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White Greater Double How could we more appropriately conclude the teachings of this Octave, than by quoting the words used by the Church herself in today’s Liturgy? “Strangers as we are and pilgrims on the earth, let us fix our hearts and our thoughts on the day which will give to each of us a home, and restore us to Paradise. Who, that is on a voyage, would not hasten to return to his country! Who, that is on the way home, would not eagerly desire a favorable wind, that he might the sooner embrace his dear ones! Parents,...

“A great mystery,” says St. John Chrysostom, “is accomplished in our dead. A mystery of praise and of joy, when, summoned by the King of kings, the soul goes to meet her Lord, accompanied by Angels sent from heaven for the purpose! And thou—dost thou lament? When the bridegroom, to whom thou hast given thy daughter, carries her to a far country, thou dost not complain, provided he makes her happy; although her absence is a grief to thee, the sadness is tempered. And now, because it is not a man, a fellow slave, but the Lord himself that...

Thou art my portion, O Lord, Alleluia, in the land of the living, Alleluia, Alleluia.—Bring forth my soul out of prison, to confess to thy Name; in the land of the living, Alleluia, Alleluia.—Glory and honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, world without end, Amen: in the land of the living, Alleluia, Alleluia. Such is the opening chant for the departed, in the Mozarabic Missal. With the Greeks, in like manner, no word is of more frequent recurrence in the Office of the Dead, than the Alleluia. Moreover, both Greece and...

And the spirit and the Bride say: Come! And he that heareth, let him say: Come! —Surely I come quickly: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. While we honor the Church triumphant with our chants, and succor the Church suffering with our prayers, let us also turn our thoughts to the Church militant, during these days when the closing cycle presents her to us as about to complete her work on earth. Now the Church is our model; but especially at the close of our pilgrimage ought we to made her attitude our own. The above-cited dialogue, which will terminate the...

HAD WE ANGELS’ EYES, we should see the earth as a vast field sown with seed for the resurrection. The death of Abel opened the first furrow, and ever since, the sowing has gone on unceasingly the wide world over. This land of labor and of suffering, what treasures it already holds laid up in its bosom! And what a harvest for heaven, when the Sun of Justice, suddenly darting forth his rays, shall cause to spring up as suddenly from the soil the elect ears ripe for glory! No wonder that the Church herself blesses and superintends the...

“Praise and glory be to thee, O holy Trinity, who hast brought us all to this day’s solemnity. Praise be to thee also, O holy Mother of God, scepter of the orthodox faith: through thee the Cross triumphs, and man is called back to heaven; through thee the idols are overthrown, and the nations are brought to repentance.” Such words as these, which the Church borrows from her doctors to close the bright Octave, were doubtless sung in prophecy by the angels around the new-born babe Mary. And such, in the light of the ages since elapsed, must needs...

HOW BEAUTIFUL are thy first steps, O prince’s daughter! Our eyes are never weary of contemplating in thee the marvel of harmonious sweetness united to the strength of an army. Blessed child, continue to grow in grace; may thy course be prosperous; may thy royalty be strengthened and established. But the Church will not wait till thou be grown up, to sing to thee her beautiful antiphon: Rejoice O Virgin Mary; thou alone hast destroyed all heresies throughout the world. Heresy, Satan’s denial of what God affirms by his Christ, this is the great struggle, or rather the only...

“WHO IS SHE that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array?” Such is thy growth, O Mary! Not the holiest life, were it even of patriarchal duration, will ever attain the degree of progress made under the influence of divine power by the soul of the most pure Virgin, in these few days elapsed since her coming on earth. First, there is the progress of her intellect: not subject to the obscurity which envelopes the minds of all men at their entrance into the world,...

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,...

LET US MAKE MAN to Our image and likeness. “And God made man; He modelled him,” says Tertullian, “to the image of God, i.e. of Christ. Wonderful deed, to fashion this slime of the earth! God seems to be absorbed in it; He makes it the work of His hand and of His heart; counsel, wisdom, providence, and above all love, trace the lines. As He forms each lineament of this clay, He has in mind Christ who is to become man. This slime of the earth, stamped with the image of the Christ to come, is not only...

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...

“It is a great thing for a saint to have as much grace as would suffice for many; but if he had sufficient for all men in the world, that would be fullness of measure: and this is the case with Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin.” So speaks the prince of theologians with regard to her whom Suarez salutes as the “universal cause, intimately united to the Lord her Son.” A higher authority than that of the School has confirmed this teaching of the Angelic Doctor; in his encyclical Magne Dei Matris, the Sovereign Pontiff Leo XIII has...

White Semidouble IN THE ETERNAL DECREES Mary was never separated from Jesus; together with him, she was the type of all created beauty. When the Almighty Father prepared the heavens and the earth, his Son, who is his Wisdom, played before him in his future humanity as the first exemplar, as measure and number, as starting-point, center and summit of the work undertaken by the Spirit of Love; but at the same time the predestined Mother, the woman chosen to give to the Son of God from her own flesh his quality of Son of Man, appeared among mere...

Red   AT CHRISTMAS Stephen watched beside the crib, where the Infant God attracted our hearts; Laurence today escorts the Queen whose beauty outshines the heavens. It was fitting that a deacon should be present at both triumphs of love, shown at Bethlehem in the weakness of the Babe, and in heaven in the glory wherewith the Son delights to honor his Mother. During her pilgrimage through the desert of this world, the deacons are the guardians of the Bride, the Church, signified by the ancient tabernacle, wherein was the Ark of the Covenant, a figure of Mary. “Beloved...

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...

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 Greater Double FIRMLY RESTING UPON PETER, the Church turns to him whom the Spouse has given to be her Head, and testifies to him no less veneration and love, than obedience and fidelity; such is the craving of her gratitude. Moreover she is fully aware of what is thus expressed by St. Peter Damian (or as others say by a disciple of St. Bernard), “none may pretend to intimacy with our Lord, unless he be intimate with Peter.” How admirable is this unity in God’s advance towards his creature! but, at the same time, how absolute is the...

Red Semidouble PETER AND PAUL cease not to hearken to the prayer of their devout clients throughout the world. Time has wrought no change in their power; and in heaven, no more than formerly on earth, can the gravity of the general interests of holy Church so absorb them, as that they should neglect the petition of the humblest inhabitant of the glorious city of God, of which they were constituted, and still are, the Princes. One of the triumph gained by hell, at this day, is the lulling to sleep of the faith even of just men; hence...

Red Semidouble ALTHOUGH AMONGST THE SAINTS there is none who is undeserving of earth’s humble homage, or whose intercession is powerless in our behalf, yet the cultus rendered to each one, and the confidence evinced, necessarily vary in proportion to what we know of his or her glory. It is therefore only just, as Saint Leo remarks in today’s Office, that we should honor in a most special manner those whom divine grace has exalted so far above all others, that they are considered, as it were, the two brilliant eyes of Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church, giving light...

THE CHURCH UNITES on June the 24th in one same glad celebration, the memory both of the Birth of the Precursor and of his Circumcision, surrounded as it was by prodigies, related in the Gospel of the feast itself. But, properly speaking, this is the day whereon these wonders were operated, according to the words of the Gospel: “It came to pass that on the Eighth Day the child was circumcised.” By placing on the morrow of this Eighth Day the celebration of Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth, the Church seems to insinuate, besides, that Our Lady, who...