of the prince of this world. And, what would be all the more odious and humiliating in this defeat, the Church raised no higher than to the rank of inferior clergy, an order so terrible, nevertheless, unto Hell. Lucifer had aimed at being equal to the Most High (Isaias xiv. 12-15). Hurled down from Heaven, he at least flattered himself in his folly to be able to supplant God on Earth and lo! the charge of defeating him here is confided not to Angels indeed, his equals by nature, but to men, yes, to the least and lowest of this race so easily tricked, that for long ages he had seen men prostrate before him! The hand of flesh constrains him, spirit though he be, to come off his throne. At their word he must needs cast away his vain adornments, he must unmask himself. The water they bless rekindles within him his eternal tortures. Of the prince of this world and his pomps, nothing remains but mere Satan, the ugly faced apostate, the condemned criminal wincing in the dust at the feet of the sons of men, or fleeing like a dry leaf at the breath of their mouth.

The Archangel Michael recognises in these sons of Adam the worthy allies of the faithful Angels he led forward to victory. But amid these continuators of the mighty battle begun on the heights of Heaven (Apocalypse xii. 7-9), the Exorcist Peter comes before us today radiant with matchless splendour. The triumph of martyrdom has been added to his victories won over Satan’s cohorts. None better than he drove Hell backwards, for, chasing the demons out of men’s bodies, he moreover made conquest of their souls. The Priest Marcellinus, his companion in martyrdom as he had been in victory, is likewise his associate in glory. The Church wishes that these two names of theirs so redoubtable to the spirits of darkness, should shine in one same aureola here below as in Heaven. Daily does she render them the most solemn homage in her power by naming them both on the diptych of the Holy Sacrifice together with the Apostles and the first of her sons. Such was the importance of the mission they fulfilled and the renown of their final combat, that their bodies translated to the Via Latina became the nucleus of an illustrious cemetery. The Christians of the Age of Peace that came soon after their glorious confession, vied with one another in obtaining sepulture near these soldiers of Christ whose protection they craved: Constantine the Great, the vanquisher of idolatry, deposited at their sacred feet the remains of his mother, Saint Helena, who had herself become a terror to the demons by her discovering the True Cross. A celebrated inscription was composed in their honour by Saint Damasus, who in childhood had learned the details of their martyrdom from the very executioner himself, afterwards converted. This inscription hard by their tomb completed the monuments of that catacomb in which Christian art had multiplied its richest teachings.

To the memory of Saints Marcellinus and Peter is joined in the Liturgy of today the name of a holy Bishop and Martyr, formerly well known to the faithful. If the Acts of his life that have reached us are not free from all reproach in a critical point of view, the favours obtained by the intercession of this Saint Erasmus, or Elmo, wafted his name over the whole of Christendom, as is attested by the numberless forms this name assumed in various countries of the West during the Middle Ages. He holds a place in the group of Saints styled auxiliatores or Helpers, whose cultus is widespread in Germany and Italy more particularly. Mariners look on him as their patron because of a certain miraculous voyage related in his life. One of the tortures to which he was subjected during his martyrdom has made him be invoked for the cholic. Nor should we forget to mention here how great a veneration Saint Benedict, the Patriarch of Western Monks, had for Saint Erasmus. When he quitted the Campagna for his solitude on the banks of the Anio, he marked his principal station between Subiaco and Monte Cassino by building a Church and Monastery at Veroli under the invocation of this holy martyr, and another was dedicated by him in Rome, likewise, to Saint Erasmus.

* * * * *

YOU three holy Martyrs all confessed Jesus Christ in the midst of the most terrific storm ever raised by the demon against the Church. Though all three, in different grades of the hierarchy, you were alike guides of the Christian people, drawing them by thousands in your train, into the arena of martyrdom, and by still more numerous conversions, filling up the void made in Earth’s chosen band by the departure of your victorious companions to Heaven. Wherefore the Church this day joins her grateful homage here below with the silvery shouts of glad congratulation that ring through the Church Triumphant. Be you propitious, as of yore, in alleviating the ills that overwhelm mankind in this vale of tears. The excess of man’s misery is that he seems to have forgotten how to call on such powerful protectors in his hour of need. Revive your memory, in our midst, by new benefits to our race. As you, Erasmus, was formerly protected by Heaven, do now, in your turn, succour those who are a prey to the tempest-tossed sea. In your last hour of bitter anguish you suffered your executioners to tear your very bowels. Lend then a kindly aid to such as call on your name when racked by pains which bear some resemblance, though but faint, to what you endured for Christ. Peter and Marcellinus, linked one to another both in toil and in glory, cast gentle eyes on us: one glance of yours would make all Hell to tremble, would drive far from us its darksome cohorts.

But how much is your aid needed in society at large in the whole visible world! The foe you so mightily thrust backwards into the fiery pit is once more master. Alas, have we come to the time in which, again taking up war against the Saints, it will be granted him to overcome them? (Apocalypse xiii. 7) Scarce does he even hide himself nowadays. Not only does he lead the world by a thousand springs ostensibly put in his hands by Societies formerly secret, but he may be seen trying to push his way into gatherings of all sorts, into the very bosom of homes as a family guest, as a comrade in diversion or in business, with table-turning and all those processes for divination such as Tertullian denounced in your early day. The expulsion of demons by Christianity had been so absolute that up to more recent times such fatal practices had fallen into utter oblivion among us. If at first, in Christian families, the warning voice of the pastors of God’s Church has prevailed over the incitements of an unhealthy curiosity, still a sect has since been formed in which Satan is sole guide and oracle. The Spiritists, as they are called, in concert with Freemasonry, are preparing the way for the final invasion of the exterior world by infernal bands. Antichrist, with his usurped power and vain prestige, will be but the common product of political lodges and of this sect in which the task is proposed of bringing back, under a new form, the ancient mysteries of paganism. Valiant Soldiers of the Church, make us, we beseech you, worthy of our forefathers. If the Christian army must needs decrease in numbers, let faith all the more wax strong in it. Let courage neither lack nor go astray. May its ranks be seen facing the foe, at that last hour in which the Lord Jesus will slay, with the breath of His Mouth, the man of sin (2 Thessalonians ii. 8), and plunge once again and forever, the whole of Satan’s crew down into the lowest depths of the bottomless pit.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Lyons, many holy martyrs (Photinus, bishop, Sanctus, deacon, Vetius, Epagathus, Maturus, Ponticus, Biblis, Attalus, Alexander and Blandina, with many others), whose many valiant combats, in the time of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Verus, are recorded in a letter from the church at Lyons to the churches of Asia and Phrygia. St. Blandina, one of these martyrs, though weaker on account of her sex and frame, and of her lower condition in life, encountered longer and more terrible trials. But remaining unshaken, she was put to the sword and followed those whom she had exhorted to win the palm of martyrdom.

At Rome, St. Eugenius, pope and confessor.

At Tarni in Terra-di-Bari, St. Nicholas Peregrinus, confessor, whose miracles were related in the Roman Council under Pope Urban II.

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

Thanks be to God.

2 JUNE – TUESDAY AFTER TRINITY SUNDAY

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The history of the Blessed Eucharist is one with that of the Church herself: the liturgical usages which have varied in the celebration of the most august of all the Sacraments have followed the great social phases of the Christian world. This was a necessity, for the Eucharist is the vital centre here below from which everything in the Church converges. It is the inner bond which unites together that society of which Christ is the head, the society of which He is to reign over the nations which are to be His inheritance (Psalms ii. 8). Union with Peter, the Vicar of Christ, must always be the indispensable condition, the external mark, of the union of the members with the invisible Head. But supported in an ineffable manner on the Rock which bears the Church, the divine Mystery in which Christ gives Himself to each one of His servants must ever be the essential mystery of union and, as such, the centre and the bond of the great Catholic communion. Let us today get a clear notion of this fundamental truth on which was based the very formation of the Church at her commencement, and let us consider the influence it exercised on the forms of Eucharistic worship during the first twelve centuries. Tomorrow we will continue the subject by examining how subsequent loss of fervour, heresy and social degeneracy induced the Church to gradually modify these forms which, after all, are but accidental. They were admirably adapted to the favoured times they had served, but would scarcely suit the changed circumstances and requirements of later generations of the Church’s children.

It was on the eve of His Passion that our Lord instituted the great Memorial which was to perpetuate in all places the one Sacrifice by which are perfected forever they that are sanctified (Hebrews x. 14). The Cross was “the Altar of the world,” as Saint Leo calls it, and on that Cross, says the same holy Doctor, was made a few hours after the Last Supper, “the oblation of the whole human nature,” for the whole human race was united with this last act of infinite adoration and reparation offered by its Head to the supreme Majesty of God. The Church, issuing, as she did, with the Blood and Water from the side of her Saviour, was then but in her infancy, and the Mystery of divine union which Jesus had come upon the Earth to produce by Himself uniting to the Father, in the Holy Ghost, the members of His mystical body — this union was not to have its immediate realisation for each separate member except by its successive application to each one, as his time came. This was the object of the sublime institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. It was a New Testament which gave to the future Church the possession of the Mystery by which each generation, linked on to its predecessors by the unity of the one same Sacrifice, would find itself in union with the Word Incarnate, and in that union would have the tie which mutually binds His members together, and the unity of His mystical body.

Immediately after instituting this new Passover Jesus said to His Disciples: “A new commandment I give to you: that you love one another, as I have loved you: and, by this will all men know that you are my disciples” (John xiii. 34, 35). This was the first injunction given to His disciples by Jesus after giving Himself to them in the Eucharist. This love of, and union with, each other was to be the mark of the Covenant which He then, through His Apostles, contracted with all them who were to believe in Him through the word of their preaching (John xvii. 20). His very first prayer after that first giving His Body and Blood under the Eucharistic species is for that same union — the union of His Faithful one with another; a union, admirable as is the Mystery which produces and maintains it; a union so intimate, that its model is the union existing between Jesus and His Eternal Father: “May they all be one, as you, Father, in me, and I in you; that they may be made perfect in one — one, as we also are one” (John xvii. 21-23).

Under the direction of the Holy Spirit the Church understood from the very first the intentions of her divine Master. The three thousand who were converted on the day of Pentecost are described in the Acts as persevering in the doctrine of the Apostles in the communication of the breaking of bread, and in prayers (Acts ii. 43). And so great is the power of union derived from their all partaking of the heavenly Bread that they were remarked by the Jews as a class of men forming a society distinct from every other, which won the esteem of all that beheld them, and drew others daily to join them (Acts ii. 47).

A few years later and the Church, led on by the same Holy Spirit, passed beyond the narrow limits of Judea and carried her treasures to the Gentiles. It was a world of corruption where all was discord between man and man, and where the only remedy to the outrages of individual egotism was the tyranny of a Caesar. And it was into such a world that the Christians came and showed it, from east to west, the marvel of a new people which, by the sole influence of its virtues, recruited its members from every class of society, and from every clime, and was stronger and more united than any nation that had ever appeared on Earth. The Pagans were in admiration at this strange and inexplicable novelty. Without knowing what they were doing, without troubling themselves with any further inquiry, they bore testimony to the perfection with which these Christians fulfilled the dying wishes of their Founder. They thus spoke of them: “See how they love one another!” It was indeed a mystery, but the Faithful, the Initiated, understood it, for it had been thus explained to them by the Apostle: “We, being many, are one bread, one body, all that partake of one Bread” (1 Corinthians x. 17). This text is admirably commented by Saint Augustine in a sermon he preached to the Neophytes a few hours after their Baptism:

“I remember the promise I made of explaining to you who have been baptised the mystery of the Lord’s Table, which you now see, and of which you were made partakers in the night just past. That Bread which you see on the Altar, that Bread which has been sanctified by the word of God, is the Body of Christ: that Chalice, or, rather, what that Chalice contains, which has been sanctified by the word of God, is the Blood of Christ. By these did Christ our Lord will to give us His Body and His Blood which He shed for us, to the remission of our sins. If you have properly received them, you are what you have received, for the Apostle says: ‘We, being many, are one bread, one body.’ Yes, it was thus that he expounded the sacrament of the Table of the Lord: We, being many, are one bread, one body. We are, by this Bread, instructed how we are to love unity. Was this Bread made out of one grain? Were there not many grains of wheat? But before they came to be bread, they were separated one from the other. They became joined by means of water, and by a certain bruising: for, unless the wheat be ground, and be moistened with water, it could never take the form we call bread. It was the same with you until you were, so to say, ground by the humiliation of fasting and the sacrament of exorcism. Baptism and water came to you. You were moistened that so you might come to the state of bread. But even so there is no bread without fire. What, then, does fire signify? It is the Chrism, for the oil which makes our fire is the sacrament of the Holy Ghost... The Holy Ghost, therefore, comes. After water, comes fire and you are made Bread, which is the Body of Christ... Christ willed that we should be His Sacrifice — the Sacrifice of God... Great, very great, are these mysteries!... Do you so receive them, as to take care that you have unity in your hearts. Be one, by your loving one another, by holding one faith, one hope and undivided charity. When the heretics receive this Bread, they receive testimony against themselves for they are seeking to make division, whereas this Bread is the sign of unity.”

The Scripture, speaking of the first Christians, says that they had but one heart and one soul, and it is the unity which is signified by the Wine in the Holy Mysteries; “For,” continues St. Augustine, “the wine was once in so many bunches of grapes, but now it is all one, one in the sweetness of the chalice, for it has gone through the crushing of the wine-press. So you, after those fastings, and labours, and humility, and contrition, have come, in the name of Christ,to the Chalice of the Lord. And you are there on that Table, and there in that Chalice. You are there together with us, for we have eaten together, and drunk together, and that because we live together. Thus did Christ our Lord (by the wine made one out of many grapes) signify us, and wished us to be one with Him, and by His Table consecrated the mystery of our peace and unity.”

These admirable expressions of Saint Augustine are but the substance of the doctrine regarding the Holy Eucharist held by the Church in the fourth century. They give us the very essence of that doctrine in all its fullness and in all the clearness of its literal truth. No other could have been given to Neophytes who up to that time had been kept in complete ignorance of the august Mysteries of which they were henceforth to partake. As to the discipline of that secrecy, we will have to speak of it a little further on. The doctrine of the Eucharist here laid down by the great Bishop of Hippo is identical with that given by all the Fathers. In Gaul, Saint Hilary of Poitiers and Saint Cesarius of Aries. In Italy, Saint Gaudentius of Brescia. At Antioch and Constantinople, Saint John Chrysostom. At Alexandria, Saint Cyril — all had the same way of putting this dogma of faith before their people. Christ is not divided: the Head and the members, the Word and His Church are inseparably one in the unity of the mystery instituted for the very purpose of producing that unity. And this unanimous teaching of the Fathers who lived in the golden age of Christian eloquence was reproduced by Paschasius Radbert in the ninth century, by Rupert in the twelfth, and by William of Auvergne in the beginning of the thirteenth.

It would be too long to give the names, and still more to quote passages in testimony of how all the Churches for the first twelve centuries looked on the holy Eucharist in this same way, that is, as instituted for the purpose of union. If we follow this traditional teaching back to the apostolic source from which it originated, we will find Saint Cyprian in the age of Persecution speaking to his people on the union between the divine Head and His members, which is the necessary result of the Holy Sacrament. He shows this, not only by the nature of bread and wine, the essential elements for the consecration of the mysteries, but likewise by the mingling of water with the wine in the Eucharistic cup: the water, he says, signifies the faithful people, the wine denotes the Blood of Christ, their union in the chalice — union necessary for the integrity of the Sacrifice — union the most complete and inseparable — expresses the indissoluble alliance between Christ and His Church which consummates the Sacrament. The same Saint Cyprian shows that the Unity of the Church by the Chair of Peter, which is the subject of one of his finest treatises, is divinely established on the sacred Mysteries. He speaks enthusiastically of the multitude of believers, the Christian unanimity being held together in the bonds of a firm and indivisible charity by the Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ in His Sacrament, and Christ in His Vicar, is in reality but the one same Rock that bears the building which is erected on it: the one sole Head, visible in His representative, His Vicar, and invisible in His own substance, in the Sacrament.

This sentiment of union as the result of the Eucharist was rooted in the soul of the early Church. Her very mission was to bring about the union of all the children of God that were dispersed throughout the world (John xi. 52), and when the violence of her enemies obliged her to provide her children with some secret sign by which they might recognise each other, and not be recognised by pagans or persecutors or blasphemers, she gave them the mysterious icthus, the FISH, which was the sacred symbol of the Eucharist. The letters which form the Greek word for fish (icthus) are the initials of a formula in the same language which gives this sentence: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. The Fish is shown to us in the Book of Tobias (Tobias vi.) as a figure of Christ who is the food of the wayfarer; casts out the devil by His virtues; and gives light to the world, grown old in iniquity. Again, it is not without a prophetic and mysterious purpose that the fish is mentioned in Genesis as being blessed by the Creator at the commencement of the world, just as man himself was (Genesis i. 22, 28). It goes with the bread which is miraculously multiplied in the Gospel when our Lord prefigures the marvels of the Eucharist. It is brought again to our notice after the Resurrection: it is found lying on hot coals, and is offered by Jesus, together with bread, as a repast to seven of His disciples on the banks of lake Tiberias (John xxi. 9).

Now, what is this Fish? This Bread? The Fathers answer: Christ is the Bread of that mysterious repast. He is the Fish taken from living water, and is roasted on the altar of the Cross by the fire of His love, and feeds the Disciples on His own substance, and offers Himself to the entire world as the true icthus. No wonder then that we find this sacred symbol on almost everything that the Christians of the first three centuries possessed: on precious stones, rings, lamps, inscriptions, paintings, there was the Fish, in some shape or other. It was the watchword, the tessera of the Christians, in those days of persecution. An inscription of the second century discovered, in modern times at Autun thus speaks of the Christians: “This divine race of the heavenly icthus, this noble hearted race, receive from the Saviour of the Saints, the nourishment which is sweet as honey, and drink long draughts of the divine fount, holding icthus in their hands.”A holy Bishop of Asia Minor of that same early period by name Abercius of Hierapolis, who was divinely led into various lands, everywhere recognises the disciples of Christ by the holy Fish, which makes all, however separated by distance, to be one. “I have,” says he, shortly before the close of his life of travel, “I have seen Rome. I have beheld the queen city in her robes and sandals of gold. I have made acquaintance with the people decked with bright rings. I have visited the country of Syria, and all her cities. Passing the Euphrates, I have seen Nisibis. And all people in the East were in union with me, for we all formed but one body. Everywhere, faith presented to all and gave, as nourishment to all, the glorious and holy ICTHUS which came from the only fount, and was taken by the most pure Virgin.”

This then was the bond of that mighty union between Christians, which was such a puzzle to the pagan world. And the more the real cause of that unity was kept concealed from its eyes, so much the more violent was the fury with which it attacked the Church. Our Lord had said: “Give not that which is holy to dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine” (Matthew vii. 6). These words contained, in principle, the discipline of secrecy which was observed in the Church till the conversion of the Western world was completed. The holiness of the Sacraments, the sublimity of the Christian doctrines, necessitated an extreme reserve on the part of the Faithful, living, as they had to do, amid people whose moral degradation and brutal corruption rendered them what our Saviour had told us men would sometimes make themselves. But there was nothing which it was so imperative to hide from the stare and sacrilege of pagans as the most Holy Eucharist — that “great pearl of the sacred, Body of the Lamb,” as Venantius Fortunatus calls it. It was this that gave rise to the essential distinction into two classes of a Christian assembly when met for divine worship: there were the initiated, and the uninitiated, the Faithful and the Catechumens. The distinction began with the apostolic age and was kept up till the eighth century. A few weeks before the solemn administration of Baptism there took place, as we have elsewhere explained, the giving, or, as it was termed, the Tradition of the Symbol, to the future members of the Church. But the Eucharistic Mystery, the arcanum by excellence, was, even then, kept back from the fortunate candidates for holy Baptism. This explains the varied precautionary expressions, the reticence, the studied obscurity of phraseology, used by the Fathers in their discourse to their flock, and this for years after the times of Constantine and Theodosius. The Catechumens were admitted while the holy Scriptures were being read or while the Psalms were being chanted, but as soon as the Bishop had given his discourse on the portion which had been read, either of the Gospel or other passages of the sacred Volume, these Catechumens were dismissed by the Deacon and this missa, or mission, gave its name to that first portion of the Liturgy: it was called the “Mass of the Catechumens,” just as the second part, which was from the oblation to the final dismissal, was called the “Mass of the Faithful.”

And yet this same holy Mother Church, which kept so jealous an eye to her treasure as not to let it be fully known except to her true children made such by Baptism, with what delight did she not at the feasts of Easter and Pentecost reveal to her newborn children, as soon as they came from the font, the ineffable secret until then kept in her heart as Bride, the full mystery of the icthus! Incorporated in Christ by the saving waters, enrolled in His army and marked with the sign of His soldiers by the anointing received from the Bishop, with what maternal fondness did she not lead them from the Baptistery first, and then from the Chrismarium, to the hallowed precinct of the Mysteries instituted by the Word Incarnate! Yes, it was there that Jesus, their Head, was awaiting His new members that He might draw all the more closely the bonds which already knit them to His mystic Body and unite them to Himself in the infinite homage of that one great Sacrifice which himself was offering to the Eternal Father.

This wondrous unity of the Eucharistic Sacrifice which, in its ever the same one oblation, included both Head and Members: this unity of Sacrifice which kept alive and strengthened the union of each Christian community and of the whole Church, was admirably expressed by the magnificent forms of the primitive Liturgy. After the Catechumens had been dismissed and the unworthy expelled, all the Faithful without exception, from the Emperor and his Court down to the poorest cottager, whether man or woman, advanced towards the altar, each one offering their share of bread and wine for the sacred Mysteries. Themselves a “kingly priesthood,” as Saint Peter calls them (1 Peter ii. 9), a living victim figured by the gifts they brought, they assisted, standing at the immolation of the divine Victim whose members they truly were. Then, united in the kiss of peace, the external sign of their union of heart, they received in their hands, and still standing, the sacred Body, their spiritual nourishment. The Deacons offered them the Chalice, and they drank of the Precious Blood. Even babes in their mothers’ arms, were eager for the divine drink, and received some drops, at least, into their innocent mouths. The sick who could not leave their rooms, and prisoners, were not deprived of being united with their brethren in the sacred banquet: they received the precious Gifts at the hands of ministers who were sent to them for the purpose by the Bishop. The Anchorets in their deserts, Christians living in the country, and all such as could not be present at the next assembly, took the Body of our Lord with them, that thus they might not, because of distance, be deprived of uniting at the coming celebration of the Mysteries of salvation. Those were ages when Christian unity was continually being attacked by persecution, schism and heresy, all three at once. And the Church, to counteract the danger, had no hesitation in facilitating by every lawful means the use and application of the venerable Sacrament, which is the sign of unity and the innermost centre, and the strongest tie, of the Christian community.

It was from the same principle of unity that, although in each city there were generally several churches or centres for the assemblies of the Faithful and a greater or less number of Clergy, yet all the Faithful and Clergy came together for the collect, or synaxis, into some one place fixed upon by the Bishop. “Where the Bishop will show himself,” says Saint Ignatius of Antioch, “there let the multitude be; just as, where Christ Jesus is, there is the catholic Church. It is not lawful, either to baptise, or to celebrate the agape (the Eucharist) without the Bishop. Do all of you assemble for prayer in the one same place. Let there be unity of common prayer, unity of mind, unity of hope... Do all of you come together, as though you were one man, into the temple of God, as to one altar, as to one Christ Jesus, the great high-priest of the unborn God. Let us enjoy the one Eucharist, for one is the Flesh of our Lord Jesus, and one His Blood which was shed for us. one also is the Bread which was broken to us all, and one the Cup which was distributed to all: one altar to the whole Church, and one Bishop, surrounded by the Presbyterium and the Deacons.”

The Presbyterium was the college of priests of each city. They kept near the Bishop, were his council, and celebrated the sacred functions together with him. It would seem that at the beginning they were twelve in number, the closer to represent the Apostles. But in the great cities that number was soon doubled. We find that towards the close of the first century there were in Rome five and twenty oriests who were, respectively, set over twenty-five Titles, that is, Churches, of the metropolis. The Pontiff took first one, and then another, of these Titles, for the celebration of the Mysteries. The twenty-four Priests of the other Titles united with the Pontiff in the solemnity of one and the same Sacrifice, and con-celebrated at one and the same Altar. In their respective places, the seven Deacons and all the inferior clerics, each according to his rank, here below, at one Altar, but the unity of the Sacrifice which was everywhere offered was, like the unity of the Church herself, expressed by the mutual transmission, between the various Bishops, of the sacred species that had been consecrated by them, and these each one put into the chalice from which they received the precious Blood. Saint Ireneus who lived in the second century tells us that the supreme Hierarch, the Pontiff of Rome, used to send these sacred gifts, not only to Churches in the West, but even into Asia, as emblems of the unity existing between the Churches there, and the Church, the Mistress and Mother of all others. So, too, when the number of the Faithful became so great as to induce the Church to allow individual priests to celebrate alone the holy Mysteries, the priests of the town where a Bishop resided never thought of exercising this isolated function until they had received from the Bishop a fragment of the bread he had consecrated, and which they mingled with their own Sacrifice. It was the fermentum, the sacred leaven of Catholic Communion.