4 FEBRUARY – WEDNESDAY OF SEPTUAGESIMA WEEK

Lesson – Genesis iii. 1‒20

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman: “Why has God said you must not eat of every tree of the garden?” And the woman said to the serpent: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said: You must not eat of it, neither may you touch it, lest you die.” And the serpent said to the woman: “you will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it, then your eyes will be opened, and you will be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired: and she took of its fruit and ate, and gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. And the eyes of them both were opened. And when they knew that they were naked, they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amidst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called to Adam, and said to him: “Where are you?” And he said: “I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” And He said: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree whereof I commanded you that you should not eat?” And Adam said: “The woman whom you gave me to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” And the Lord God said to the Woman: “Why have you done this?” And she said: “The serpent beguiled me, and I ate.” And the Lord God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. Upon your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. She will bruise your head, and you will bruise her heel.” And to the woman He said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrows and your conception: in sorrow you will bring forth children, and you will be in the power of your husband, and he will rule over you.” And to Adam He said: “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying: You must halt not eat of it — cursed is the ground on which you will labour. In sorrow you will eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns also and thistles will it bring forth to you, and you will the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground; for out of it were you taken; for dust you are, and to dust you will return.” And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The guilty pair appear before the great God whom they have offended, and instead of acknowledging their guilt they would palliate and excuse it. But Divine Justice pronounces their condemnation, and the sentence will be felt by their posterity, even to the last generation. The two beings that had committed the heinous crime had been enriched with every gift of nature and grace. It was not with them, as it is with us. Concupiscence which gives us an inclination for what is wrong. Ignorance and forgetfulness which cloud the intellect of fallen man — these miseries had nothing whatever to do with the fall of our First Parents. They sinned through sheer ingratitude. They began by weighing the proposal of revolt when they ought to have spurned it with indignation and conquered by flight. Then, by degrees, the proposed crime seemed no great harm because, though God would lose their obedience, they would gain by the disobedience! And at length, the love of God was made to give place to the love of self and they declared their independence!

Yet, God had mercy on them because of their posterity. The Angels were all created at one and the same instant, and each of them was subjected to the trial which was to decide his eternal future. Each Angel depended on his own act — on his own choice between fidelity to his Creator or rebellion against Him, so that they who rebelled drew on themselves the eternity of God’s chastisement. The human race, on the contrary, existed not save as represented in its two First Parents, and was plunged by and with them into the abyss of God’s reprobation. Therefore God who spared not the Angels, mercifully spared the human race.

But, let us listen to the three sentences pronounced by God after the fall of Man. The first is against the serpent, and is the severest. The curse which is already upon him is deepened, and the pardon which is about to be promised to the human race, is to be given in the form of an anathema against that wicked spirit that has dared to war with God in the work of his hands. “I will put enmities between you and the woman: she will crush your head” (Genesis iii. 15). Thus does God avenge Himself of His enemy. The victory won over the woman is made to turn against the proud conqueror and become his humiliation and his defeat. In his fiendish craft, he had directed his first attack not against the man, but against the woman. She, by nature, was weaker and more credulous. And if he conquered her, he hoped — too well, alas! — that Adam would be led to turn against his Creator in order not to displease the creature. All happened as he willed it: but now, see how God uses the woman to foil and punish him. He kindles in her heart an implacable hatred against his and our enemy. This cruel serpent may raise his proud head and, here and there, find men that will adore him: the day will come when a woman’s foot will crush this head which refused to bend before God. This daughter of Eve whom all generations are to call Blessed (Luke i. 48) will be prefigured by other women: by Deborah, Judith, Esther and others, all celebrated for their victories over the Serpent. She will be followed, until the end of time, by an uninterrupted succession of Christian Virgins and Matrons who, with all their weakness, will be powerful in co-operating with God’s designs and, as the Apostle says, “the unbelieving husband will be sanctified by the believing wife” (1 Corinthians vii. 14).

Thus will God punish the serpent’s pride. Before pronouncing upon our First Parents the sentence they have deserved, He promises to bless their posterity and pours into their own hearts a ray of hope.

4 FEBRUARY – SAINT ANDREW CORSINI (Bishop and Confessor)

 

Andrew was born at Florence of the noble Corsini family in 1303. He was the fruit of his parents’ prayers and was consecrated by them to the Blessed Virgin Mary. His future was thus shown by God to the mother. She dreamt that she had given birth to a wolf which went to the church of the Carmelites and, as it entered the threshold, was suddenly changed into a lamb. Though his early education was one which was calculated to form him to piety and to everything that suited his high birth, by degrees Andrew fell into a vicious manner of life notwithstanding the frequent reproaches made him by his mother. But as soon as he was told that he had been consecrated by his parents to the Virgin-Mother of God and heard of his mother’s vision, he entered the Order of Carmelites. The devil ceased not to molest him, even then, with manifold temptations, but nothing could make him change his resolution of entering the religious life.

Shortly after his profession Andrew was sent to Paris for a course of study. Having completed it and taken his degrees, he returned to Italy and was made superior of his Order in the province of Tuscany. It happened about that time that the Church of Fiesole lost its bishop, and Andrew was chosen as his successor. But looking on himself as unworthy of such a dignity, he hid himself so that no one knew where he was. But a child who had not yet received the use of speech, miraculously revealed the place outside the town where he was, upon which the Saint, fearing that further refusal would be a resistance to the divine will, was consecrated bishop. Thus exalted to so great a dignity Andre applied himself more than ever to the practice of humility, which had always been his favourite virtue. To the zeal of a good pastor he united tender compassion for the poor, abundant alms-giving, a life of prayer, long watchings and other virtues, all which, together with the gift of prophecy he had received, gained for him a great reputation for sanctity.

Pope Urban V hearing of his great merits sent him as his Legate to Bologna to quell a sedition that had arisen in that city. The fulfilment of this charge cost him much suffering, but such was his prudence that he succeeded in restoring peace among the citizens and so prevented further bloodshed. He then returned to Fiesole. Not long after, being worn out by ceaseless labours and bodily mortifications, and having been told by the Blessed Virgin Mary of the precise day of his death, he passed from this life to the kingdom of Heaven in 1373, in the seventieth year of his age. Great was the reputation of his name on account of the many and wonderful miracles wrought through his intercession, and at length he was canonised by Urban VIII. His body reposes in the church of his Order at Florence. The citizens of that city, having often experienced that his relics have drawn down the divine protection on them in times of public calamity, their devotion to the Saint is very great.

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

The saintly Bishop whose feast we keep today pressingly invites us, by his austere life and his burning zeal for the salvation of souls, to procure, at all costs, our own reconciliation with the Divine Justice. We are indebted for this feast to a member of the illustrious family of the Corsini, Pope Clement XII who, however, was but the instrument used by Divine Providence. The holy Bishop of the little town of Fiesole ever sought to be unknown during his life and God, who willed that he should be glorified by the whole Church, inspired the Sovereign Pontiff to inscribe his name among the Saints of the universal Calendar. Andrew the Saint, was once a sinner. His example will encourage us in the work of our conversion.

*****

Hear, O holy Pontiff, our prayer: we are sinners and would learn from you how we are to return to the God we have offended. His mercy was poured out upon you. Obtain the same for us. Have pity on Christians throughout the world, for the grace of repentance is now being offered to all. Pray for us that we may be filled with the spirit of compunction. We have sinned. We sue for pardon. Intercession like yours can win it for us. From wolves, change us into lambs. Strengthen us against our enemies. Get us an increase of the virtue of humility which you had in such perfection, and intercede for us with our Lord that He may crown our efforts with perseverance, as He did yours, that thus we may be enabled to unite with you in singing forever the praises of our Redeemer.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Rome, St. Eutychius, who endured a glorious martyrdom, and was buried in the cemetery of Callistus. Pope St. Damasus wrote an epitaph in verse for his tomb.

At Fossombrone, the holy martyrs Aquilinus, Geminus, Gelasius, Magnus and Donatus.

At Thumuis in Egypt, in the persecution of Diocletian, the passion of blessed Philaeas, bishop of that city, and of Philoromus, military tribune, who rejected the exhortations of their relations and friends to save themselves, offered themselves to death, and so merited immortal palms from God. With them was crowned with martyrdom a numberless multitude of the faithful of the same place who followed the example of their pastor.

The same day, St. Rembert, bishop of Bremen.

At Troyes, St. Aventin, confessor.

At Pelusium in Egypt, St. Isidore, a monk renowned for merit and learning.

The same day, St. Gilbert, confessor, In the town of Amatrice, in the diocese of Rieti, the decease of St. Joseph of Leonissa, of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchins, who suffered many afflictions from the Muslims. As he was celebrated for his apostolic labours and miracles, he was placed on the list of holy confessors by Pope Benedict XIV.

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

Thanks be to God.

3 FEBRUARY – TUESDAY OF SEPTUAGESIMA WEEK

 

Lesson – Genesis ii. 15‒24

So the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it. And He commanded him, saying: “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you must not eat of it: for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die.” And the Lord God said: It is not good that the man should be alone. Let us make him a help meet for him. So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them to Adam, to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called every living creature, that was the name of it. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to every fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a help meet for him. the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam. And while he slept, He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead of it. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from Adam made He a woman, and brought her to Adam. And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she will be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man must leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife. And they joined will be one flesh.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The serpent’s promises had stifled, in Eve’s heart, every sentiment of Love for the God that had created her and loaded her with blessings: she ambitions to be god like Him! Her Faith, too, is wavering. She s not sure but what God may have deceived her by threatening her with death should she disobey His command. Flushed by pride, she looks up to the Forbidden Fruit. It seems good to eat, and it is fair to her eyes (Genesis iii. 6), so that her senses too conspire against God, and against her own happiness. The sin is already committed in her heart. It needs but a formal act to make it complete. She cares for nothing but self. God is no more heeded than if He did not exist. She stretches forth her daring hand. She plucks the Fruit. She puts it to her mouth and eats! God had said that if she broke His commandment, she should die. She has eaten, she has sinned, and yet she lives as before! Her pride exults at this triumph, and convinced that she is too strong for God’s anger to reach her, she resolves on making Adam a partner in her victory. Boldly she hands him the Fruit which she herself has eaten without any evil coming to her. Whether it were, that he was emboldened by the impunity of his wife’s sin, or that from a feeling of blind affection he wished to share the lot of her who was the flesh of his flesh and the bone of his bones — our First Father, also, forgets all he owes to his Creator and, as though there had never been anything of love between him and his God, he basely does as Eve suggests — he eats of the Fruit, and by that act ruins himself and all his posterity.

No sooner have they broken the tie which united them with God than they sink into themselves. As long as God dwells in the creature whom He has raised to the supernatural state, his being is complete. But let that creature drive his God away from himself by sin and he finds himself in a state worse than nothing — the state of evil. That soul which a moment before was so beautiful and pure, is a hideous wreck. Thus was it with our First Parents: they stand alone. Creatures without God, and an intolerable shame seizes them. They thought to become gods, they aspired at Infinite Being. See them now: sinners, the prey of concupiscence. Hitherto their innocence was their all-sufficient garb. The world was obedient to them. They knew not how to blush, and there was nothing to make them fear. But now they tremble at their nakedness, and must needs seek a place in which to hide! The same self-love that had worked their ruin had made them forget the greatness and goodness of God and despise His commandment. Now that they have committed the great sin, the same blindness prevents them from even thinking of confessing it, or asking the forgiveness of the Master they have offended. A sullen fear possesses them. They can think of nothing but how and where to hide!

3 FEBRUARY – SAINT BLAISE (Bishop and Martyr)

 

Blaise, whose signal virtues made him dear to the people of Sebaste in Armenia, was chosen Bishop of that city. When the Emperor Diocletian waged his cruel persecution against the Christians, the Saint hid himself in a cave on mount Argeus, and there he remained sometime concealed but was at length discovered by some soldiers of the governor Agricolaus while they were hunting. They led him to the governor, who gave orders that he should be put into prison. During his imprisonment, many sick people, attracted by the reputation of his sanctity, came to him and he healed them. Among these was a boy whose life was despaired of by the physicians, on account of his having swallowed a bone which could not be extracted from his throat. The Saint was twice brought before the governor, but neither fair promises nor threats could induce him to offer sacrifice to the gods. Whereupon he was first beaten with rods, and then his flesh was torn with iron hooks while he lay stretched on the rack. At length, he was beheaded, and nobly gave testimony to the faith of Christ our Lord on the third of the Nones of February (February 3rd).

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

Now that the Church, has closed the joyous period of her Forty Days of Christmas and is putting us through a course of meditations on subjects which are to excite a spirit of penance within us, each of the Saints’ Feasts must produce an impression which will be in accordance with that spirit. From this day till Easter, we will study the Saints, as they come to us, in this special light: how much they laboured and suffered during their pilgrimage of life, and what was the plan they took for conquering the world and the flesh. “They went,” says the Psalmist, “and wept, casting their seeds: but coming they will come with joyfulness, carrying their sheaves” (Psalm cxxv. 6, 7). It will be the same with us and, at the end of our Lenten labours, our Risen Jesus will hail us as His living, regenerated children.

The Calendar of this portion of the year abounds with martyrs and, at the very onset, we meet with one of the most celebrated of these glorious champions of Christ. The scene of his pastoral virtues and his martyrdom, was Sebaste, a city of Armenia, the same that will give us forty martyred soldiers on a single day. The devotion to Saint Blase is, even to this day, most fervently kept up in the East, especially in Armenia. The Western Churches soon began to love and honour his memory, and so universally that we might call him one of the most popular of our Saints.

*****

Accept, glorious Martyr, the praise which we, too, offer you in union with that given you by the whole Church. In return for this homage of our veneration, look down upon the Christian people who are now preparing to enter on the Season of penance and be converted to the Lord their God by holy compunction and tears. We ask it of you by your own combat: assist us in the one for which we are preparing. When duty required you to undergo tortures and death, it found you ready and brave. Our duty is expiation by penance, and your prayers must get us courage. Our enemies are not more cruel than yours, but they are more treacherous and if we spare them we are lost. Obtain for us that heavenly assistance which enabled you to conquer. We are children of the Martyrs. God forbid we should be degenerate!

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYOLOGY:

In Africa, St. Celerinus, deacon, who was kept nineteen days in prison loaded with fetters and confessed Christ gloriously in the midst of afflictions. By overcoming the enemy with invincible constancy he showed to others the road to victory.

Also the holy martyrs, Laurentinus and Ignatius, his uncles, and Celerina, his grandmother, who had been previously crowned with martyrdom. They are highly praised in an Epistle of St. Cyprian.

In the same country, the holy martyrs Felix, Symphronius, Hippolytus and their companions.

In the town of Gap, the holy bishops Tigides and Remedius.

At Lyons, the Saints Lupicinus and Felix, also bishops.

The same day, St. Anscharius, bishop of Bremen, who converted the Swedes and Danes to the faith of Christ.

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

Thanks be to God.

2 FEBRUARY – MONDAY OF SEPTUAGESIMA WEEK

 

Lesson – Genesis i. 27‒31; ii. 1‒10

So God created man in His Own image. In the image of God He created him: male and female He created them. And God blessed them, and said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the Earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the Earth.” And God said: “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of the Earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed, to you it will be for meat. And to every beast of the Earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creeps upon the Earth in which there is life [I have given it] for meat.” And it was so. And God saw everything that He had made, and it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the Sixth Day. Then the heavens and the Earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made. And He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all His work, which He created and made. These are the generations of the heavens and of the Earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the heavens and the Earth, and every plant of the field before it sprung up in the Earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the Earth, and there was not a man to till the ground; but there rose up a spring from the Earth and watered the whole face of the ground. So the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And the Lord God had planted a garden earlier in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food: the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The serpent said to the woman: “Why has God commanded you that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?” (Genesis iii. 1). Thus opened the conversation which our mother Eve so rashly consents to hold with God’s enemy. She ought to have refused all intercourse with Satan. She did not and thereby she imperils the salvation of the whole human race. Let us recall to mind the events that have happened up to this fatal hour. God, in His omnipotence and love, has created two beings upon whom He has lavished all the riches of His goodness. He has destined them for immortality, and this undying life is to have everything that can make it perfectly happy. The whole of nature is made subject to them. A countless posterity is to come from them and love them with all the tenderness of grateful children. Nay, this God of goodness who has created them deigns to be on terms of intimacy with them, and such is their simple innocence that this adorable condescension does not seem strange to them. But there is something far beyond all this. He, whom they have hitherto known by favours of an inferior order, prepares for them a happiness which surpasses all they could picture with every effort of thought. They must first go through a trial, and if faithful, God will bestow the great gift as a recompense they have merited. And this is the gift: He will give them to know Him in Himself, make them partakers of His own glory, and make their happiness infinite and eternal. Yes, this is what God has done, and is preparing to do for these two beings who, but a while ago, were nothing!

In return for all these gratuitous and magnificent gifts, God asks of them but one thing: and it is that they acknowledge His dominion over them. Nothing, surely, can be sweeter to them than to make such a return. Nothing could be more just. All they are, and all they have, and all the lovely creation around them, has been produced out of nothing by the lavish munificence of this God. They must, then, live for Him, faithful, loving and grateful. He asks them to give Him one only proof of this fidelity, love and gratitude: He bids them not to eat of the fruit of one single tree. The only return He asks for all the favours He has bestowed on them is the observance of this easy commandment. His sovereign justice will be satisfied by this act of obedience. They ought to accept such terms with hearty readiness and comply with them with a holy pride, as being not only the tie which will unite them with their God, but as the only means in their power of paying Him what He asks of them. But there comes another voice, the voice of a creature, and it speaks to the woman: “Why has God commanded you that you should not eat of every tree?” And Eve dares, and has the heart, to listen to him that asks why her divine Benefactor has put a command upon her! She can bear to hear the justice of God’s will called in question! Instead of protesting against the sacrilegious words, she tamely answers them! Her God is blasphemed and she is not indignant! How dearly we will have to pay for this ungrateful indifference, this indiscretion!

“And the woman answered him, saying: Of the fruit of the trees that are in Paradise we do eat, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of Paradise, God has commanded us that we should not eat, and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die” (Genesis iii. 2, 3). Thus Eve not only listens to the serpent’s question: she answers him. She converses with the wicked spirit that tempts her. She exposes herself to danger. Her fidelity to her Maker is compromised. True, the words she uses show that she has not forgotten His command, but they imply a certain hesitation which savours of pride and ingratitude. The Spirit of Evil finds that he has excited, in this heart, a love of independence, and that if he can but persuade her that she will not suffer from her disobedience, she is his victim. He, therefore, further addresses her with these blasphemous and lying words: “No, you will not die the death, for God knows that in whatever day you will eat thereof, your eyes will be opened and you will be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis iii. 4, 5). What he proposes to Eve is open rebellion. He has kindled within her that perfidious love of self which is man’s worst evil, and which, if it be indulged, breaks the tie between him and his Creator. Thus the blessings God has bestowed, the obligation of gratitude, personal interest — all are to be disregarded and forgotten. Ungrateful man would become god. He would imitate the rebel Angels. He will fall as they did.

2 FEBRUARY – CANDLEMAS

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

After Tierce follows the Blessing of the Candles, which is one of the three principal ones observed by thee Church during the year. The other two are the Blessing of the Ashes and the Blessing of the Palms.

The signification of this ceremony bears so essential a connection with the mystery of our Lady’s Purification, that if Septuagesima, Sexagesima or Quiuquagesima Sunday fall on the 2nd of February, the Feast is deferred to tomorrow, but the Blessing of the Candles and the Procession which follows it always take place on this precise day.

In order to give uniformity to the three great Blessings of the year, the Church prescribes for that of the candles the same colour for the vestments of the sacred Ministers as is used in the two other Blessings of the Ashes and Palms — namely, purple. Thus this solemn function, which is inseparable from the day on which our Lady’s Purification took place, may be gone through every year on the 2nd of February, without changing the colour prescribed for the three Sundays just mentioned.

It is exceedingly difficult to say what was the origin of this ceremony. Baronius, Thomassin and others are of opinion that it was instituted towards the close of the 5th century by Pope Saint Gelasius, in order to give a Christian meaning to certain vestiges, still retained by the Romans, of the old Lupercalia. Saint Gelasius certainly did abolish the last vestiges of the feast of the Lupercalia which, in earlier times, the pagans used to celebrate in the month of February. Pope Innocent III in one of his Sermons for the Feast of the Purification attributes the institution of this ceremony of Candlemas to the wisdom of the Roman Pontiffs who turned into the present religious rite the remnants of an ancient pagan custom which had not quite died out among the Christians. The old pagans, he says, used to carry lighted torches in memory of those which the fable gives to Ceres when she went to the top of Mount Etna in search of her daughter Proserpine. But against this, we have to object that on the pagan calendar of the Romans there is no mention of any feast in honour of Ceres for the month of February. We, therefore, prefer adopting the opinion of Dom Hugh Menard, Pocca, Henschenius and Pope Benedict XIV that an ancient feast, which was kept in February and was called the Amburbalia, during which the pagans used to go through the city with lighted torches in their hands, gave occasion to the Sovereign Pontiffs to substitute in its place a Christian ceremony which they attached to the Feast of that sacred mystery in which Jesus, the Light of the world, was presented in the Temple by His Virgin-Mother.

The mystery of today’s ceremony has frequently been explained by liturgists dating from the seventh century. According to Saint Ivo of Chartres, the wax — which is formed from the juice of flowers by the bee (which has always been considered as the emblem of virginity) — signifies the virginal flesh of the Divine Infant who diminished not, either by His conception or His birth, the spotless purity of His Blessed Mother. The same holy Bishop would have us see in the flame of our candle a symbol of Jesus who came to enlighten our darkness. Saint Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking on the same mystery, bids us consider three things in the blessed candle: the wax, the wick and the flame. The wax, he says, which is the production of the virginal bee, is the flesh of our Lord. The wick, which is within, is His soul. The flame which burns on the top, is His Divinity. Formerly, the faithful looked upon it as an honour to be permitted to bring their wax tapers to the Church on this Feast of the Purification that they might be blessed together with those which were to be borne in the procession by the Priests and sacred Ministers. And the same custom is still observed in some congregations. It would be well if Pastors were to encourage this practice, retaining it where it exists, or establishing it where it is not known. There has been such a systematic effort made to destroy or, at least, to impoverish the exterior rites and practices of religion that we find, throughout the world, thousands of Christians who have been insensibly made strangers to those admirable sentiments of faith which the Church alone, in her Liturgy, can give to the body of the faithful.

Thus, we shall be telling many what they have never heard before, when we inform them that the Church blesses the candles today, not only to be carried in the procession which forms part of the ceremony, but also for the use of the faithful, inasmuch as they draw upon such as use them with respect, whether on sea or on land, (as the Church says in the Prayer) special blessings from Heaven. These blessed candles ought, also, to be lit near the bed of the dying Christian as a symbol of the immortality merited for us by Christ, and of the protection of our Blessed Lady.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Rome, on the Via Salaria, the passion of St. Apronian, a notary. While he was yet a Gentile and was leading St. Sisinius out of prison to present him before the governor Laodicius, he heard a voice from heaven saying, “Come you, the blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world.” At once he believed, was baptised and, after confessing our Lord, received the sentence of death.

Also at Rome, the holy martyrs Fortunatus, Felician, Firmus and Candidus.

At Caesarea in Palestine, St. Cornelius, a centurion, whom the blessed Apostle St. Peter baptised and raised to the episcopal dignity in that city.

At Orleans, the holy bishop Flosculus.

At Canterbury in England, the birthday of St. Lawrence, bishop, who succeeded St. Augustine in the government of that church and converted the king himself to the faith.

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

Thanks be to God.

2 FEBRUARY – THE PURIFICATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

The Forty Days of Mary’s Purification are now completed and she must go up to the Temple, there to offer to God her child Jesus. Before following the Son and His Mother in this their mysterious journey, let us spend our last few moments at Bethlehem in lovingly pondering over the mysteries at which we are going to assist.

The Law commanded that a woman who had given birth to a son should not approach the Tabernacle for the term of forty days, after which time she was to offer a sacrifice for her Purification. She was to offer up a lamb as a holocaust, and a turtle or dove as a sin-offering. But if she were poor and could not provide a lamb, she was to offer, in its stead, a second turtle or dove. By another ordinance of the Law, every first-born son was to be considered as belonging to God and was to be redeemed by five sides, each side weighing, according to the standard of the Temple, twenty obols (Leviticus xii; Numbers iii. 47). Mary was a Daughter of Israel — she had given birth to Jesus —He was her first-born son. Could such a Mother and such a Son be included in the Laws we have just quoted? Was it becoming that Mary should observe them? If she considered the spirit of these legal enactments and why God required the ceremony of Purification, it was evident that she was not bound to them. They, for whom these Laws had been made, were espoused to men. Mary was the chaste Spouse of the Holy Ghost, a Virgin in conceiving, and a Virgin in giving birth to, her Son. Her purity had ever been spotless as that of the Angels, but it received an incalculable increase by her carrying the God of all sanctity in her womb, and bringing Him into this world. Moreover, when she reflected on her child being the Creator and sovereign Lord of all things, how could she suppose that He was to be submitted to the humiliation of being ransomed as a slave whose life and person are not His own? And yet, the Holy Spirit revealed to Mary that she must comply with both these Laws. She, the holy Mother of God, must go to the Temple like other Hebrew mothers, as though she had lost a something which needed restoring by a legal sacrifice. He that is the Son of God and Son of Man must be treated in all things as though He were a servant, and be ransomed in common with the poorest Jewish boy. Mary adores the will of God and embraces it with her whole heart.

The Son of God was not to be made known to the world but by gradual revelations. For thirty years He leads a hidden life in the insignificant village of Nazareth, and during all that time men took Him to be the son of Joseph (Luke iii. 23). It was only in His thirtieth year that John the Baptist announced Him, and then only in mysterious words to the Jews who flocked to the Jordan, there to receive from the Prophet the baptism of penance. Our Lord Himself gave the next revelation — the testimony of His wonderful works and miracles. Then came the humiliations of His Passion and Death, followed by His glorious Resurrection which testified to the truth of His prophecies, proved the infinite merits of His Sacrifice and, in a word, proclaimed His Divinity. The Earth had possessed its God and its Saviour for three-and-thirty years and men, with a few exceptions, knew it not. The shepherds of Bethlehem knew it, but they were not told, as were afterwards the fishermen of Genesareth, to go and preach the Word to the furthermost parts of the world. The Magi, too, knew it. They came to Jerusalem and spoke of it, and the city was in a commotion. But all was soon forgotten, and the Three Kings went back quietly to the East. These two events (which would, at a future day, be celebrated by the Church as events of most important interest to mankind) were lost upon the world, and the only ones that appreciated them were a few true Israelites who had been living in expectation of a Messiah who was to be poor and humble, and was to save the world. The majority of the Jews would not even listen to the Messiah having been born, for Jesus was born at Bethlehem, and the Prophets had distinctly foretold that the Messiah was to be called a Nazarite (Matthew ii. 23).

The same Divine plan — which had required that Mary should be espoused to Joseph in order that her fruitful virginity might not seem strange in the eyes of the people — now obliged her to come, like other Israelite mothers, to offer the sacrifice of Purification for the birth of the son whom she had conceived by the operation of the power of the Holy Ghost, but who was to be presented in the Temple as the son of Mary, the spouse of Joseph. Thus it is, that Infinite Wisdom delights in showing that His thoughts are not our thoughts, and in disconcerting our notions. He claims the submissiveness of our confidence until the time come that He has fixed for withdrawing the veil and showing Himself to our astonished view. The Divine Will was dear to Mary in this as in every circumstance of her life. The Holy Virgin knew that by seeking this external rite of Purification she was in no way risking the honour of her child, or failing in the respect due to her own virginity. She was in the Temple of Jerusalem what she was in the house of Nazareth, when she received the Archangel’s visit — she was the Handmaid of the Lord. She obeyed the Law because she seemed to come under the Law. Her God and her Son submitted to the ransom as humbly as the poorest Hebrew would have to do. He had already obeyed the edict of the emperor Augustus in the general census. He was to be obedient even unto death, even to the death of the Cross. The Mother and the Child, both humbled themselves in the Purification and man’s pride received on that day one of the greatest lessons ever given it.

What a journey was this of Mary and Joseph. from Bethlehem to Jerusalem! The Divine Babe is in His Mother’s arms — she had Him on her heart the whole way. Heaven, and Earth, and all nature, are sanctified by the gracious presence of their merciful Creator. Men look at this Mother as she passes along the road with her sweet Jesus. Some are struck with her appearance, others pass her by as not worth a look. But of the whole crowd there was not one that knew he had been so close to the God who had come to save him. Joseph is carrying the humble offering which the Mother is to give to the priest. They are too poor to buy a lamb — besides, their Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The Law required that a turtle, or dove, should be offered in the place of a lamb when the mother was poor. Innocent birds! Emblems of purity, fidelity and simplicity. Joseph has also provided the five sides, the ransom to be given for the first-born son —Mary’s only Son, who has vouchsafed to make us His brethren and by adopting our nature to render us partakers of His. At length, the Holy Family enter Jerusalem. The name of this Holy City signifies Vision of Peace, and Jesus comes to bring her Peace. Let us consider the names of the three places in which our Redeemer began, continued and ended his life on Earth. He is conceived at Nazareth, which signifies a Flower. And Jesus is, as He tells us in the Canticle, the Flower of the field and the Lily of the valley (Canticles ii. 1) by whose fragrance we are refreshed. He is born at Bethlehem, the House of Bread, for He is the nourishment of our souls. He dies on the Cross in Jerusalem, and by His Blood He restores peace between Heaven and Earth, peace between men, peace within our own souls and, on this day of His Mother’s Purification, we will find Him giving us the pledge of this peace.

While Mary, the Living Ark of the Covenant, is ascending the steps which lead up to the Temple carrying Jesus in her arms, let us be attentive to the Mystery — one of the most celebrated of the prophecies is about to be accomplished, one of the principal characters of the Messiah is about to be shown as belonging to this infant. We have already had the other predictions fulfilled, of His being conceived of a Virgin and born in Bethlehem. Today He shows us a further title to our adoration — He enters the Temple. This edifice is not the magnificent Temple of Solomon which was destroyed by fire during the Jewish captivity. It is the Second Temple which was built after the return from Babylon, and is not comparable to the First in beauty. Before the century is out, it also is to be destroyed, and our Saviour will soon tell the Jews that not a stone will remain on stone that will not be thrown down (Luke xxi. 6). Now, the Prophet Aggeus, in order to console the Jews who had returned from banishment and were grieving because they were unable to raise a House to the Lord equal in splendour to that built by Solomon, addressed these words to them, which mark the time of the coming of the Messiah: “Take courage, O Zorobabel, says the Lord; and take courage, O Jesus, the son of Josedec, the High Priest; and take courage, all ye people of the land — for thus says the Lord of hosts: Yet one little while, and I will move the Heaven, and the Earth, and the sea, and the dry land. And I will move all nations; and the Desired of all nations will come; and I will fill this House with glory. Great will be the glory of this House, more than of the first; and in this place I will give Peace, says the Lord of hosts” (Aggeus ii. 5, 7, 8, 10).

The hour is come for the fulfilment of this prophecy. The Emmanuel has left Bethlehem. He has come among the people. He is about to take possession of His Temple, and the mere fact of His entering it will immediately give it a glory which is far above that of its predecessor. He will often visit it during His mortal life, but His coming to it today, carried as He is in Mary’s arms, is enough for the accomplishment of the promise, and all the shadows and figures of this Temple at once pale before the rays of the Sun of Truth and Justice. The blood of oxen and goats will, for a few years more, flow on its altar, but the infant who holds in His veins the Blood that is to redeem the world is, at this moment, standing near that very altar. Amid the Priests who are there, and amid the crowd of Israelites who are moving to and fro in the sacred building, there are a few faithful ones who are in expectation of the Deliverer, and they know that the time of His manifestation is at hand. But there is not one among them all who knows that at that very moment this expected Messiah is under the same roof with Himself.

But, this great event could not be accomplished without a prodigy being wrought by the Eternal God as a welcome to His Son. The shepherds had been summoned by the Angel, and the Magi had been called by the Star, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem. This time it is the Holy Ghost Himself who sends a witness to the Infant, now in the great Temple. There was then living in Jerusalem an old man whose life was well near spent. He was a Man of desires (Daniel x. 11) and his name was Simeon. His heart had longed unceasingly for the Messiah and, at last, his hope was recompensed. The Holy Ghost revealed to him that he should not see death without first seeing the rising of the Divine Light. As Mary and Joseph were ascending the steps of the Temple to take Jesus to the altar, Simeon felt within himself the strong impulse of the Spirit of God. He leaves his house and walks towards the Temple. The ardour of his desire makes him forget the feebleness of age. He reaches the porch of God’s House and there, amid the many mothers who had come to present their children, his inspired gaze recognises the Virgin of whom he had so often read in Isaias, and he presses through the crowd to the child she is holding in her arms.

Mary, guided by the same Divine Spirit, welcomes the saintly old man and puts into his trembling arms the dear object of her love, the Salvation of the world. Happy Simeon! Figure of the ancient world, grown old in its expectation, and near its end. No sooner has he received the sweet Fruit of Life than his youth is renewed as that of the eagle, and in his person is wrought the transformation which was to be granted to the whole human race. He cannot keep silence. He must sing a Canticle. He must do as the shepherds and Magi had done, he must give testimony: “Now,” says he, “now, O Lord, dismiss your servant in peace, because my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared: a light that is to enlighten the Gentiles, and give glory to your people Israel” (Luke ii. 29). Immediately, there comes, attracted to the spot by the same Holy Spirit, the holy Anne, Phanuel’s daughter, noted for her piety and venerated by the people on account of her great age. Simeon and Anna, the representatives of the Old Testament, unite their voices and celebrate the happy coming of the child who is to renew the face of the Earth. They give praise to the mercy of Jehovah who, in this place, in this Second Temple, gives peace to the world as the Prophet Aggeus had foretold. This was the peace so long looked forward to by Simeon, and now in this peace will he sleep. “Now, Lord,” as he says in his Canticle, “dismiss your servant, according to your word, in peace!” His soul, quitting its bond of the flesh, will now hasten to the bosom of Abraham and bear to the elect who rest there, the tidings that peace has appeared on the Earth, and will soon open Heaven. Anne has some years still to pass on Earth. As the Evangelist tells us, she has to go and announce the fulfilment of the promises to such of the Jews as were spiritually minded, and looked for the Redemption of Israel (Luke ii. 38).

The divine seed is sown. The shepherds, the Magi, Simeon and Anne have all been its sowers. It will spring up in due time, and when our Jesus has spent His thirty years of hidden life in Nazareth and will come for the harvest time, He will say to His Disciples: “Lift up your eyes, and see the countries, for they are white already for the harvest (John iv. 35). Pray ye the Lord of the harvest, that He send labourers into His harvest” (Luke x. 2). Simeon gives back to Mary the child she is going to offer to the Lord. The two doves are presented to the priest who sacrifices them on the altar. The price for the ransom is paid. The whole law is satisfied and, after having paid her homage to her Creator in this sacred place where she spent her early years, Mary, with Jesus fast pressed to her bosom, and her faithful Joseph by her side, leaves the Temple.

Such is the mystery of this fortieth day which closes, by this admirable Feast of the Purification, the holy season of Christmas. Several learned writers, among whom we may mention Henschenius and Pope Benedict XIV, are of opinion that this Solemnity was instituted by the Apostles themselves. This much is certain, that it was a long-established Feast even in the fifth century. The Greek Church and the Church of Milan count this Feast among those of our Lord, but the Church of Rome has always considered it as a Feast of the Blessed Virgin. It is true, it is our Saviour who is this day offered in the Temple, but this offering is the consequence of our Lady’s Purification. The most ancient of the Western Martyrologies and Calendars call it The Purification. The honour thus paid by the Church to the Mother tends, in reality, to the greater glory of her Divine Son, for He is the Author and the End of all those prerogatives which we revere and honour in Mary.

Lesson – Malachias iii. 1–5

Thus says the Lord God: “Behold I send my angel, and he will prepare the way before my face. And presently the Lord whom you seek, and the Angel of the Testament whom you desire, will come to His Temple. Behold He comes, says the Lord of hosts: and who will be able to think of the day of His coming? and who will stand to see Him? For He is like a refining fire, and like the fuller’s herb: and He will sit refining and cleansing the silver, and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and will refine them as gold, and as silver, and they will offer sacrifices to the Lord in justice. And the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will please the Lord, as in the days of old, and in the ancient years,” says the Lord Almighty.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

All the Mysteries of the Man-God have this for their object — the purifying of our hearts. He sends His Angel (that is, His Precursor) before His face that he may prepare His way and we have heard this holy Prophet crying out to us, in his wilderness: “Be humbled, ye hills! and ye valleys, be ye filled up!” At length, he that is the Angel, the Sent, by excellence, comes in person to make a Testament or Covenant with us. He comes to His Temple, and this Temple is our heart. But He is like a refining fire that takes away the dross of metals. He wishes to renew us by purifying us, that thus we may be worthy to be offered to Him, and with Him, by a perfect sacrifice. We must, therefore, take care and not be satisfied with admiring these sublime Mysteries. We must hold this as a principle of our spiritual life — that the Mysteries brought before us, feast after feast, are intended to work in us the destruction of the old, and the creation of the new, man. We have been spending Christmas. We ought to have been born together with Jesus. This new birth is now at its fortieth day. Today we must be offered by Mary (who is also our Mother) to the Divine Majesty, as Jesus was. The moment is come for our offering, for it is the hour of the Great Sacrifice. Let us redouble the fervour of our preparation.

Gospel – Luke ii. 22–32

At that time, after the days of the purification of Mary, according to the law of Moses, were accomplished, they carried Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. As it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male opening the womb will he called holy to the Lord. And to offer a sacrifice according as it is written in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. And behold there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel and the Holy Ghost was in him. And he had received an answer from the Holy Ghost that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord. And he came by the Spirit into the temple. And when His parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the law, he also took him into his arms, and blessed God, and said: “Now dismiss your servant, O Lord, according to your word in peace. Because my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples: a light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.”

Praise be to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

The Holy Spirit has led us to the Temple, as He did Simeon. There we see the Virgin-Mother offering at the altar her Son who is the Son of God. We are filled with admiration at this fidelity, of the child and His Mother, to the Law, and we feel in our hearts a desire to be also presented to our Creator who will accept our homage as He accepted that offered Him by His Divine Son. Let us, at once, put ourselves in those same holy dispositions which filled the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. The salvation of the world has this day gained ground. Let the work of our individual sanctification also advance. From this Feast forward, the Mystery of the Infant-God will no longer be put before us by the Church as the special object of our devotion. The sweet Season of Christmas will, in a few hours, have left us and we will have to follow our Jesus in His combats against our enemies. Let us keep close to our dear King. Let us ever keep Simeon’s spirit and follow our Redeemer, walking in His footsteps, who is our Light. Let us love this Light, and merit, by our fidelity in using it, that it unceasingly shine on us.

*****

We adore and thank you, O Emmanuel, on this happy day which saw you enter into the Temple of your Majesty, carried in the arms of your incomparable Mother. You come into the Temple that you may offer yourself for our sakes. You deign to be redeemed by the payment of a ransom for, one day, you have to pay an infinite ransom for us. You come now to offer a ceremonial sacrifice because you are soon to abolish every sacrifice by the one that alone is perfect. You enter today into that Jerusalem which is to be the place of your Passion and Death. Our salvation urges you on. You were born for us, but you are not satisfied. And every gift of this your fortieth day must needs bespeak the future proofs you have yet to give us of the love you bear us.

You, the Consolation of Israel, on whom the Angels love to look! You enter into the Temple and they who were living in expectation of their Redeemer redouble their hope. Oh that we had something of that love which burned in Simeon’s heart as he held you in his arms! All he lived for was to see you, O Divine Infant, and having seen you, he longs to die. One brief moment’s sight of you makes him sleep in peace! What must it be to possess you eternally, when a glance could satisfy the longings of a whole life! But, O Saviour of our souls, if Simeon was so satiated with this seeing you presenting yourself for mankind in the Temple, how ought we to love you, we who have seen the final consummation of your Sacrifice? The day will come when, as your devout servant Bernard expresses it, you will be offered, not in the Temple and on Simeon’s arms, but outside the city gates and on the arms of the Cross. On that day man will not offer up the blood of a victim for you, but yourself will offer up your own Blood for man. Now, it is the morning. Then, it will be the evening sacrifice. Now, you are in the age of infancy. Then, you will have attained the fullness of the age of Man. And having loved us from the beginning, you will love us even to the end.

What return shall we make to you, Divine Infant, for you bear within your heart, during this your first offering, the same infinite love of us with which you will consummate your last? Can we do less than offer ourselves to you from this very day, and be wholly yours? You give yourself to us in the Adorable Sacrament with more perfection than you gave yourself to Simeon, and we receive you, not in ours arms, but in our very breast. Dismiss us, dear Jesus! Break our chains. Give us your peace, and may we, like Simeon, enter now on a new life. In order to imitate your virtues and be united with you, we have endeavoured during this holy Season to gain that humility and simplicity which you wish to see within us. Assist us to persevere in the spiritual life that, like you, we may grow in age and wisdom, before both God and men (Luke ii. 52).

And you, Mary, purest of Virgins, and Mother blessed above all mothers! Daughter of the Prince! How beautiful are your steps (Canticles vii. 1) on this day of your Purification when you enter the Temple with our Jesus in your arms! Who could tell the joy and the humility of your maternal heart in this offering you make to the Eternal Father of His and your Son? Looking around on the mothers who have come for their own purification on this same day, you rejoice at the thought that the babes they are now presenting in the Temple will one day see and know your Jesus, their Saviour. What a privilege that these children should be presented to the Lord together with yours! What honour for these mothers that they should be purified in your holy company! If the Temple is glad at seeing enter within its walls the God in whose honour it has been built, part of its joy is to see Him throned there in your arms, who are the holiest of creatures, the one child of Eve that has never known sin, the Virgin-Mother of this God. But, while humbly keeping within yourself the secrets of the Eternal Father and mingled in the throng of these Hebrew mothers, the holy Simeon advances towards you, Mary! Knowing that the Holy Ghost has revealed the mystery to him, you affectionately place in his hands the God of Heaven and Earth who has come to be the Consolation of Israel. The holy Anna, too, approaches you, and you lovingly receive her. Perhaps in your younger years you had received from her, in this very Temple, the affection and care of a second mother. Your heart thrills with delight at hearing these two venerable Saints extolling God’s faithfulness to His promises, and the glory of your child, and the splendour of the Light which is now to be shed forth on all nations. The happiness of thus hearing the praises of the God, who is your child, fills you with joy and thankfulness. But oh what a sword of grief pierces your heart, dear Mother, at the words of Simeon as he gives you back your babe! Henceforth you must weep as often as you look on Him. He is to be a sign of contradiction (Luke ii. 34) and the wounds men are to give Him are to wound your soul! The blood of victims like these that are now being offered in the Temple will cease to flow and be changed for the Blood of your Jesus! O Mother of Sorrows, we were the cause of all this. It was our sins that changed your joy into mourning. And yet you love us because your Jesus loves us! Love us now and forever. Intercede for us with your Son. Pray that we may never lose the graces granted us during these forty happy days. These graces drew us to the crib of your child, and your affection for us encouraged to stay. We are resolved to maintain our position near this Jesus, following Him through all the Mysteries which are now to succeed this of His Infancy. We are resolved to be faithful disciples of this dear Master, and follow Him, as you did, even to the foot of that Cross, which was revealed to you on this day.

1 FEBRUARY – SAINT BRIGID OF IRELAND (Virgin)

 

Brigid was born at Fouchard (Foughard) in the diocese of Armagh, County Louth (then part of Ulster) circa 451. Her father, a nobleman called Dubtach, was descended from Eschaid, the brother of King Constantine of the Hundred Battles, as he is surnamed by the Irish historians. Brigid’s parents were baptised by Saint Patrick himself, and they brought up their children in the holy fear of God. Brigid showed signs of sanctity from early in her life. Eventually she received the veil from the hands of Saint Mel, who was a nephew of Saint Patrick. In about 585 she built her first cell under a large oak which had previously been the site of pagan worship and from which it was named ‘Kil-dara’ (the cell of the oak). This was the first religious house of women in Ireland around it arose the city of Kildare. Bridget died circa 532 and was buried in the Cathedral of Downpatrick, where her relics were enshrined with those of Saint Patrick and Saint Columba.

Also on this day according to the ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:

At Smyrna, St. Pionius, priest and martyr. After writing in defence of the Catholic faith, after suffering imprisonment in a loathsome dungeon, where by his exhortations he encouraged even to martyrdom many of his brethren, after enduring excruciating pains from being pierced with nails and laid on a hot fire, he ended his life happily for Christ. With him suffered fifteen others.

At Ravenna, the holy bishop Severus, whose great virtues deserved that he should be raised to the episcopate by the sign of a dove.

At Trois-Chateaux in France, St. Paul, bishop, whose life was eminent for virtues and whose death was made precious by miracles.

The same day, St. Ephrem, deacon of the church of Edessa, in the time of the emperor Valens. After suffering many trials for the faith of Christ and gaining great renown for holiness and learning, he went to rest in the Lord.

At Castel Fiorentino in Tuscany, the blessed virgin Verdiana, a recluse of the Order of Vallumbrosa.

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

Thanks be to God.

1 FEBRUARY – SEPTUAGESIMA SUNDAY

Epistle – 1 Corinthians ix. 24‒10, 5

Brethren, know you not that they that run in the race, all run indeed, but one receives the prize? So run, that you may obtain. And every one who strives for the mastery, refrains himself from all things: and they indeed that they may receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible one. I therefore so run, not as at an uncertainty; I fight not as one beating the air; but I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection; lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway. For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and all in Moses were baptised, in the cloud and in the sea; and all did eat the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink (and they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ). But with most of them God was not well pleased.

Thanks be to God.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

These stirring words of the Apostle deepen the sentiments already produced in us by the sad recollections of which we are this day reminded. He tells us that this world is a race in which all must run, but that they alone win the prize who run well. Let us, therefore, rid ourselves of everything that could impede us and make us lose our crown. Let us not deceive ourselves: we are never sure until we reach the goal. Is our conversion more solid than was Saint Paul’s? Are our good works better done or more meritorious than were his? Yet, he assures us, that he was not without the fear that he might perhaps be lost, for which cause he chastises his body and keeps it in subjection to the spirit. Man in his present state has not the same will for all that is right and just which Adam had before he sinned, and which, notwithstanding, he abused to his own ruin. We have a bias which inclines us to evil, so that our only means of keeping our ground is by sacrificing the flesh to the spirit. To many this is very harsh doctrine, hence they are sure to fail —they never can win the prize. Like the Israelites spoken of by our Apostle, they will be left behind to die in the desert and so lose the Promised Land. Yet they saw the same miracles that Joshua and Caleb saw! So true is it that nothing can make a salutary impression on a heart which is obstinately bent on fixing all its happiness in the things of this present life. And though it is forced, each clay, to own that they are vain, yet each day it returns to them, vainly but determinedly loving them. The heart, on the contrary, that puts its trust in God, and mans itself to energy by the thought of the divine assistance being abundantly given to him that asks it —will not flag or faint in the race, and will win the heavenly prize. God’s eye is unceasingly on all them that toil and suffer.

Gospel – Matthew xx. 1‒16

At that time, Jesus spoke to his disciples this parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. And having agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. Going out about the third hour, he saw others standing in the marketplace idle and said to them, ‘Go you too into my vineyard, and I will give you what is just.᾿ And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hours, and did in the like manner. But about the eleventh hour, he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no man has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘Go you also into my vineyard.’ And when evening came the lord of the vineyard said to his steward, ‘Call the labourers and pay them their hire, beginning from the last to the first.’ When therefore they came who had come about the eleventh hour, every man received a penny. But when the first also came, they thought that they should receive more; and they also received a penny each. And receiving it, they murmured against the master of the house, saying, ‘These last ones have worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the heat.’ But answering, he said to one of them, ‘Friend, I do you no wrong: did you not agree with me on a penny? Take what is yours, and go your way: I will give to the last as I gave to you. Or, is it not lawful for me to do what I will? Is your eye evil, because I am good?’ So will the last be first, and the first be last. For many are called, but few are chosen.”

Praise be to you, O Christ.

Dom Prosper Guéranger:

It is of importance that we should well understand this Parable of the Gospel, and why the Church inserts it in today’s Liturgy. Firstly, then, let us recall to mind on what occasion our Saviour spoke this Parable, and what instruction He intended to convey by it to the Jews. He wishes to warn them of the fast approach of the day when their Law is to give way to the Christian Law, and He would prepare their minds against the jealousy and prejudice which might arise in them at the thought that God was about to form a Covenant with the Gentiles. The Vineyard is the Church in its several periods, from the beginning of the world to the time of God Himself coming to dwell among men, and form all true believers into one visible and permanent society. The Morning is the time from Adam to Noah. The Third Hour begins with Noah and ends with Abraham. The Sixth Hour includes the period which elapsed between Abraham and Moses. And lastly, the Ninth Hour opens with the age of the Prophets and closes with the birth of the Saviour. The Messiah came at the Eleventh Hour when the world seemed to be at the decline of its day. Mercies unprecedented were reserved for this last period, during which salvation was to be given to the Gentiles by the preaching of the Apostles. It is by this mystery of Mercy that our Saviour rebukes the Jewish pride. By the selfish murmurings made against the Master of the House by the early Labourers, our Lord signifies the indignation which the Scribes and Pharisees would show at the Gentiles being adopted as God’s children. Then He shows them how their jealousy would be chastised: Israel, that had laboured before us, will be rejected for their obduracy of heart, and we Gentiles, the last comers, will be made first, for we will be made members of that Catholic Church which is the Spouse of the Son of God.

This is the interpretation of our Parable given by Saint Augustine and Saint Gregory the Great, and by the generality of the Holy Fathers. But it conveys a second instruction, as we are assured by the two Holy Doctors just named. It signifies the calling given by God to each of us individually, pressing us to labour, during this life, for the Kingdom prepared for us. The Morning is our childhood. The Third Hour, according to the division used by the ancients in counting their day, is sunrise: it is our youth. The Sixth Hour, by which name they called our midday, is manhood. The Eleventh Hour, which immediately preceded sunset, is old age. The Master of the House calls his Labourers at all these various Hours. They must go that very hour. They that are called in the Morning may not put off their starting for the Vineyard under pretext of going afterwards when the Master will call them later on. Who has told them that they will live to the Eleventh Hour? They are called at the Third Hour. They may be dead at the Sixth. God will call to the labours of the last hour such as will be living when that hour comes. But if we should die at midday, that last call will not avail us. Besides, God has not promised us a second call if we excuse ourselves from the first.

THE HISTORY, MYSTERY AND PRACTICE OF SEPTUAGESIMA

The Fall (Septuagesima) The Flood (Sexagesima) Abraham's Sacrifice (Quinquagesima)

Dom Prosper Gueranger:

The History of Septuagesima

The Season of Septuagesima comprises the three weeks immediately preceding Lent. It forms one of the principal divisions of the Liturgical Year, and is itself divided into three parts, each part corresponding to a week: the first is called Septuagesima; the second, Sexagesima; the third, Quinquagesima.

All three are named from their numerical reference to Lent which, in the language of the Church, is called Quadragesima — that is, Forty — because the great Feast of Easter is prepared for by the holy exercises of Forty Days. The words Quinquagesima, Sexagesima, and Septuagesima tell us of the same great Solemnity as looming in the distance, and as being the great object towards which the Church would have us now begin to turn all our thoughts, and desires and devotion.

Now, the Feast of Easter must be prepared for by a forty-days’ recollectedness and penance. Those forty-days are one of the principal Seasons of the Liturgical Year, and one of the most powerful means employed by the Church for exciting in the hearts of her children the spirit of their Christian vocation. It is of the utmost importance that such a Season of grace should produce its work in our souls — the renovation of the whole spiritual life. The Church, therefore, has instituted a preparation for the holy time of Lent. She gives us the three weeks of Septuagesima during which she withdraws us, as much as may be, from the noisy distractions of the world, in order that our hearts may be the more readily impressed by the solemn warning she is to give us at the commencement of Lent by marking our foreheads with ashes.

This prelude to the holy season of Lent was not known in the early ages of Christianity: its institution would seem to have originated in the Greek Church. The practice of this Church being never to fast on Saturdays, the number of fasting-days in Lent, besides the six Sundays of Lent (on which, by universal custom, the faithful never fasted) there were also the six Saturdays which the Greeks would never allow to be observed as days of fasting: so that their Lent was short, by twelve days, of the Forty spent by our Saviour in the desert. To make up the deficiency they were obliged to begin their Lent so many days earlier.

The Church of Rome had no such motive for anticipating the season of those privations which belong to Lent for, from the earliest antiquity, she kept the Saturdays of Lent (and as often, during the rest of the year, as circumstances might require) as fasting days. At the close of the sixth century Saint Gregory the Great alludes, in one of his Homilies to the fast of Lent being less than Forty Days, owing to the Sundays which come during that holy season. “There are,” he says, “from this Day (the first Sunday of Lent) to the joyous Feast of Easter, six Weeks, that is, forty-two days. As we do not fast on the six Sundays, there are but thirty-six fasting days... which we offer to God as the tithe of our year.”

It was therefore after the pontificate of Saint Gregory that the last four days of Quinquagesima Week were added to Lent in order that the number of Fasting Days might be exactly Forty. As early, however, as the ninth century, the custom of beginning Lent on Ash Wednesday was of obligation in the whole Latin Church. All the manuscript copies of the Gregorian Sacramentary which bear that date call this Wednesday the In capite jejunii, that is to say, the beginning of the fast. And Amalarius who gives us every detail of the Liturgy of the ninth century, tells us that it was, even then, the rule to begin the Fast four days before the first Sunday of Lent. We find the practice confirmed by two Councils held in that century. 1 But out of respect for the form of Divine Service drawn up by Saint Gregory, the Church does not make any important change in the Office of these four days. Up to the Vespers of Saturday, when alone she begins the Lenten rite, she observes the rubrics prescribed for Quinquagesima Week.

Peter of Blois who lived in the twelfth century, tells us what was the practice in his days. He says: “All religious begin the Fast of Lent at Septuagesima. The Greeks, at Sexagesima. The Clergy, at Quinquagesima, and the rest of Christians who form the Church Militant on Earth begin their Lent on the Wednesday following Quinquagesima.” The secular Clergy, as we learn from these words, were bound to begin the Lenten Fast somewhat before the laity, though it was only by two days, that is, on Monday, as we gather from the Life of Saint Ulric, Bishop of Augsburg, written in the tenth century. The Council of Clermont in 1095 at which Pope Urban II presided, has a decree sanctioning the obligation of the Clergy beginning abstinence from flesh-meat at Quinquagesima. This Sunday was called, indeed, Dominica carnis privii, and Carnis privium Sacerdotum (that is, Priests’ Carnival Sunday) — but the term is to be understood in the sense of the announcement being made, on that Sunday, of the abstinence having to begin on the following day. We will find further on that a like usage was observed in the Greek Church on the three Sundays preceding Lent. This law, which obliged the Clergy to these two additional days of abstinence, was in force in the thirteenth century, as we learn from a Council held at Angers which threatens with suspension all Priests who neglect to begin Lent on the Monday of Quinquagesima Week.

This usage, however, soon became obsolete and in the fifteenth century, the secular Clergy and even the Monks themselves, began the Lenten Fast, like the rest of the faithful, on Ash Wednesday. There can be no doubt, but that the original motive for this anticipation — which, after several modifications, was limited to the four days immediately preceding Lent — was to remove from the Greeks the pretext of taking scandal at the Latins who did not fast a full Forty days. Ratramnus, in his Controversy with the Greeks, clearly implies it. But the Latin Church did not think it necessary to carry her condescension further by imitating the Greek ante-lenten usages which originated, as we have already said, in the eastern custom of not fasting on Saturdays.1

Thus it was, that the Roman Church, by this anticipation of Lent by Four days, gave the exact number of Forty Days to the holy Season which she had instituted in imitation of the Forty Days spent by our Saviour in the desert. While faithful to her ancient practice of looking on the Saturday as a day appropriate for penitential exercises, she gladly borrowed from the Greek Church the custom of preparing for Lent by giving to the Liturgy of the three preceding weeks a tone of holy mournfulness.

Even as early as the beginning of the ninth century, as we learn from Amalarius, the Alleluia and Gloria in excelsis were suspended in the Septuagesima Offices. The monks conformed to the custom, although the Rule of Saint Benedict prescribed otherwise. Finally, in the second half of the eleventh century Pope Alexander II enacted that the total suspension of the Alleluia should be everywhere observed, beginning with the Vespers of the Saturday preceding Septuagesima Sunday. This Pope was but renewing a rule already sanctioned in that same century, by Pope Leo IX, and which was inserted in the body of Canon Law.

Thus was the present important period of the Liturgical Year, after various changes, established in the Cycle of the Church. It has been there upwards of a thousand years. Its name, Septuagesima (Seventy) expresses, as we have already remarked, a numerical relation to Quadragesima (the Forty Days), although in reality there are not seventy but only sixty-three days from Septuagesima Sunday to Easter. We will speak of the mystery of the name in the following Chapter. The first Sunday of Lent being called Quadragesima (Forty), each of the three previous Sundays has a name expressive of an additional ten: the nearest to Lent, Quinquagesima (Fifty); the middle one, Sexagesima (Sixty); the third, Septuagesima (Seventy).

As the season of Septuagesima depends upon the time of the Easter celebration, it comes sooner or later, according to the changes of that great Feast. The 18th of January and the 22nd of February are called the Septuagesima Keys, because the Sunday which is called Septuagesima cannot be earlier in the year, than the first, nor later than the second, of these two days.

The Mystery of Septuagesima

The Season upon which we are now entering is expressive of several profound mysteries. But these mysteries belong not only to the three weeks which are preparatory to Lent: they continue throughout the whole period of time which separates us from the great Feast of Easter.

The number seven is the basis of all these mysteries. We have already seen how the Holy Church came to introduce the season of Septuagesima into her Calendar. Let us now meditate on the doctrine hid under the symbols of her Liturgy. And first, let us listen to Saint Augustine who thus gives us the clue to the whole of our Season's mysteries. “There are two times,” says the Holy Doctor: “one which is now, and is spent in the temptations and tribulations of this life; the other which will be then, and will be spent in eternal security and joy. In figure of these, we celebrate two periods: the time ‘before Easter,’ and the time ‘after Easter.’ That which is ‘before Easter,’ signifies the sorrow of this present life. That which is ‘after Easter,’ the blessedness of our future state... Hence it is that we spend the first in fasting and prayer, and in the second we give up our fasting, and give ourselves to praise.”’

The Church, the interpreter of the Sacred Scriptures, often speaks to us of two places which correspond with these two times of Saint Augustine. These two places are Babylon and Jerusalem. Babylon is the image of this world of sin, in the midst of which the Christian has to spend his years of probation. Jerusalem is the heavenly country where he is to repose after all his trials. The people of Israel, whose whole history is but one great type of the human race, was banished from Jerusalem and kept in bondage in Babylon.

Now, this captivity which kept the Israelites exiles from Sion lasted seventy years, and it is to express this mystery, as Alcuin, Amalarius, Ivo of Chartres and all the great Liturgists tell us, that the Church fixed the number of Seventy for the days of expiation. It is true, there are but sixty-three days between Septuagesima and Easter, but the Church, according to the style so continually used in the Sacred Scriptures, uses the round number instead of the literal and precise one.

The duration of the world itself, according to the ancient Christian tradition, is divided into seven ages. The human race must pass through seven Ages before the dawning of the day of eternal life. The first Age included the time from the creation of Adam to Noah. The second begins with Noah and the renovation of the Earth by the Deluge, and ends with the vocation of Abraham. The third opens with this first formation of Gods chosen people, and continues as far as Moses, through whom God gave the Law. The fourth consists of the period between Moses and David in whom the house of Judah received the kingly power. The fifth is formed of the years which passed between David’s reign and the captivity of Babylon, inclusively. The sixth dates from the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, and takes us on as far as the birth of our Saviour. Then, finally, comes the seventh Age. It starts with the rising of this merciful Redeemer, the Sun of Justice, and is to continue till the dread coming of the Judge of the living and the dead. These are the Seven great divisions of Time after which, Eternity.

In order to console us in the midst of the combats which so thickly beset our path, the Church — like a beacon shining amidst the darkness of this our earthly abode — shows us another Seven which is to succeed the one we are now preparing to pass through. After the Septuagesima of mourning we will have the bright Easter with its Seven weeks of gladness, foreshadowing the happiness and bliss of Heaven. After having fasted with our Jesus, and suffered with Him, the day will come when we will rise together with Him, and our hearts will follow Him to the highest heavens, and then after a brief interval, we will feel descending upon us the Holy Ghost, with His Seven Gifts. The celebration of all these wondrous joys will take us Seven weeks, as the great Liturgists observe in their interpretation of the Rites of the Church: the seven joyous weeks from Easter to Pentecost will not be too long for the future glad Mysteries which, after all, will be but figures of a still gladder future, the future of eternity.

Having heard these sweet whisperings of hope, let us now bravely face the realities brought before us by our dear Mother the Church. We are sojourners on this Earth. We are exiles and captives in Babylon, that city which plots our ruin. If we love our country — if we long to return to it — we must be proof against the lying allurements of this strange land, and refuse the cup she proffers us and with which she maddens so many of our fellow captives. She invites us to join in her feasts and her songs, but we must unstring our harps, and hang them on the willows that grow on her river’s bank till the signal be given for our return to Jerusalem (Psalm cxxv.) She will ask us to sing to her the melodies of our dear Sion, but how will we, who are so far from home, have heart to sing the Song of the Lord in a strange land? (Psalm cxxxvi) No, there must be no sign that we are content to be in bondage, or we will deserve to be slaves forever.

These are the sentiments with which the Church would inspire us during the penitential Season which we are now beginning. She wishes us to reflect on the dangers that beset us — dangers which arise from our own selves, and from creatures. During the rest of the year she loves to hear us chant the song of Heaven, the sweet Alleluia, but now she bids us close our lips to this word of joy because we are in Babylon. We are pilgrims absent from our Lord (2 Corinthians v. 6). Let us keep our glad hymn for the day of His return. We are sinners, and have but too often held fellowship with the world of God’s enemies. Let us become purified by repentance, for it is written that praise is unseemly in the mouth of a sinner (Ecclesiasticus xv. 9).

The leading feature, then, of Septuagesima is the total suspension of the Alleluia, which is not to be again heard upon the Earth until the arrival of that happy day when, having suffered death with our Jesus and having been buried together with Him, we will rise again with Him to a new life (Colossians ii. 12).

The sweet Hymn of the Angels, Gloria in excelsis Deo, which we have sung every Sunday since the birth of our Saviour in Bethlehem, is also taken from us. It is only on the Feasts of the Saints, which may be kept during the week, that we will be allowed to repeat it. The night Office of the Sunday is to lose, also, from now till Easter, its magnificent Ambrosian Hymn, the Te Deum. And at the end of the Holy Sacrifice, the Deacon will no longer dismiss the faithful with his solemn Ite, Missa est, but will simply invite them to continue their prayers in silence, and bless the Lord, the God of mercy, who bears with us notwithstanding all our sins.

After the Gradual of the Mass, instead of the thrice repeated Alleluia which prepared our hearts to listen to the voice of God in the Holy Gospel, we will hear but a mournful and protracted chant called, on that account, the Tract. That the eye, too, may teach us, that the Season we are entering on is one of mourning, the Church will vest her Ministers (both on Sundays and the days during the week, which are not Feasts of Saints) in the sombre Purple. Until Ash Wednesday, however, she permits the Deacon to wear his dalmatic, and the Subdeacon his tunic. But from that day forward they must lay aside these vestments of joy, for Lent will then have begun and our holy Mother will inspire us with the deep spirit of penance by suppressing everything of that glad pomp, which she loves, at other seasons, to bring into the Sanctuary of her God.

The Practice of Septuagesima

The joys of Christmastide seem to have fled far from us. The forty days of gladness brought us by the birth of our Emmanuel are gone. The atmosphere of holy Church has grown overcast, and we are warned that the gloom is still to thicken. Have we, then, for ever lost Him, we so anxiously and longingly sighed after, during the four slow weeks of our Advent? Has our divine Sun of Justice that rose so brightly in Bethlehem now stopped His course and left our guilty Earth?

Not so. The Son of God, the Child of Mary, has not left us. The Word was made Flesh in order that He might dwell among us. A glory, far greater than that of his birth, when Angels sang their hymns, awaits Him, and we are to share it with Him. Only, He must win this new and greater glory by strange countless sufferings. He must purchase it by a most cruel and ignominious death: and we, if we would have our share in the triumph of His Resurrection, must follow Him in the Way of the Cross, all wet with the tears and the blood He shed for us.

The grave maternal voice of the Church will soon be heard inviting us to the Lenten penance. But she wishes us to prepare for this laborious baptism by employing these three weeks in considering the deep wounds caused in our souls by sin. True, the beauty and loveliness of the Little Child born to us in Bethlehem, are great beyond measure, but our souls are so needy that they require other lessons than those He gave us of humility and simplicity.

Our Jesus is the Victim of the divine justice, and He has now attained the fullness of His age. The altar on which He is to be slain is ready, and since it is for us that He is to be sacrificed, we should at once set ourselves to consider what are the debts we have contracted towards that infinite Justice which is about to punish the Innocent One instead of us the guilty.

The mystery of a God becoming Incarnate for the love of His creature has opened to us the path of the Illuminative Way, but we have not yet seen the brightest of its Light. Let not our hearts be troubled. The divine wonders we witnessed at Bethlehem are to be surpassed by those that are to grace the day of our Jesus’ Triumph: but that our eye may contemplate these future mysteries, it must be purified by courageously looking into the deep abyss of our own personal miseries. God will grant us His divine light for the discovery; and if we come to know ourselves, to understand the grievousness of original sin, to see the malice of our own sins, and to comprehend, at least in some degree, the infinite mercy of God towards us, we will be prepared for the holy expiations of Lent, and for the ineffable joys of Easter.

The Season, then, of Septuagesima is one of most serious thought. Perhaps we could not better show the sentiments with which the Church would have her children to be filled at this period of her Year than by quoting a few words from the eloquent exhortation given to his people at the beginning of Septuagesima by the celebrated Ivo of Chartres. He spoke thus to the faithful of the 11th century: “‘We know,’ says the Apostle, ‘that every creature groans and travails in pain even till now: and not only it, but ourselves, also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body’ (Romans viii. 22, 23). The creature here spoken of is the soul that has been regenerated from the corruption of sin to the likeness of God: she groans within herself, at seeing herself made subject to vanity. She, like one that travails, is filled with pain, and is devoured by an anxious longing to be in that country which is still so far off. It was this travail and pain that the Psalmist was suffering when he exclaimed: ‘Woe is one, that my sojourning is prolonged!’ (Psalm cxix. 5) Nay, that Apostle who was one of the first members of the Church and had received the Holy Spirit, longed to have, in all its reality, that adoption of the sons of God which he already had in hope. And he too thus exclaimed in his pain: ‘I desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ’ (Philippians i. 3). During these days, therefore, we must do what we do at all seasons of the Year — only, we must do it more earnestly and fervently we must sigh and weep after our country from which we were exiled in consequence of having indulged in sinful pleasures. We must redouble our efforts in order to regain it by compunction and weeping of heart... Let us now shed tears in the way that we may afterwards be glad in our country. Let us now so run the race of this present life that we may make sure of the prize of the supernal vocation (Philippians iii. 14). Let us not be like imprudent wayfarers, forgetting our country and preferring our banishment to our home. Let us not become like those senseless invalids who feel not their ailments and seek no remedy. We despair of a sick man who will not be persuaded that he is in danger. No: let us run to our Lord, the Physician of eternal salvation. Let us show Him our wounds, and cry out to Him with all our earnestness: ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am weak: heal me, for my bones are troubled’ (Psalm vi. 3). Then will He forgive us our iniquities, heal us of our infirmities, and satisfy our desire with good things” (Psalm cii. 3, 5).

From all this it is evident that the Christian who would spend Septuagesima according to the spirit of the Church must make war upon that false security, that self-satisfaction, which are so common to effeminate and tepid souls, and produce spiritual barrenness. It is well for them if these delusions do not insensibly lead them to the absolute loss of the true Christian spirit. He that thinks himself dispensed from that continual watchfulness, which is so strongly inculcated by our Divine Master (Mark xiii. 37), is already in the enemy’s power. He that feels no need of combat and of struggle in order to persevere and make progress in virtue (unless he have been honoured with a privilege, which is both rare and dangerous), should fear that he is not even on the road to that Kingdom of God which is only to be won by violence (Matthew xi. 12). He that forgets the sins which God’s mercy has forgiven him, should fear his being the victim of a dangerous delusion (Ecclesiasticus v. 5). Let us, during these days which we are going to devote to the honest unflinching contemplation of our miseries, give glory to our God and derive, from the knowledge of ourselves, fresh motives of confidence in Him who, in spite of all our wretchedness and sin, humbled Himself so low as to become one of us in order that He might exalt us even to union with Himself.

1The Gallican Liturgy had retained several usages of the Oriental Churches, to which it owed, in part, its origin: hence, it was not without some difficulty that the custom of abstaining and fasting on Saturdays was introduced into Gaul. Until such time as the Churches of that country had adopted the Roman custom, in that point of discipline, they were necessitated to anticipate the Fast of Lent. The first Council of Orleans, held in the early part of the sixth century, enjoins the Faithful to observe, before Easter, Quadragesima (as the Latins call Lent) and not Quinquagesima, in order, says the Council, that unity of custom may be maintained. Towards the close of the same century, the fourth Council held in the same city repeals the same prohibition, and explains the intentions of the making such an enactment by ordering that the Saturdays during Lent should be observed as days of fasting. Previously to this, that is, in the years 511 and 541, the first and second Councils of Orange had combated the same abuse, by also forbidding the imposing on the Faithful the obligation of commencing the Fast at Quinquagesima. The introduction of the Roman Liturgy into France, which was brought about by the zeal of Pepin and Charlemagne, finally established, in that country, the custom of keeping the Saturday as a day of penance. And, as we have just seen, the beginning Lent on Quinquagesima was not observed excepting by the Clergy. In the thirteenth century the only Church in the Patriarchate of the West which began Lent earlier than the Church of Rome, was that of Poland: its Lent opened on the Monday of Septuagesima, which was owing to the rites of the Greek Church being so much used in Poland. The custom was abolished, even for that country, by Pope Innocent the fourth, in the year 1248.