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Red Simple “DIMITTE ME, jam enim ascendit aurora; let me go for it is break of day;” such were the words which put an end to the struggle between the Angel and the Patriarch on the banks of the torrent. Blessed dawn, which triumphed over God himself! How long had been that night, during which the human race had been struggling by its supplications and tears! Ever since the fall, the Angel of justice had been guarding the entrance to the true land of promise; at every turn he was to be found, resisting in his inexorable vengeance poor,...

White Double A FRAGRANCE OF HOLINESS is wafted today across the dark Ocean, renewing the youth of the Old World, and winning for the New the good will of heaven and earth. A century before the birth of St. Rose, Spain, having cast out the Crescent from her own territory, received as a reward the mission of planting the Cross on the distant shores of America. Neither heroes nor apostles were wanting in the Catholic kingdom for the great work; but there was also, unhappily, no lack of adventurers who, in their thirst for gold, became the scourge of...

Red Simple ZEPHYRINUS WAS THE FIRST PONTIFF to be buried in the celebrated crypt where the Popes of the third century came after their combat to sleep their last sleep. The catacomb which thus succeeded the Vatican cemetery in the honor of sheltering the Vicars of Christ had been opened thirty years before by the virgin martyr Cæcelia. As when at the point of death she had consecrated her palace into a church, so now from her tomb she caused her family burial-place to pass into the hands of the Church. This gift of the Cæcilii was the inauguration,...

Red Double of the Second Class A WITNESS OF THE SON OF GOD, one of the princes who announced his glory to the nations, lights up this day with his apostolic flame. While his brethren of the sacred College followed the human race into all the lands whither the migration of nations had led it, Bartholomew appeared as the herald of the Lord, at the very starting point, the mountains of Armenia whence the sons of Noe spread over the earth. There had the figurative Ark rested; humanity, everywhere else a wanderer, was there seated in stillness, remembering the...

The Octave of the Assumption (The Immaculate Heart of Mary);Commemoration of Saints Timothy, Hippolytus, and Symphorian, Martyrs White Double of the Second Class HE ALONE WHO COULD UNDERSTAND Mary’s holiness could appreciate her glory. But Wisdom, who presided over the formation of the abyss, has not revealed to us the depth of that ocean, beside which all the virtues of the just and all the graces lavished upon them are but streamlets. Nevertheless, the immensity of grace and merit, whereby the Blessed Virgin’s supernatural perfection stands quite apart from all others, gives us a right to conclude that she...

Red Simple NOT FAR FROM THE SEPULCHER of St. Laurence, on the opposite side of the Tiburtian Way, lies the tomb of St. Hippolytus, one of the sanctuaries most dear to the Christians in the days of triumph. Prudentius has described the magnificence of the crypt, and the immense concourse attracted to it each year on the Ides of August. Who was this Saint? Of what rank and manner of life? What facts of his history are there to be told, beyond that of his having given his blood for Christ? All these questions have in modern times become...

Red Simple LAURENCE IS FOLLOWED TODAY by the son of Chromatius, prefect of Rome, Tiburtius, who also suffered upon burning coals for the confession of his faith. Though forty years intervened between the two martyrdoms, it was the same Holy Spirit that animated these witnesses of Christ and suggested to them the same answer to their executioners. Tiburtius, walking upon the fire, cried out: “Learn that the God of the Christians is the only God, for these hot coals seem flowers to me.” Equally near to the great Archdeacon stands an illustrious virgin, so bright herself as not to...

Red Double of the Second Class (with a Simple Octave) “ONCE THE MOTHER OF FALSE GODS, but now the bride of Christ, O Rome, it is through Laurence thou art victorious! Thou hadst conquered haughty monarchs and subjected nations to thine empire; but though thou hadst overcome barbarism, thy glory was incomplete till thou hadst vanquished the unclean idols. This was Laurence’s victory, a combat bloody yet not tumultuous like those of Camillus or of Cæsar; it was the contest of faith, wherein self is immolated, and death is overcome by death. What words, what praises suffice to celebrate...

Violet   “Fear not, my servant, for I am with thee, saith the Lord. If thou pass through fire, the flame shall not hurt thee, and the odor of fire shall not be in thee. I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem thee out of the hand of the mighty.” It was the hour of combat; and Wisdom, more powerful than flame, was calling upon Laurence to win the laurels of victory presaged by his very name. The three days since the death of Sixtus had passed at length, and the...

Red Semidouble TODAY A PRECURSOR OF LAURENCE appears on the cycle, the deacon Cyriacus, whose power over the demon made hell tremble, and entitles him to a place among the Saints called helpers. He and his companions in martyrdom form one of the noblest groups of Christ’s army in that last and decisive battle, wherein the eagerness of the faithful to show that they knew how to die, won victory for the Cross. Rome, baptized in the blood she had shed, found herself Christian in spite of herself; all her honors were now to be lavished upon the very...

White Double CAJETAN APPEARED in all his zeal for the sanctuary at the time when the false reform was spreading rebellion throughout the world. The great cause of the danger had been the incapacity of the guardians of the holy City, or their connivance by complicity of heart or of mind with pagan doctrines and manners introduced by an ill-advised revival. Wasted by the wild boar of the forest, could the vineyard of the Lord recover the fertility of its better days? Cajetan learned from Eternal Wisdom the new method of culture required by an exhausted soil. The urgent...

Saint Alphonsus Mary Liguori, Bishop and Doctor of the Church; Saint Stephen I, Pope and Martyr White Double YESTERDAY WE ADMIRED, in Peter and the Machabees, the substructure of the palace built by Wisdom in time to endure for eternity. Today, in conformity with the divine ways of that Wisdom, who in her playing reaches from end to end, we re suffered to contemplate the progress of the glorious building, to behold the summit of the work, the last row of stones actually laid. Now, summit and foundation, the work is all one; the materials are all priceless: witness...

White Greater Double ROME, MAKING A GOD OF THE MAN who had subjugated her, consecrated the month of August to Cæsar Augustus. When Christ had delivered her, she placed at the head of this same month, as a trophy of her regained liberty, the feast of the chains, wherewith, in order to break hers, Peter the Vicar of Christ had once been bound. O Divine Wisdom, who hast a better claim to reign over this month than had the adopted son of Cæsar, thou couldst not have more authentically inaugurated thy empire. Strength and sweetness are the attributes of...

Red Simple THE DECREES OF ETERNAL WISDOM ordained that the West should be honored before the East with the glory of martyrdom. Yet when the hour had come, Jesus was to have, beyond the Tigris, millions of witnesses by no means inferior to their forerunners, astonishing heaven and earth by new forms of heroism. Impatient of the delay, two noble Persians won their palm on this day by the command of Rome. By shedding their blood they paid tribute for their native land to the eternal City; and now they protect our Latin Churches, and receive the prayers and...

White Semidouble MAGDALENE THIS TIME was the first to meet our Lord. Scarcely a week had elapsed since her glorious passage, when she repaid her sister’s former kind office and came in her turn saying: “The Beloved is here and calleth for thee.” And Jesus preventing her, appeared himself and said: “Come, my hostess; come from exile, thou shalt be crowned.” Hostess of the Lord, then, is to be Martha’s title of nobility in heaven, as it was her privileged name on earth. Into whatever city or town you shall enter, said the Man-God to his disciples, inquire who...

Red Simple THE EAST CELEBRATES TODAY one of her greater martyrs, who was both a healer of bodies and a conqueror of souls. His name, which recalls the strength of the lion, was changed by heaven at the time of his death into Panteleemon, or all-merciful; a happy presage of the gracious blessings our Lord would afterwards bestow on the earth through his means. The various translations and the diffusion of his sacred relics in our West have made his cultus widespread, together with his renown as a friend in need, which has caused him to be ranked among...

Red Commemoration CHRISTINA, WHOSE NAME fills the Church with the fragrance of the Spouse, comes as a graceful harbinger to the feast of the elder son of thunder. The ancient Vulsinium, seated by its lake with basalt shores and calm clear waters, was the scene of a triumph over Estruscan paganism, when this child of ten years despised the idols of the nations, in the very place where, according to the edicts of Constantine, the false priests of Umbria and Tuscany held a solemn annual reunion. The discovery of Christina’s tomb in our days has confirmed this particular of...

Red Double RAVENNA, THE MOTHER OF CITIES, invites us today to honor the martyr bishop, whose labors did more for her lasting renown than did the favor of emperors and kings. From the midst of her ancient monuments, the rival of Rome, though now fallen, points proudly to her unbroken chain of Pontiffs, which she can trace back to the Vicar of the Man-God through Apollinaris. This great Saint has been praised by Fathers and Doctors of the Universal Church, his sons and successors. Would to God that the noble city had remembered what she owed to St. Peter....

Red Commemoration THIS SAME DAY brings before us a rival of the warrior martyr, St. George: Margaret, like him victorious over the dragon, and like him called in the Menæa of the Greeks, the Great Martyr. The cross was her weapon; and like the soldier, the virgin, too, consummated her trial in her blood. They were equally renowned also in those chivalrous times when valor and faith fought hand in hand for Christ beneath the standard of the Saints. So early as the seventh century England rivalled the East in honoring the pearl drawn from the abyss of infidelity....

Your Beatitude! Your Excellence and Your Eminence! Dear fathers, brothers, and sisters! I congratulate you all on the Lord’s Day! By historical circumstances, we had the opportunity to celebrate a Divine Liturgy here and consecrate the church in honor of the Theodore Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos which is associated with the Romanov dynasty: this church was built next to the site of the death of the Holy Martyr Elizabeth Feodorovna, Nun Barbara, and other representatives of the royal family. Looking at this place, this nearly buried mine, it is hard to imagine that fear and terror that engulfed...