16 JUNE – FERIA

On this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Besançon in France, the holy martyrs Ferreol, priest, and Ferrution, deacon, who were sent by the blessed bishop Irenaeus to preach the word of God, and after being exposed to various torments under the judge Claudius, were put to the sword.

At Tarsus in Cilicia, in the reign of the emperor Diocletian, the holy martyrs Quiricus, and Julitta, his mother. Quiricus, a child of three years, seeing his mother cruelly scourged in the presence of the governor Alexander, and crying bitterly, was killed by being dashed against the steps of the tribunal. Julitta, after being subjected to severe stripes and grievous torments, closed the career of her martyrdom by decapitation.

At Mayence, the passion of the Saints Aurens, and Justina, his sister, and other martyrs, who, being at Mass in church, were massacred by the Huns then devastating Germany.

At Amathonte in Cyprus, St. Tychon, a bishop in the time of Theodosius the Younger.

At Lyons, the demise of blessed Aurelian, bishop of Arles.

At Nantes in Brittany, St. Similian, bishop and confessor.

At Meissen in Germany, St. Benno, bishop.

In the village of La Louvesc, formerly of the diocese of Vienne in Dauphiny, the decease of St. John Francis Regis, confessor, of the Society of Jesus, distinguished by his zeal for the salvation of souls, and by his patience. He was placed on the list of saints by Pope Clement XII.

In Brabant, St. Lutgard, virgin.

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

Thanks be to God.

16 JUNE – MONDAY AFTER TRINITY SUNDAY

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Having by His divine light added fresh appreciation towards the sovereign mystery of the august Trinity, the Holy Ghost next leads the Church to contemplate that other marvel which concentrates in itself all the works of the Incarnate Word and leads us, even in this present life, to union with God. The mystery of the Holy Eucharist is going to be brought before us in all its magnificence: it behoves us therefore to prepare the eyes of our soul for the worthy reception of the light which is so soon to dawn on us. As during the whole year, we have never lost sight of the mystery of the Holy Trinity and all our worship has unceasingly been offered to the Three divine Persons. So, in like manner, the Blessed Eucharist has uninterruptedly accompanied us throughout the whole period of the Liturgical Year, either as the means for our paying our homage to the infinite Majesty of God, or as the nourishment which sustains the supernatural life.

Though we knew and loved these two ineffable mysteries before, yet the graces of Pentecost have added much to both our knowledge and our love. Yesterday the mystery of the Trinity beamed on us with a greater clearness than ever, and now we are close to the solemnity which is to show us the Holy Eucharist with an increase of light and joy to our faith. The Blessed Trinity is, as we have already shown, the essential object of all religion. It is the centre to which all our homage converges and this, even when we do not seem to make it our direct intention.

Now, the Holy Eucharist is the best of all the means by which we can give to the Three divine Persons the worship we owe Them. It is, moreover, the bond by which Earth is united with Heaven. It is easy, therefore, to understand how it was that holy Church so long deferred the institution of the two festivals immediately following Whitsuntide. All the mysteries we have celebrated up to this time were contained in the august Sacrament which is the memorial and, so to say, the compendium of the wonderful things wrought in our favour by our Redeemer (Psalms cx. 4). It was the reality of Christ’s presence under the sacramental species that enabled us to recognise in the sacred Host at Christmas, the child that was born to us; in Passiontide, the Victim who redeemed us; and at Easter, the glorious conqueror of death. We could not celebrate all those admirable mysteries without the aid of the perpetual Sacrifice. Neither could that Sacrifice be offered up without its renewing and repeating them.

It was the same with the feasts of our Blessed Lady and the Saints — they kept us in the continual contemplation of the Holy Sacrament. When we honoured Mary on the solemnities of the Immaculate Conception, the Purification or the Annunciation, we were honouring Her who had, from her own substance, given that Body and Blood which was then offered on our altars. As to the Apostles and the Martyrs whose memories we solemnised, from where had they the strength to suffer so much and so bravely for the faith, but from the sacred banquet which we then celebrated, and which gives courage and constancy to them that partake of it? The Confessors and Virgins, as their feasts came round, seemed to us as so many lovely flowers in the garden of the Church, and that garden itself all fruitful with wheat and clusters of grapes because of the fertility given by Him who is called in the Scriptures both Wheat and Wine (Zacharias ix. 17).

Putting together all the means within our reach for honouring these blessed citizens of the heavenly court, we have chanted the grand Psalms of David, and hymns, and canticles, with all the varied formulas of the Liturgy: but nothing that we could do towards celebrating their praise could be compared to the Holy Sacrifice offered to the divine Majesty. It is in that Sacrifice that we entered into direct communication with them according to the energetic term used by the Church in the Canon of the Mass (communicantes). The blessed in Heaven are ever adoring the Most Holy Trinity by and in Christ Jesus our Lord: and it is by the Sacrifice of the Mass that we were united with them in the one same centre, and that we mingled our homage with theirs. Hence, they received an increase of glory and happiness. So, then, the Holy Eucharist, both as Sacrifice and Sacrament, has always been prominently before us. If we are now going to devote several days to a more attentive consideration of its magnificence and power, if we are now going to make more earnest efforts to taste more fully its heavenly sweetness, it is not a something fresh, which attracts our special notice and devotion for a season, and will then give way for something else: no, the Eucharist is that element prepared for us by the love of our Redeemer, of which we must always avail ourselves in order that we may enter into direct communication with our God, and pay Him the debt not only of our worship, but also of our love.

And yet, the time would come when the Holy Ghost who governs the Church would inspire her with the thought of instituting a special solemnity in honour of that august mystery in which all others are included. There is a sacred element which gives a meaning to every feast that occurs during the Year, and graces it with the beauty of its own divine splendour. That sacred element is the Most Holy Eucharist, and itself had a right to a solemn festival in keeping with the dignity of its divine object. But that festive exaltation of the divine Host, and those triumphant processions so deservedly dear to the present generation of Christians, were not practicable in the ages of the early Persecutions. And when those rough times had passed away and the courageous Martyrs had won victory for the Church, those same modes of honouring the Eucharist would not have suited the spirit and form of the primitive liturgical observances, which were kept up for ages following. Neither were they needed for the maintenance of the lively faith of those times. They would have been superfluous for a period such as that was, when the solemnity of the Sacrifice itself, and the share the people at large took in the sacred Mysteries, and the uninterrupted homage of liturgical chants sustained by the crowds of faithful adorers around the altar, gave praise and glory to God, secured correctness of faith, and fostered in the people a superabundance of supernatural life, which is not to be found nowadays. The divine Memorial produced its fruits, the intentions our Lord had in instituting the Eucharist were realised, and the remembrance of that institution, which used then to be solemnised as we now celebrate Mass on Maundy Thursday, was deeply impressed on the minds of the Faithful.

This state of things lasted till the beginning of the thirteenth century when, as the Church expresses it, a certain coldness took possession of the world. Faith grew weak, and the vigorous piety which characterised the Christians of the previous ages became exceedingly rare. There were grand exceptions, here and there, of individual saintliness, but there was an unmistakable falling off amid people at large, and the falling off was progressive: so much so, indeed, that there was danger that the Mystery which by its very nature is the Mystery of Faith would suffer in a special manner from that coldness, that indifference, of the new generation. Even at that period, Hell had been at work stirring up sacrilegious teachers here and there who dared to throw doubts on the dogma of the Real Presence. Fortunately the people easily took alarm and, as a general rule, were too strong in the old faith to be led astray. The Pastors, too, of the Church were alive to the danger, for there were souls who allowed themselves to be deceived. Scotus Erigena had formulated the sacramentarian heresy: he had taught that the Eucharist “was but a sign, a figure of spiritual union with Jesus, of which the intellect alone could be cognizant.” His teaching made little impression. It was regarded as mere pedantry, and was too novel to make head against Catholic Tradition, such as was to be found exposed in the learned writings of Paschasius Padbert, Abbot of Corbie.

The sophistry of Scotus was revived in the eleventh century by Berengarius, but although its new promoter was more crafty and conceited than its originator, and did greater and more lasting mischief, yet it died with him. The time for Hell to play havoc with such direct attacks as these had not yet come. They were laid aside for others of a more covert kind. That hotbed of heresies, the empire of Byzantium, fostered the almost extinct germ of Manicheism. The teaching of that sect regarding the flesh — that it is the work of the evil principle — was subversive of the dogma of the Eucharist. While Berengarius was trying to bring himself into notice by the noisy but ineffectual broachings of his errors, Thrace and Bulgaria were quietly sending their teachers into the West. Lombardy, the Marches and Tuscany became infected. So did Austria, in several places, and almost all at one and the same time. So too did three cities of France — Orleans, Toulouse and Arras. Forcible measures for repressing the evil were used, but it was one which knew how to grow strong by retreat. Taking the south of France for the basis of its operations, the foul heresy silently organised its strength during the whole of the twelfth century. So great was the progress it made thus unperceived, that when it came publicly before the world at the beginning of the thirteenth century, it had an army ready for the maintenance of its impious doctrines. Torrents of blood had to be shed in order to subdue it and deprive it of its strongholds, and for years after the defeat of the armed insurrection the Inquisition had to exercise active watchfulness in the provinces that had been tainted by the Albigensian contagion.

Simon of Montfort was the avenger of the Catholic faith. But while the victorious arm of the Christian hero was dealing a death-blow to heresy, God was preparing for His Son, who had been so unworthily outraged by the sectarians in the Sacrament of His Love, a triumph of a more peaceful kind, and a more perfect reparation. It was in 1208 that a humble Religious of the Congregation of the Hospitallers by name the Blessed Juliana of Mont-Cornillon, near Liége, had a mysterious vision in which she beheld the moon at its full, but having a hollow on its disc. In spite of all her efforts to divert herself from what she was afraid was an illusion, the same vision appeared before her as often as she set herself to pray. After two years of such efforts and earnest supplications, it was revealed to her that the moon signified the Church as it then was and that hollow she observed on its disc expressed the want of one more solemnity in the Liturgical Year — a want which God willed should be supplied by the introduction of a feast to be kept annually in honour of the institution of the Blessed Eucharist: the solemn commemoration made of the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday was no longer sufficient for the children of the Church, shaken as they had been by the influences of heresy. It was not sufficient even for the Church herself who, on that Thursday, has her attention divided by the important functions of the day, and is wholly taken up a few hours later by the sad mysteries of the great Friday.

At the same time that Juliana received this communication, she was also commanded to set to work and make known to the world what she had been told was the divine will. Twenty years, however, passed, before the humble and timid virgin could bring herself to put her person thus forward. She at length mentioned the subject to a Canon of Saint Martin’s of Liége, named John of Lausanne, whom she much respected for his great holiness of life. And she besought him to confer with men of theological learning on the subject of the mission confided to her. All agreed that not only there was no reason why such a feast should not be instituted but, moreover, that it would be a means for procuring much glory to God, and great good to souls. Encouraged by this decision, the saintly Juliana got a proper Office composed and approved for the future Festival. It begins with the words: Animarum cibus, and a few portions are still extant.

The Church of Liége, to which the universal Church owes the yesterday’s solemnity of the Blessed Trinity, was predestined to have the honour of originating the Feast of Corpus Christi. It was a happy day when in 1246, after so many delays and difficulties, the then Bishop of Liége, Robert de Torôte, published a synodical decree that each year, on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, there should be observed in all the Churches of his Diocese, with rest from servile work, and with the preparation of fasting on the eve, a solemn Feast in honour of the Blessed Sacrament.

But the mission of the Blessed Juliana was far from being at an end. She had to be punished for having so long deferred it. The Bishop died, and the decree he had issued would have long been a dead letter had there not been one, the only one, Church of the Diocese whose clergy were determined to carry the decree into execution: these were the Canons of Saint Martin-au-Mont. Though there was no authority during the vacancy that cared to enforce the observance, yet in 1247 the Feast of Corpus Christi was kept in that privileged Church. Robert’s successor, Henry de Gueldre, a warrior and grandee, took no interest in what his predecessor had had so much at heart. Hugh de Saint Cher, Cardinal of Saint Sabina and Legate in Germany, having gone to Liége with a view to remedy the disorders to which the new episcopal government had given rise, heard mention of the decree of the late Bishop Robert, and of the new Feast. The Cardinal had formerly been Prior and Provincial in the Order of Saint Dominic, and was one of the theologians who, having been consulted by John de Lausanne, had favoured the project. He was of the same mind when Legate, and claimed the honour of keeping the Feast himself, and singing Mass with much solemnity. Not satisfied with that, he issued a Circular dated December 29, 1253, which he addressed to the Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots and Faithful of the territory of his legation. And in that document he confirmed the decree of the Bishop of Liége, and extended it to all the country over which he was Legate, granting one hundred days’ indulgence to all who, contrite and after confession of their sins, should on the Feast itself, or during its Octave, devoutly visit a Church in which the Office of Corpus Christi was being celebrated. In the year following the Cardinal of Saint George in Velabro who had succeeded as Legate confirmed and renewed the ordinances made by the Cardinal of Saint Sabina.

These reiterated decrees, however, failed to remove the widespread indifference. A terrible blow had been given by the proposed Feast to the powers of Hell, and Satan excited every possible opposition to it. As soon as the Legates had taken their departure, several local Superiors, men of note and authority, published their own ordinances in opposition to what had been already given. In 1258, the year of the Blessed Juliana’s death, there was still but the single Church of Saint Martin that would celebrate the Feast, which it was her mission to spread throughout the entire world. But she left the continuation of her work to a holy recluse of the name of Eve, to whom she had confided her secrets.

On the 29th day of August 1261 James Pantaléon ascended the papal throne under the name of Urban IV. He owed his election to this dignity of his great personal merits for, by birth, he had nothing to recommend him. He had been Archdeacon of Liége, and there had met with the Blessed Juliana and had approved her work. In this his exaltation to the papacy Eve thought she had an indication of God’s providence. She induced the Bishop, Henry de Gueldre, to send his written congratulations to the new Pontiff and at the same time to entreat him to confirm, by his own approbation, the Feast which had been instituted by Robert de Torôte. About that same time, several supernatural events had attracted public attention, and in particular, the prodigy at Bolsena near Orvieto where the papal court happened to be then residing — the prodigy of a corporal having been stained with blood by a miraculous Host. These events seemed as though providentially permitted in order to rouse Urban’s attention and confirm him in the holy zeal he had formerly evinced for the glory of the Blessed Sacrament. Saint Thomas of Aquinas was appointed to compose, according to the Roman rite, the Office for the Feast, which Office was to be substituted for the one prepared by the Blessed Juliana, and which she had adapted to the ancient liturgy of France. The Bull Transiturus was published soon after. It made known to the Church the Pope’s intentions. Urban there mentions the revelations which had come to his knowledge before his election and declares that, in virtue of his apostolic authority, for the confounding of heresy and the increase of the true faith, he institutes a special Solemnity in honour of the divine Memorial left by Christ to His Church. The day there fixed for the Feast is the fifth Feria (that is, the Thursday) after the Octave of Pentecost, for the Papal document does not mention, as the decree of the Bishop of Liége had done, the Feast of the Blessed Trinity, which had not yet been received into the calendar of the Church of Rome.

In imitation of what had been done by Hugh de Saint Cher, the Pontiff granted a hundred days’ indulgence to all the Faithful who, being contrite and having confessed their sins, should assist at Mass, or Matins, or at first or second Vespers, of the Feast. And for assisting at Prime, Tierce, Sext, None and Compline, forty days for each of those Hours. He also granted a hundred days for each day within the Octave to those who should assist, on any such day, at the Mass and the entire Office. Though thus entering into all these details, there is not an allusion to the Procession, for it was not introduced till the following century.

All now seemed settled: and yet, owing to the troubles which were then so rife in Italy and the Empire, the Bull of Urban IV was forgotten and remained a dead letter. Forty years and more elapsed before it was again promulgated and confirmed by Pope Clement V at the Council of Vienne. John XXII gave it the force of a settled law by inserting it in the Clementines about the year 1318, and he had thus the honour of putting the finishing hand to the great work which had taken upwards of a century for its completion.

The Feast of the Blessed Sacrament, or, as it is commonly called, Corpus Christi, began a new phase in the Catholic worship of the Holy Eucharist. But in order to understand this we must go more thoroughly into the question of Eucharistic worship as practised in the previous ages of the Church: the inquiry is one of importance for the full appreciation of the great Feast for which we must now be preparing our souls. No preparation, so it seems to us, could be more to the point than the devoting the two next days to a faithful and compendious study of the chief features in the history of the Blessed Eucharist.

IT belongs to you, Holy Spirit, to teach us the history of so great a Mystery. Scarcely has your reign begun upon the Earth when, faithful to your divine mission of glorifying our Emmanuel (John xvi. 14) who has ascended into Heaven, you at once raise our eyes and hearts up to that best gift of His love by which we still possess Him under the Eucharistic veil. During those long ages of the expectation of nations, you brought the “Word before mankind.” You spoke of Him in the Scriptures, you proclaimed Him by the Prophets. You that are the Gift of the Most High! (2 Peter i. 19-21) You are also infinite Love and it is through you, as such, that are wrought all the manifestations which God vouchsafes to make to us His creatures. It was you that brought this divine Person, the Word, into the womb of the immaculate Virgin Mary, there to clothe Him with sinless flesh and so make Him our Brother and our Saviour. And now that He has ascended to His Father and our Father (John xx. 17), depriving us of the sight of His human nature, all beauteous with its perfections and charms; now that we have to go through this vale of tears deprived of His visible company, He has sent you to us (Luke xxiv. 49), and you are come, divine Spirit, as our Consoler. But the consolation you bring us, dear Paraclete, is ever the same — it is the faithful remembrance of our Jesus (John xiv. 26). Yes, more, it is His divine Presence perpetuated by you in the Sacrament of Love. We had been already told that this would be so, that you would not speak of yourself (John xvi. 13) or for yourself, but that you would come to give testimony of the Emmanuel (John xv. 26), continue His work, and produce His divine likeness in each one of us.

How admirable is this your fulfilment of your sublime mission, which is all for the glory of Jesus! Divine Spirit, Guardian of the Word in the Church! it is far beyond our power to describe how great is your vigilance over the word of teaching, brought by the Saviour to this Earth of ours, a teaching which is the true expression of Himself and which, coming as He Himself does from the mouth of the Father, is the nourishment of His Bride here below (Matthew iv.). But with what infinite respect and vigilance, Holy Spirit, do you not preside over the august Sacrament in which is present, with all the reality of His adorable Flesh, that same Incarnate Word who from the very first of creation was the centre and object of all your dealings with creatures!

It is by the mystery which is produced by your omnipotence that the exiled Bride recovers her Spouse. It is by you that she traverses the long ages of time holding and prizing her infinite treasure. It is by you that she, with such superhuman wisdom, puts it to profit by so arranging, so modifying her discipline, yes, her very life, as to secure in each age of time the greatest possible faith, respect and love towards the Divine Eucharist. If she anxiously hides It from the profane men that would only turn their knowledge into blasphemy, or if she lavishes on It all that Liturgy can give of pomp and magnificence, or if again, she brings It forth from her sacred temples and triumphantly carries It in processions through the crowded streets of cities or the green lanes of the quiet country, it is you, divine Spirit, that inspires her with what is best. It is your divine foresight that suggests to her what is the surest means for gaining, in each respective period and age, the most of honour and love for that Jesus of hers, who is ever present in the Sacred Host, and who deigns to let His love be delighted with being thus among the children of men (Proverbs vii. 31).

Vouchsafe, Holy Ghost, to aid us in our contemplations of this sacred Mystery. Enlighten our understandings, inflame our hearts, during these hours of preparation for its Feast. Give to our souls the knowledge of that Jesus who is coming to us beneath the Sacramental veil. May this holy Mystery be to us, during this last portion of the year and its liturgy, our Bread to support us on the journey we have still to make through the desert before we can reach the mount of God (3 Kings xix.). We have yet a great way to go, and a way so different from the one we have already passed through when we had the company of our Jesus in the Mysteries He was working for our salvation. Be you, Holy Spirit, our guide in those paths which the Church, under your direction, is courageously traversing, and is every day approaching nearer to the end of her pilgrimage here below. Yet, scarcely have we entered on this second portion of our Year, than you, divine Spirit, bring us to the banquet prepared by divine Wisdom (Wisdom ix.) where the pilgrim gets the strength he needs for his journey. We will walk on, then, in the strength of this heavenly food (3 Kings xix. 8), and when our course is run we will, with the same Bread to support us, cry out with the Spirit and the Bride that our Lord Jesus may come (Apocalypse xxii. 17) to us at that last hour, and admit us into His eternal kingdom.

15 JUNE – SAINTS VITUS, MODESTUS AND CRESCENTIA (Martyrs)

Unknown to his pagan father, Vitus (or Guy) was baptised as a child. When his father found out, he used his best endeavours to dissuade Vitus from the Christian religion, but as he persisted in it, he he handed him over to the judge Valerian to be whipped. Remaining unshaken as before, he was given back to his father. But while his father was turning over in his mind to what severe discipline to subject him, Vitus, being warned by an Angel, fled to another country with Crescentia (his nurse) and her husband Modestus, who had brought him up. There he gained great praise for holiness so that his fame reached Diocletian. The Emperor, therefore, sent for him to deliver his own child that was vexed by a devil. Vitus delivered him, but when Diocletian found that with all his gifts, he could not bring him to worship the gods, he cast him, Crescentia and Modestus into prison. When they were found in the prison more faithful than ever to their confession, the Emperor commanded them to be thrown into a great vessel full of burning resin, pitch and melted lead. There, like the three Hebrew Children in the fiery furnace, they sang praise to God. They were dragged out and cast to a lion, but he only lay down before them and licked their feet. Then, Diocletian being filled with fury, more especially because he saw that the crowd looking on were stirred up by the miracles, he ordered Vitus, Crescentia and Modestus to be stretched on a block and their limbs crushed so that their bones were broken. While they were dying, there came thunder, lightning and earthquakes so that the temples of the gods fell down and many men were killed. Their remains were gathered up by a noble lady named Florentia who gave them honourable burial.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

One of the titles of this Divine Spirit who is reigning so specially over this portion of the Cycle is the Witness of the Word (John xv. 26). Thus was He announced to the world by the Man-God Himself when about to quit it in order to return to His Father after having on His part rendered His own great testimony to Sovereign Truth (John xviii. 37). Formed by the Holy Ghost on the type of Jesus Christ, the faithful too are witnesses whose mission is to trample on lying error, the enemy of God, by expressing the Truth, not in words only but in deeds. There is a testimony however, that is not given to all to render: this is the Testimony of blood. The martyrs hold this privilege, this is the special stand granted to them in the ceaseless battle ever being waged betwixt Truth and Falsehood, and this battle is the sum total of all History. Hence Martyrs come crowding on the brilliant heavens of Holy Church at this season. In a few days the Church will be all thrilling with gladness at the birth of Saint John the Baptist, that man great beyond all men (Matthew xi. 11), and whose greatness specially consists in that he was sent by God to be a witness, to give testimony of the Light (John i. 6, 8). We will then meditate at leisure on these thoughts for which we seem to be prepared by the ever swelling groups of joyous martyrs who cross our path as it were to announce the near approach of the Friend of the Bridegroom (John iii. 29).

Today we have Vitus, accompanied by his faithful foster-parents, Modestus and Crescentia. He is but a child, yet he comes teaching us the price of Baptism and the fidelity we owe to our Father in Heaven despite all else beside. Great is his glory, both on Earth and in Heaven. The demons who used to tremble before him in life still continue their dread of him. His name remains ineffacably inscribed on the memory of the Christian people, just as that of a Saint Elmo or Erasmus, among their most potent “helpers” in daily needs. Saint Vitus, or more commonly Saint Guy, is invoked to deliver those who are attacked by that lamentable sickness which is named from him, as also to neutralise bad effects from the bite of a mad dog, and his beneficence is evinced even to the dumb brutes also. He is likewise implored in cases of lethargy, or unduly prolonged sleep. For this reason, the cock is his distinctive attribute in Christian art, as well as because recourse is usually had to this Saint when one wants to awake at some particular hour.

* * * * *

You have won the battle, glorious Martyrs! The struggle was not long, but it gained for you an eternal crown! You have purchased to yourselves, O Modestus and Crescentia, the everlasting gratitude of your God Himself, for to Him you faithfully gave back the precious charge committed to your keeping in the person of that dear child who became your very own through Faith and Baptism. And you too, noble boy, who preferred your Father in Heaven to your earthly parent, who may tell the caressing tenderness lavished on you eternally by Him whom before men you did so unflinchingly own to be your true Father? Even here below He is pleased to load you with striking marks of His munificence, for to you he confides, on a large scale, the exercise of His merciful power. Because of that holy liberty which reigned in your soul from reason’s earliest dawn by which your body was subjected to your soul’s control, you now hold over fallen nature a marvellous power. Unhappy sufferers whose distorted limbs are worked violently at the caprice of a cruel malady, and are no longer mastered by the will or, on the other hand, those who are rendered powerless and no longer free to act by reason of resistless sleep: all these recover at your feet, that perfect harmony of soul and body, that needful docility of the material to the spiritual, by which man may freely attend to the duties incumbent on him, whether as regards God or his neighbour. Vouchsafe to be ever more and more lavish in the granting of these favours, which are the precious gifts specially at your disposal, for the good of suffering mankind, and for the greater glory of your God who has given you an eternal crown. We implore you, in the words of the Church and by your merits, that God may destroy in us that pride which spoils the equilibrium of man himself and makes him deviate from his path. May it be granted us to have a thorough contempt of evil for thus is restored to man, liberty in love: superbe non sapere, sed placita humilitate proficere, ut prava despiciens, quoecumque recta sunt libera exerceat charitate.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Dorostorum in Mysia, St. Hesychius, a soldier, who was arrested with blessed Julius and after him crowned with martyrdom under the governor Maximus.

At Cordova in Spain, St. Benildes, martyr.

At Zephirium in Cilicia, St. Dulas, martyr, who, under the governor Maximus was, for the name of Christ, scourged, laid on the gridiron, scalded with boiling oil, and after enduring other trials, received for his victory the palm of martyrdom.

At Palmyra in Syria, the holy martyrs Libya and Leonides, sisters, and Eutropia, a girl of twelve years, who won the crown of martyrdom by various torments.

At Valenciennes, the decease of St. Landelin, abbot.

At Clermont in Auvergne, St. Abraham, confessor, illustrious by his holiness and miracles.

In Switzerland, on Mount Jou, St. Bernard of Menthon, confessor.

At Pibrac, in the diocese of Toulouse, St. Germana Cousin, virgin. After a life of poverty, humility and patient suffering amid many trials in the care of her flocks, she went to her heavenly spouse and became renowned for numerous miracles after her death. Blessed Pius IX placed her in the number of holy virgins.

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

Thanks be to God.

15 JUNE – SUNDAY OF THE HOLY TRINITY

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

On the day of Pentecost the Holy Apostles received, as we have seen, the grace of the Holy Ghost. In accordance with the injunction of their divine Master (Matthew xxviii. 19) they will soon start on their mission of teaching all nations and baptising men in the name of the Holy Trinity. It was but right, then, that the solemnity which is intended to honour the mystery of One God in Three Persons should immediately follow that of Pentecost, with which it has a mysterious connection. And yet, it was not till after many centuries that it was inserted in the Cycle of the Liturgical Year, whose completion is the work of successive ages.

Every homage paid to God by the Church’s Liturgy has the Holy Trinity as its object. Time, as well as eternity, belongs to the Trinity. The Trinity is the scope of all religion. Every day, every hour, belongs to It. The feasts instituted in memory of the mysteries of our Redemption centre on It. The feasts of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints are but so many means for leading us to the praise of the God who is One in essence, and Three in Persons. The Sunday’s Office, in a very special way, gives us each week a most explicit expression of adoration and worship of this mystery, which is the foundation of all others, and the source of all grace.

This explains to us how it was that the Church was so long in instituting a special feast in honour of the Holy Trinity. The ordinary motive for the institution of feasts did not exist in this instance. A feast is the memorial of some fact which took place at some certain time, and of which it is well to perpetuate the remembrance and influence. How could this be applied to the mystery of the Trinity? It was from all eternity, it was before any created being existed, that God lives and reigns, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. If a feast in honour of that Mystery were to be instituted, it could only be by the fixing some one day in the year on which the faithful would assemble for the offering a more than usually solemn tribute of worship to the Mystery of Unity and Trinity in the one same divine Nature.

The idea of such a feast was first conceived by some of those pious and recollected souls who are favoured from on high with a sort of presentiment of the things which the Holy Ghost will achieve at a future period in the Church. So far back as the eighth century, the learned monk Alcuin had had the happy thought of composing a Mass in honour of the mystery of the blessed Trinity. It would seem that he was prompted to this by the Apostle of Germany, Saint Boniface. That this composition is a beautiful one no one will doubt that knows from Alcuin’s writings how full its author was of the spirit of sacred Liturgy. But, after all, it was only a votive Mass, a mere help to private devotion, which no one ever thought would lead to the institution of a feast. This Mass, however, became a great favourite and was gradually circulated through the several Churches. For instance, it was approved of for Germany by the Council of Selingenstadt held in 1022. In that eleventh century, however, a feast properly so called of Holy Trinity had been introduced into one of the Churches of Belgium — the very same that was to have the honour later on of procuring to the Church’s Calendar one of the richest of its Solemnities.

Stephen, Bishop of Liege, solemnly instituted the feast of Holy Trinity for his Church in 920, and had an entire Office composed in honour of the mystery. The Church’s law, which now reserves to the Holy See the institution of any new feast, was not then in existence and Riquier, Stephen’s successor in the See of Liege, kept up what his predecessor had begun.

The feast became gradually adopted. The Benedictine Order took it up from the very first. We find, for instance, in the early part of the eleventh century, that Berno, the Abbot of Reichnaw, was doing all he could to propagate it. At Cluny, also, the feast was established at the commencement of the same century, as we learn from the Ordinarium of that celebrated Monastery drawn up in 1091, and where we find mention of Holy Trinity day as having been instituted long before.

Under the pontificate of Alexander II who reigned from 1061 to 1073, the Church of Rome, which has frequently sanctioned the usages of particular Churches by herself adopting them, was led to pass judgement on this new institution. In one of his Decretals, the Pontiff mentions that the feast was then kept in many places, but that the Church at Rome had not adopted it, and for this reason — that the adorable Trinity is every day of the year unceasingly invoked by the repetition of the words: Gloria Patri et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto; as, likewise, by several other formulas expressive of praise.

Meanwhile, the feast went on gaining ground as we gather from the Micrologns and, in the early part of the twelfth century, we have the learned Abbot Rupert, who may justly be styled a Doctor in liturgical science, explaining the appropriateness of that feast’s institution in these words: “Having celebrated the solemnity of the coming of the Holy Ghost, we, at once, on the Sunday next following, sing the glory of the Holy Trinity. And rightly is this arrangement ordained, for, after the coming of that same Holy Spirit, the faith in, and confession of, the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, immediately began to be preached, and believed, and celebrated in Baptism.”

In [England] it was the glorious martyr Saint Thomas of Canterbury that established the feast of Holy Trinity. He introduced it in his Archdiocese in 1162 in memory of his having been consecrated Bishop on the first Sunday after Pentecost. As regards France, we find a Council of Aries held in 1260 under the presidency of Archbishop Florentinus solemnly decreeing, in its sixth canon, the feast of Holy Trinity to be observed with an Octave. The Cistercian Order, which was spread throughout Europe, had ordered it to be celebrated in all its Houses as far back as 1230. Durandus, in his Rationale, gives us grounds for concluding that during the thirteenth century the majority of the Latin Churches kept this feast. Of these Churches, there were some that celebrated it, not on the first, but on the last Sunday, after Pentecost: others kept it twice — once on the Sunday next following the Pentecost Solemnity, and, a second time on the Sunday immediately preceding Advent.

It was evident from all this that the Apostolic See would finally give its sanction to a practice whose universal adoption was being prompted by Christian instinct. John XXII who sat in the Chair of Saint Peter as early as 1334, completed the work by a Decree in which the Church of Rome accepted the feast of Holy Trinity and extended its observance to all Churches.

As to the motive which induced the Church, led, as she is, in all things by the Holy Ghost, to fix one special day in the year for the offering a solemn homage to the blessed Trinity, whereas all our adorations, all our acts of thanksgiving, all our petitions, are ever being presented to It — such motive is to be found in the change which was being introduced at that period into the liturgical Calendar. Up to about the year 1000, the feasts of Saints marked on the general Calendar and universally kept were very few. From that time, they began to be more numerous, and there was evidence that their number would go on increasing. The time would come when the Sunday’s Office, which is specially consecrated to the blessed Trinity, must make way for that of the Saints, as often as one of their feasts occurred on a Sunday. As a sort of compensation for this celebration of the memory of God’s servants on the very day which was sacred to the Holy Trinity, it was considered right that once, at least, in the course of the year, a Sunday should be set apart for the exclusive and direct expression of the worship which the Church pays to the great God, who has vouchsafed to reveal Himself to mankind in His ineffable Unity and in His eternal Trinity.

The very essence of the Christian Faith consists in the knowledge and adoration of One God in Three Persons. This is the Mystery from which all others flow. Our Faith centres in this as in the master-truth of all it knows in this life, and as the infinite object whose vision is to form our eternal happiness. And yet we only know it because it has pleased God to reveal Himself thus to our lowly intelligence which, after all, can never fathom the infinite perfections of that God, who necessarily inhabits light inaccessible (1 Timothy vi. 16). Human reason may, of itself, come to the knowledge of the existence of God as Creator of all beings. It may, by its own innate power, form to itself an idea of His perfections by the study of His works, but the knowledge of God’s intimate being can only come to us by means of His own gracious revelation.

It was God’s good-pleasure to make known to us His essence, in order to bring us into closer union with Himself, and to prepare us, in some way, for that face-to-face vision of Himself which He intends giving us in eternity. But His revelation is gradual: He takes mankind from brightness to brightness, fitting it for the full knowledge and adoration of Unity in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity. During the period preceding the Incarnation of the Eternal Word, God seems intent on inculcating the idea of His Unity, for polytheism was the infectious error of mankind. And every notion of there being a spiritual and sole cause of all things would have been effaced on Earth had not the infinite goodness of that God watched over its preservation.

Not that the Old Testament Books were altogether silent on the Three Divine Persons, whose ineffable relations are eternal. Only, the mysterious passages which spoke of them were not understood by the people at large, whereas in the Christian Church a child of seven will answer them that ask him that, in God, the Three Divine Persons have but one and the same nature, but one and the same Divinity. When the Book of Genesis tells us that God spoke in the plural and said: “Let Us make man to our image and likeness” (Genesis i. 26), the Jew bows down and believes, but he understands not the sacred text. The Christian, on the contrary, who has been enlightened by the complete revelation of God, sees under this expression the Three Persons acting together in the formation of Man. The light of Faith develops the great truth to him, and tells him that, within himself, there is a likeness to the blessed Three in One. Power, Understanding and Will, are three faculties within Him, and yet He Himself is but one being.

In the Books of Proverbs, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus Solomon speaks, in sublime language, of Him who is Eternal Wisdom. He tells us, and he uses every variety of grandest expression to tell us, of the divine essence of this Wisdom, and of His being a distinct Person in the Godhead — but, how few among the people of Israel could see through the veil? Isaias heard the voice of the Seraphim as they stood around God’s throne. He heard them singing, in alternate choirs, and with a joy intense because eternal, this hymn: “Holy! Holy! Holy! is the Lord! (Isaias vi. 3), but who will explain to men this triple Sanctus, of which the echo is heard here below, when we mortals give praise to our Creator? So again, in the Psalms and the prophetic Books, a flash of light will break suddenly upon us. A brightness of some mysterious Three will dazzle us but it passes away, and obscurity returns seemingly all the more palpable. We have but the sentiment of the divine Unity deeply impressed on our inmost soul, and we adore the Incomprehensible, the Sovereign Being.

The world had to wait for the fullness of time to be completed, and then God would send into this world his Only Son, Begotten of him from all eternity. This His most merciful purpose has been carried out and “the Word made Flesh has dwelt among us” (John i. 14) By seeing His glory, “the glory of the Only Begotten Son of the Father” (John i. 14), we have come to know that in God there is Father and Son. The Son’s mission to our Earth, by the very revelation it gave us of Himself, taught us that God is eternally Father, for whatever is in God is eternal. But for this merciful revelation, which is an anticipation of the light awaiting us in the next life, our knowledge of God would have been too imperfect. It was fitting that there should be some proportion between the light of Faith and that of the vision reserved for the future. It was not enough for man to know that God is One.

So that we now know the Father, from whom comes, as the Apostle tells us, all paternity even on Earth (Ephesians iii. 15). We know Him not only as the creative power which has produced every being outside Himself but, guided as it is by Faith, our soul’s eye respectfully penetrates into the very essence of the Godhead, and there beholds the Father begetting a Son like to Himself. But, in order to teach us the mystery, that Son came down on our Earth. He Himself has told us expressly that “no one knows the Father, but the Son, and He to whom it will please the Son to reveal Him” (Matthew xi. 27). Glory, then, be to the Son who has vouchsafed to show us the Father! And glory to the Father, whom the Son has revealed to us!

The intimate knowledge of God has come to us by the Son, whom the Father, in His love, has given to us (John iii. 16). And this Son of God, who in order to raise up our minds even to His own Divine Nature, has clad Himself by His Incarnation with our Human Nature, has taught us that He and His Father are one (John xvii. 22) — that they are one and the same Essence, in distinction of Persons. One begets, the other is begotten. The One is named Power, the Other, Wisdom or Intelligence.

The Power cannot be without the Intelligence, nor the Intelligence without the Power, in the sovereignly perfect Being: but, both the One, and the Other produce a Third term. The Son, who had been sent by the Father, had ascended into Heaven with the Human Nature which He had united to Himself for all future eternity and lo! the Father and the Son send into this world the Spirit who proceeds from them both. It was a new Gift, and it taught man that the Lord God was in Three Persons. The Spirit, the eternal link of the first Two, is Will; He is Love, in the divine Essence. In God, then, is the fullness of Being, without beginning, without succession, without increase — for there is nothing which He has not. In these Three eternal terms of His uncreated Substance is the Act, pure and infinite.

The sacred Liturgy, whose object is the glorification of God and the commemoration of His works, follows each year the sublime phases of these manifestations by which the Sovereign Lord has made known His whole self to mortals. Under the sombre colours of Advent, we commemorated the period of expectation during which the radiant Triangle sent forth but few of its rays to mankind. The world, during those thousands [of] years, was praying Heaven for a Liberator, a Messiah, and it was God’s own Son that was to be this Liberator, this Messiah. That we might have the full knowledge of the prophecies which foretold Him, it was necessary that He Himself should actually come: “a child was born to us” (Isaias ix. 6), and then we had the key to the Scriptures. When we adored that Son, we adored also the Father who sent Him to us in the Flesh, and to whom He is consubstantial. This Word of Life, whom we have seen, whom we have heard, whom our hands have handled (1 John i. 1), in the Humanity which He deigned to assume, has proved Himself to be truly a Person, a Person distinct from the Father, for One sends, and the Other is sent. In this second Divine Person, we have found our Mediator who has re-united the creation to its Creator. We have found the Redeemer of our sins, the Light of our souls, the Spouse we had so long desired.

Having passed through the mysteries which He Himself wrought, we next celebrated the descent of the Holy Spirit who had been announced as coming to perfect the work of the Son of God. We adored Him, and acknowledged Him to be distinct from the Father and the Son who had sent Him to us with the mission of abiding with us (John xiv. 16) He manifested Himself by divine operations which are especially His own, and were the object of His coming. He is the soul of the Church: He keeps her in the truth taught her by the Son. He is the source, the principle, of the sanctification of our souls and in them He wishes to make His dwelling. In a word, the mystery of the Trinity has become to us not only a dogma made known to our mind by Revelation but, moreover, a practical truth given to us by the unheard of munificence of the Three Divine Persons: the Father, who has adopted us; the Son, whose brethren and joint-heirs we are; and the Holy Ghost, who governs us, and dwells within us.

Although the Sacrifice of the Mass is always celebrated in honour of the blessed Trinity, yet, for this day, the Church, in her chants, prayers and lessons, honours in a more express manner the great mystery which is the foundation of our Christian faith. A commemoration is, however, made of the first Sunday after Pentecost, in order not to interrupt the arrangement of the Liturgy. The colour used by the Church on this feast of Trinity is white, as a sign of joy, as, also, to express the simplicity and purity of the divine essence.

Epistle – Romans xi. 33‒36

O the depth of the riches of the wisdom, and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgements, and how unsearchable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counsellor? Or who has first given to Him, and recompense shall be made Him? For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things: to Him be glory, forever. Amen.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

We cannot fix our thoughts upon the divine Judgements and ways without feeling a sort of bewilderment. The eternal and infinite dazzle our weak reason. And yet this same reason of ours acknowledges and confesses them. Now, if even the ways of God with His creatures surpass our understanding, how can we pretend to discover of ourselves the inmost nature of this sovereign Being? And yet, in this in-created essence, we do distinguish the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost from each other, and we glorify them. This comes from the Father having revealed Himself by sending us His Son, the object of His eternal delight. It comes from the Son showing us His own Personality by taking our Flesh, which the Father and the Holy Ghost did not. It comes from the Holy Ghost being sent by the Father and the Son, and His fulfilling the mission He received from them. Our mortal eye respectfully gazes on these divine depths of truth, and our heart is touched at the thought that it is through His benefits to us that He has given us to know Him, and that our knowledge of what He is, came through what He gave us. Let us lovingly prize this Faith, and confidently wait for that happy moment when it will make way for the eternal vision of that which we have believed here below.

Gospel – Matthew xxviii. 18‒20

And Jesus coming, spoke to them saying, “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going, therefore, teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the consummation of the world.”

Praise be to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

The mystery of the Blessed Trinity which was taught us by the mission of the Son of God into this world, and by the promise of a speedy sending the Holy Spirit, is announced to men by these solemn words uttered by Jesus just before His Acension into Heaven. He had said: “He that will believe, and will he baptised, will he saved” (Mark xvi. 16), but He adds that Baptism is to be given in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Henceforward man must not only confess the unity of God by abjuring a plurality of gods, but he must also adore a Trinity of Persons in Unity of Essence. The great secret of Heaven is now a truth which is published through the whole world.

But, while humbly confessing the God whom we have been taught to know as He is in Himself, we must likewise pay a tribute of eternal gratitude to the ever glorious Trinity. Not only has It vouchsafed to impress Its divine image on our soul by making her to Its own likeness, but, in the supernatural order It has taken possession of our being and raised it to an incalculable pitch of greatness. The Father has adopted us in His Son become Incarnate. The Word illumines our minds with His light. The Holy Ghost has chosen us for His dwelling: and this it is that is expressed by the form of holy Baptism. By those words pronounced over us, together with the pouring out of the water, the whole Trinity took possession of Its creature. We call this sublime marvel to mind as often as we invoke the Three divine Persons, making on ourselves, at the same time, the Sign of the Cross. When our mortal remains are carried into the house of God, there to receive the last blessings and farewell of the Church on Earth, the priest will beseech the Lord “not to enter into judgement with His servant,” and in order to draw down the divine mercy on this Christian who has gone to his eternity, he will say to the Sovereign Judge that this member of the human family “was marked, while in this life, with the sign of the Holy Trinity.” Let us respect this divine impress which we bear on us: it is to be eternal. Hell itself will not be able to blot it out. Let it then be our hope, our dearest title, and let us live for the glory of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

O INDIVISIBLE Unity! Trinity distinct in one only Nature! Infinite God, who has revealed yourself to men, graciously bear with us while we dare to make our adorations before you, and pour forth our heart’s thanksgiving, feeling ourselves overwhelmed by the brightness of your majesty. Unity divine! Divine Trinity! We have not as yet seen you, but we know that you are, for you have vouchsafed to reveal yourself to us. This Earth on which we are living has the mystery distinctly proclaimed to it every day of its existence — that same august mystery whose vision is the source of the happiness enjoyed by the Blessed, who are glorified, and are united with you in closest union. The human race had to wait long ages before the divine formula was fully revealed — happy we who live in its full possession and can, and do, delightedly proclaim Unity and Trinity in your infinite Essence!

There was a time when an inspired writer spoke an allusion to this grandest of truths, but his words flashed across the mind of his hearers as lightning traverses a cloud, and then leaves it darker than before. “I have not learned Wisdom,” said he, “and have not known the science of saints. Who has ascended up into Heaven? and descended? Who has held the wind (the storm) in his hands? Who has bound up the waters together, as in a garment? Who has raised up all the borders of the earth? What is his name? and what is the name of his Son, if you know?” (Proverbs xxx. 3, 4).

Thanks to your unbounded mercy, Lord God, we now know your name. You are called the Father, and He whom you beget from all eternity is named the Word and Wisdom. We know, too, that from the Father and the Son proceeds the Spirit of love. The Son, clad in our flesh, has dwelt on this Earth and lived among men. Then came down the Spirit, and abides forever with us, till the destinies of the human race are accomplished here below. Therefore is it, that we dare to confess the Unity and the Trinity: for we have heard the divine testimony and have believed, and, “having believed we have spoken with all certainty” (Psalms cxv. 10; 2 Corinthians iv. 13). Accept, then, this our confession, Lord, as you did that of your brave virgin and martyr Cecilia, who when the executioner had thrice struck her neck with the sword, and her noble blood flowed in streams from her wound, expressed her faith as she breathed forth her soul, and confessed, by the position of her hands, the Unity of your Nature and the Trinity of your Persons.

The hymn of your Seraphim has been heard here on Earth: “Holy, Holy, Holy, the Lord God of hosts!” (Isaias vi. 3). We are but mortals. We are not Prophets as was Isaias and yet have we a happiness which he had not — we can repeat the song of those blessed Spirits with fullness of knowledge, and can say to you: “Holy is the Father, Holy is the Son, Holy is the Spirit!” Those same Seraphim flew with two of their wings. With two they hid their face, and with two they covered their feet. So is it with us: strengthened, as we are, by the divine Spirit who has been given to us, we strive to lighten the heavy weight of our frail mortality and raise it aloft on the wings of desire. We hide our sins by repentance and, veiling the weakness of our intellectual vision beneath the cloud of Faith, we receive the light which is infused into our souls. Docile to the revealed word, we submit to its teachings. And it imparts to us not merely a distinct, but even an enlightened knowledge of that mystery, which is the source and centre of all others. The Angels and Saints in Heaven contemplate it with that inexpressible reserve, which the Prophet describes by saying that they hide their face with their wings. We poor mortals have not, and cannot have, the sight of the great truth. But we have the knowledge of it, and this knowledge enlightens our path, and keeps us firm in the truth. We have a dread of presuming to be searchers of your majesty, lest we should be “overwhelmed by glory” (Proverbs xxv. 27). But humbly treasuring up what Heaven has vouchsafed to reveal to us of its secrets, we dare thus to address you:

Glory be to you, divine Essence, that are but one! You are pure Act. You are Being, necessary, infinite, undivided, independent, perfect from all eternity, peaceful and sovereignly happy. In you we acknowledge, together with the inviolable Unity, which is the source of all your perfections, Three Persons distinctly subsistent but, in their production and distinction, the one same Nature is common to all, so that the personal subsistence which constitutes them, and distinguishes them one from the other, causes no inequality between them. Infinite blessedness in this life of the Three Persons! They contemplate in themselves the ineffable perfections of the Essence which unites them together, and the attribute of each of the Three, which divinely animates the nature that nothing can limit or disturb! Wonder of that infinite Essence, when it deigns to act outside itself, by creating beings in its power and its goodness! The Three Persons work then together so that the one which acts in a way which is His special attribute, does so in virtue of a will common to all. May a special love be given to that divine Person who, in the act which is common to the Three, deigns to reveal Himself thus markedly to us creatures and, at the same time, may thanks be given to the other Two, who unite, in one same will, with the Person who vouchsafes to honour us with that special manifestation of Himself!

Glory be to you, O Father, you Ancient of days (Daniel vii. 9). You are unborn, without beginning, but communicating, essentially and necessarily, to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, the godhead which dwells in you! You are God, and you are Father. He who knows you as God, and knows you not as Father, does not know you as you are. You produce, you beget, you test — but it is within your own bosom that you generate, for nothing is God which is outside yourself. You are being, you are power. But you have never been without a Son. You speak to yourself all you are yourself. You explain yourself, and the fruit of the fecundity of your thought, which is equal to yourself, is a second Person coming forth from you: it is your Son, your Word, your uncreated Word. Once did you utter this Word. And your Word is eternal as you yourself are, and as is your thought, of which that Word is the infinite expression. Like the sun which is visible to our eyes and which has never existed, but what its own brightness has existed with it: this brightness is by the sun, it is with the sun. It emanates from it without lessening it, and it never exists as something independent of its source.

Bear, Father, with this weakness of our understanding, which borrows from the beings you have created an image to which to compare you. And so, again, if we study ourselves whom you have created to your own likeness, we find that a thought of our own, that it may be something distinct from our mind, has need of a term, a word, to fix and express it.

O Father! We have been brought to know you by that Son whom you eternally beget, and who has vouchsafed to reveal Himself to us. He has taught us that you are Father, and Himself Son; and that, nevertheless, you are one with Him (John x. 30). When one of His Apostles said to Him: “Lord, show us the Father!” He answered him: “He that sees me, sees the Father” (John xiv. 8, 9). Unity of the divine Nature by which the Son, though distinct from the Father, is not less than what the Father is! Delight of the Father in the Son, by whom He has the knowledge of Himself! Delight of intimate love, of which He spoke to His creature man, on the banks of Jordan and on the top of Thabor! (Matthew iii. 17; 2 Peter i. 17).

Father! We adore you, but we also love you, for a Father should be loved by his children, and we are your children. It is an Apostle that teaches us that all paternity proceeds from you, not in Heaven alone, but on Earth too (Ephesians iii. 15). No one is Father, no one has paternal authority, be it in a family, or in the State, or in the Church, but by you, and in you, and in imitation of you. No, more — you would have us not only be called, but really and truly be your sons (1 John iii. 1), not, indeed by generation, as is your Only Begotten Son, but by an adoption which makes us joint-heirs with Him (Romans viii. 17). This divine Son of yours, speaking of you, says: “I honour my Father” (John viii. 49). We, also, honour you, sovereign Father, Father of infinite majesty, and until eternity dawn on us, we glorify you now from the depths of our misery and exile, uniting our humble praise with that which is presented to you by the Angels, and by the Blessed ones, who are of the same human family as ourselves. May your fatherly eye protect us, may it graciously find pleasure in us your children, whom, as we hope, you have foreseen, whom you have chosen, whom you have called to the faith, and who presume, with the Apostle, to call you the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation (2 Corinthians i. 3).

Glory be to you Son, Word, Wisdom, of the Father! You emanate from His divine essence. He gave you birth before the day-star (Psalms cix. 3) and He said to you: “This day have I begotten you” (Psalms ii. 7), and that day, which has neither eve nor morrow, is eternity. You are Son, and Only Son. And this name expresses one same nature with Him who begets you. It excludes creation, and shows you to be consubstantial with the Father, from whom you come forth, perfectly like Him in all things. And you come forth from the Father, without coming out of the divine essence, being co-eternal with your source: for in God there is nothing new, nothing temporal. Your Sonship is not a dependency, for the Father cannot be without the Son, no more than the Son can be without the Father. If it be a glory in the Father to produce the Son, it is no less a glory in the Son to be the exhaustive term to the generative power of the Father.

O SON of God! You are the Word of the Father. Uncreated Word! You are as intimately in Him, as is His thought: and His thought is His being. It is in you that this His being expresses itself, in its whole infiniteness: it is in you that He knows Himself. You are the spiritual fruit produced by the divine intellect of the Father. The expression of all that He is, whether He keeps you mysteriously in His bosom (John i. 18), or produces you outside Himself. What language can we make use of in order to describe you and your glories, Son of God! The Holy Ghost has vouchsafed to come to our assistance in the writings which He has inspired: and it is with the very expressions He has suggested, that we presume thus to address you: “You are the brightness of the Father’s glory. You are the figure of His substance.” (Hebrews i. 3) “You are the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God’s majesty, and the image that reflects His eternal goodness” (Wisdom vii. 26). We presume, likewise, to say to you what we are taught by the holy Church assembled at Nicea: You are “God of God; Light of Light; true God of true God.” And we add with the Fathers and Doctors: “You are the torch eternally lit by the eternal torch. Your Light lessens nothing of that which communicates Itself to you; neither is your Light inferior, in anything to that from which it is produced.”

But when this ineffable fecundity which gives an eternal Son to the Father, and, to the Father and Son a third term, willed to manifest Itself outside the divine essence. And, not having again the power to produce what is equal to Itself, it deigned to call forth, from nothingness, intellectual and rational nature, as being the nearest approach to its author, and material nature, as being the least removed from nothingness — then, O Only-Begotten Son of God, the intimate production of your Person in the Father’s bosom revealed itself by Creation. It is the Father who made all things: but, it was in Wisdom, that is, in you, that He made all (Psalms ciii. 24). This mission of working which you received from the Father is a consequence of the eternal generation by which He produces you from Himself. You came forth from your mysterious rest, and creatures, visible and invisible, came forth at your bidding out of nothing. Acting in closest union with the Father, you poured out on the worlds you created somewhat of that beauty and harmony of which you are the image in the divine essence. And yet, your mission was not at an end when creation was completed. Angels and Men, who were intellectual and free beings, were destined for the eternal vision and possession of God. The mere natural order could not suffice for these two classes of your creatures: a supernatural way had to be prepared for them by which they might be brought to their last end. You, Only-Begotten Son of God, are this “Way.” By yourself assuming human nature, you united yourself to your own work, you raised Angel and Man up to God, and, by your Human Nature, you showed yourself as the supreme type of the Creation which the Father had effected by you. Unspeakable mystery, you are the uncreated Word and, at the same time, you are the first-born of every creature (Colossians i. 15), not, indeed, to appear until your time should come and yet preceding, in the divine mind and intention, all created beings, all of which were to be created, in order that they might be your subjects.

The human race, though destined to possess you, in its midst, as its divine intermediary, rebelled against its God by sin, and by sin was plunged into the abyss of death. Who could raise it up again? Who could restore it to the sublime destiny it had forfeited? You alone, Only-Begotten Son of the Father! It was what we never could have hoped for, but this God so loved the world as to give His Only-Begotten Son (John iii. 16), to be not only the Mediator, but the Redeemer, too, of us all. You, our first-born, asked your Father to restore your inheritance to you (Psalms xv. 5). You had to purchase back this inheritance.

Then did the Father entrust you with the mission of Saviour to our lost race. Your Blood, shed on the Cross, was our ransom, and by it we were born again to God and restored to our lost privileges. Therefore, Son of God, we, your redeemed, glory in calling you Our Lord. Having thus delivered us from death, and cleansed us from sin, you vouchsafed to restore us to all the grand things we had lost for, henceforth, you are our Head, and we are your members. You are King, and we your happy subjects. You are Shepherd, and we the sheep of your one fold. You are Spouse, and the Church, our Mother, is your Bride. You are the living Bread come down from heaven, and we are your guests. Son of God! Emmanuel! Son of Man! Blessed be the Father that sent you, but blessed also be you who fulfilled the mission He gave you, and has been pleased to say, that your “delight is to be with the children of men!” (Proverbs viii. 31).

GLORY be to you, Holy Spirit, who eternally emanate from the Father and the Son in the unity of the divine substance! The eternal Act, by which the Father knows Himself, produces the Son, who is the infinite image of the Father: the Father is full of love for this brightness which eternally proceeds from Himself, and the Son, contemplating the source from which He forever comes, conceives for this source a love as great as that with which Himself is loved. What language could describe this mutual ardour and aspiration, which is the attraction and tendency of one Person to Another in the eternally immovable Essence! You are this Love, divine Spirit, that proceeds from the Father and the Son as from one same principle. You are distinct from Both, and yet are the bond that unites them in the ineffable delights of the Godhead. You are living Love, personal Love, proceeding from the Father by the Son, the final term which completes the divine Nature, and eternally perfects the Trinity. In the inaccessible bosom of the great God, your Personality comes to you both from the Father, of whom you are the expression by a second production (John xv. 26), and from the Son, who, receiving of the Father, gives you of His own (John xvi. 14, 15), for the infinite Love which unites them is of Both Persons, and not of one alone. The Father was never without the Son, and the Son never without the Father. So, likewise, the Father and Son have never been without you, Holy Spirit! Eternally have they loved, and you are the infinite Love which exists between them, and to which they communicate their Godhead. Your Procession from Both exhausts the productive power of the increated Essence and thus are the divine Persons Three in number, all that is outside Them, is created being.

In the divine Essence, there is not only Power and Intelligence, but, also and necessarily there is Will, from which action follows. Will and Love are one and the same thing, and you, divine Spirit, are this Will, this Love. When the glorious Trinity works outside itself, the act conceived by the Father, and expressed by the Son, is accomplished by you. By you, likewise, the Love, which the Father and Son have for each other, and which is personified in you, is extended to beings which are to be created. It is by His Word that the Father knows them. It is by you, divine Love, O Holy Spirit, that He loves them and thus, all creation proceeds from the divine goodness.

Emanating as you do from the Father and the Son, you are sent by Both to us creatures, and yet so as not to lose thereby the equality you have from all eternity with Them. The Son, when sent by the Father, clad Himself, once forever, with our human nature and His Person, by the works which are peculiarly His own, is shown to us as distinct from that of the Father. So, likewise, Holy Spirit, we recognise you as distinct from the Father and the Son by your coming down to fulfil in our regard, the mission given to you by Both. It was you that inspired the Prophets (2 Peter i. 21), you that overshadowed Mary in the divine Incarnation (Luke i. 35), you that rested on the flower of Jesse (Isaias xi. 2), you that led Jesus into the desert (Luke iv. 1), you that glorified Him by miracles (Matthew xii. 28). The Church, His Bride, receives you, and you teach her all truth (John xvi. 13), and you abide in her as her devoted friend, even to the very end of time (John xiv. 16). Our souls are signed with your seal (Ephesians i. 13, iv. 30) and you quicken them with supernatural life (Galatians v. 25). You dwell even in our bodies, making them your temple (1 Corinthians vi. 19). In a word, you are to us the Gift of God, and the fountain springing up even into life everlasting (John, iv. 14; vii. 38, 39. May special thanks be given to you, Holy Spirit, for the special works you accomplish in our favour!

And now, having adored each of the divine Persons, and blessed each for the favours He has bestowed on this world, we again dare to fix our unworthy gaze on that Trinity of Majesty which exists in the Unity of the divine Essence. Sovereign Lord, we again confess what you have taught us but we confess it in the words of your servant Augustine: “They are not more than Three: One that loves Him who is from Him; and One that loves Him from whom He is; and One who is that very Love”. But we have still a debt of gratitude to pay for that unspeakable favour of yours by which, blessed Trinity, you have vouchsafed to mark us with the image of yourself. Having resolved from all eternity to admit us into fellowship with yourself (1 John i. 3), you have prepared us for according to a type taken from your own divine Nature (Genesis i. 27). There are three powers in our one soul. This tells us that it was you who gave us our existence, and yet this likeness to yourself, which is the glory of our natural being, was but a preparation for further purposes of your generous love towards us. After having bestowed on us this natural being, it pleased you to decree, sacred Trinity, that a supernatural one should also be imparted to us. When the fullness of time had come, the Father sends us His Son, and this uncreated Word brings light to our understanding: the Father and the Son send us the Spirit, and the Spirit brings love to our will: and the Father, who cannot be sent, comes of Himself, and gives Himself to our soul, giving her a power beyond her own strength. It is in holy Baptism, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, that is produced, in the Christian, this work of the Three divine Persons which is so admirably in keeping with the faculties of our soul. And these faculties are but an outline of the masterpiece which the supernatural action of God can alone complete.

Blessed union by which God is in man, and man is in God! Union that brings us to adoption by the Father, to brotherhood with the Son, to our eternal inheritance! But, how has this indwelling of God in His creature been formed? Gratuitously, by God’s eternal love. And, how long will it last? Forever, unless man himself refuse to give love for love. Mortal sin admitted into the soul, the divine indwelling is at an end: the very moment that sanctifying grace is lost, the Three divine Persons who had taken up their abode in that soul (John xiv. 23) and were united with her, abandon her. God would be no longer in her, save by His immensity, but the soul would not possess Him as she did before. Then would Satan set up again his wretched kingdom within her, the kingdom of his vile trinity, concupiscence of the flesh, concupiscence of the eyes, and pride of life (2 John ii. 16). Woe to the man who would dare to defy his God by such rebellion, and put evil in the place of infinite good! Hell and eternal torments are the consequences of the creature’s contempt of his Creator. God is a jealous God. If we drive Him from the dwelling of our souls, the deep abyss must be our everlasting abode.

But is this rupture beyond the hope of reconciliation? Yes, as far as sinful man’s power is concerned, for he can never of himself recover his position with the blessed Trinity, which God’s gratuitous bounty had prepared and His incomprehensible goodness achieved. But, as the Church teaches us in her Liturgy, God never shows His power more than when He has pity on a sinner and pardons Him: it is this powerful mercy of God which can work the prodigy of a reconciliation, and He really does work it, as often as a sinner is converted. When the august Trinity deigns to return into the soul of repentant man, the Angels and Saints in Heaven are filled with joy, as the Gospel assures us (Luke xv. 10), for the Father, Son and Holy Ghost have testified their love and sought their glory by making him just, who had been a sinner; by coming again to dwell in this lost sheep; in this prodigal, who had, but a few days before, been tending swine; in this thief who, but just now, had been insulting on the Cross, together with his fellow culprit, the innocent Crucified.

Adoration, then, and love, be to you, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, perfect Trinity that has vouchsafed to reveal yourself to mankind; eternal and infinite Unity, that has delivered our forefathers from the yoke of their false gods! Glory be to you, as it was in the beginning, before any creature existed; as it is now, at this very time, while we are living in the hope of that true life which consists in seeing you face-to-face; and as it will forever be, in those everlasting ages when a blissful eternity will have united us in the bosom of your infinite Majesty. Amen.

14 JUNE – SAINT BASIL THE GREAT (Bishop, Confessor and Doctor of the Church)

Basil, the most celebrated of the Greek Fathers, came of a family of saints, the best known being his father, Saint Basil the Elder, his brother Saint Gregory Nyssen, and his sister Saint Macrina. Born at Caesarea in Cappadocia, Basil distinguished himself as a student at Constantinople and Athens. In the latter city he became close friends with Saint Gregory Nazianzen who was also destined to become a Bishop and Doctor of the Church. Basil was consecrated Bishop of Caesarea on the 14th of June 370 and died on the first of January 379. He defended the Catholic faith before the Emperor Constantius, in particular the use of the word “Consubstantial,” which was inserted in the Nicene Creed. He left many writings, including a Treatise (Hexaemeron) on the Book of Genesis, several hundred letters and a series of homilies. Saint Gregory Nazianzen put him in first place among commentators on the Bible and Erasmus declared Saint Basil the finest orator of all time. Saint Basil led the life of a monk and wrote a Rule which is still followed in the East.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The Doctors who form the fourfold glory of the Greek Church complete their sacred number on the Cycle this day. John Chrysostom was the first to greet us, with his radiant light, during Christmastide. The glorious Pasch saw the rise of two resplendent luminaries, Athanasius and Gregory Nazianzen. Basil the Great, having checked his effulgent blaze till now, illumines the reign of the Holy Ghost. He well deserves so distinguished a place by reason of his eminent doctrine and brave combats which prepared the way for the triumph of the Divine Paraclete over the blasphemies of the impious sect of Macedonius who used against the Third Person of the Consubstantial Trinity the very same arguments invented by Arius against the Divinity of the Word. The Council of Constantinople putting the finishing stroke to that of Nicaea, formulated the Faith of the Churches, in Him who proceeds from the Father, no less than does the Word Himself, Who is adored and glorified conjointly with the Father and the Son. Basil was not there on the day of victory. Prematurely exhausted by austerities and labours, he had been sleeping the sleep of peace for quite two years when this great definition was promulgated. But it was his teaching that inspired the assembled council. His word remains as the luminous expression of Tradition concerning the Holy Spirit, Who is Himself the Divine Loadstone attracting all in the vast universe that aspire after holiness, the potent Breeze uplifting souls, the Perfection of all things. Just as we hearkened to Gregory Nazianzen on his feast day, speaking magnificent truths concerning the great Paschal Mystery, let us listen now to his illustrious friend explaining that of the present season, sanctification effected in souls:

“The union of the Holy Ghost and the soul is effected by the estrangement of the passions which having crept in had separated her from God. Whoever, therefore, would disengage himself from the deformity that proceeds from vice and return to that beauteousness which he holds of His Creator would restore within himself the primitive features of that royal and divine original, such a one does verily draw near to the Paraclete. But then also, even as the sun coming in contact with an unsullied eye illumines it, so the Paraclete reveals to such a one the image of Him that cannot be seen. And in the blissful contemplation of this image, he perceives the ineffable beauty of the Principle, the Model of all. In this ascension of hearts of which the first tottering steps, as well as the growing consummation, are equally His work, the Holy Spirit renders them spiritual who are quit of all stain, by reason of that participation of Himself into which He initiates them. Bodies that are limpid and translucent, pierced by a brilliant ray, become resplendent and shed light all around them. Thus also souls bearing the Holy Spirit within them are all luminous with Him, and becoming themselves spiritualised, shed grace all around. Hence, the superior understanding possessed by the Elec, and their converse in the Heavens. Hence, all fair gifts. Hence, your own resemblance to your God. Hence, truth sublime! You yourself are a god. Wherefore it is that properly and in very truth, by the illumination of the Holy Ghost, we contemplate the splendour of God’s glory. Yes, it is by the character of resemblance which He has imprinted in our soul that we are raised up even to the loftiness of Him whose full similitude He, the Divine Seal, bears with Himself. He, the Spirit of Wisdom reveals to us, not as it were outside, but within Himself, Christ, the Wisdom of God. The path of contemplation leads from the Holy Ghost, by the Son, to the Father. Concurrently, the goodness, holiness and royal dignity of the Elect come from the Father by the Son to the Holy Ghost, whose temples they are. And He fills them with His own glory, illuminating their brow with a radiance like that of Moses at the sight of God. Thus likewise did He, in the case of our Lord’s Humanity. Thus does He to the Seraphim who cannot cry their triple Sanctus save in Him. So also to all the choirs of Angels, whose concerts He regulates, whose songs He vibrates. But the carnal man who has never exercised his soul in contemplation, holding her captive in the mud and mire of the senses, cannot lift his eyes to Light supernal: the Holy Spirit belongs not to him.”

The action of the Paraclete surpasses the power of any creature. Therefore, in thus drawing attention to the operation of the Spirit of Love, Saint Basil is anxious to bring his adversaries to confess of their own accord the Divinity of the Holy Ghost. On the other hand, who can fail to recognise in this burning exposition of doctrine, not merely the invincible theologian, vindicating dogma, but furthermore the experienced guide of souls, the sublime ascetic, deputed by God to bring down within reach of all marvels of holiness such as an Anthony or a Pachomius brought forth in the desert? Even as the bee humming amid the flowers avoids the thorn and knows how to eschew poisoned sap, so Basil in his youthful days had hovered amid the schools of Athens and Constantinople without sucking in any of their poison. According to the advice he himself gave to youth at a later date in a celebrated discourse, his quick intelligence unsullied by passions (too often found even in the most gifted) had succeeded in stealing from rhetoricians and poets all that could adorn as well as develop his mind, and discipline it for the struggle of life. The world smiled on the young orator whose pure diction and persuasive eloquence recalled the palmy days of Greek Literature.

But the noblest gifts of glory Earth could offer were far beneath the lofty ambition with which with his soul was fired in reading the holy Scriptures. Life’s struggle in his eyes seemed a combat for truth alone. In himself, first of all, must Divine Truth be victorious by the defeat of nature and by the Holy Ghost’s triumphant creation of the new man. Therefore, heedless to know before God’s own time whether he might not be used in winning souls to God, never once suspecting how soon multitudes would indeed come pressing to receive the law of life from his lips, he turned his back on all things and fled to the wilds of Pontus, there to be forgotten of men in his pursuit after holiness. Nor did the misery of those times cause him to fall into that error, so common nowadays, namely that of wishing to devote one’s self to others before having first regulated one’s own soul. Such is not the true way of setting charity in order. Such is not the conduct of the saints. No, it is yourself God wants of you before all things else. When you are become His in the full measure He intends, He Himself will know how to bestow you on others, unless perchance He prefers, for your greater advantage, to keep you all to Himself! But in any case He is no lover of all that hurry to become useful. He does not bless these would be utilitarians who are all eagerness, as it were, to push themselves into the service of His Providence.

Anthony of Padua showed us this truth yesterday. And here we have it given to us a second time. Mark it well: that which really tends to the extension of our Lord’s glory is not the amount of time given to the works, but the holiness of the worker. According to a custom frequent in that century, owing to the fear entertained of exposing the grace of Baptism to woeful shipwreck, Basil remained a simple Catechumen until his youth had well near matured to manhood. Of the years that followed his Baptism, thirteen were spent in the monastic life and nine in the episcopate. At the age of fifty he died. But his work, carried on under the impulse of the Holy Ghost, far from finishing with him, appeared more fruitful and went on thus increasing during the course of succeeding ages. While living the life of a humble monk on the banks of the Iris where his mother and sister had preceded him, his whole being was all intent on the saving of his soul from the judgement of God, and on running generously in the way that leads to the eternal recompense. Later on, others having begged him to form them also to the warfare of Christ the King according to the simplicity of faith and the Scriptures, our Saint would not have them embrace the life of solitaries, such isolation being not without danger for the many. But he preferred for them one that would join to the blissful contemplation of the solitary, the rampart and completeness of community life in which charity and humility are exercised under the conduct of a head who, in his turn, deems himself but the servitor of all.

Moreover, he would admit none into his monasteries without serious and prolonged trial followed by a solemn engagement to persevere in this new life. At the remembrance of what he had admired among the Solitaries of Egypt and Syria, Basil compared himself and his disciples to children who fain would strive in a puny way to mimic strong men, or to beginners sticking at the first difficulties of the rudiments, and scarce yet fairly started on the path of true piety. Yet the day would come when the ancient giants of the wilderness and the hoary legislators of the desert would see their heroic customs and their monastic codes cede the place of honour to the familiar conferences, to the unprepared answers given by Basil to his monks, in solution of their proposed difficulties, and to form them to the practice of the divine counsels. Ere long, the whole of the East ranged itself under his Rule, while in the West, Saint Benedict called him his Father.

His Order, like a fruitful nursery of holy monks and virgins, bishops, doctors and martyrs, has stocked heaven with saints. For a long time it served as a bulwark of the faith to Byzantium and [in the nineteenth century] beheld, despite the schism, its faithful children sparing not to render under the savage persecution of the Tsar of Russia, their testimony of blood and suffering, to Holy Mother Church. Worthily also have they in it paid a personal testimony, as it were, to their intrepid father. For Basil too was the grandson of Martyrs, the son and brother of Saints. Would that we might be allowed to devote a page to the praises of his illustrious grandmother, Macrina the elder, who seems to have miraculously escaped from the hands of her executioners, and from a seven years’ exile in the wild forests on purpose to be instrumental in infusing into Basil’s young heart that faith firm and pure which she had herself received from Saint Gregory Thaumaturgus.

Suffice it to say that towards the close of his life the great Basil, Doctor of the Church and Patriarch of Monks, was proud to appeal to Macrina’s name as a guarantee for the orthodoxy of his faith when once called in question. Basil’s lifetime was cast in one of those periods exceptionally disastrous to the Church, when shipwrecks of faith are common because darkness prevails to such an extent as to cast its shades even over the children of Light (1 Thessalonians v. 5), a period in fact when, as Saint Jerome expresses it, “the astonished world waked up to bewail itself Arian.” Bishops were faltering in essentials of true belief and in questions of loyalty to the Successor of Peter so that the bewildered flock scarcely knew whose voice to follow. For many of their pastors, some through perfidy, and some through weakness, had subscribed at Rimini to the condemnation of the Faith of Nicaea. Basil himself was assuredly not one of them, not one of those blind watchmen: dumb dogs not able to bark. When but a simple Lector he had not hesitated to sound the horn of alarm by openly separating himself from his Bishop who had been caught in the meshes of the Arians. And now himself a Bishop, he boldly showed that he was so indeed. For, when entreated for peace’s sake to make some compromise with the Arians, vain was every supplication, every menace of confiscation, exile or death. He used no measured terms in treating with the Prefect Modestus, the tool of Valens. And when this vaunting official complained that none had ever dared to address him with such liberty, Basil intrepidly replied: “Perhaps you never yet had to deal with a Bishop.”

Basil, whose great soul was incapable of suspecting duplicity in another, was entrapped by the guile of a false monk, a hypocritical bishop, one Eustathius of Sebaste, who by apparent austerity of life and other counterfeits long captivated the friendship of Basil. This unconscious error was permitted by God for the increase of his servant’s holiness, for it was destined to fill his declining days with utmost bitterness, and to draw down on him the keenest trial possible to one of his mould, namely, that several in consequence began to doubt of his own sincerity of faith. Basil appealed from the tongue of calumny to the judgement of his brother bishops, but yet he recoiled not from likewise justifying himself before the simple Faithful. For he knew that the richest treasure of a Church is the pastor’s own surety of faith and his personal plenitude of doctrine. Athanasius, who had led the battles of the first half of that century and had conquered Arius, was no more: he had gone to join in the well-merited repose of eternity his brave companions, Eusebius of Vercelli and Hilary of Poitiers.

In the midst of the confusion that Valens’ persecution was then reproducing in the East, even holy men knew not how to weather the storm. Many such were to be seen adopting first the extreme measure of utter withdrawal through mistaken excess of prudence, and then rushing into equally false steps of indiscreet zeal. Basil alone was of a build proportioned to the tempest. His noble heart bruised in its most delicate feelings, had drunk the chalice to the dregs, but strong in Him who prayed the prayer of agony in Grethsemani, the trial crushed him not. With wearied soul and with a body well near exhausted by the jading effects of chronic infirmities, already in fact a dying man, he nevertheless nerved himself up against death and bravely faced the surging waves. From this ship in distress, as he termed the Eastern Church, dashing against every rock amid the dense fog, his pressing cry of appeal reached the ears of the Western Church seated in peace in her unfailing light,— reached Rome from where alone help could come, yet whose wise slowness, on one occasion, made him almost lose heart. While awaiting the intervention of Peter’s Successor, Basil prudently repressed anything like untimely zeal and, for the present, required of weak souls merely what was indispensable in matters of faith, just as under other circumstances and with equal prudence, he had severely reproved his own brother, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, for suffering himself to be betrayed by simplicity into inconsiderate measures, motived indeed by love of peace.

Peace, yes, this is just what Basil desired as much as anybody: but the peace for which he would give his life could be only that true Peace left to the Church by our Lord. What he so vigorously exacted on the grounds of Faith proceeded solely from this very love of his, for peace. And therefore, as he himself tells us, he absolutely refused to enter into communion with men of just medium, men who dread nothing so much as a clear, close drawn, expression of dogma. In his eyes, their captious formulae and ungraspable shiftings were but the action of hypocrites in whose company he would scorn to approach God’s altar. As to those merely misled, “let the Faith of our Fathers be proposed to them with all tenderness and charity. If they will assent thereunto, let us receive them into our midst. In other cases, let us dwell with ourselves alone, regardless of numbers. And let us keep aloof from equivocating souls who are not possessed of that simplicity without guile indispensably required, in the early days of the Gospel, from all who would approach to the Faith. The believers, so it is written, had but one heart and one soul (Acts iv 32). Let those, therefore, who would reproach us for not desiring pacification, mark well who are the real authors of the disturbance, and so not point the question of reconciliation on our side any more.”

In another place, he thus continues, “To every specious argument that would seem to counsel silence on our part, we oppose this other, namely, that charity counts as nothing, either her own proper interests, or the difficulties of the times. Even though no man is willing to follow our example, what then? Are we ourselves, just for that, to let duty alone? In the fiery furnace the children of the Babylonian captivity chanted their canticle to the Lord without making any reckoning of the multitude who set truth on one side: they were quite sufficient for one another, merely three as they were!” He thus wrote to his monks, likewise pursued and vexed by a government that would fain not own itself a persecutor: “There are many honest men who though they admit that you are being treated without a shadow of justice, still will not grant that the sufferings you are enduring can quite deserve to be called confessing the faith. Ah, it is by no means necessary to be a pagan in order to make martyrs! The enemies we have nowadays detest us no less than did the idolaters. If they would fain deceive the crowd as to the motive of their hatred, it is merely because they hope thereby to rob you of the glory that surrounded Confessors in bygone days. Be convinced of it: before the face of the just Judge, your confession is every whit as real. So, take heart under every stroke, renew yourselves in love. Let your zeal gain strength every day, knowing that in you are to be preserved the last remains of godliness which the Lord, at His return, may find upon the Earth. Trouble not yourselves about treacheries, nor from where they come: was it not the princes among God’s priests, the scribes and the ancients among His own, that plotted the snares in which our divine Master suffered Himself to be caught! Heed not what the crowd may think, for a breath is sufficient to sway the crowd to and fro like the rippling wave. Even though only one were to he saved, as in the case of Lot out of Sodom, it would not be lawful for him to deviate from the path of rectitude merely because he finds that he is the only one that is right. No, he must stand alone, unmoved, holding fast his hope on Jesus Christ.”

Basil himself, from his bed of sickness, set an example to all. But what was not the anguish of his soul when he realised how scant correspondence his efforts received among the leading men in his own diocese! He sadly wondered at seeing such as these, and how their ambition was in no wise quenched by the lamentable state of the Churches, how they still could listen to nothing but their own puny jealous susceptibilities when the vessel was actually foundering, and could bicker and quarrel about who should command the ship when she was already sinking. Then, there were others, and even these were to be found among the better sort who would fain hold aloof, hoping to get themselves forgotten in the silence of their own inertia, quite ignoring that when general interests are at stake egotistic estrangement from the scene of struggle can never save an individual, nor absolve him from the crime of treason. It is curious to hear our Saint himself relating the story to his friend Eusebius of Samosata, the future Martyr, of how once Basil’s death was noised abroad, and consequently all the bishops hurried at once to Caesarea to choose a successor.

“But,” Basil continues, “as it pleased God that they should find me alive, I took this opportunity to speak to them weighty words. Yet vainly, for while in my presence they feared me and promised everything, but scarce had they turned their backs than they were just the same again.” In the meanwhile, persecution was pursuing its course, and sooner or later, the moment came for each in turn to choose between either downright heresy or banishment. Many, unfortunately, then consummated their apostasy. Others, opening their eyes at last, took the road to exile where they were able to meditate at leisure on the advantages of their policy of “keeping quiet,” and “out of the struggle.” Or better still, where they could repair their past weakness by the heroism with which they would henceforth suffer for the faith. Basil’s virtue held even his persecutors at bay, and God preserved him in such wondrous ways that at last he was almost the only one that remained at the head of his Church, although he had really exposed himself far more than anyone else to the brunt of every attack and to every peril. He profited hereby to the benefit of his favoured flock on whom he lavished the boon of highest teaching and wisest administration. This he did with such marvellous success that so much could scarcely have been attainable by another bishop in times of peace, when exclusive attention could be devoted to those employments.

Caesarea responded splendidly to his pastoral care. His word excited such avidity amongst all classes that the populace would hang upon his lips and await his arrival the live long day, in the ever more and more closely thronged edifice. We learn this from his remarks: for instance, once, when his insatiable auditory would allow him no repose in spite of his extreme fatigue, he tenderly compares himself to a worn out mother who gives her baby the breast, not so much to feed it, as to stay its cries. The mutual understanding of pastor and flock in these meetings is quite delicious! When the great orator would chance by inadvertence to leave some verse of Scripture unexplained, with all decorum, yet eagerly, would these sons of his, by signs and half suppressed mutterings, recall the attention of the venerable father to the passage of the text before him, from the explaining of which they were not going to let him off free. On such occasions Basil would pour himself out in charming excuses for his mistake, and then give what was asked of him, but in such a way as to show he really was proud of his flock! When he was explaining, for example, the magnificence of the great ocean among other wonders of the Works of the Six Days, he suddenly paused and casting a glance of ineffable pleasure over the vast crowd, closely pressing around his episcopal chair, he thus continued: “If the sea is beauteous, and in God’s sight worthy of goodly praise, how far more beautiful is this immense assembly whereof better than the waves that swell and roll and die away against the coast, the mingled voices of men, women, and children bear to God our swelling prayer: you tranquil ocean, peaceful in your mighty deep, because evil winds of heresy are impotent to rouse your waves!”

Happy people, thus formed by Basil, to the understanding of the Scriptures, especially of the Psalms of which he inspired the Faithful with so great love that it was quite the custom for all to repair at night to the House of God, there, in the solemn accents of alternate psalmody, to pour out their souls, in one united homage. Prayer in common was one of those fruits of his ministry that Basil (like a true monk) valued the most. The importance he attached to it has made him to be one of the principal Fathers of the Greek Liturgy. “Talk not to me,” he cries out, “of private homes, of private assemblies. Adore the Lord in His Holy Court, says the Psalmist. The adoration here called for is that which is paid not outside the Church, but in the Court, the one only Court of the Lord” (in Psalms xxviii.). Time and space would fail us, were we to attempt to follow our Saint through all the details of this grand family life which he so thoroughly lived with his whole people, and which formed his one consolation in the midst of his otherwise stormy career.

It would behove us to show how he made himself all to all, in gladness and in sorrow, with a simplicity which is so admirably blended in him with lofty greatness. How he would reply to the humblest consultations, just as though he had nothing more urgent on hand than to satisfy the demands of the least among his sons. How he would cry out against every touch of injustice offered to one of his flock and cease not, till full compensation was made. And finally, how, with the aid of his Faithful of Caesarea, rising up as one man to defend their bishop, he would oppose himself as a strong rampart to protect virgins and widows against the brutal oppression of men in power. Though himself poor and stripped of all things since the day when about to enter the monastic state, he had distributed the whole of his rich paternal inheritance among the poor, he nevertheless found the secret of how to raise in his episcopal city an immense establishment destined as an assured refuge for pilgrims and the poor — an asylum ever open and admirably organised to meet the requirements of every kind of suffering and the needs of all ages: or rather, a new city, built beside the great Caesarea, and named by the gratitude of the people after its sainted founder. Ever ready for any combat, Basil intrepidly maintained his rights as exarch, which he possessed by reason of his See over the eleven provinces composing the vast administrative division known to the Romans by the generic name of the diocese of Pontus. Indefatigable in his zeal for the sacred canons, he both defended his clergy against all attempts aimed at their immunities, and reformed such abuses as had crept in during times less troubled than his own. Even in the very vortex of the storm, he knew how to bring back ecclesiastical discipline to the perfection of its best days. At last the time came when the main interests of the Faith, the perils of which seemed up to this, to have suspended in his worn out body the law of all flesh — now no longer demanded his presence, so absolutely as before. On the 9th of August 378, the arrow of the Goth exercised justice on Valens. Soon afterwards, Gratian’s Edict recalled the exiled Confessors and Theodosius appeared in the East. On the First of January 379, Basil at last set free, slept in the Lord.

The Greek Church celebrates the memory of this great Bishop on the day of his death conjointly with the Circumcision of the Word made Flesh, a second time, on the Thirtieth of the same month of January, uniting therewith two other of her doctors, namely Saints Gregory Nazianzen and John Chrysostom, bringing all the magnificence of her gorgeous Liturgy to give splendour to this grand solemnity of January 30th, illumined as it is by a “triple sun, beaming glory concordantly to the Holy Trinity.” The Latin Church has chosen for her celebration of Saint Basil the day of his Ordination, namely June 14th.

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To give thus a list of your admirable works is in itself to sing your praises, mighty Pontiff! Would that nowadays you had imitators, for history teaches us that Saints of a build like yours are those who cause an epoch to be really great and who save society. No matter how tried, how abandoned even, a people may apparently be, if only blessed with a ruler docile in all things — docile to heroism, to the inspirations of the Holy Ghost ever abiding in Holy Church — this people will assuredly weather the storm and conquer at last. Whereas, if the salt lose its savour (Matthew v. 13), society necessarily falls away without the need of any Julian or any Valens to bring about its ruin. Basil, do then obtain for this our waning society, leaders such as you were. May the astonishment of Modestus be justly renewed in these days of ours. Let prefects, Valens’ successors, meet at the head of every Church a Bishop in the full sense of the term as used by you. Then will their astonishment be for us a signal of victory, for a Bishop is never vanquished, even should he be exiled or put to death!

While maintaining the Pastors of the Church up to the high standard of the state of perfection in which the sacred unction supposes them to be, lead the flock likewise, to higher paths of sanctity, such as Christianity gives scope for. Not to monks alone is that word spoken: “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke xvii. 21). You have taught us that the kingdom of Heaven, that beatitude that can be ours already, is the contemplation, accessible to us here below, of eternal realities, not indeed by clear and direct vision, but in that mirror of which the Apostle speaks. How foolish is it to cultivate and feed in man nothing but the senses that crave for the material alone, and to refuse to the spirit its own proper food and bent? Does not the spirit urge of its own nature towards intellectual regions for the which it is created? If its flight be slow and heavy, the reason is that the senses by prevailing, impede its ascent.

Teach us, therefore, to furnish it more and more with increased faith and love, by which it may become light and agile as the hart to leap to loftiest heights. Tell in our age, as you did formerly in yours, that forgotten truth, namely how earnestness in maintaining an upright faith is no less necessary for this end than rectitude of life. Alas, how far have your sons for the greater part forgotten that every true monk, as well as every true Christian, detests heresy and all that savours of it. Wherefore, dear Saint, bless all the more particularly those few whom such a continuity of trials has, as yet, failed to shake in their constancy. Multiply conversions. Hasten the happy day when the East, casting off the yoke of schism and Islam, may resume her former glorious place in the one Fold of the one Shepherd. Doctor of the Holy Ghost, Defender of the Word Consubstantial to the Father, grant that we, now prostrate at your feet, may ever live to the glory of the Holy Trinity. These are the words of your own admirable formulary: “To be baptised in the Trinity, to hold one’s belief conformable to one’s Baptism, to glorify God according to our Faith,” such was the essential basis set down by you for the being a Monk. But is it not that also of the being a Christian? Would that all might thoroughly understand this! Vouchsafe, dear Saint, to bless us all.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Samaria, in Palestine, the holy prophet Eliseus, whose grave, says St. Jerome, makes the demons tremble. With him rests also the prophet Abdias.

At Syracuse, St. Marcian, bishop, who was made bishop by the blessed Apostle St. Peter, and killed by the Jews after he had preached the Gospel.

At Soissons, the holy martyrs Valerius and Rufinus who, after enduring many torments, were condemned to be beheaded by the governor Rictiovarus in the persecution of Diocletian.

At Cordova, the holy martyrs Anastasius, priest, Felix, monk, and Digna, virgin.

At Constantinople, St. Methodius, bishop.

At Vienne, St. Ætherius, bishop.

At Rhodez, St. Quinctian, bishop.

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

Thanks be to God.