16 JULY – OUR LADY OF MOUNT CARMEL

When on the holy day of Pentecost the Apostles, through heavenly inspiration, spoke various languages and worked many miracles by the invocation of the most holy name of Jesus, it is said that many men who were walking in the footsteps of the holy prophets Elias and Eliseus, and had been prepared for the coming of Christ by the preaching of John the Baptist, saw and acknowledged the truth, and at once embraced the faith of the Gospel. These new Christians were so happy as to be able to enjoy familiar intercourse with the Blessed Virgin, and venerated her with so special an affection that they, before all others, built a chapel to the purest of Virgins on that very spot of Mount Carmel where Elias of old had seen the cloud, a remarkable type of the Virgin ascending.

Many times each day they came together to the new oratory, and with pious ceremonies, prayers and praises honoured the most Blessed Virgin as the special protectress of their Order. For this reason, people from all parts began to call them the Brethren of the Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel (Ordo Fratrum Beatissiae Virginis Mariae de Monte Carmelo), and the Popes not only confirmed this title, but also granted special indulgences to whoever called either the whole Order or individual Brothers by that name. But the most noble Virgin not only gave them her name and protection, she also bestowed on Blessed Simon the Englishman the holy Scapular as a token, wishing the holy Order to be distinguished by that heavenly garment and to be protected by it from the evils that were assailing it.

Moreover, as formerly the Order was unknown in Europe, and on this account many were importuning Honorius III for its abolition, the loving Virgin Mary appeared by night to Honorius and clearly bade him receive both the Order and its members with kindness. The Blessed Virgin has enriched the Order so dear to her with many privileges, not only in this world, but also in the next (for everywhere she most powerful and merciful). For it is piously believed that those of her children who, having been enrolled in the Confraternity of the Scapular, have fulfilled the small abstinence and said the few prayers prescribed, and have observed chastity as far as their state of life demands, will be consoled by our Lady while they are being purified in the fire of Purgatory, and will through her intercession be taken thence as soon as possible to the heavenly country. The Order, thus laden with so many graces, has ordained that this solemn commemoration of the Blessed Virgin should be yearly observed forever to her greater glory.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Towering over the waves on the shore of the Holy Land, Mount Carmel, together with the short range of the same name, forms a connecting link to two other chains, abounding with glorious memories, namely: the mountains of Galilee on the north, and those of Judea on the south. “In the day of my love, I brought you out of Egypt into the land of Carmel,” (Jeremias ii. 2, 7) said the Lord to the daughter of Sion, taking the name of Carmel to represent all the blessings of the Promised Land. And when the crimes of the chosen people were about to bring Judaea to ruin, the prophet cried out: “I looked, and behold Carmel was a wilderness: and all its cities were destroyed at the presence of the Lord, and at the presence of the wrath of His indignation” (Jeremias iv. 26). But from the midst of the Gentile world a new Sion arose, more loved than the first. Eight centuries beforehand Isaias recognised her by the glory of Libanus, and the beauty of Carmel and Saron which were given her. In the sacred Canticle, also, the attendants of the Bride sing to the Spouse concerning his well-beloved, that her head is like Carmel, and her hair like the precious threads of royal purple carefully woven and dyed (Canticles vii. 5).

There was, in fact, around Cape Carmel an abundant fishery of the little shellfish which furnished the regal colour. Not far from there, smoothing away the slopes of the noble mountain, flowed the torrent of Cison, that “dragged the carcasses” (Judges v. 21) of the Caanaanites when Deborah won her famous victory. Here lies the plain where the Madianites were overthrown, and Sisara felt the power of her that was called the “Mother in Israel” (Judges v. 7). Here Gedeon, too, marched against Madian in the name of the Woman terrible as an army set in array (Canticles vi. 3, 9), whose sign he had received in the dew-covered fleece. Indeed, this glorious plain of Esdrelon, which stretches away from the foot of Carmel, seems to be surrounded with prophetic indications of her who was destined from the beginning to crush the serpent’s head: not far from Esdrelon, a few defiles lead to Bethulia, the city of Judith, type of Mary, who was the true joy of Israel and the honour of her people (Judith. Wile nestling among the northern hills lies Nazareth, the white city, the flower of Galilee xv. 10).

When Eternal Wisdom was playing in the world, forming the hills and establishing the mountains, she destined Carmel to be the special inheritance of Eve’s victorious Daughter. And when the last thousand years of expectation were opening, and the desire of all nations was developing into the spirit of prophecy, the father of prophets ascended the privileged mount, thence to scan the horizon. The triumphs of David and the glories of Solomon were at an end. The sceptre of Judah, broken by the schism of the ten tribes, threatened to fall from his hand. The worship of Baal prevailed in Israel. A long-continued drought, figure of the aridity of men’s souls, had parched up every spring, and men and beasts were dying beside the empty cisterns, when Elias the Thesbite gathered the people, representing the whole human race, on Mount Carmel, and slew the lying prophets of Baal. Then, as the Scripture relates, prostrating with his face to the Earth, “he said to his servant: Go up, look towards the sea. And he went up, and looked and said: There is nothing. And again he said to him: Return seven times. And at the seventh time: Behold, a little cloud arose out of the sea like a man’s foot” (3 Reg xviii.)

Blessed cloud! Unlike the bitter waves from which it sprang, it was all sweetness. Docile to the least breath of Heaven, it rose light and humble, above the immense heavy ocean, and screening the sun it tempered the heat that was scorching the earth, and restored to the stricken world life and grace and fruitfulness. The promised Messiah, the Son of Man, set His impress upon it, showing to the wicked serpent the form of the heel that was to crush him. The prophet, personifying the human race, felt his youth renewed. And while the welcome rain was already refreshing the valleys, he ran before the chariot of the king of Israel. Thus did he traverse the great plain of Esdrelon, even to the mysteriously named town of Jezrahel, where, according to Osee, the children of Judah and Israel were again to have but one head, in the great day of Jezrahel (i.e., of the seed of God), when the Lord would seal His eternal nuptials with a new people (Osee i. 11; ii. 14-24). Later on, from Sunam near Jezrahel, the mother whose son was dead crossed the same plain of Esdrelon, in the opposite direction and ascended Mount Carmel, to obtain from Eliseus the resurrection of her child, who was a type of us all (4 Kings iv. 8-37). Elias had already departed in the chariot of fire to await the end of the world, when he is to give testimony, together with Henoch, to the son of her that was signified by the cloud (Apocalypse xi. 3, 7) and the disciple, clothed with the mantle and the spirit of his father, had taken possession, in the name of the sons of the prophets, of the august mountain honoured by the manifestation of the Queen of prophets. Henceforward Carmel was sacred in the eyes of all who looked beyond this world.

Gentiles as well as Jews, philosophers and princes, came here on pilgrimage to adore the true God, while the chosen souls of the Church of the expectation, many of whom were already wandering in deserts and in mountains (Hebrews xi. 38) loved to take up their abode in its thousand grottoes, for the ancient traditions seemed to linger more lovingly in its silent forests, and the perfume of its flowers foretokened the Virgin Mother. The cultus of the Queen of Heaven was already established, and to the family of her devout clients, the ascetics of Carmel, might be applied the words spoken later by God to the pious descendants of Rechab: “There will not be wanting a man of this race, standing before me forever” (Jeremias xxxv. 19). At length figures gave place to the reality: the heavens dropped down their dew, and the Just One came forth from the cloud. When His work was done and He returned to his Father, leaving His blessed Mother in the world and sending His Holy Spirit to the Church, not the least triumph of that Spirit of love was the making known of Mary to the new-born Christians of Pentecost. “What a happiness,” we then remarked, “for those neophytes who were privileged above the rest in being brought to the Queen of Heaven, the Virgin-Mother of Him who was the hope of Israel! They saw this second Eve, they conversed with her, they felt for her that filial affection with which she inspired all the disciples of Jesus. The Liturgy will speak to us at another season of these favoured ones” The promise is fulfilled today. In the lessons of the feast the Church tells us how the disciples of Elias and Eliseus became Christians at the first preaching of the Apostles, and being permitted to hear the sweet words of the Blessed Virgin and enjoy an unspeakable intimacy with her, they felt their veneration for her immensely increased. Returning to the loved mountain where their less fortunate fathers had lived but in hope, they built, on the very spot where Elias had seen the little cloud rise up out of the sea, an oratory to the purest of virgins. Hence they obtained the name of Brothers of Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel.

In the twelfth century, in consequence of the establishment of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, many pilgrims from Europe came to swell the ranks of the solitaries on the holy mountain. It therefore became expedient to give to their hitherto eremitical life a form more in accordance with the habits of western nations. The legate Aimeric Malafaida, patriarch of Antioch, gathered them into a community under the authority of Saint Berthold, who was thus the first to receive the title of Prior General. At the commencement of the next century Blessed Albert, patriarch of Jerusalem and also Apostolic legate, completed the work of Aimeric by giving a fixed Rule to the Order which was now, through the influence of princes and knights returned from the Holy Land, beginning to spread into Cyprus, Sicily and the countries beyond the sea. Soon indeed, the Christians of the East, being abandoned by God to the just punishment of their sins, the vindictiveness of the conquering Saracens reached such a height in this age of trial for Palestine, that a full assembly held on Mount Carmel under Alanus the Breton resolved upon a complete migration, leaving only a few friars eager for martyrdom to guard the cradle of the Order. The very year in which this took place (1245), Simon Stock was elected General in the first Chapter of the West held at Aylesford in England.

Simon owed his election to the successful struggle he had maintained for the recognition of the Order, which certain prelates, alleging the recent decrees of the Council of Lateran, rejected as newly introduced into Europe. Our Lady had then taken the cause of the Friars into her own hands, and had obtained from Honorius III the decree of confirmation which originated today’s feast. This was neither the first nor the last favour bestowed by the sweet Virgin on the family that had lived so long under the shadow, as it were, of her mysterious cloud, and shrouded like her in humility with no other bond, no other pretension than the imitation of her hidden works and the contemplation of her glory. She herself had wished them to go forth from the midst of a faithless people just as, before the close of that same thirteenth century, she would command her angels to carry into a Catholic land her blessed house of Nazareth. Whether or not the men of those days, or the short-sighted historians of our own time, ever thought of it: the one translation called for the other, just as each completes and explains the other, and each was to be, tor our own Europe, the signal for wonderful favours from heaven.

In the night between the l0th and 16th of July of the year 1251, the gracious Queen of Carmel confirmed to her sons by a mysterious sign the right of citizenship she had obtained for them in their newly adopted countries: as mistress and mother of the entire Religious state she conferred upon them with her queenly hands, the scapular, hitherto the distinctive garb of the greatest and most ancient religious family of the West. On giving Saint Simon Stock this badge, ennobled by contact with her sacred fingers, the Mother of God said to him: “Whoever will die in this habit, will not suffer eternal flames.” But not against hell fire alone was the all-powerful intercession of the Blessed Mother to be felt by those who should wear her scapular. In 1316, when every holy soul was imploring heaven to put a period to that long and disastrous widowhood of the Church which followed on the death of Clement V, the Queen of Saints appeared to James d’Euse, whom the world was soon to hail as John XXII. She foretold to him his approaching elevation to the Sovereign Pontificate, and at the same time recommended him to publish the privilege she had obtained from her Divine Son for her children of Carmel, viz., a speedy deliverance from Purgatory. “I, their Mother, will graciously go down to them on the Saturday after their death, and all whom I find in Purgatory I will deliver and will bring to the mountain of life eternal.” These are the words of our Lady herself, quoted by John XXII in the Bull which he published for the purpose of making known the privilege, and which was called the Sabbatine Bull on account of the day chosen by the glorious benefactress for the exercise of her mercy.

We are aware of the attempts made to nullify the authenticity of these heavenly concessions, but our extremely limited time will not allow us to follow up these worthless struggles in all their endless details. The attack of the chief assailant, the too famous Launoy, was condemned by the Apostolic See. And after, as well as before, these contradictions the Roman Pontiffs confirmed, as much as need be, by their supreme authority, the substance and even the letter of the precious promises. The reader may find in special works the enumeration of the many indulgences with which the Popes have time after time enriched the Carmelite family, as if Earth would vie with Heaven in favouring it. The munificence of Mary, the pious gratitude of her sons for the hospitality given them by the West and lastly, the authority of Saint Peter’s successors, soon made these spiritual riches accessible to all Christians by the institution of the Confraternity of the holy Scapular, the members of which participate in the merits and privileges of the whole Carmelite Order. Who will tell the graces, often miraculous, obtained through this humble garb? Who could count the faithful now enrolled in the holy militia? When Benedict XIII in the eighteenth century extended the feast of the 16th July to the whole Church, he did but give an official sanction to the universality already gained by the cultus of the Queen of Carmel.

QUEEN of Carmel, hear the voice of the Church as she sings to you on this day. When the world was languishing in ceaseless expectation, you were already its hope. Unable as yet to understand your greatness, it nevertheless, during the reign of types, loved to clothe you with the noblest symbols. In admiration, and in gratitude for benefits foreseen, it surrounded you with all the notions of beauty, strength and grace suggested by the loveliest land scapes, the flowery plains, the wooded heights, the fertile valleys, especially of Carmel, whose very name signifies “the plantation of the Lord.” On its summit our fathers, knowing that Wisdom had set her throne in the cloud, hastened by their burning desires the coming of the saving sign: there at length was given to their prayers what the Scripture calls perfect knowledge, and the knowledge of the great paths of the clouds (Job xxxvii. 16). And when he who makes his chariot and his dwelling in the obscurity of a cloud had therein shown himself, in a nearer approach, to the practised eye of the father of prophets, then did a chosen band of holy persons gather in the solitudes of the blessed mountain, as heretofore Israel in the desert, to watch the least movements of the mysterious cloud, to receive from it their guidance in the paths of life, and their light in the long night of expectation.

O Mary, who from that hour presided over the watches of God’s army without ever failing for a single day: now that the Lord has truly come down through you, it is no longer the land of Judaea alone, but the whole Earth that you cover as a cloud, shedding down blessings and abundance. Your ancient clients, the sons of the prophets, experienced this truth when, the land of promise becoming unfaithful, they were forced to transplant into other climes their customs and traditions. They found that even into our far West, the cloud of Carmel had poured its fertilising dew, and that nowhere would its protection be wanting to them. This feast, O Mother of our God, is the authentic attestation of their gratitude, increased by the fresh benefits with which your bounty accompanied the new exodus of the remnant of Israel. And we, the sons of ancient Europe, we too have a right to echo the expression of their loving joy, for since their tents have been pitched around the hills where the new Sion is built on Peter, the cloud has shed all around showers of blessing more precious than ever, driving back into the abyss the flames of Hell, and extinguishing the fire of Purgatory.

While, then, we join with them in thanksgiving to you, deign yourself, O Mother of divine grace, to pay our debt of gratitude to them. Protect them ever. Guard them in these unhappy times when the hypocrisy of modern persecutors has more fatal results than the rage of the Saracens. Preserve the life in the deep roots of the old stock, and rejoice it by the accession of new branches bearing, like the old ones, flowers and fruits that will be pleasing to you, O Mary. Keep up in the hearts of the sons that spirit of retirement and contemplation which animated their fathers under the shadow of the cloud. May their sisters too, wherever the Holy Spirit has established them, be ever faithful to the traditions of the glorious past so that their holy lives may avert the tempest and draw down blessings from the mysterious cloud. May the perfume of penance that breathes from the holy mountain purify the now corrupted atmosphere around, and may Carmel ever present to the Spouse the type of the beauties He loves to behold in His Bride!

On this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

The birthday of St. Faustus, a martyr, under Decius. He lived five days fastened on a cross, and being then pierced with arrows, he went to heaven.

At Sebaste in Armenia, the holy martyrs Athenogenes, bishop, and ten of his disciples in the time of the emperor Diocletian.

At Antioch in Syria, the birthday of blessed Eustathius, bishop and confessor, celebrated for learning and sanctity. Under the Arian emperor Constantius, for the defence of the Catholic faith, he was banished to Trajanopolis in Thracia, where he rested in the Lord.

The same day, St. Hilarinus, monk, who was arrested with St. Donatus in the persecution of Julian the Apostate. As he would not sacrifice to idols, he was beaten with rods and died a martyr at Arezzo in Tuscany. His body was translated to Ostia.

At Treves, St. Valentine, bishop and martyr.

At Cordova in Spain, St. Sisenandus, deacon and martyr, who was strangled by the Saracens for the faith of Christ.

At Saintes in France, the holy martyrs Raineldes, virgin, and her companions, who were massacred by barbarians for the Christian faith.

At Bergamo, St. Domnio, martyr.

At Capua, St. Vitalian, bishop and confessor.

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

Thanks be to God.

15 JULY – SAINT HENRY (King and Confessor)

Henry II, the son of the Duke of Bavaria, was born in 973. He was descended on both parents' side from the emperor Charlemagne. After his cousin King Otto III died in 1002, Henry was elected king of Germany and in 1005 he also became king of Italy. He became the Holy Roman Emperor on his coronation by Pope Benedict VIII in 1014. However, not satisfied with a mere temporal principality, he strove to gain an immortal crown by paying zealous service to the eternal King. As emperor he devoted himself earnestly to spreading religion, and rebuilt with great magnificence the churches which had been destroyed by the infidels, endowing them generously both with money and lands. He built monasteries and other pious establishments, and increased the income of others. The bishopric of Bamberg, which he had founded out of his family possessions, he made tributary to Saint Peter and the Roman Pontiff. When Pope Benedict VIII was obliged to seek safety in flight, Henry received him and restored him to his See.

Once when he was suffering from a severe illness in the Monastery of Monte Cassino, Saint Benedict cured Henry by a wonderful miracle. He endowed the Roman Church with a most copious grant, undertook in her defence a war against the Greeks, and gained possession of Apulia, which they had held for some time. It was his custom to undertake nothing without prayer, and at times he saw the angel of the Lord, or the holy Martyrs, his patrons, fighting for him at the head of his army. Aided thus by the Divine protection, he overcame barbarous nations more by prayer than by arms. Hungary was still pagan, but Henry having given his sister in marriage to its King Stephen, the latter was baptised and thus the whole nation was brought to the faith of Christ. He set the rare example of preserving virginity in the married state, and at his death restored his wife, Saint Cunigund, a virgin to her family. He arranged everything relating to the glory or advantage of his empire with the greatest prudence, and left scattered throughout Gaul, Italy and Germany, traces of his munificence towards religion. The sweet odour of his heroic virtue spread far and wide, till he was more celebrated for his holiness than for his imperial dignity.

His life’s work being accomplished, he was called by our Lord to the rewards of the heavenly kingdom in 1024. His body was buried in the Church of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul at Bamberg. God wished to glorify his servant, and many miracles were worked at his tomb. These being afterwards proved and certified, Pope Eugenius III inscribed his name in the catalogue of the Saints in 1174, and Cunigunde was canonised by Pope Innocent III in 1200.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Henry of Germany, the second King, but the first Emperor of that name, was the last crowned representative of that branch of the house of Saxony descended from Henry the Fowler, to which God in the tenth century entrusted the mission of restoring the work of Charlemagne and Leo III. This noble stock was rendered more glorious by the flowers of sanctity adorning its branches, than for the deep and powerful roots it struck in the German soil by great and long-enduring institutions.

The Holy Spirit, who divides His gifts according as He will, was then calling to the loftiest destinies that land which, more than any other, had witnessed the energy of His divine action in the transformation of nations. Won to Christ by Saint Boniface and the continuators of his work, the vast country which extends beyond the Rhine and the Danube had become the bulwark of the West, and for many years had been the scene of devastation and ruin. Far from attempting to subjugate to her own rule the formidable tribes that inhabited it, pagan Rome at the very zenith of her power had had no higher ambition than to raise a wall of separation between them and the Empire: Christian Rome, more truly Mistress of the world, set up in their very midst the seat of the Holy Roman Empire re-established by her Pontiffs. The new Empire was to defend the rights of the common Mother, to protect Christendom from new inroads of barbarians, to win over to the Gospel or else to crush the successive hordes that would come down on her frontiers — Hungarians, Slavs, Mongols, Tartars and Ottomans. Happy had it been for Germany if she had always understood her true glory, if the fidelity of her princes to the Vicar of the Man-God had been equal to their people’s faith.

God, on His part, had not closed His hand. Today’s feast shows us the crowning point of the period of fruitful labour when the Holy Ghost, having created Germany anew in the waters of the sacred font, would lead her up to the full development of a people’s perfect age. The historian who would know what Providence requires of nations, must study them at such a period of truly creative formation. Indeed, when God creates, whether in the order of nature or of the supernatural vocation of men and societies, He first deposits in His work the principle of that grade of life for which it is destined: it is a precious germ, the development of which, unless thwarted, must lead that being to attain its end. And the knowledge of which, could we observe it before any alteration has taken place, would clearly indicate the divine intention with regard to that being. Now many times already, since the coming of the Holy Ghost the Sanctifier, we have shown that the principle of life for Christian nations is the holiness of their beginnings: a holiness as manifold as is the Wisdom of God, whose instrument these nations are to be, and as peculiar to each as are their several destinies. Thisholiness, beginning as it does for the most part from the throne, possesses a social character. The crimes also of princes will but too often bear this same mark, from the very fact of the princes being the representatives of their people before God.

Then, too, we have seen how in the name of Mary who, through her divine Maternity, is the channel of life to the whole world, a mission has been entrusted to women: the mission of bringing forth to God the families of nations (families gentium) (Psalm xxi. 28) which are to be the objects of His tenderest love. Whereas the princes, the apparent founders of Empires, stand with their mighty deeds in the foreground of history, it is she that, by her secret tears and prayers, gives fruitfulness a loftier aim and stability to their undertakings. The Holy Ghost multiplies these imitators of the Mother of God: like Clotilde, Radegond and Bathildis giving the Franks to the Church in the midst of troublous times, there arose in another land another three, in honour of the Blessed Trinity: Matilda, Adelaide and Cunigund super-added to the diadem of Germany the aureola of sanctity. Over the chaos of the tenth century from which Germany was to spring, they shone out like three bright stars, shedding their peaceful light over the Church and the world in that dark night, and thus doing more to suppress anarchy than could even the sword of an Otho. The eleventh century opened: Hildebrand had not yet arisen, and the angels of the sanctuary were weeping over many a desecrated altar, when the royal succession was brought to a beautiful close by a virginal union, as though, weary of producing heroes for the world, it would now bear fruit for heaven alone. Was such a step against the interests of Germany? No, for it drew down the mercy of God upon the country which, in the midst of universal corruption, could offer Him the perfume of such a holocaust.

Let Earth and Heaven this day unite in celebrating the man who carried out to the full the designs of eternal Wisdom at this period of history. In his single person he discovered all the heroism and sanctity of the illustrious race, whose chief glory it is to have been for a century a worthy preparation for so great a man. Great before men, who knew not whether to admire more his bravery or the energetic activity which made him seem to be everywhere at once throughout his vast empire, he was ever successful, putting down internal revolts, conquering the Slavs on his Northern frontier, chastising the insolence of the Greeks in southern Italy, assisting Hungary to rise from barbarism to Christianity, concluding with Robert the Pious a lasting peace between the Empire and the eldest daughter of the Church. But the virgin spouse of the virgin Cunigund was greater still before God, who never had a more faithful lieutenant on Earth. God in His Christ was in Henry’s eyes the only King; the interest of Christ and the Church, the one principle of his administration; the most perfect service of the Man-God, his highest ambition. He understood how the truest nobility was hidden in the cloister, where chosen souls, fleeing from the universal degradation, were averting the ruin and obtaining the salvation of the world. It was this thought that led him, on the morrow of his imperial coronation, to confide to the famous Abbey of Cluny the golden globe representing the world which he, as soldier of the Vicar of Christ, was commissioned to defend. It was with the desire of imitating those noble souls that he threw himself at the feet of the Abbot of Saint Vannes at Verdun, begging admission into his community and then, constrained by obedience, returned with a heavy heart to resume the burden of government.

* * * * *

“By me kings reign, by me princes rule” (Proverbs viii. 15, 16). You, O Henry, well understood this language of Heaven. In an age of wickedness you knew where to find counsel and strength. Like Solomon you desired wisdom alone, and like him you experienced that with her are riches and glory, glorious riches and justice (Proverbs viii. 18), but more blessed than David’s son, you did not suffer yourself to be drawn away from Wisdom herself by those lower gifts, which were rather a test of your love of God, than an expression of His love for you. The test, O Henry, was decisive: you walked to the very end in the right path, following up loyally every consequence of our Lord’s teaching. Not content to mount, with many even of the best, by the gentler slopes, you ran with the perfect, following closely the footsteps of adorable Wisdom in the midst of the paths of judgement (Proverbs viii. 20). Who can gainsay what God approves, what Christ counsels, what the Church has canonised in you and your noble spouse? Surely kings are not placed in so pitiable a condition that the call of the Man-God cannot reach them on their thrones? Christian equality requires that princes should not be less free than their subjects to have higher ambitions than those of Earth. You proved to mankind that even for the world, the knowledge of the holy is true prudence (Proverbs ix. 10). By claiming the right to aspire to the highest mansions in our Heavenly Father’s house (the baptismal birthright of every child of God), you shone like a beacon-light under the darkest sky that ever overspread the Church, and you rescued souls whom the salt of the Earth, having lost its savour and being trodden under foot, could no longer preserve from corruption.

It was not for you in person to reform the sanctuary, but as chief servant of Mother Church you did not fear to respect both her ancient laws and recent decrees which are ever worthy of the Spouse, and holy as the Spirit who in every age dictates them. Your reign was a period of sunshine before the satanic fury which was all too soon to break as a storm over the Church. While seeking first the Kingdom of God and His justice, you did not abandon your fatherland, nor the nation that had placed you at its head. To you, above all others, Germany owes the establishment in her midst of that Empire which was her glory until in our times it fell, never to rise again. Long after your departure from this Earth, your holy works were of sufficient weight in the scales of Divine justice to over-balance the crimes of a Henry IV or a Frederick II, which would have compromised forever the future of Germany. From your throne in Heaven, cast down a look of pity on the extensive domain of the Holy Empire, which owed so much to thee, and which heresy has forever dismembered. Put to confusion those principles, unknown to Germany in happier days, which would reconstruct, for the benefit of earthly prosperity, the grandeurs of the past without the cement of the ancient faith. Return, O emperor of glorious days! Return and fight for the Church. Gather together the remains of Christendom upon the traditional ground of the interests common to all Catholic nations: then will the alliance, which your able policy concluded, give to the world a security, a peace, a prosperity, which it can never enjoy so long as it remains on such a slippery footing, and exposed to the violence of every hostile agency.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Porto, the birthday of the holy martyrs Eutropius, and the sisters Zosima and Bonosa.

At Carthage, blessed Catulinus, deacon, whose glories were proclaimed by St. Augustine in a sermon to his people, and the Saints Januarius, Florentius, Julia and Justa, martyrs, who were entombed in the church of St. Faustus.

At Alexandria, the holy martyrs Philip, Zeno, Narseus and ten children.

On the island of Tenedos, St. Abudemius, a martyr, who suffered under Diocletian.

At Sebaste, St. Antiochus, a physician, who was decapitated under the governor Hadrian. On seeing milk flowing from his wounds instead of blood, Cyriacus, his executioner, was converted to Christ and endured martyrdom.

At Pavia, St. Felix, bishop and martyr.

At Nisibis, the birthday of St. James, bishop of that city, a man celebrated for great holiness, miracles and erudition. He was one of those who confessed the faith during the persecution of Galerius Maximian, and afterwards, in the Council of Nicaea, condemned the perverse heresy of Arius by opposing to it the doctrine of consubstantiality. It was also owing to his prayers, and those of bishop Alexander, that Arius received at Constantinople the condign punishment of his iniquity, the extravasation of his intestines.

At Naples in Campania, St. Athanasius, bishop of that city, who suffered much from his wicked nephew Sergius, by whom he was driven from his See. Consumed with afflictions, he departed for Heaven at Veroli in the time of Charles the Bald.

At Palermo, the finding of the body of St. Rosalia, virgin of Palermo. Being miraculously discovered in the time of the Pope Urban VIII, it delivered Sicily from the plague in the year of the Jubilee.

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

Thanks be to God.

14 JULY – SAINT BONAVENTURE (Bishop, Confessor and Doctor of the Church)

Bonaventure was born to Giovanni di Fidanza and Maria Ritella in 1231 at Bagnorea near Viterbo in Italy. At the age of 20 he entered the Order of Friars Minor. He studied at the University of Paris under Alexander of Hales (“the Unanswerable Doctor”) and taught theology and the Holy Scriptures there from 1248 until 1257, when he and Saint Thomas Aquinas both received the degree of Doctor of Theology. In the same year he was chosen to be the Minister-General of the Franciscan Order and in 1263 Bonaventure fixed the limits of the different provinces of the Order and prescribed that a bell should be rung in honour of the Annunciation at nightfall. In 1265 Clement IV nominated Bonaventure to the vacant Archbishopric of York, but the humble friar refused this honour. In the same year Pope Gregory X appointed Bonaventure Cardinal-Bishop of Albano. He died during the General Council of Lyons in 1274 and was canonised in 1482. In 1588 he was declared to be a Doctor of the Church. Saint Bonaventure wrote many ascetical and mystical treatises and a biography of Saint Francis of Assisi, as well as Commentaries on Holy Scripture and on the work of the Master of Sentences (the theological and philosophical text-book in use in his times). He became known as the “Seraphic Doctor” for the angelic virtues with which he adorned his learning.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

Four months after the Angel of the Schools, the Seraphic Doctor appears in the heavens. Bound by the ties of love when on Earth, the two are now united forever before the Throne of God. Bonaventure’s own words will show us how great a right they both had to the heavenly titles bestowed upon them by the admiring gratitude of men.

As there are three hierarchies of Angels in Heaven, so on Earth there are three classes of the elect. The Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones who form the first hierarchy represent those who approach nearest to God by contemplation, and who differ among themselves according to the intensity of their love, the plenitude of their science and the steadfastness of their justice. To the Dominations, Virtues and Powers correspond the prelates and princes. And lastly, the lowest choirs signify the various ranks of the faithful engaged in the active life. This is the triple division of men which according to Saint Luke will be made at the last day: two will be in the bed, two in the field, two at the mill, that is to say, in the repose of divine delights, in the field of government, at the mill of this life’s toil. As regards the two mentioned in each place, we may remark that in Isaias the Seraphim, who are more closely united to God than the rest, perform two together their ministry of sacrifice and praise: for it is with the Angel as with man ― the fullness of love, which belongs especially to the Seraphim, cannot be without the fulfilment of the double precept of charity towards God and one’s neighbour. Again our Lord sent His disciples two and two before His face. And in Genesis we find God sending two Angels where one would have sufficed (Genesis xix. 1) It is better therefore, says Ecclesiastes, that two should be together than one, for they have the advantage of their society (Ecclesiastes iv. 9)

Such is the teaching of Bonaventure in his book of the Hierarchy in which he shows us the secret workings of Eternal Wisdom for the salvation of the world and the sanctification of the elect. It would be impossible to understand aright the history of the thirteenth century were we to forget the prophetic vision in which our Lady was seen presenting to her offended Son His two servants Dominic and Francis, that they might by their powerful union bring back to Him the wandering human race. What a spectacle for Angels when, on the morrow of the apparition, the two saints met and embraced: “You are my companion, we will run side by side,” said the descendant of the Gusmans to the poor man of Assisi: “let us keep together, and no man will be able to prevail against us.” These words might well have been the motto of their noble sons, Thomas and Bonaventure. The star which shone over the head of Saint Dominic, shed its bright rays on Thomas. The Seraph who imprinted the stigmata in the flesh of Saint Francis, touched with his fiery wing the soul of Bonaventure. Yet both, like their incomparable fathers, had but one end in view: to draw men by science and love to that eternal life which consists in knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. Both were burning and shining lamps, blending their flames in the heavens in proportions which no mortal eye could distinguish here below. Nevertheless, Eternal Wisdom has willed that the Church on Earth should borrow more especially light from Thomas and fire from Bonaventure. Would that we might here show in each of them the workings of Wisdom, the one bond even on earth of their union of thoughts — that Wisdom who, ever unchangeable in her adorable unity, never repeats herself in the souls she chooses from among the nations to become the prophets and the friends of God. But today we must speak only of Bonaventure.

When quite a child, he was saved by Saint Francis from imminent death, upon which his pious mother offered him by vow to the Saint, promising that he should enter the Order of Friars Minor. Thus, in the likeness of holy poverty, that beloved companion of the Seraphic Patriarch, did Eternal Wisdom prevent our Saint from his very cradle showing herself first to him. At the earliest awakening of his faculties he found her seated at the entrance of his soul, awaiting the opening of its gates, which are, he tells us, intelligence and love. Having received a good soul in an undefiled body, he preferred Wisdom before kingdoms and thrones, and esteemed riches nothing in comparison with the august friend who offered herself to him in the glory of her nobility and beauty. From that first moment, without ever waning, she was his light. Peacefully as a sunbeam glancing through a hitherto closed window, Wisdom filled this dwelling, now become her own, as the bride on the nuptial day takes possession of the bridegroom’s house, filling it with joy in community of goods, and above all of love. For her contribution to the nuptial banquet, she brought the substantial brightness of Heaven. Bonaventure on his part offered her the lilies of purity, so desired by her as her choicest food. Henceforth the feast in his soul was to be continual, and the light and the perfumes, breaking forth, were shed around, attracting, enlightening and nourishing all.

While still very young, he was, according to custom, sent, after the first years of his religious life to the celebrated University of Paris, where he soon won all hearts by his angelic manners. And the great Alexander of Hales, struck with admiration at the union of so many qualities, said of him that it seemed as if in him Adam had not sinned. As a lofty mountain whose head is lost in the clouds, and from whose foot run fertilising waters far and wide, Brother Alexander himself, according to the expression of the Sovereign Pontiff, seemed at that time to contain within himself the living fountain of Paradise, from which the river of science and salvation flowed over the Earth. Nevertheless not only would he, the irrefragable Doctor, and the Doctor of doctors, give up his chair in a short time to the newcomer, but he would hereafter derive his greatest glory from being called father and master by that illustrious disciple. Placed in such a position at so early an age, Bonaventure could say of Divine Wisdom, even more truly than of the great master who had had little to do but admire the prodigious development of his soul: “It is she that has taught me all things. She taught me the knowledge of God and of His works, justice and virtues, the subtleties of speeches and the solutions of arguments” (Wisdom vii. And viii.).

Such indeed is the object of those Commentaries on the four Books of Sentences first delivered as lectures from the chair of Paris where he held the noblest intellects spellbound by his graceful and inspired language. This masterpiece, while it is an inexhaustible mine of treasures to the Franciscan family, bears so great testimony to the science of this doctor of twenty-seven years of age that, though so soon called from his chair to the government of a great Order, he was worthy on account of this single work to share with his friend Thomas of Aquinas who was fortunately freer to pursue his studies, the honourable title of prince of Sacred Theology. The young master already merited his name of Seraphic Doctor by regarding science as merely a means to love, and declaring that the light which illuminates the mind is barren and useless unless it penetrates to the heart, where alone wisdom rests and feasts. Saint Antoninus tells us also that in him every truth grasped by the intellect passed through the affections, and thus became prayer and divine praise. “His aim,” says another historian, “was to burn with love, to kindle himself first at the divine fire, and afterwards to inflame others. Careless of praise or renown, anxious only to regulate his life and actions, he would fain burn and not only shine. He would be fire, in order to approach nearer to God by becoming more like to Him who is fire. Albeit, as fire is not without light, so was he also at the same time a shining torch in the House of God. But his special claim to our praise is, that all the light at his command he gathered to feed the flame of divine love.”

The bent of his mind was clearly indicated when at the beginning of his public teaching he was called on to give his decision on the question then dividing the Schools: to some theology was a speculative, to others a practical science, according as they were more struck by the theoretical or the moral side of its teaching. Bonaventure, uniting the two opinions in the principle which he considered the one universal law, concluded that “Theology is an affective science, the knowledge of which proceeds by speculative contemplation, but aims principally at making us good.” For the wisdom of doctrine, he said, must be according to her name be something that can be relished by the soul. And he added, not without that gentle touch of irony which the saints know how to use, “There is a difference, I suppose, in the impressions produced by the proposition, Christ died for us, or the like, and by such as this: the diagonal and the side of a square cannot be equal to one another.” The graceful speech and profound science of our saint were enhanced by a beautiful modesty. He would conclude a difficult question thus: “This is said without prejudice to the opinions of others. If anyone think otherwise, or better, as he may well do on this point as on all others, I bear him no ill-will. But if, in this little work, he find any thing deserving approval, let him give thanks to God, the Author of all good. Whatever in any part be found false, doubtful or obscure, let the kind reader forgive the incompetence of the writer, whose conscience bears him unimpeachable testimony that he has wished to say nothing but what is true, clear, and commonly received.”

On one occasion, however, Bonaventure’s unswerving devotion to the Queen of Virgins modified with a gentle force his expression of humility: “If anyone,” he says, “prefers otherwise, I will not contend with him, provided he say nothing to the detriment of the Venerable Virgin, for we must take the very greatest care, even should it cost us our life, that no one lessen in any way the honour of our Lady.” Lastly, at the end of the third book of this admirable Exposition of the Sentences, he declares that “charity is worth more than all science. It is enough, in doubtful questions, to know what the wise have taught. Disputation is to little purpose. We talk much, and our words fail us. Infinite thanks be to the perfecter of all discourse, our Lord Jesus Christ, who taking pity on my poverty of knowledge and of genius, has enabled me to complete this moderate work. I beg of Him that it may procure me the merit of obedience, and may be of profit to my brethren: the twofold purpose for which the task was undertaken.”

But the time had come when obedience was to give place to another kind of merit, less pleasing to himself, but not less profitable to the brethren. At thirty-five years of age, he was elected Minister General. Obliged thus to quit the field of scholastic teaching, he entrusted it to his friend, Thomas of Aquinas who, younger by several years, was to cultivate it longer and more completely than he himself had been suffered. The Church would lose nothing by the change, for Eternal Wisdom, who orders all things with strength and sweetness, thus disposed that these two incomparable geniuses, completing one another, should give us the fullness of that true science which not only reveals God, but leads to Him.

“Give an occasion to the wise man, and wisdom will be added to him” (Proverbs ix. 9). This sentence was placed by Bonaventure at the head of his treatise on “the Six Wings of the Seraphim,” in which he sets forth the qualifications necessary for one called to the cure of souls; and well did he fulfil it himself in the government of his immense Order, scattered by its missions throughout the whole Church. The treatise itself, which Father Claude Aquaviva held in such high estimation as to oblige the Superiors of the Society of Jesus to use it as a guide, furnishes us with a portrait of our Saint at this period. He had reached the summit of the spiritual life where the inward peace of the soul is undisturbed by the most violent agitations from without, where the closeness of their union with God produces in the saints a mysterious fecundity displayed to the world, when God wills, by a multiplicity of perfect works incomprehensible to the profane. Let us listen to Bonaventure’s own words: “The Seraphim exercise an influence over the lower orders, to draw them upwards. So the love of the spiritual man tends both to his neighbour and to God: to God that he may rest in Him, to his neighbour to draw him there with himself. Not only then do they burn. They also give the form of perfect love, driving away darkness and showing how to rise by degrees, and to go to God by the highest paths.”

Such is the secret of that admirable series of opuscula composed, as he owned to Saint Thomas, without the aid of any book but his crucifix, without any preconceived plan, but simply as occasion required, at the request, or to satisfy the needs of the brethren and sisters of his large family, or again when he felt a desire of pouring out his soul. In these works Bonaventure has treated alike of the first elements of asceticism and of the sublimest subjects of the mystic life, with such fullness, certainty, clearness and persuasive force that Sixtus IV declared the Holy Spirit seemed to speak in him. On reading the Itinerary of the soul to God, which was written on the height of Alvernia, as it were under the immediate influence of the Seraphim, the Chancellor Gerson exclaimed: “his opusculum, or rather this immense work, is beyond the praise of a mortal mouth.” And he wished it, together with that wonderful compendium of sacred science, the Breviloquium, to be imposed on theologians as a necessary manual. “By his words,” says the great Abbot Trithemius in the name of the Benedictine Order, “the author of all these learned and devout works inflames the will of the reader no less than he enlightens his mind. Note the spirit of divine love and Christian devotion in his writings, and you will easily see that he surpasses all the doctors of his time in the usefulness of his works. Many expound doctrine, many preach devotion, few teach the two together. Bonaventure surpasses both the many and the few, because he trains to devotion by science, and to science by devotion. If then you would be both learned and devout, you must put his teaching in practice.”

But Bonaventure himself will tell us best the proper dispositions for reading him with profit. At the beginning of his Incendium amoris in which teaches the three ways, purgative, illuminative and unitive which lead to true wisdom, he says: “I "offer this book not to philosophers, not to the worldly-wise, not to great theologians perplexed with endless questions, but to the simple and ignorant who strive rather to love God than to know much. It is not by disputing, but by activity, that we learn to love. As to these men full of questions, superior in every science, but inferior in the love of Christ, I consider them incapable of understanding the contents of this book. Unless putting away all vain show of learning, they strive, by humble self-renunciation, prayer and meditation to kindle within them the divine spark which, inflaming their hearts and dispelling all darkness, will lead them beyond the concerns of time even to the throne of peace. Indeed by the very fact of their knowing more, they are better disposed to love, or at least they would be, if they truly despised themselves and could rejoice to be despised by others.”

Although these pages are already too long, we cannot resist quoting the last words left us by Saint Bonaventure. As the Angel of the School was soon, at Fossa Nova, to close his labours and his life with the explanation of the Canticle of Canticles, so his seraphic rival and brother tuned his last notes to these words of the sacred Nuptial Song: “King Solomon has made him a litter of the wood of Libanus: The pillars thereof he made of silver, the seat of gold, the going-up of purple.” “The seat of gold,” added our Saint, “is contemplative wisdom. It belongs to those alone who possess the column of silver, i.e. the virtues which strengthen the soul. The going-up of purple is the charity by which we ascend to the heights and descend to the valleys.” It is a conclusion worthy of Bonaventure, the close of a sublime but incomplete work, which he had not even time to put together himself. “Alas! Alas! Alas!” cries out with tears the loving disciple to whom we owe this last treasure, “a higher dignity, and then the death of our lord and master prevented the continuation of this work.” And then showing us in a touching manner the precautions taken by the sons lest they should lose anything of their father’s conferences: “What I here give,” he says, “is what I could snatch by writing rapidly while he was speaking. Two others took notes at the same time, but their papers are scarcely legible; whereas several of the audience were able to read my copy, and the master himself and many others made use of it, a fact for which I deserve some gratitude. And now at length, permission and time having been given to me, I have revised these notes, with the voice and gestures of the master ever in my ear and before my eyes. I have arranged them in order, without adding anything to what he said, except the indication of certain authorities.”

The dignity mentioned by the faithful secretary is that of Cardinal Bishop of Albano. After the death of Clement IV and the succeeding three years of widowhood for the Church, our Saint, by his influence with the Sacred College, had obtained the election of Gregory X who now imposed on him in virtue of obedience the honour of the Cardinalate. Having been entrusted with the work of preparation for the Council of Lyons convened for the Spring of 1274, Bonaventure had the joy of assisting at the re-union of the Latin and Greek Churches which he, more than anyone else, had been instrumental in obtaining. But God spared him the bitterness of seeing how short-lived the re-union was to be: a union which would have been the salvation of that East which he loved, and where his name, translated into Eutychius, was still in veneration two centuries later at the time of the Council of Florence. On the 10th of July of that year, 1274, in the midst of the Council, and presided at by the Sovereign Pontiff himself, took place the most solemn funeral the world has ever witnessed. “I grieve for you, my brother Jonathan,” cried out before that mourning assembly gathered from East and West, the Dominican Cardinal Peter of Tarentaise. After fifty-three years spent in this world, the Seraph had cast off his robe of flesh, and spreading his wings had gone to join Thomas of Aquinas, who had by a very short time preceded him to Heaven.

YOU have entered, O Bonaventure, into the joy of your Lord, and what must your happiness be now since, as you yourself did say: “By how much a man loves God on Earth, by so much does he rejoice in him in Heaven.” If the great Saint Anselm from whom you borrowed that word added, that love is proportioned to knowledge, you who were at the same time a prince of sacred science and the doctor of love, show us how all light, in the order of grace and of nature, is intended to lead us to love. God is hidden in everything. Christ is the centre of every science, and the fruit of each of them is to build up faith, to honour God, to regulate our life, and to lead to divine union by charity, without which all knowledge is vain. For, as you said, all the sciences have their fixed and infallible rules which come down to our soul as so many reflections of the eternal law. And our soul, surrounded and penetrated with such brightness, is led of her own accord, unless she is blind, to contemplate that eternal light. Wonderful light, reflected from the mountains of our fatherland into the further most valleys of our exile! In the eyes of the Seraphic Father Francis the world was truly noble, so that he called, as you tell us, even the lowest creatures by the name of brothers and sisters. In every beauty he discerned the Sovereign Beauty. By the traces left in creation by its Author he found his Beloved everywhere, and he made of them a ladder by which to ascend to Him.

Do you, too, O my soul, open your eyes, bend your ear, unlock your lips, and prepare your heart, that in every creature you may see your God, hear Him, praise Him, love Him and honour Him, lest the whole universe rise up against you for not rejoicing in the works of His hands. Then from the world beneath you, which has but the shadow of God and His presence, inasmuch as He is everywhere, pass on to yourself His image by nature, reformed in Christ the Bridegroom. From the image rise to the truth of the first Beginning, in unity of Essence and trinity of Persons, that you may attain the repose of that sacred night where both the shadow and the image are forgotten in an all-absorbing love. But first of all you must know that the mirror of the external world will avail you little unless the interior mirror of your soul be purified and bright, unless your desire be aided by prayer and contemplation in order to kindle love. Know that here, reading without unction, speculation without devotion, labour without piety, knowledge without charity, intelligence without humility, study without grace, are nothing. And when at length rising gradually by prayer, holiness of life and the contemplation of truth, you will have reached the mountain where the God of gods reveals Himself, taught by the powerlessness of your sight here on Earth to endure splendours of which nature was too feeble to give you an indication, let your blind intelligence remain asleep, pass beyond it in Christ, who is the gate and the way, question no longer the master but the Bridegroom, not man but God, not the light but the all-consuming fire. Pass from this world with Christ to the Father, who will be shown to you, and then say with Philip: “It is enough for us.”

O Seraphic Doctor, lead us by this sublime ascent of which every line of your works discloses the secrets, the toils, the beauties and the dangers. In the pursuit of that Divine Wisdom which even in its feeblest reflections no one can behold without ecstasy, guard us against mistaking for an end the satisfaction felt from the scanty rays sent down to us to draw us from the confusion of nothingness even to Itself. If these rays which proceed from the eternal Beauty be withdrawn from their focus and perverted from their object, there will be nothing but delusion, deception, vain knowledge, or false pleasures. Indeed, the more lofty the knowledge and the nearer it approaches to God as the object of speculative theory, the more in a certain sense is error to be feared. If a man in his progress towards true wisdom, which is possessed and relished for its own sake, is drawn aside by the charms of knowledge, and rests in it, you, O Bonaventure, hesitate not to compare such knowledge to a vile deceiver who would withdraw the affections of the king’s son from his noble betrothed to fix them on herself. Such an insult to an august queen would be equally grievous whether offered by a servant or by a lady of honour. Hence you declared that “the passage from science to wisdom is dangerous, unless holiness intervenes.” Help us to cross the perilous pass. Let science ever be to us a means of attaining sanctity and acquiring greater love.

You have still, O Bonaventure, the same thoughts in the light of God. Witness the predilection you have more than once shown in our time for those centres, where, in spite of the fever of activity which must needs keep in motion every force of nature, divine contemplation is still appreciated as the better part, as the only end and aim of all knowledge. Deign to continue your protection of your devout and grateful clients. Defend, as heretofore, the life and prerogatives of all religious Orders which are now so persecuted. To your own Franciscan family be still a cause of increase both in numbers and in sanctity. Bless the labours undertaken by it, to the joy of all the world, to bring to light as they deserve your history and your works. Bring back the East a third time to unity and life, and that forever. May the whole Church be warmed by your rays. May the divine fire you so effectually nurtured, kindle the earth anew!

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Rome, St. Justus, soldier under the tribune Claudius. A miraculous cross appearing to him, he believed in Christ, was baptised, and bestowed his goods on the poor. Arrested afterwards by the prefect Magnetius, he was scourged, had a heated helmet put on his head, and was thrown into the fire, but without injury even to a hair of his head. Finally, he yielded up his soul in the confession of the Lord.

At Sinope in Pontus, the martyrs St. Phocas, bishop of that city. Under the emperor Trajan, after having been imprisoned, bound, struck with the sword and exposed to the fire for Christ, he took his flight to heaven. His remains were brought to Vienne in France and deposited in the church of the holy Apostles.

At Alexandria, St. Heraclas, bishop, whose fame was so great that the historian Africanus repaired to Alexandria to see him, as he himself testifies.

At Carthage, St. Cyrus, bishop, on whose festival St. Augustine spoke of him to his people.

At Como, St. Felix, first bishop of that city.

At Brescia, St. Optatian, bishop.

At Daventry in Belgium, St. Marcellin, priest and confessor.

At Rome, St. Camillus de Lellis, confessor, founder of the Clerks Regular who minister to the sick. Renowned for virtues and miracles, he was numbered among the saints by Pope Benedict XIV.

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

Thanks be to God.

13 JULY – SAINT ANACLETUS (Pope and Martyr)

Anacletus, a native of Athens, was ordained a priest by Saint Peter and succeeded Linus to the Holy See. He decreed that a bishop should be consecrated by no fewer than three bishops, that clerics should be publicly admitted to Holy Orders by their own bishop, and that at Mass all should communicate after the Consecration. He adorned the tomb of blessed Peter, and set aside a place for the burial of the Pontiffs. He held two ordinations in the month of December, and made 5 priests, 3 deacons, and 6 bishops. He was martyred in about 91 AD during the reign of Trajan. He was buried alongside Pope Saint Linus in the Vatican cemetery where Saint Peter himself was laid to rest.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The name of Anacletus sounds like a lingering echo of the solemnity of June 29th. Linus, Clement and Cletus, the immediate successors of Saint Peter, received from his hands the pontifical consecration. Anacletus had a less but still inestimable glory of being ordained priest by the Vicar of the Man-God. Whereas the feasts of most of the martyr Pontiffs who came after him are only of simple rite, that of Anacletus is a semi-double because of his privilege of being the last Pope honoured by the imposition of hands of the Prince of the Apostles. It was also during his pontificate that the Eternal City had the glory of receiving within its walls the beloved disciple who had come to fulfil his promise and drink of his Master’s chalice. “O happy Church,” exclaims Tertullian, “into whose bosom the Apostles poured not only all their teaching, but their very blood; where Peter imitated his Lord’s Passion by dying on the cross; where Paul, like John the Baptist, received his crown by means of the sword; from which the Apostle John, after coming forth safe and sound from the boiling oil, was sent to the isle of his banishment.”

By the almighty power of the Spirit of Pentecost, the progress of the faith in Rome was proportionate to the bountiful graces of our Lord. Little by little the great Babylon, drunk with the blood of the martyrs, was being transformed into the Holy City. This new-born race, so full of promise for the future, could already reckon among its members representatives of every class of society. Beside the boiling cauldron where the Prophet of Patmos did homage to the New Jerusalem by offering within her walls his glorious confession, two consuls, one representing the ancient patrician rank, the other the more modern nobility of the Caesars, Acilius Glabrio and Flavius Clemens, together fell by the sword of martyrdom. Anacletus adorned the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, and provided a burial place for the other pontiffs. Following his example, the distinguished families of Rome opened galleries for subterranean cemeteries all along the roads leading to the imperial city. There rest innumerable soldiers of Christ, victorious by their blood. And there, too, sleep in peace with the anchor of salvation beside them, the most illustrious names of earth.

GLORIOUS Pontiff, your memory is so closely linked with that of Peter that many reckon you under a somewhat different name, among the three august persons raised by the Prince of the Apostles to the highest rank in the hierarchy. Nevertheless, in distinguishing you from Cletus, who appeared on the sacred cycle in the month of April, we are justified by the authority of the holy Liturgy which appoints you a separate feast, and by the constant testimony of Rome itself, which knows better than any the names and the history of its pontiffs. Happy are you in being thus, as it were, lost sight of among the foundations on which rest forever the strength and beauty of the Church! Give us all a special love for the particular positions assigned to us in the sacred building. Receive the grateful homage of all the living stones who are chosen to form the eternal temple, and who will all lean on you for evermore.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYOLOGY:

The holy prophets Joel and Esdras.

In Macedonia, blessed Silas, one of the first Christians. By the Apostles he was destined for the churches of the Gentiles with the blessed Apostles Saints Paul and Barnabas. Filled with the grace of God, he zealously discharged the office of preaching, and after glorifying Christ by his sufferings rested in peace.

Also St. Serapion, martyr, who obtained the crown of martyrdom by fire in the time of the emperor Severus and the governor Aquila.

On the island of Chio, in the time of the emperor Decius and the governor Numerian, the martyr St. Myrops. Being clubbed to death, he went to Our Lord.

In Africa, the holy confessors Eugenius, the faithful and virtuous bishop of Carthage, and all the clergy of that church, to the number of about five hundred or more, among whom were many small children employed as lectors. In the persecution of the Vandals under the Arian king Hunneric, they were subjected to scourging and starvation, and driven into a most painful banishment which they bore with joy for God’s sake.

In their number were also two distinguished personages, the archdeacon Salutaris, and Muritta, occupying the second rank among the ministers of the church. Both had three times confessed the faith, and were illustrious by their sturdy perseverance in Christianity.

In Bretagne, St. Turian, bishop and confessor, a man of admirable simplicity and innocence.

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

Thanks be to God.

12 JULY – SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The Dominical cycle of the Time after Pentecost completes today its first seven. Previous to the general adoption of the changes introduced into the Sunday Gospels for this portion of the Year, the Gospel of the multiplication of the seven loaves gave its name to the seventh Sunday, and the mystery it contains is still evident in more than one section of today’s liturgy.

As we have already seen, this mystery was that of the consummation of the perfect in the repose or rest of God Himself. It was the fruitful peace of the divine union. Nothing, then, could be more fitting than that Solomon, who is the Peaceful by excellence, the sacred and authorised chanter of the nuptial Canticle, should have been selected to come forward, on this day to speak the praises of infinite Wisdom and reveal her ways to the children of men. When Easter is kept as late in April as it is possible, the seventh Sunday after Pentecost is the first of the month of August. And the Church then begins, in her night Office, the lessons from the Sapiential Books. Otherwise, she continues the historic scriptures, and that, some years, for five weeks more — but, even in that case Eternal Wisdom maintains her rights to this Sunday, which the number of Seven had already made hers in so special a way. For, when we cannot have the inspired instructions of Proverbs, we have Solomon’s own example preaching to us in the Third Book of Kings: we find him preferring Wisdom to all other treasures, and, on the throne of his father David, making her sit there with him as his inspirer and most noble Bride.

Saint Jerome, who has been appointed by the Church herself as the interpreter of today’s scripture lessons, tells us that David, at the close of his life of wars and troubles, knew as well as Solomon the loveliness of this incomparable Bride of the Peaceful. The chill of his age was remedied by her caresses, whose very contact is purity. “That this Wisdom may be mine,” exclaims the fervent solitary of Bethlehem, “may she embrace me, and abide with me. She never grows old. She is ever the purest of virgins, fruitful yet ever immaculate. I think the Apostle meant her, when he speaks of a something that can make us fervent in spirit (Romans xii. 11): So again, when our Lord tells us, in the Gospel, that, at the end of the world, the charity of many will grow cold (Matthew xxiv. 12), I believe it will be because Wisdom will then grow rare.”

Epistle – Romans vi. 19‒23

Brethren, I speak a human thing, because of the infirmity of your flesh; for as you have yielded your members to serve uncleanliness and iniquity unto iniquity, so now yield your members to serve justice, unto sanctification. For when you were the servants of sin, you were free from justice. What fruit therefore had you then in those things, of which you are now ashamed? For the end of them is death. But now, being made free from sin, and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end of life everlasting. For the wages of sin is death. But the grace of God, life everlasting, in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

“Reckon that you are dead unto sin, but alive to God, in Christ Jesus our Lord!” (Romans vi. 11). The Apostle of the Gentiles enters today into the development of this leading formula of the Christian life. The Epistle of last Sunday aimed exclusively at putting it in language that could not be misunderstood. It showed us that it expresses what is meant by that Baptism which, when we are immersed in the water, unites us to Christ. There, as in a sepulchre, the death of Jesus becomes ours and delivers us from sin. Sold under sin (Romans vii. 14) by our First Parents even before we had seen the day, and branded with its infamous stigma, our whole life belonged to the cruel tyrant. He is a master who is never satisfied with our service. He is a merciless exactor. There is scarce an hour that he does not make us feel his power over the members of our body. He does not allow us to forget that our body is his slave. But, if the life of a slave is under his master’s control, death comes at last and sets the soul free. And as to the body, the oppressor can claim nothing once it is buried (Job ii. 18).

Now, it was on the Cross of the Man-God, on the Cross of that Jesus who, as the Apostle so strongly expresses it, was made sin (2 Corinthians v. 21) because of our sins — it was on that Cross that guilty human nature was considered by God’s merciful justice to have become what its divine and innocent Head was. The old man, that was the issue of Adam the sinner, has been crucified. He has died in Christ. The slave by birth, affranchised by this happy death, has had buried under the waters of Baptism the body of sin which carried in its flesh the mark of its slavery. The body of sin was indeed our flesh. Not that innocent flesh which originally came all pure from its Creator’s hands, but the flesh which, generation after generation, was defiled by the transmission of a disgraceful inheritance. In Baptism, which the Apostle calls the mysterious sepulchre, the sacred stream has not only washed away the defilement of this degraded body, but it has also set it free from those members of sin, which are the evil passions.

These passions were powers of iniquity, that is, powers which deformed and turned into uncleanness, those faculties and organs with which God had endowed us that we might fulfil all justice, to sanctification (Colossians iii. 5-9). At that moment of our Baptism the strong-armed tyrant forfeited his possession of us (Luke xi. 21). That Baptism was a death which set his slave free. Sin being thus destroyed, the head of triple concupiscence has been severed, and the monster may writhe as he can. Aided by grace, man thus liberated may always prevent, if he wishes, the coils of the serpent from again being joined with their head. Yes, this is the manifold, yet single, work of holy Baptism: in the twinkling of an eye, and by its own power, it extirpates sin and annihilates all its rights over us. But once this is achieved, man must co-operate with the grace of the sacrament. That is, he must keep watch over his treacherous inclinations to sin which comes to life again by the slightest encouragement. He must be ever keeping up the work which his baptism day began, that is, he must be ever cutting down the vile and noxious weeds which are ever cropping up.

First, then, there is the death of sin which, in its complete and sudden defeat of the old enemy, is the result of God’s divine operation. But all this is to be followed up by a work which belongs to the affranchised slave to do — the life-long work of mortification of the spirit and the senses. It is the virtue of the first sacrament which is still telling on the Christian in this work of two-fold mortification. In his mortification, the sacrament is still pushing on its ceaseless work of vengeance against sin. Holy Baptism having of itself alone operated in the wretched slave of sin what God alone could empower it to achieve, summons man, now that his chains have fallen, to join her in the glorious work of maintaining his liberty. She invites him to share with her the honour of the divine victory over Satan and his works.

The keeping down the flesh will be again brought before us next Sunday as the true indicator of liberty on this Earth, and as the authentication of our being truly children of God. As the Apostle says: “Let not sin reign in your mortal body, so as to obey the lusts of it. Neither yield your your members as instruments of iniquity to sin, but present yourselves to God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of justice to God. For sin will not have dominion over you: for you are not under the law, but under grace. Know you not, that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants are you whom you obey, whether it be of sin to death, or of obedience to justice. But thanks be to God, that you were the servants of sin... but being freed from sin, we have been made servants of justice” (Romans vi. 12-18).

And will we do less for Justice than is being done everywhere in favour of our enemy, Sin? Surely justice deserves that we should make greater efforts in her service than for that odious tyrant who requites his slaves with nothing but shame and death. And yet, admirable condescension of God to our weakness! We have Saint Paul telling us in today’s Epistle, in the name of the Holy Ghost, we will be saints, we will attain eternal life (Romans vi. 19-23) if we will but serve justice with as much earnestness as we once served uncleanness and iniquity.

Let us humble ourselves at hearing such words. Let us be honest, and we will feel that they contain a reproach. For many of us, we might ask: What has become of that intense ardour with which we once used to follow after sin? To say that we have converted our ways would be no answer, for a conversion does not paralyse our faculties: it enlists our natural energy in God’s service, it even intensifies it by the very fact of its now being employed as originally intended. At all events, conversion does not lessen the activity which was in us before our conversion. It would be an insult to grace to accuse it of diminishing in us the gifts of God. What lessons, then, may we not learn, by seeing how eager in the pursuit of honour, interest or pleasure are the votaries of the world! What earnestness, what toil, what perseverance, what frequent sufferings, what abnegation at every turn, what misplaced heroism, and all for the purpose of satisfying the seven heads of the beast, and tasting a few drops of the poisoned cup of Babylon! (Apocalypse xvii. 7).

There are many souls in Hell who have gone through more fatigue and pain to procure their damnation than even the martyrs endured for Christ. And even with all that, never attaining the object they sought to obtain in this world! So true is it, that the fools who are the most subservient to Satan’s wishes, do not always succeed in enjoying, not even for a single day, the vile rewards he promises his slaves. Justice treats her followers in a very different way. She does not degrade, she does not deceive them that keep her. She blesses them with peace of mind at every step they take in duty-doing. She is ever enriching their treasure of merit. She leads them safely to the perfection of love. The life of union divine then grows, almost spontaneously, on that high ground of Justice. It rests on Justice, as a flower does on its stem. “He that possesses Justice,” says the Scripture, “will lay hold on Wisdom: he will find delights in that divine Wisdom, which surpasses all that earth could procure” (Ecclesiasticus xv. 1-8).

Would it then be fair to hesitate about going through those toils which procure Heaven for us, and are a preparation made here on Earth for the glories which are to be revealed in us in our eternal home? The present life, however long it may be, seems but momentary to a faithful soul. She is glad to give this proof of the love she bears to Him she longs for. “Jacob,” says Saint Augustine, “gave his twice seven years of service (Genesis xxix. 18-30) for the sake of Rachel, whose name, they tell us, signifies, vision of the Beginning, that is, of the Word, that is, of the Wisdom which shows us God. Every virtuous man on earth loves this Wisdom. It is for her he works and suffers by serving Justice. What he, like Jacob, aims at by his labours is not the fatigue for its own sake, but the possession of that which the fatigue is to bring him, namely, the fair Rachel, that is to say, rest in the Word in whom we have the vision of the Beginning. Is there any true servant of God who can have any other thought, when he is under the influence of grace? Once converted, what is it that man wishes for? What are his thoughts on? What has he in his heart ? What is it that he thus passionately loves and desires? It is the knowledge of Wisdom. Of course, man would, if he could, avoid all fatigue and suffering and come straight to the delights which he knows are in the exquisitely beautiful and perfect Wisdom. But that cannot be in the land of the dying. ‘If you desire Wisdom, keep justice, and God will give her to you’ (Ecclesiasticus i. 33). Justice here means the commandments, and the commandments prescribe works of Justice, of that Justice which comes of Faith. And Faith lives amid the uncertainty of temptations, that by piously believing what it does not as yet understand, it may merit the happiness of understanding. We are not, therefore, to find fault with the ardour of those who are possessed by the desire to possess Truth in its unveiled loveliness. What we must do is to put order in their love by telling them to begin with faith and strive, by the exercise of good deeds, to arrive at the bliss they long for. Do you love and desire, at the very onset, and above all things, this object which is so worthy of your possession, but let the ardour which burns within you show itself, first of all, by its leading you to cheerfully endure the fatigues of the road which leads to the prize towards which your love is all directed. Yes, and when you have got up to it, remember you will never enjoy beautiful Truth in this life without having, all the same happy while, to be still cultivating laborious Justice. However comprehensive and pure may be the sight granted to mortal men of the unchangeable Good, the corruptible body is a load on the soul, and the earthly habitation presses down the mind that muses on many things (Wisdom ix. 15) One, then, is that to which we must tend. But many are the things we are to bear for that one’s sake.”

Gospel – Matthew vii. 15‒21

At that time Jesus said to His disciples, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree brings forth good fruit, and the evil tree brings forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can an evil tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that brings not forth good fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits will know them. Not everyone that says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven, he will enter into the kingdom of Heaven.”

Praise be to you, O Christ. 

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

For each individual Christian, as for the Church at large, the security of the spiritual building depends primarily on the firmness of the foundation, which is Faith. The Holy Ghost will not build on a foundation that is unsound or unsafe. When, especially, He is to lead a soul to the higher degrees of divine union, He exacts from her, as the first condition, that her Faith, too, be above the average — a Faith, that is, with heroism enough to fight successfully those battles which brace the soul and so render her worthy of light and love. In every stage of the Christian life, however, it is Faith that provides love with its enduring and substantial (Hebrews xi. 1) nourishment. It is Faith that gives to the virtues their supernatural motives and makes them fit to form a worthy court for their queen, Charity. A soul’s development never goes beyond the measure of her Faith. The capaciousness of Faith, and its ever growing plenitude, and its certified conformity with truth — these are the guarantee of the progress which will be made by a just man, whereas all such holiness as affects to be guided by a Faith which is cramped or false, is holiness of a very dubious kind, and one that is exposed to most fearful illusions.

It was, therefore, a good and a wholesome thing that Faith should be put to the test, for it grows brighter and stronger under trial. Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews xi. 4-40) is enthusiastic in his praise of the triumphs won by the Faith of our forefathers. Could there be denied to the new Covenant those glorious combats which constituted the eternal merit and honour of the Saints who lived in the period of expectation and figures? It is by their victorious Faith in the word of the promise that all those worthy ancestors of the Christian people merited to have God Himself as their praise-giver (Hebrews xi. 2, 39). For us who joyously have possession of that Messiah who to them was but the object of their heroic hope, our trial cannot be like theirs — the trial of expectation. This is quite true. And yet heresy, which is the offspring of man’s pride and Hell’s malice — heresy and its manifold outcomings, which are ever producing the diminution of truth in this world of ours (Psalm xi. 2) — yes, it is through these that we will win merit by our possession of what they beheld and saluted only afar off (Hebrews xi. 13). Man is ever trying to intrude his foolish ideas into the truths of divine revelation and, as to the prince of this world (John xvi. 11), he will do all in his power to encourage these audacious attempts at corrupting the purity of the Word.

But Wisdom, who is never overcome (Wisdom vii. 30), will turn all these impious efforts into an occasion of glorious victories for her children. Here we have the reason why God permitted from the very commencement of the Church’s existence, and still permits, that sects should be continually springing up. It is in the battle field against error that the Church brings forth the armour of God (Ephesians vi. 11-17) and shows herself all brilliant with that absolute truth, which is the brightness of the Word, her Spouse (Hebrews i. 3). It is by the personal triumph over the spirit of lying, and by the spontaneous adhesion to the teachings of Christ and his Church, that the Christian shows himself to be a true child of light (John xii. 36), and becomes himself a light to the world (Matthew v. 14).

The combat is not without its dangers for the Christian who would hold, in all its integrity, the Faith of his mother the Church. The tricks of the enemy, his studied and obstinate hypocrisy, the crafty skill with which he tries to stir up in the soul, almost without her knowing it, a score of little weaknesses of hers which more or less favour error, all this frequently ends in injuring the light, not perhaps in extinguishing it altogether, but in robbing it of some of its brilliancy. And yet, they who live on the teachings given us in today’s Gospel are sure to come off with the victory. Let us meditate on them with gratitude and love, for it is by such teachings that eternal Wisdom grants us what we so ardently ask of Him when, in Advent, we thus beseech Him: “Come, and teach us the way of prudence.” Prudence, the friend of a wise man (Proverbs vii. 4), guardian of his treasures and his surest defence, has no greater peril from which to keep him than shipwreck concerning the Faith (1 Timothy i. 19). If Faith be lost, all is lost. No price is too great to give (Proverbs iii. 13-19) for that Prudence of the serpent which, in a disciple of Christ, goes so admirably with the simplicity of the dove (Matthew x. 16).

If we are happy enough to possess Prudence, we will readily distinguish between those false teachers whom we must shun, and those we must hearken to —between the falsifiers of the Word, and his faithful interpreters. “By their fruits will you know them,” says our Gospel, and history confirms the words of our Redeemer. Under the sheep’s clothing, which they wear that they may deceive simple souls, the apostles of falsehood ever betray a stench of death. The artful language they use (Ephesians v. 6), and the flatteries they utter for gain’s sake (Jude 16) cannot hide the hollowness of their works (Ephesians v. 11). They separate themselves from the flock of Christ (Jude 19) and flee from the light, for, as the Apostle says, all things that are reproved, or deserve to be so, are made manifest by the light (Ephesians v. 13), and as to the things that are done by them in secret, it is a shame even to speak of them (Ephesians v. 12). Therefore, be not partakers with them (Ephesians v. 7). The useless or rotten fruits of darkness, and the trees of Autumn, twice dead (Jude 12) which bear such fruits on their withered branches, both of them will be cast into the fire. If you yourselves were heretofore darkness, now that you have become light in the Lord by Baptism, or by a sincere conversion, show yourselves to be so, and produce the fruits of light, in all goodness, and justice and truth (Ephesians v. 89).

On this condition alone can you hope to enter into the kingdom of Heaven, and call yourselves disciples of that Wisdom of the Father, who, on this seventh Sunday, asks us to give Him our love. Saint James the Apostle almost seems to be giving a commentary on the Gospel of this seventh Sunday where he says: “Can the fig-tree, my Brethren, bear grapes? or the vine, figs? So neither can the salt water yield sweet. Who is a wise man and endued with wisdom among you? Let him, by a good conversation, (that is, by his good conduct, show his work in the meekness of Wisdom... For there is a wisdom which is bitter, and misleads others. It descends not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish... But the Wisdom which is from above first indeed is chaste, then peaceable, modest, easy to be persuaded, consenting to the good (and always sides with them) full of mercy and good fruits, without judging (the conduct of others) without dissimulation. And the fruit of justice is sown in peace to them that make peace (James iii. 11-18).