4 AUGUST – SAINT DOMINIC (Confessor)

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

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

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

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

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

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

At Cologne, St. Protasius, martyr.

At Verona, St. Agabius, bishop and confessor.

At Tours, St. Euphronius, bishop.

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

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

Thanks be to God.

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

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

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks be to God.

2 AUGUST – SAINT STEPHEN I (Pope and Martyr)

Stephen, a Roman and the son of Jovius, was the archdeacon of Rome when Pope Saint Lucius I entrusted him with the care of the Church shortly before his martyrdom in 254 AD in the persecution under Decius. During the interval between the Decian and Valerian persecutions, there sprang a controversy regarding baptism. The Churches of Africa and the East, and of Alexandria to a lesser extent, declared that baptisms performed by heretics were void and could only be valid when performed by duly consecrated clergy in communion with the Church. However, Pope Stephen I was of the view that every baptism performed with the right matter and the right words was effective.

Saints Cyprian of Carthage and Dionysius of Alexandria wrote to Pope Stephen who replied by denouncing Cyprian as a false Christ, a false apostle and a deceitful worker. He broke off communion with all the Churches of the East and of Africa which adhered to the more rigorous practice. Cyprian then held a council at Carthage attended by 71 bishops of Africa, and at it he asserted the independent judgement of the African Churches. Cyprian sent two bishops to Rome with a copy of the decisions of the Carthaginian council, and letters from himself. Stephen would not allow the messengers to enter his presence, and forbade the faithful to show them the smallest hospitality, to receive them into their houses, or wish them God-speed. Cyprian wrote in indignation. He condemned in severe terms the perverseness, obstinacy and contumacy of Stephen. He promulgated, in Latin, a letter of Saint Firmilian, the Bishop of Cappadocian Caesarea, even more unmeasured in its censures. Firmilian denounced the audacity and insolence of Stephen and scoffed at his boasted descent from Saint Peter. He declared that, by his sin, he had excommunicated himself: that he was a schismatic, an apostate from the unity of the Church. Cyprian assembled another council of 87 bishops who reasserted their previous decision, repudiated the assumption by Stephen of the title Bishop of Bishops, and the arbitrary dictation of one bishop to all Christendom.

This happened in 256 AD. In the council were fifteen confessors, some with scars, and maimed for the faith. It is not known what was the end of this dispute. It lasted under the pontificate of Saint Sixtus, the successor of Stephen. The sudden outbreak of persecution under Valerian in 257 AD drew attention from these questions to the more pressing necessities of a time of fiery trial. One of the first victims was Stephen. Soldiers suddenly entered a church while he was saying Mass, but he remained before the altar and concluded the sacred mysteries with intrepidity, and was beheaded on his throne. He was buried in the Catacombs of Saint Callistus.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The commemoration of the illustrious Pope and Martyr Stephen I adds a perfume of antiquity to the holiness of this day dedicated to the honour of a comparatively modern Saint. Stephen’s special glory in the Church is to have been the guardian of the dignity of holy Baptism. Baptism once given can never be repeated, for the character of child of God, which it imprints upon the Christian, is everlasting. And this unspeakable dignity of the first Sacrament in no wise depends upon the disposition or state of the minister conferring it. According to the teaching of Saint Augustine, whether Peter, or Paul, or Judas baptise, it is He upon whom the Divine Dove descended in the Jordan, it is He alone and always that baptises by them in the Holy Ghost. Such is the adorable munificence of our Lord with regard to this indispensable means of salvation, that the very pagan who belongs not to the Church, and the schismatic or heretic separated from her, can administer it with full validity on the one condition of fulfilling the exterior rite in its essence, and of wishing to do by it what the Church does.

In the time of Stephen I this truth was not so universally known as now. Great bishops whose learning and holiness had justly won them the admiration of their age wished to make the converts from various sects pass again through the laver of salvation. But the assistance promised to Peter was not wanting to his successor, and by maintaining the traditional discipline, Rome, through Stephen, saved the faith of the Churches. Let us testify our gratitude to the holy Pontiff for his fidelity in guarding the sacred deposit which is the treasure of all men. And let us beg him to preserve no less effectually, in us also, the nobility and the rights of our holy Baptism.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Nicaea in Bithynia, the martyrdom of St. Theodota with her three sons. The eldest, named Evodius, confessing Christ with confidence, was first beaten with rods, by order of Nicetius, ex-consul of Bithynia, and then the mother, with all her sons, was consumed by fire.

In Africa, St. Rutilius, martyr. He had frequently secured safety from the perils of persecution by flight, and sometimes even by means of money, but at last, being unexpectedly apprehended, he was led to the governor and subjected to many tortures. Afterwards he was cast into the fire and thus merited the glorious crown of martyrdom.

At Padua, St. Maximus, bishop of that city, who ended his blessed life in peace, with a reputation for miracles.

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

Thanks be to God.

2 AUGUST – SAINT ALPHONSUS DE LIGUORI (Confessor and Doctor of the Church)

 

Alphonsus Maria de' Ligouri was born in Marianella near Naples, Italy, on 27 September 1696 to Giuseppe Ligouri, a naval officer and Captain of the Royal Galleys, and his wife Anna Maria Caterina Cavalieri. He was baptised two days later as Alphonsus Maria Antonio Giovanni Damiano Michele Gaspari de' Ligouri. His family was of noble origin.

As a young man he cared for the sick in the public hospitals and devoted his spare time to prayer in churches. In obedience to his father he became a lawyer, studying law at the University of Naples. He graduated with doctorates in both civil and canon law at the age of 16. Alphonsus was successful in his legal career but after losing an important case, and hearing an interior voice saying “leave the world and give yourself to me” he abandoned his profession.

Alphonus renounced his right of inheritance as the oldest son (primogeniture) and became a priest in 1726 at the age of 30. Zealous against vice, he procured the conversions of many sinners. He took particular pity on the poor and those living in the country. In 1732 Alphonsus founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer to preach the Gospel to them. To avoid any distractions from this mission he took a perpetual vow never to waste any time. Alphonsus was constant in contemplating the Passion of Christ and the Holy Eucharist and was outstanding in his devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Alphonsus wrote many books of devotion and religious instruction to gain souls for Christ. He consistently refused ecclesiastical honour but was forced by Rome to accept the episcopal chair of Sant'Agata dei Goti in 1762. He was generous to the poor and brought religious sisters back to a more perfect form of life. Serious chronic illnesses forced him to resign his office as bishop and return to his disciples. By May 1775 he was blind, deaf and full of other infirmities.

Alphonsus died on 1 August 1787 at the age of 90. He was beatified in 1816 by Pope Pius VII and canonised in 1839 by Pope Gregory XVI. In 1949 the Redemptorists founded the Alphonsian Academy (Alphonsianum) for the advanced study of Catholic moral theology. It is situated in Rome and in 1960 became part of the Faculty of Theology of the Pontifical Lateran University. Pope Pius IX declared Alphonsus a Doctor of the Universal Church and Pope Pius XII designated him the heavenly patron of all confessors and moralists.

2 AUGUST – TENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

This Sunday is, some years, the second of the dominical series which opened with the feast of Saint Laurence, and took its name (of Post Sancti Laurentii) from the solemnity of the great Deacon-Martyr. It is, also, sometimes called the Sunday of Humility, or, of the Pharisee and Publican, because of the Gospel of the day. The Greeks count it as the tenth of Saint Matthew, and they read on it the episode of the Lunatic, which is given in the 17th Chapter of that Evangelist.

Epistle – 1 Corinthians xii. 2‒11

Brethren, you know that when you were heathens you went to dumb idols, according as you were led. Wherefore, I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God says “Anathema” to Jesus. And no man can say “The Lord Jesus,” but by the Holy Ghost. Now there are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit. And there are diversities of ministries but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but the same God, who works all in all. And the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man unto profit. To one indeed, by the Spirit, is given the word of wisdom: and to another, the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit: To another, faith in the same spirit: to another, the grace of healing in one Spirit: To another the working of miracles: to another, prophecy: to another, the discerning of spirits: to another, diverse kinds of tongues: to another, interpretation of speeches. But all these things, one and the same Spirit works, dividing to everyone according as He will.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The reading of our Epistle shows us that it is speaking of those absolutely gratuitous favours which, at the first commencement of the Church, were more or less enjoyed by every Christian assembly, and since then are imparted to a few privileged souls which, generally speaking though not necessarily, are being guided in the extraordinary paths of mystic Theology. If, in the immense majority of God’s faithful servants, we do not meet with these infused graces of prophecy, of supernatural knowledge, of the gift of tongues, or of miracles properly so called, yet the Lives of the Saints are always the common patrimony of the children of the Church and therefore they should not neglect to provide themselves with the lights needed for understanding and profiting by a reading which is so important and so interesting. In this season of the Liturgical Year which is so specially devoted to the celebration of the mysteries of divine Union, it is very necessary to have certain clear ideas without which we should be in danger of confounding what, in this higher Christian life, is the interior perfection of the soul and her real holiness, with those exterior, and intermittent, and varied phenomena which are but the radiation of the Spirit of love, who is Master to display His own operations in His own divine way.

These are the motives which induced the Church to select for today this passage from the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians. If we would fully enter into her design, we must not limit our attention to the few lines we have just been reading. The end of the chapter from which they are taken, as likewise the two subsequent chapters, are all one and the same piece of teaching, and must not be separated one from the other (1 Corinthians xii., xiii, xiv.) In this important passage, besides the summary of the principles which are unchangeable, we have also an instructive account of what the Church’s assemblies were in those early times when the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit everywhere opened and made to flow in abundance the double spring of miracle and holiness. The rapid conquest of the world which, from the very commencement was to give evidence to the catholicity of the Church, required a large effusion of power from on high: and in order that the promulgation of the New Testament might be made authoritatively among men, it was necessary that God should give it all possible solemnity and authenticity. And this He did, by accompanying it with signs and wonders, of which He alone could be the author. Hence in those early days the Holy Ghost took not possession of a soul by Baptism, without giving an external sign of His presence in that new Christian — without, that is, one of those manifestations which the Apostle here enumerates. Thus the Witness of the Word (John xv. 26) fulfilled the twofold mission he had received: he sanctified in truth the faithful of Christ (John xvii. 17) and he will convince of sin the world which would not receive the word of the heralds of the Gospel.

Saint Paul (Romans i. 4) mentions three proofs which were held out to the world as a sure guarantee of the divinity of Christ: these were His Resurrection from the grave, the holiness of those who became His disciples, and thirdly the innumerable miracles which accompanied the preaching of the Apostles and the conversion of the Gentiles. As to the first of these proofs, we will have it proposed to our consideration next Sunday. Passing then, to the second — the law given to the world by Jesus of Nazareth was abundantly proved to be of divine origin by the admirable change of this Earth of which, when He was born in it for our salvation, we might say in the language of the Scripture, all flesh had corrupted its way (Genesis vi. 12). For men that knew how to use their reasoning powers, no demonstration could be plainer or more cogent than this, which showed that, from the sinks of corruption, there were everywhere coming forth harvests worthy of Heaven, and that men, who had degraded themselves to the level of the brute by the indulgence of their evil passions, were now changed into angels of Earth by their saintly morals and heavenly aspirations. To change the odour of death into the good odour of Christ (2 Corinthians ii. 14‒16), that is, to live his life as did the Christians — was it not a revealing God to men by showing that the very life of God was lived by men in human flesh? (2 Corinthians iv. 10, 11).

But, for men who seem incapable of reasoning, for men who cannot see beyond the present nor raise themselves above the senses — for so many beings who have become brutalised who, in virtue which scorns to share in their debaucheries, see nothing but a something to stare at and blaspheme (1 Peter iv. 4) — for all these the Holy Spirit had prepared a demonstration which was tangible and visible, and which all could take in —it was that exuberance of supernatural gifts, which were actively at work in every place where there was a church. The gift of Tongues, which had given such power to the preaching of the Apostles on the day of Pentecost (Acts ii. 6‒11), was multiplied with such frequency, when men came near the baptismal font, that the beholders were astonished, or, as the full force of the sacred text gives it, they were stupified (Acts x. 44‒48). It continued to be the sign, the wonder, whose influence on the unbeliever, after first exciting his surprise, went on gradually inclining both his thoughts and his heart towards the word of faith (1 Corinthians xiv. 22). But the work of his conversion received a still greater impulse when he was introduced into the assembly of the men of his own neighbourhood, whom hitherto he had only known in the simple intercourse of every day life. He then found them transformed into prophets who could see into the most hidden recesses of his unbelieving soul. All were his convincers, all were his judges — how was he to resist? No, he fell prostrate on the ground, he adored God, he could not but acknowledge that the Lord was indeed in such an assembly (1 Corinthians xiv. 24, 25).

The Corinthians to whom Saint Paul wrote that Epistle were rich in these spiritual favours. Nothing of this kind of grace was wanting to them, and the Apostle gave thanks to God for His having so abundantly endowed them, for thereby a strong testimony was given to the Christian religion (1 Corinthians i. 4‒7). But it would have been a great mistake if from this profusion bestowed on them by the Holy Spirit, a man had concluded that the Corinthians were perfect. Jealousies, vanity, obstinacy and other miseries earned for them the name of carnal, which was given to them by the same divine Spirit, and made the Apostle tell them that he was compelled to treat them as children incapable of receiving anything like sublime teaching (1 Corinthians ii. 1‒3). These privileged receivers of gratuitous graces pointed out very clearly, therefore, the difference between the value the Christian should attach to these exceptionally great but perhaps, to the possessor’s own soul, unproductive favours and between the value he should set on justifying and sanctifying grace which makes the soul pleasing to God.

This second — the regularly appointed result of the Sacraments which were instituted by our Lord’s munificence for the use of all men — this justifying, this sanctifying, grace is the necessary basis of salvation. It is also the one sole measure of future glory, for its development and increase depend on the merit of each individual possessor. Gratuitous Grace, on the contrary, is irregular and spontaneous both in its origin and its effects, and is quite independent of the recipient, be his dispositions or merits what they may. Like the authority given to one over the souls of others — like those several ministries mentioned in our Epistle — this Gratuitous Grace has for its aim, not so much the advantage of him who receives it, as the advantage of his fellow-men. And this aim is realised independently of the virtue or the imperfection of the one whom God has selected as His instrument. So that miracles or prophecy do not necessarily presuppose a certain amount of holiness in the thaumaturgus or the prophet. We have a proof of it in our Corinthians, and a still stronger in Balaam and Judas. God, who had His own designs which were not to be frustrated by their faults or sins, left them in possession of His own gifts just as He does in the Priest who may, perhaps, be anything but what he should be. and who nevertheless validly makes use of faculties and powers more divine than any of those others. We have it from our divine Master Himself: “Many,” says He, will say that day (of judgment) ‘Lord! Lord! Have we not prophesied in your name, and, in your name, cast out devils, and done many wonderful works in your name?’ And then will I profess to them, “I never knew you. Depart from me, you that work iniquity!” (Matthew vii. 22, 23).

In these days when such manifestations of supernatural power are no longer needed for the promulgation of the Gospel, and are therefore less frequent, it is generally the case that when they are found in a Christian they are an indication of a real and sanctifying Union existing between him and the Spirit of love. That Holy Spirit, who raises such a Christian above the ordinary paths, takes pleasure in His own divine work, and wishes to have it attract the attention either of all the faithful, or at least of some privileged souls who, being moved by these extraordinary signs, give thanks to God for the favours He has bestowed on that soul. And yet, even in such case it would be a mistake to measure the holiness of that favoured soul by the number or greatness of such exterior gifts. The development of charity by the exercise of the several virtues is the only thing that makes men be Saints. Divine Union, whether it be that degree of it which is attainable by all, or those grand heights of Mystic Theology which are reached by a few privileged ones — divine Union does not in any way depend on those brilliant phenomena. These, when they are bestowed on a servant of God, do not generally wait for his reaching perfection in divine love, though it is love alone will give him, if he be faithful, the perfection of true holiness.

The practical conclusion we are to draw from all this, is, what the Apostle makes the summary of his teaching on this subject: Have a great esteem for all these gifts. Look on them as the work of the Holy Ghost who thereby bestows manifold degrees of adornment on the whole body of the Church (1 Corinthians xii. 11‒30). Do not despise any of these (1 Corinthians xiv. 39), but when you see or hear of any of them count those as the most precious (1 Corinthians xii. 31) which produce most edification in the Church, and in souls (1 Corinthians xiv. 12). Let us, above all, hearken to what Saint Paul adds: “I have a way to show you more excellent than all these! (1 Corinthians xii. 31). If I should speak with the tongues of men and of angels; if I should have prophecy, and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge; if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains; if I have not charity, I am nothing, it profits me nothing. Prophecies will be made void, tongues will cease, knowledge will be destroyed” and be substituted by the vision beatific. But Charity will never fail, will never cease. Of all things, Charity is the greatest (1 Corinthians xiii. 1‒13).

Gospel – Luke xviii. 9‒14

At that time Jesus spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves as just and despised others: “Two men went up into the temple to pray: the one a Pharisee and the other a publican. The Pharisee standing, prayed thus with himself: ‘O God, I give you thanks that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, as also is this publican. I fast twice in a week: I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the publican, standing afar off, would not so much as lift up his eyes towards heaven; but struck his breast, saying: ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’ I say to you, this man went down into his house justified rather than the other: because every one that exalts himself will be humbled: and he that humbles himself will be exalted.”

Praise be to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Commenting this passage of Saint Luke, Venerable Bede thus explains the mystery: “The Pharisee is the Jewish people, who boasts of the merits he had acquired to himself by observing the precepts of the law. The Publican is the Gentile who, being far off from God, confesses his sins. The Pharisee, by reason of his pride, has to depart in humiliation. The Publican, by his lamenting his miseries, merited to draw near to God, that is, to be exalted. It is of these two people, and of every man, who is proud or humble, that it is written: ‘The heart of a man is exalted before destruction, and it is humbled before he be glorified” (Proverbs xviii. 12).

In the whole Gospel, then, there was no teaching more appropriate, as a sequel to the history of Jerusalem’s fall. The children of the Church who in her early years saw her humbled in Sion and persecuted by the insulting arrogance of the Synagogue, now quite understand that word of the Wise Man: ‘Better is it to be humbled with the meek, than to divide spoils with the proud!’ (Proverbs xvi. 19). According to another Proverb, the tongue of the Jew — that tongue which abused the Publican and ran down the poor Gentile — is become, in his mouth, as a rod of pride (Proverbs xiv. 3), a rod which, in time, struck himself by bringing on his own destruction. But while adoring the justice of God’s vengeance and giving praise to His mercy, the Gentiles must take care not to go into the path in which was lost the unhappy people, whose place they now occupy. Israel’s offence, says Saint Paul, has brought about the salvation of the Gentiles. But his pride would be also their ruin, and whereas Israel is assured, by prophecy, of a return to God’s favour when the end of the world will be approaching (Romans xi. 25‒27), there is no such promise of a second call of mercy to the Gentiles should they ever apostatise after their baptism. If, at present, the power of Eternal Wisdom enables the Gentiles to produce fruits of glory and honour (Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 23), let them never forget how once they were vile barren trees: then humility, which alone can keep them right, as formerly it alone drew on them the eye of God’s mercy, humility will be an easy duty and, at the same time, they will understand the regard they should always entertain for the people of Israel in spite of all his sins.

For, at the time that the original defect of their birth made the Gentiles be as so many wild olive trees producing nothing but worthless fruits, the good, the genuine, the natural olive tree, through whose branches flowed the sap of grace, was growing and flourishing, sucking sanctification into its branches from the holy root of the Patriarchs, blessed of God (Romans xi. 16‒24). “We must remember that this tree of salvation is ever the same. Some of its branches fell off, it is true, and others were substituted. But this accession of the Gentiles, who were permitted by grace to graft their branches into the holy stock — this accession effected no change, either in the stock, or in its root. The God of the Gentiles is not another, but the same, as the God of Isaac and Jacob. The heavenly olive tree is one, and only one, and its roots rest in Abraham’s bosom: it is from the faith of this the just man by excellence (Romans iv. 11‒18) it is from the blessing promised to him (Genesis xii. 3) and to his divine Bud (Genesis xii. 18), the blessing which was to be imparted to all the nations of the earth, that flows the life-giving and rich sap which will transform the Gentile world in all future ages. When, therefore, Christian nations are boasting of their origin and descent, let them not forget the one which is above all the rest. The founders of earthly empires are not, in God’s way of counting, the true fathers of the people of those empires: in the order of supernatural, that is, of our best, interest, Abraham the Hebrew (Genesis xiv. 13), he that went forth from Chaldea at the call of God (Genesis xii. 1‒4) — he, by the fecundity of his faith is the truest father of nations (Genesis xvii. 4‒7).

Now we can understand those words of the Apostle: “Boast not, you wild olive tree that, contrary to nature, was grafted into the good olive tree, boast not against the original branches. But if you are tempted to boast, remember, you bear not the root but the root bears you. Therefore, be not high-minded, but fear” (Romans xi. 18, 20, 24). Humility, which produces within us this salutary fear, is the virtue that makes man know his right place, with regard both to God and his fellow-men. It rests on the deep-rooted conviction, put into our hearts by grace, of how God is everything in man, and of how we, by nature, are nothingness, no, less than nothingness, because we have degraded ourselves by sin. Reason is able, of herself alone, to convince anyone who takes the trouble to reflect, of the nothingness of a creature. But such conviction, if it remain a mere theoretical conclusion, is not Humility: it is a conviction which forces itself on the devil in Hell, whose vexation at such a truth is the chief source of the rage of that leader of the proud. As faith, which reveals to us what God is in the supernatural order, does not come from mere reason, nor remain confined to the intellect alone, so neither does humility, which teaches us what we ourselves are: that it may be true real virtue it must derive its light from above, and in the Holy Spirit, must move our will also. At the same time that this Holy Spirit fills our souls with the knowledge of their littleness and misery, he also sweetly leads them to the acceptance and love of this truth, which reason, if left entirely to herself, would be tempted to look on as a disagreeable thought.

And when this holy Spirit of truth (John xiv. 17) this divine witness of hearts (Wisdom i. 6) takes possession of a soul, what an incomparably stronger light is there in the humility which He imparts, than in that which mere human reason forces on a man! We are bewildered at seeing to what lengths this sentiment of their own misery led the Saints: it made them deem themselves inferior to every one. It drove them to act and speak in a way which in our flippant judgement, out-stepped the bounds of both truth and justice! But the Holy Ghost who guided and ruled them passed a very different judgement. And it is precisely because of His being the Spirit of all truth and all justice — in other words, because of His being the Sanctifying Spirit — that, as He willed to raise them to extraordinary holiness, He therefore gave them an extraordinary clear-sightedness, both as to what they themselves were, and what God is. Satan, the spirit of wickedness, makes his slaves act just the opposite to the divine way. The way he makes them take is the one he took for himself from the very beginning, and which our Lord thus expresses: “He stood not in the truth” (John viii. 44), he aimed at “being like the Most High” (Isaias xiv. 4). This pride of his succeeded in fixing him, for all eternity, in the hell of absurdity and lie. Therefore, Humility is Truth and as that same Jesus says: “The Truth will make you free” (John viii. 32, 34) by liberating us from the tyranny of the father of lies (John viii. 44) and then having made us free, it makes us holy. It sanctifies us (John xvii. 17) by uniting us to God, who is living and substantial Truth.

In proportion as the human creature advances in the paths of divine Union, and draws nearer to this infinite ALL, this One who alone is by essence (Exodus iii. 14) — man, far from losing any of his own borrowed being, receives a marvellous increase of both light and heat. It would be more correct, perhaps, to say that, as by drawing nearer to God, he lives, not he, but Christ lives in him (Galatians ii. 20), so, together with that life of his own self, he is entirely losing the factitious light which used to accompany that diminished life of his and which, when he was far removed from the divine centre of light, may have seemed to him grand because it came from no source but his own poor Self! Yes, when he is in close union with the divine Light, all that flicker of his own is lost. And what a happy loss when it gives him such a gain! The stars which gravitate round the sun get more brilliant with his light, the nearer they approach him till, at last, they quite disappear under the immediate action of their glorious centre, whereas the brightness they have from him seems less dependent when in the isolation produced by distance. It seems all the more to be their own, the further they are from him.

There are men who, like Satan, have done all in their power to throw themselves out of the orbit of the divine sun. Rather than acknowledge that they owe all they have to the Most High God, they would sink back again into nothingness, if they could. To the heavenly treasures which the common Father opens out to all who own themselves to be

His children, they prefer the pleasure of keeping to natural good things, for then, so they talk, they owe what they get to their own cleverness and exertions. They are foolish men not to understand that, do what they please, they owe everything they have or get to this their forgotten God (1 Corinthians iv. 7). They are weak sickly minds, taking for principles which they may be proud of, these vapours of conceit in which their disordered brain finds delight. Their high-mindedness is but ignominy. Their independence leads but to slavery, for, though refusing to have God as their Father, they must by necessity have Him as their Master. And thus, not being His children, they must be His slaves. As slaves, they keep to the vile food which they themselves preferred to the pure delights with which Wisdom inebriates them that follow her. As slaves, they have acquired the right to the scourge and the fetter. They chose to be satisfied with what they had, and would have neither the throne that was prepared for them (Wisdom vi. 22), nor the nuptial robe (Ecclesiasticus vi. 32). Let them, if they will, prefer their prison and there deck themselves in the finery which moths will be soon making their food! But, during these short years of theirs, they are branding their bodies with a deeper slavery than ever red-hot iron stamped on vilest bondsman. All this comes because, with all the empty philosophy which was their boast, they would not listen to the Christian teaching — that real greatness consists in the Truth, and that Humility alone leads to it.

Not only does man not unman himself by humbling himself — for he thereby is but believing himself to be what he really is — but, according to the Gospel expression, the degree of that voluntary abasement is the measure of God’s exaltation of him. The Holy Ghost is, beyond measure, liberal in bestowing His gifts on one who is sure to refer all the glory of them to the divine Giver. It is to the little that the Lord of Heaven and Earth makes revelations which He hides from the proudly wise and prudent (Luke x. 21). More correctly, the truly wise, the perfect ones of whom Saint Paul speaks, who alone understand the mysteries of God’s infinite love (1 Corinthians ii. 6‒16) of which they have had experience even in this present life — are they not those little ones whom divine Wisdom calls to His banquet (Proverbs ix. 4), who are nothing in their own eyes (Wisdom ix. 5), 1 but whose confiding simplicity ravishes his heart (Wisdom viii.) and who find that all good things come to them together with this divine visitor? (Wisdom vii. 11). Verily, it is in them that among all the children of men He finds His delights (Proverbs viii. 31). It is just what the disciples could not understand when, after the words of our Lord which are given in today’s Gospel, they insisted, as Saint Luke tells us, on keeping back the little ones who wanted to get too near Him. But this Jesus of ours, this Wisdom Incarnate insisted on their being brought to Him, saying very much the same as He had already done in the Old Testament pages: “Suffer little children to come to me: do not forbid them! for, of such is the kingdom of God, and of them that are like them. Amen say to you: whoever will not receive the kingdom of God as a child, will not enter into it! (Luke xviii. 15‒17)

In that Heaven, that Kingdom of God, the humility of the Saints is far greater than it was while they were here on Earth because they now see the realities which then they could only faintly take in. Their happiness, yonder above, is to be gazing on and adoring that altitude of God of which they will never have an adequate knowledge, and the more they look up at that infinite perfection, the deeper do they plunge into their own original nothingness. Let us get these great truths well into us, and we will have no difficulty in understanding how it was that the greatest Saints were the humblest creatures here below, and how the same beautiful fact is still one great charm of Heaven. it must be so, for the light of the elect is in proportion to their glory. What, then, must all this exquisite truth be when we apply it to the great Mother of God? The nearest to the throne of her divine Son, she is precisely what she was in Nazareth (Luke i. 48), that is, she is the humblest of all creatures, because she is the most enlightened of all, and therefore understands better than even the Seraphim and Cherubim, the greatness of God and the nothingness of creatures.

1 AUGUST – THE SEVEN HOLY MACCABEES

At Antioch in Syria took place the martyrdom of the Seven Holy Maccabees, seven Jewish brothers who lived in Old Testament times. According to tradition their names were Habim, Antonin, Guriah, Eleazar, Eusebon, Hadim (Halim) and Marcellus. Their story is told in the two Books of Maccabees which the Catholic Church holds to be canonical scripture. They are also referred to in the Books of Meqabyan which are regarded as canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The empress Saint Helena brought their relics to Constantinople and they were subsequently translated to the Basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome.

 

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The August heavens glitter with the brightest constellations of the sacred cycle. Even in the sixth century, the Second Council of Tours remarked that this month was filled with the feasts of Saints. “My delights are to be with the children of men,” says Wisdom, and in the month which echoes with her teachings, she seems to have made it her glory to be surrounded with blessed ones who, walking with her in the midst of the paths of judgement, have in finding her found life and salvation from the Lord. This noble court is presided over by the Queen of all grace, whose triumph consecrates this month and makes it the delight of that Wisdom of the Father who, once enthroned in Mary, never quitted her. What a wealth of divine favours do the coming days promise to our souls! Never were our Father’s barns so well filled as at this season when the earthly as well as the heavenly harvests are ripe.

While the Church on Earth inaugurates these days by adorning herself with Peter’s chains as with a precious jewel, a constellation of seven stars appears for the third time in the heavens. The seven brothers Maccabees preceded the sons of Symphorosa and Felicitas in the blood-stained arena. They followed divine Wisdom even before she had manifested her beauty in the flesh. The sacred cause of which they were the champions, their strength of soul under the tortures, their sublime answers to the executioners, were so evidently the type reproduced by the later Martyrs, that the Fathers of the first centuries with one accord claimed for the Christian Church these heroes of the synagogue who could have gained such courage from no other source than their faith in the Christ to come. For this reason they alone of all the holy persons of the ancient covenant have found a place on the Christian cycle. All the Martyrologies and Calendars of East and West attest the universality of their cultus, while its antiquity is such as to rival that of St. Peter’s chains in that same basilica of Eudoxia where their precious relics lie.

At the time when in the hope of a better resurrection they refused under cruel torments to redeem their lives, other heroes of the same blood, inspired by the same faith, flew to arms and delivered their country from a terrible crisis. Several children of Israel, forgetting the traditions of their nation, had wished it to follow the customs of strange peoples, and the Lord in punishment had allowed Judea to feel the whole weight of a profane rule to which it had guiltily submitted. But when king Antiochus, taking advantage of the treason of a few and the carelessness of the majority, endeavoured by his ordinances to blot out the divine law which alone gives power to man over man, Israel, suddenly awakened, met the tyrant with the double opposition of revolt and martyrdom. Judas Maccabeus in immortal battles reclaimed for God the land of his inheritance, while by the virtue of their generous confession, the seven, brothers also, his rivals in glory, recovered, as the Scripture says, “the law out of the hands of the nations, and out of the hands of the kings” (1 Maccabees ii. 48). Soon afterwards, craving mercy under the hand of God and not finding it, Antiochus died devoured by worms, just as later on were to die the first and last persecutors of the Christians, Herod Agrippa and Galerius Maximian.

The Holy Ghost, who would Himself hand down to posterity the acts of the Protomartyr of the New Law, did the same with regard to the passion of Stephen’s glorious predecessors in the ages of expectation. Indeed it was he who then, as under the law of Love, inspired with both words and courage these valiant brothers, and their still more admirable mother who, seeing her seven sons one after the other suffering the most horrible tortures, uttered nothing but burning exhortations to die. Surrounded by their mutilated bodies, she mocked the tyrant who in false pity wished her to persuade at least the youngest to save his life. She bent over the last child of her tender love and said to him: “My son, have pity on me, that bore you nine months in my womb, and gave you suck three years, and nourished you, and brought you up to this age. I beseech you, my son, look upon Heaven and Earth, and all that is in them: and consider that God made them out of nothing and mankind also: so you will not fear this tormentor, but being made a worthy partner with your brethren, receive death, that in that mercy I may receive you again with your brethren (2 Maccabees vii. 27, 28, 29). And the intrepid youth ran in his innocence to the tortures, and the incomparable mother followed her sons.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Rome, the holy virgins Faith, Hope and Charity, who won the crown of martyrdom under the emperor Hadrian.

Also at Rome, on the Via Latina, the holy martyrs Bonus, a priest, Faustus and Maurus, with nine others, mentioned in the Acts of Pope St. Stephen.

At Philadelphia in Arabia, the holy martyrs Cyril, Aquila, Peter, Domitian, Rufus and Menander, crowned on the same day.

At Pergen, in Pamphylia, the holy martyrs Leontius, Attius, Alexander, and six husbandmen, who were beheaded in the persecution of Diocletian under the governor Flavian.

At Gerona in Spain, the birthday of the holy martyr Felix. After enduring various torments by order of Dacian, he was cut with knives until he gave his undaunted soul to Christ.

At Vercelli, St. Eusebius, bishop and martyr, who for the confession of the Catholic faith, was banished to Scythopolis and then to Cappadocia by the emperor Constantius. Afterwards returning to his church, he suffered martyrdom in the persecution of the Arians. His feast is kept on the sixteenth of December.

In the diocese of Paris, St. Justin, martyr.

At Vienne, St. Verus, bishop.

At Winchester in England, St. Ethelwold, bishop.

In the territory of Liswin, St. Nemesius, confessor.

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

Thanks be to God.

1 AUGUST – THE CHAINS OF SAINT PETER

During the reign of Theodosius the younger, his wife Eudoxia went to Jerusalem to fulfil a vow, and while she was there she was honoured with many gifts, the greatest of which was given to her by Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem in about 439 AD. This was an iron chain adorned with gold and precious stones, and said to be that with which Saint Peter had been bound by Herod in Jerusalem. Eudoxia piously venerated this chain, and then sent it to Rome to her daughter Eudoxia. The latter took it to the Sovereign Pontiff Pope Saint Leo I (440‒461), who in turn showed her another chain which had bound Peter, under Nero, in the Marmetine Prison in Rome. On being brought together, the two chains miraculously united. On account of this miracle the holy chains began to be held in so great honour that a church at the title of Eudoxia on the Esquiline was dedicated under the name of Sancte Pietros ad Vincula (San Pietro in Vincoli), and the memory of its dedication was celebrated by a feast on the Kalends of August. From that time Saint Peter’s chains began to receive the honours of this day, instead of pagan festival which it had been customary to celebrate in honour of the emperor Augustus, after whom the month was named. Contact with the chains healed the sick and put demons to flight. In 909 a certain count who was very intimate with the Emperor Otho was taken possession of by an unclean spirit, so that he tore his flesh with his own teeth. By command of the emperor he was taken to the Pontiff John, who had no sooner touched the count’s neck with the holy chain than the wicked spirit was driven away, leaving the man entirely free. On this account devotion to the holy chains was spread throughout Rome.

The chains are kept in a gold reliquary case. One portion has 11 links of lengthened chain to bind the hands. The second portion has 23 links, to the last of which is affixed two half circles to hold the next. The feast of Saint Peter’s Chains was observed throughout the Universal Church until it was replaced in the General Roman Calendar of 1962 by the commemoration of the Seven Holy Maccabees.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Rome, making a god of the man who had subjugated her, consecrated the month of August to Caesar Augustus. When Christ had delivered her, she placed at the head of this same month, as a trophy of her regained liberty, the feast of the chains with which, in order to break hers, Peter the Vicar of Christ had once been bound. O Divine Wisdom, who has a better claim to reign over this month than had the adopted son of Caesar, you could not have more authentically inaugurated your empire. Strength and sweetness are the attributes of your works, and it is in the weakness of your chosen ones that you triumph over the powerful. You yourself, in order to give us life, swallowed death. Simon, son of John, became a captive to set free the world entrusted to him. First, Herod, and then Nero showed him the cost of the promise he had once received of binding and loosing on Earth as in Heaven: he had to share the love of the Supreme Shepherd, even to allowing himself, like Him, to be bound with chains for the sake of the flock, and led where he would not.

Glorious chains, never will you make Peter’s successors tremble any more than Peter himself. Before the Herods and Neros and Caesars of all ages you will be the guarantee of the liberty of souls. With what veneration have the Christian people honoured you ever since the earliest times!

One may truly say of the present feast that its origin is lost in the darkness of ages. According to ancient monuments, Saint Peter himself first consecrated on this date the basilica on the highest of the seven hills where the citizens of Rome are gathered today. The name Title of Eudoxia, by which the venerable Church is often designated, seems to have arisen from certain restorations made on occasion of the events mentioned in the Lessons. As to the sacred chains which are its treasure, the earliest mention now extant of honour being paid to them occurs in the beginning of the second century. Balbina, daughter of the tribune Quirinus, keeper of the prisons, had been cured by touching the chains of the holy Pope Alexander. She could not cease kissing the hands which had healed her. “Find the chains of blessed Peter, and kiss them rather than these,” said the Pontiff. Balbina, therefore, having fortunately found the Apostle’s chains, lavished her pious veneration on them, and afterwards gave them to the noble Theodora, sister of Hermes.

The irons which had bound the arms of the Doctor of the Gentiles, without being able to bind the word of God, were also after his martyrdom treasured more than jewels and gold. From Antioch in Syria, Saint John Chrysostom, thinking with holy envy of the lands enriched by these trophies of triumphant bond age, cried out in a sublime transport: “What more magnificent than these chains? Prisoner for Christ is a more beautiful name than that of Apostle, Evangelist, or Doctor. To be bound for Christ’s sake is better than to dwell in the heavens, to sit on the twelve thrones is not so great an honour. He that loves can understand me, but who can better understand these things than the holy choir of Apostles? As for me, if I were offered my choice between these chains and the whole of Heaven, I should not hesitate, for in them is happiness. Would that I were now in those places, where it is said the chains of these admirable men are still kept! If it were given me to be set free from the care of this Church, and if I had a little health, I should not hesitate to undertake such a voyage only to see Paul’s chains. If they said to me: Which would you prefer, to be the Angel who delivered Peter or Peter himself in chains? I would rather be Peter, because of his chains.”

Though always venerated in the great basilica which enshrines his tomb, Saint Paul’s chain has never been made, like those of Saint Peter, the object of a special feast in the Church. This distinction was due to the pre-eminence of him “who alone received the keys of the kingdom of heaven to communicate them to others,” and who alone continues, in his successors, to bind and loose with sovereign power throughout the whole world. The collection of letters of Saint Gregory the Great proves how universally, in the sixth century, was spread the cultus of these holy chains, a few filings of which enclosed in gold or silver keys was the richest present the Sovereign Pontiffs were wont to offer to the principal churches, or to princes whom they wished to honour. Constantinople, at some period not clearly determined, received a portion of these precious chains. She appointed a feast on the 16th January, honouring on that day the Apostle Peter as the occupant of the first See, the foundation of the faith, the immovable basis of dogma.

“Put your feet into the fetters of Wisdom, and your neck into her chains,” said the Holy Spirit under the ancient alliance, “and be not grieved with her bands.... For in the latter end you will find rest in her, and she will be turned to your joy. Then will her fetters be a strong defence for you... and her bands are a healthful binding. You will put her on as a robe of glory” (Ecclesiasticus vi. 25‒32). Incarnate Wisdom, applying the prophecy to you, O Prince of Apostles, declared that in testimony of your love the day would come when you should suffer constraint and bondage. The trial, O Peter, was a convincing one for Eternal Wisdom, who proportions her requirements to the measure of her own love. But you found her faithful. In the days of the formidable combat in which she wished to show her power in your weakness, she did not leave you in bands: in her arms you slept so calm a sleep in Herod’s prison, and going down with with you into the pit of Nero, she faithfully kept you company up to the hour when, subjecting the persecutors to the persecuted, she placed the sceptre in your hands, and on your brow the triple crown.

From the throne where you reign with the Man-God in Heaven, as you followed Him on Earth in trials and anguish, loosen our bands which are not glorious ones such as yours: break these fetters of sin which bind us to Satan, these ties of all the passions which prevent us from soaring towards God. The world, more than ever enslaved in the infatuation of its false liberties which make it forget the only true freedom, has more need now of enfranchisement than in the times of pagan Caesars: be once more its deliverer, now that you are more powerful than ever. May Rome especially, now fallen the lower because precipitated from a greater height, learn again the emancipating power which lurks in your chains. They have become a rallying standard for her faithful children in these latter trials. Make good the word once uttered by her poets, that “encircled with these chains she will ever be free.”

31 JULY – SAINT IGNATIUS (Confessor)

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, was born Inigo Lopez de Bicalde in 1491, Loyola being name of his family and the castle and estates belonging to his family in Spain. Until the age of 30 Inigo served as a soldier, but after being wounded seriously in the leg at the seige of Pamplona, he was given books about the life of Christ and the saints. When he recovered, he laid down his sword at the feet of the Virgin Mary in the famous Benedictine monastery at Montserrat. He then watched the whole night in prayer, and thus entered upon his knighthood in the Army of Christ. Next he retired to Manresa, dressed as he was in sackcloth, for he had a short time before given his costly garments to a beggar. Here he stayed for a year, and during that time he lived on bread and water, given to him in alms. He fasted every day except Sunday, subdued his flesh with a sharp chain and a hair-shirt, slept on the ground, and scourged himself with iron disciplines. God favoured and refreshed him with such wonderful spiritual lights, that afterwards he was wont to say, that even if the sacred Scriptures did not exist, he would be ready to die for the faith, on account of those revelations alone which the Lord had made to him at Manresa. It was at this time that he, a man without education, composed that admirable book of the Exercises, which has been approved by the judgement of the Apostolic See, and by the benefit reaped from it by all.

However, in order to make himself more fit for gaining souls, he determined to procure cure the advantages of education, and began by studying grammar among children. Meanwhile he relaxed nothing of his zeal for the salvation of others, and it is marvellous what sufferings and insults he patiently endured in every place, undergoing the hardest trials, even imprisonment and stripes almost to death. But he ever desired to suffer far more for the glory of his Lord. In Paris in 1534 he and six friends, including Saint Francis Xavier and Blessed Pierre Favre, professed vows of poverty and chastity, and later of obedience, with a special vow of obedience to the Pope. In 1537 he was ordained a priest and celebrated his first Mass on Christmas Day in 1538 at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. In 1540 Pope Paul III approved the Rule of the Company (or Society) of Jesus. Ignatius sent Francis Xavier to preach the Gospel in the Indies, and dispersed others of his children to spread the Christian faith in other parts of the world, thus declaring war against paganism, superstition and heresy. This war he carried on with such success that it has always been the universal opinion, confirmed by the word of Pontiffs, that God raised up Ignatius and the Society founded by him to oppose Luther and the heretics of his time, as formerly he had raised up other holy men to oppose other heretics.

Ignatius made the restoration of piety among Catholics his first care. He increased the beauty of the sacred buildings, the giving of catechetical instructions, the frequentation of sermons and of the Sacraments. He everywhere opened schools for the education of youth in piety and letters. He founded at Rome the German College, refuges for women of evil life, and for young girls who were in danger, houses for orphans and catechumens of both sexes, and many other pious works. He devoted him self unweariedly to gaining souls to God. Once he was heard saying, that if he were given his choice, he would rather live uncertain of attaining the Beatific Vision, and in the meanwhile devote himself to the service of God and the salvation of his neighbour, than die at once certain of eternal glory. His power over the demons was wonderful. Saint Philip Neri and others saw his countenance shining with heavenly light. At length in the sixty-fifth year of his age in 1556 he passed to the embrace of his Lord, whose greater glory he had ever preached and ever sought in all things. He was celebrated for miracles and for his great services to the Church and Gregory XV enrolled him among the Saints in 1623.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Although the cycle of the time after Pentecost has shown us many times already the solicitude of the Holy Spirit for the defence of the Church, yet today the teaching shines forth with a new lustre. In the sixteenth century Satan made a formidable attack upon the holy city by means of a man who, like himself, had fallen from the height of Heaven, a man prevented in early years by the choice graces which lead to perfection, yet unable in an evil day to resist the spirit of revolt. As Lucifer aimed at being equal to God, Luther set himself up against the Vicar of God, on the mountain of the covenant. And soon, falling from abyss to abyss, he drew after him the third part of the stars of the firmament of holy Church. How terrible is that mysterious law by which the fallen creature, be he man or Angel, is allowed to keep the same ruling power for evil, which he would otherwise have exercised for good. But the designs of Eternal Wisdom are never frustrated: against the misused liberty of the Angel or man, is set up that other merciful law of substitution by which Saint Michael was the first to benefit.

The development of Ignatius’ vocation to holiness followed step-by-step the defection of Luther. In the Spring of 1521 Luther had just quitted Worms and was defying the world from the Castle of Wartburg, when Ignatius received at Pampeluna the wound which was the occasion of his leaving the world and retiring to Manresa. Valiant as his noble ancestors, he felt within him from his earliest years the warlike ardour which they had shown on the battle fields of Spain. But the campaign against the Moors closed at the very time of his birth. Were his chivalrous instincts to be satisfied with petty political quarrels? The only true King worthy of his great soul revealed Himself to him in the trial which put a stop to his worldly projects: a new warfare was opened out to his ambition. Another crusade was begun, and in the year 1522, from the mountains of Catalonia to those of Thuringia, was developed that divine strategy of which the Angels alone knew the secret.

In this wonderful campaign it seemed that Hell was allowed to take the initiative, while Heaven was content to look on, only taking care to make grace abound the more, where iniquity strove to abound. As in the previous year Ignatius received his first call three weeks after Luther had completed his rebellion, so in this year, at three weeks’ distance, the rival camps of Hell and Heaven each chose and equipped its leader. Ten months of diabolical manifestations prepared Satan’s lieutenant in the place of his forced retreat which he called his Patmos. And on the 5th March the deserter of the altar and of the cloister left Wartburg. On the 25th of the same month, the glorious night of the Incarnation, the brilliant soldier in the armies of the Catholic kingdom, the descendant of the families of Ognes and Loyola, clad in sackcloth, the uniform of poverty, to indicate his new projects, watched his arms in prayer at Montserrat. Then hanging up his trusty sword at Mary’s altar, he went forth to make trial of his future combats by a merciless war against himself. In opposition to the already proudly floating standard of the free thinkers, he displayed upon his own this simple device: To the greater glory of God!

At Paris where Calvin was secretly recruiting the future Huguenots, Ignatius, in the name of the God of armies, organised his vanguard which he destined to cover the march of the Christian army to lead the way, to bear the brunt, to deal the first blows. On the 15th August 1534, five months after the rupture of England from the Holy See, these first soldiers sealed at Montmartre the definitive engagement which they were afterwards to solemnly renew at Saint Paul’s outside the Walls. For Rome was to be the rallying place of the little troop which was soon to increase so wonderfully, and which was, by its special profession, to be ever in readiness, at the least sign from the Head of the Church, to exercise its zeal in whatever part of the world he should think fit, in the defence or propagation of the faith, or for the progress of souls in doctrine and Christian life. An illustrious speaker of our own day (Cardinal Pie) has said: “What strikes us at once in the history of the Society of Jesus, is that it was matured at its very first formation. Whoever knows the first founders of the Company knows the whole Company, in its spirit, its aim, its enterprises, its proceedings, its methods. What a generation was that which gave it birth! What union of science and activity, of interior life and military life! One may say they were universal men, men of a giant race, compared with whom we are but insects: de genere giganteo, quibus comparati quasi looustce videbamur” (Numbers xiii. 34).

All the more touching then, was the charming simplicity of those first Fathers of the Society, making their way to Rome on foot, fasting and weary, but their hearts overflowing with joy, singing with a low voice the Psalms of David. When it became necessary on account of the urgency of the times for the new institute to abandon the great traditions of public prayer, it was a sacrifice to several of these souls. Mary could not give way to Martha without a struggle. For so many centuries, the solemn celebration of the Divine Office had been the indispensable duty of every religious family, its primary social debt, and the principal nourishment of the individual holiness of its members. But new times had come, times of decadence and ruin, calling for an exception as extraordinary as it was grievous to the brave company that was risking its existence amid ceaseless alarms and continual sallies upon hostile territory. Ignatius understood this, and to the special aim imposed upon him, he sacrificed his personal attraction for the sacred chants. Nevertheless, to the end of his life, the least note of the Psalmody falling on his ears drew tears of ecstasy from his eyes. After his death, the Church, which had never known any interest to outbalance the splendour of worship due to her Spouse, wished to return from a derogation which so deeply wounded the dearest instincts of her bridal heart. Paul IV revoked it absolutely, but Saint Pius V, after combating it for a long time, was at last obliged to give in. In the latter ages so full of snares, the time had come for the Church to organise special armies. But while it became more and more impossible to expect from these worthy troops, continually taken up with outside combats, the habits of those who dwelt in security, protected by the ancient towers of the holy city, at the same time Ignatius repudiated the strange misconception which would try to reform the Christian people according to this enforced, but abnormal manner of life. The third of the eighteen rules which he gives as the crowning of the Spiritual Exercises, to have in us the true sentiments of the orthodox Church, recommends to the faithful the chants of the Church, the Psalms, and the different Canonical Hours at their appointed times. And at the beginning of this book, which is the treasure of the Society of Jesus, where he mentions the conditions for drawing the greatest fruit from the Exercises, he ordains in his twentieth annotation that he who can do so, should choose for the time of his retreat a dwelling from where he can easily go to Matins and Vespers as well as to the Holy Sacrifice. What was our Saint here doing, but advising that the Exercises should be practised in the same spirit in which they were composed in that blessed retreat of Manresa where the daily attendance at solemn Mass and the evening Offices had been to him the source of heavenly delights?

“This is the victory which overcomes the world, our faith” (1 John v. 4). And you proved this truth once more to the world, O great conqueror of the age in which the Son of God chose you to raise up again His ensign that had been humbled before the standard of Babel. Against the ever-increasing battalions of the rebels you long stood almost alone, leaving it to the God of armies to choose His own moment for engaging you against Satan’s troops, as He chose His own for withdrawing you from human warfare. If the world had then been told of your designs, it would have laughed them to scorn. Yet now no one can deny that it was a decisive moment in the history of the world when, with as much confidence as the most illustrious general concentrating his forces, you gave the word to your nine companions to proceed three and three to the holy city. What great results were obtained in the fifteen years during which this little troop, recruited by the Holy Ghost, had you for its first General! Heresy was trampled out of Italy, confounded at Trent, checked everywhere, paralysed in its very centre. Immense conquests were made in new worlds as a compensation for the losses suffered in our West. Sion herself, renewing the beauty of her youth, saw her people and her pastors raised up again, and her sons receiving an education befitting their heavenly destiny. In a word, all along the line, where he had rashly cried victory, Satan was now howling, overcome once more by the name of Jesus, which makes every knee to bow, in Heaven, on Earth and in Hell! Had you ever, O Ignatius, gained such glory as this in the armies of earthly kings?

From the throne you have won by so many valiant deeds, watch over the fruits of your works, and prove yourself always God’s soldier. In the midst of the contradictions which are never wanting to them, uphold your sons in their position of honour and prowess which makes them the vanguard of the Church. May they be faithful to the spirit of their glorious Father, “having unceasingly before their eyes: first, God. Next, as the way leading to Him, the form of their institute, consecrating all their powers to attain this end marked out for them by God, yet each following the measure of grace he has received from the Holy Ghost, and the particular degree of his vocation.” Lastly, O head of such a noble lineage, extend your love to all religious families whose lot in these times of persecution is so closely allied with that of your own sons. Bless, especially, the monastic Order whose ancient branches overshadowed your first steps in the perfect life, and the birth of that illustrious Society which will be your everlasting crown in Heaven.

Have pity on France, on Paris, whose University furnished you with foundations for the strong, unshaken building raised by you to the glory of the Most High. May every Christian learn of you to fight for the Lord, and never to betray His standard. May all men, under your guidance, return to God, their beginning and their end.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Caesarea, the martyrdom of the blessed martyr Fabius. As he refused to carry the ensign of the governor of the province, he was thrown into prison for some days, and as he persisted twice in confessing Christ when brought before the judge, he was condemned to capital punishment.

At Milan, during the persecution of Antoninus, St. Calimerius, bishop and martyr, who was arrested, covered with wounds, and pierced through the neck with a sword. He terminated his martyrdom by being precipitated into a well.

At Synnada in Phrygia, the holy martyrs Democritus, Secundus and Denis.

In Syria, three hundred and fifty monks, who became martyrs by being slain by the heretics for defending the Council of Chalcedon.

At Ravenna, the departure from this world of St. Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, a man most renowned for his birth, faith, learning and glorious miracles, who freed England completely from the heretical doctrines of the Pelagians.

At Tagaste in Africa, St. Firmus, bishop, illustrious by a glorious confession of the faith.

At Siena in Tuscany, the birthday of blessed John Colombini, founder of the Order of the Jesuati, renowned for sanctity and miracles.

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

Thanks be to God.