Free Republic

White Double OUR LADY IS NOW REIGNING in heaven. Her triumph over death cost her no labor; and yet it was through suffering that she like Jesus entered into her glory. We too cannot attain eternal happiness otherwise than did the Son and the Mother. Let us keep in mind the sweet joys we have been tasting during the past week; but let us not forget that our own journey to heaven is not yet completed. “Why stand ye looking up into heaven!” said the Angels to the disciples on Ascension day, in the name of the Lord who...

White Double SAINT JEAN EUDES, forerunner of devotion both to the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, was born in 1601, some time after France had been torn apart by the revolt of the Huguenots. The rebels were calmed but relegated to western France by King Henry IV, after he himself returned to the Catholic faith. It was in that region that this young Saint spent his childhood, at Argentan in Normandy, and was educated with the Jesuits of Caen. The father of this first-born of a family of solid and profound virtue, had himself desired the...

White Double ONE OF THE LOVELIEST LILIES from the Dominican field today unfurls its petals at the foot of Mary’s throne. Hyacinth represents on the sacred cycle that intrepid band of missionaries who, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, faced the barbarism of the Tartars and Mussulmans which was threatening the West. From the Alps to the Northern frontiers of the Chinese Empire, from the islands of the Archipelago to the Arctic regions, he propagated his Order and spread the kingdom of God. On the Steppes, where the schism of Constantinople disputed its conquests with the idolatrous invaders from...

White Double of the Second Class FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL the Greeks have celebrated the feast of St. Joachim on the day following our Lady’s birthday. The Maronites kept it on the day after the Presentation in November, and the Armenians on the Tuesday after the Octave of the Assumption of the Mother of God. The Latins at first did not keep his feast. Later on it was admitted and celebrated sometimes on the day after the Octave of the Nativity, September 16th, sometimes on the day following the Conception of the Blessed Virgin, December 9th. Thus both East and...

White Double EVER SINCE THE SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS vanished from men’s view, the heaven of holy Church has been illumined through the centuries by the shining light of countless Saints; and even as the brightness of the stars increases as the night advances, so, as we recede from the blessed days of His mortal life, Our Lord sends into the world Saint after Saint whose lives seem to shine with ever-increasing lustre. Less than a century ago a tiny village of provincial France was for many years the hub of the religious life of the whole country. Between 1818...

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...

White Greater Double “In that climeWhere springs the pleasant west-wind to unfoldThe fresh leaves, with which Europe sees herselfNew-garmented; nor from those billows far,Beyond whose chiding, after weary course,The sun doth sometimes hide him; safe abidesThe happy Callaroga under guardOf the great shield, wherein the lion liesSubjected and supreme. And there was bornThe loving minion of the Christian faith,The hallow’d wrestler, gentle to his own,And to his enemies terrible. So repleteHis soul with lively virtue, that when firstCreated, eve in the mother’s womb,It prophesied. When, at the sacred font,The spousals were complete ’twixt faith and him,Where pledge of mutual...

White Double ALTHOUGH THE CYCLE of the time after Pentecost has shown us many times already the solicitude of the Holy Spirit for the defense of the Church, yet today the teaching shines forth with a new luster. In the sixteen century Satan made a formidable attack upon the holy city by means of a man who, like himself, had fallen from the height of heaven, a man prevented in early years by the choice graces which lead to perfection, yet unable in an evil day to resist the spirit of revolt. As Lucifer aimed at being equal to...

Red Semidouble NAZARIUS AND CELSUS bring glory to the Church of Milan, by appearing on the cycle today. After lying forgotten for three centuries in the obscure tomb that had received their precious remains in the time of Nero, they now receive the united homage of East and West. It was nine years since the triumphal day when Gervase and Protase, no less forgotten by the city once witness of their combat, had come to console and strengthen an illustrious Bishop who was persecuted for his profession of the Divine consubstantiality of the same Christ who had had all...

White Double SPRUNG FROM THE POWERFUL ARISTOCRACY which won for Venice twelve centuries of splendor, Jerome came into the world when that city had reached the height of its glory. At fifteen years of age he became a soldier; and was one of the heroes in that formidable struggle wherein his country withstood the united powers of almost all Europe in the League of Cambrai. The golden city, crushed for a moment, but soon restored to her former condition, offered her honors to the defender of Castelnovo, who like herself had fallen bravely and risen again. But our Lady...

White Double VINCENT WAS A MAN OF FAITH that worketh by charity. At the time he came into the world, viz., at the close of the same century in which Calvin was born, the Church was mourning over many nations separated from the faith; the Turks were harassing all the coasts of the Mediterranean. France, worn out by forty years of religious strife, was shaking off the yoke of heresy from within, while by a foolish stroke of policy she gave it external liberty. The Eastern and Northern frontiers were suffering the most terrible devastations, and the West and...

White Double THE HOLY SPIRIT, who desires to raise our souls above this earth, does not therefore despise our bodies. The whole man is his creature and his temple,a nd it is the whole man he must lead to eternal happiness. The Body of the Man-God was his masterpiece in material creation; the Divine delight he takes in that perfect body he extends in a measure to ours; for that same Body, framed by him in the womb of the most pure Virgin, was from the very beginning the model on which ours are formed. In the re-creation which...

White Semidouble ALTHOUGH WE ARE NOT commanded to follow the Saints to the extremities where their heroic virtue leads them, nevertheless, from their inaccessible heights, they still guide us along the easier paths of the plain. As the eagle upon the orb of day, they fixed their unflinching gaze upon the Sun of Justice; and, irresistibly attracted by his divine splendor, they poised their flight far above the cloudy region where we are glad to screen our feeble eyes. But however varied be the degrees of brightness for them and for us, the light itself is unchangeable, provided that,...

White Double LATER THAN CAJETAN OF VICENZA and earlier than Ignatius of Loyola, Anthony was called to be the father of one of those religious families which arose in such numbers during the sixteenth century to repair the ruins of the house of God. Lombardy, exhausted and demoralized by the wars for the possession of the duchy of Milan, was encouraged by the sight of the heroic virtues of Zaccaria to believe, hope and love once again. She listened to his fiery exhortations calling her to repentance, to meditation on the Passion and to more fervent devotion to, and...

White Semidouble IT WERE FITTING that our attention should not be diverted, on this Vigil, from the august object which is occupying the Church in the preparation of her chants. But the triumph of Peter will shine out with all the more splendor in proportion as the testimony he rendered to the son of God is shown to have been maintained with all fidelity, during the long series of succeeding ages, by the Pontiffs, inheritors of his primacy. For a considerable time, the twenty-eighth of June was consecrated to the memory of Saint Leo the Great; it was the...

White Double WHILE WE WERE CELEBRATING the Infancy of our divine Lord, Felix of Nola rejoiced our hearts with the sight of his sanctity at once so triumphant and yet so humble, revealing under gentlest aspects the potency of our Emmanuel. Illumined by the glow of Pentecostal fires, Paulinus now comes before us, from that very same town of Nola, by his glory doing honor to him of whom he was the happy conquest. For indeed the sublime path whereby he was at length to gain the heavenly mountain tops, was not at the first opened before him; and...

White Double “OH! HOW EXCEEDING GREAT is the glory of Aloysius, Son of Ignatius! Never could I have believed it, had not my Jesus shown it to me. Never could I have believed that such glory as that, was to be seen in heaven!” Thus cries out Saint Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, whose memory we were celebrating a month ago: she is speaking in ecstasy. From the heights of Carmel, whence her ken may reach beyond the heavens, she reveals to earth the splendor wherewith the youthful hero of this day shines amidst the celestial phalanxes. Yet short was...

White Double SAINT EPHRAEM, MONK AND DEACON, the contemporary of St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nazianzen and St. Gregory of Nyssa, was with them one of the glories of the Christian East so rich in testimonies to faith and sanctity during the first centuries. He takes his place in the liturgical cycle among the doctors of the Universal Church. It is only fitting that the ancient piety of Edessa and Nisibis should be represented in the Roman calendar by him who was always held to be tht most illustrious of her sons. St. Ehpraem was honored by...

White Double “REJOICE THEE, HAPPY PADUA, rich in thy priceless treasure!’ Anthony, in bequeathing thee his body, has done more for thy glory than the heroes who founded thee on so favored a site, or the doctors who have illustrated thy famous university! The days of Charlemagne were past and gone: yet the work of Leo III still lived on, despite a thousand difficulties. The enemy, now at large, had sown cockle in the field of the divine householder; heresy was springing up here and there, while vice was growing apace in every direction. In many an heroic combat,...

White Double AT THE HEAD of the holy Confessors admitted by the Church on the monumental page of her Martyrology for today is inscribed the illustrious name of William: “At York, in England,” thus runs the text of the Golden Book of heaven’s nobility, “the memory of Saint William, Archbishop and Confessor, who, amongst other miracles wrought at his tomb, raised three dead persons to life, and was inscribed amongst the Saints by Honorius III.” The divine Spirit who adorns the Church with variety in the virtues of her sons, reproduces in them the life of the Divine Spouse,...