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Red Semidouble Honor the physician for the need thou hast of him: for the most High hath created him. For all healing is from God, and he shall receive gifts of the king. The skill of the physician shall lift up his head, and in the sight of great men he shall be praised. The most High hath created medicines out of the earth, and a wise man will not abhor them. Was not bitter water made sweet with wood? The virtue of these things is come to the knowledge of hem, and the most High hath given knowledge...

Red Simple “WHOSOEVER YE BE that are seduced by the mysteries of the demons, none of you can equal the zeal I once had for these false gods, nor my researches into their secrets, nor the vain power they had communicated to me, to me Cyprian, who from my infancy was given up to the service of the dragon in the citadel of Minerva. Learn from me the deceitfulness of their illusions. A virgin has proved to me that their power is but smoke. The king of the demons was arrested at the door of a mere child, and...

Red Semidouble THE LIVES OF THE FIRST VICARS OF CHRIST are buried in a mysterious obscurity; just as the foundations of a monument built to defy the ravages of time are concealed from view. To be the supports of the everlasting Church is a sufficient glory: sufficient to justify our confidence in them, and to awaken our gratitude. Let us leave the learned to discuss certain points in the following short Legend; as for ourselves, we will rejoice with the Church on this feast, and pay our loving veneration to the humble and gentle Pontiff, who was the first...

Red Double THE TWENTIETH OF SEPTEMBER marks one of the saddest events in history. At the height of her power, in the glorious days of Pepin and Charlemagne, the eldest daughter of the Church had crowned her mother; and the Church, in the person of her Head, reigned in reality, as well as by right until, a thousand years later, Satan took advantage of the fallen state of France, to despoil Peter of the patrimony which ensured his independence. The holy Cross is still shedding its rays upon us! Today a group of martyrs, and this time a whole...

Red Double JANUARIUS IS EVER PREACHING the Gospel to every creature; for his miraculous blood perpetuates the testimony he bore to Christ. Let those who say they cannot believe unless they see, go to Naples; there they will behold the martyr’s blood, when placed near his head which was cut off seventeen hundred years ago, to liquefy and boil as at the moment it escaped from his sacred veins. No; miracles are not lacking in the Church at the present day. True, God cannot subject himself to the fanciful requirements of those proud men who would dictate to him...

Red Semidouble THERE IS A PECULIAR BEAUTY in the meeting of these two Saints upon the sacred Cycle. Cyprian, in a famous dispute, was once opposed to the Apostolic See: Eternal Wisdom now offers to the homage of the world, in company with one of the most illustrious successors of St. Peter. Cornelius was, by birth, of the highest nobility; witness his tomb, lately discovered in the family crypt, surrounded by the most honorable names in the patrician ranks. The elevation of a descendant of the Scipios to the sovereign Pontificate linked the past grandeurs of Rome to her...

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...