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White Semidouble A HUMBLE LAY BROTHER, Didacus of St. Nicholas is welcomed today by his father St. Francis into the company of Bernardine of Siena and John Capistran, who preceded him by a few years to heaven. The two latter left Italy and the whole of Europe still echoing with their voices, the one making peace between cities in the name of the Lord Jesus, the other urging on the Christian hosts to battle with the victorious Crescent. The age which they contributed so powerfully to save from the results of the great schism and to restore to its...

Red Demidouble WHILE THE CONCOURSE OF PILGRIMS to the sepulchre of the Bishop of Tours induced his third successor Perpetuus to raise over his precious remains the basilicas, in which so many prodigies were to be wrought all through the middle ages, Rome herself was dedicating to St. Martin one of her noblest churches, uniting with him as joint titular her own illustrious Pontiff and Confessor Sylvester. Adorned with this twofold glory, St. Martin-on-the-hill worthily inaugurated in the eternal City the cultus of Confessors side by side with that of the Martyrs. But another honor awaited the venerable sanctuary....

White Double THREE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED AND SIXTY CHURCHES dedicated to St. Martin in France alone, and well nigh as many in the rest of the world, bear witness to the immense popularity of the great thaumaturgus. In the country, on the mountains, and in the depth of forests, trees, rocks, and fountains, objects of superstitious worship to our pagan ancestors, received, and in many places still retain, the name of him who snatched them from the dominion of the powers of darkness to restore them to the true God. For the vanquished idols, Roman, Celtic or German, Christ...

White Double IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, in reply to the reproach of exhaustion hurled against the Church, the Holy Ghost raised from her soil an abundant harvest of sanctity. Andrew was one of his most worthy cooperators in the work of holy reformation and supernatural renaissance, which then took place. Eternal Wisdom had as usual suffered Satan to go before, for his own greater shame, cloaking his evil works under the grand names of renaissance and reform. It was nine years since St. Cajetan had departed this world, leaving it strengthened by his labors and all embalmed with the...

White Double of the Second Class IN THE FOURTH CENTURY OF OUR ERA, the cessation of persecution seemed to give the world a foretaste of its future entrance into eternal peace. “Glory to the Almighty! Glory to the Redeemer of our souls!” wrote Eusebius at the opening of the tenth and last book of his History. Himself a witness of the triumph, he describes the admirable spectacle everywhere displayed by the dedication of the new sanctuaries. In city after city the Bishops assembled, and crowds flocked together. From nation to nation, the goodwill of mutual charity, of common faith,...

White Double HUMILITAS. This word already stood, crowned with gold, upon his family escutcheon, when Charles was born at the castle of Arona. It had been said of the Borromeos that they knew nothing of humility, except to bear it on their coat of arms: but the time had now come, when the mysterious device was to be justified by the most illustrious scion of that noble family; and when, at the zenith of his greatness, a Borromeo would learn to void his heart of self, in order that God might fill it. Far, however, from abjuring the high-mindedness...

Red Double of the Second Class [Transferred from Sunday, 28 October.] INSTEAD OF THY FATHERS, sons are born to thee. Thus does the Church, disowned by Israel, extol in her chants the apostolic fruitfulness which resides in her till the end of time. Yesterday she was already filled with that loving hope which is never deceived, that the holy Apostles Simon and Jude would anticipate their solemnity by shedding blessings upon her. Such is the condition of her existence on earth, that she can remain here only as long as she continues to give children to our Lord; and...

Red Simple THE BELOVED DISCIPLE had just received the long-promised visit of our Lord inviting him to heaven when the Church, under Evaristus, completed the drawing up of the itinerary for her long pilgrimage to the end of time. The blessed period of the apostolic times was definitively closed, but the eternal City continued to augment her treasure of glory. Under this pontificate the virgin Domitilla, by her martyrdom, cemented the foundations of the new Jerusalem with the old. Then Ignatius of Antioch brought to the “Church that presides in charity” the testimony of his death; he was the...

Red Simple CHRYSANTHUS WAS UNITED, in his confession of our Lord, with her whom he had won to Christianity and to the love of the angelic virtue. Our forefathers had a great veneration for these two martyrs who, having lived together in holy virginity, were together buried alive in a sand pit at Rome for refusing to honor the false gods. Dying like the seed in the earth, they yielded the fruit of martyrdom. On the anniversary day of their triumph, numbers of the faithful had gathered in the catacomb on the Salarian Way for the liturgical Synaxis, when...

White Double THE APPROACH OF THE GREAT SOLEMNITY, which will soon be shedding upon us all the splendors of heaven, seems to inspire the Church with a profound recollection. Except for the homage she must needs pay, on their own date, to the glorious Apostles Simon and Jude, only a few Feasts of simple rite break the silence of these last days of October. Our souls must be in confirmity with the dispositions of our common Mother. It will not, however, be out of keeping to give a thought to the great Archangel, honored today by many particular churches....

White Simple “MONKS WERE UNKNOWN IN SYRIA before St. Hilarion,” says his historian St. Jerome. “He instituted the monastic life in that country, and was the master of those who embraced it. The Lord Jesus had his Anthony in Egypt and his Hilarion in Palestine, the former advanced in years, the latter still young.” Now our Lord very soon raised this young man to such glory that Anthony would say to the sick, who came to him from Syria attracted by the fame of his miracles: “Why take the trouble to come so far when you have near you...

White Double KENTY, THE HUMBLE VILLAGE of Silesia which witnessed the birth of St. John, owes its celebrity entirely to him. The canonization of this holy priest, who in the fifteenth century had illustrated the university of Cracow by his virtues and science, was the last hope of expiring Poland. It took place in the year 1767. Two years earlier, it was at the request of this heroic nation that Clement XIII had issued the first decree sanctioning the celebration of the feast of the sacred Heart. When enrolling John Cantius among the saints, the magnanimous Pontiff expressed in...

White Double “O HAPPY PENANCE, which has won me such glory!” said the Saint of today at the threshold of heaven. And on earth, Teresa of Jesus wrote of him “Oh! what a perfect imitator of Jesus Christ God has just taken from us, by calling to his glory that blessed religious Brother Peter of Alcantara! The world, they say, is no longer capable of such high perfection; constitutions are weaker, and we are not now in the olden times. Here is a Saint of the present day; yet his manly fervor equalled that of past ages; and he...

Red Double of the Second Class The goodness and kindness of God our Savior hath appeared to all men. It would seem that the third Evangelist, a disciple of St. Paul, had purposed setting forth this word of the Doctor of the Gentiles; or may we not rather say, the Apostle himself characterizes in this sentence the Gospel wherein his disciple portrays the Savior prepared before the face of all peoples; a light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of … Israel. St. Luke’s Gospel, and the words quoted from St. Paul, were in fact written...

White Double “AMONG THE MOST STRIKING PROOFS of the infinite love of our Redeemer is this, that, at a moment in which the love of the faithful was growing cold, the Divine Love proposed himself as the object of special veneration and worship, and the precious treasure of the Church was opened to enrich with indulgences the cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge … In that Sacred Heart we must place all our hope, from that Heart ask and expect our salvation.” The great devotion to the...

White Semidouble AT THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY, the plateau of Upper Asia poured down a fresh torrent of barbarians, more terrible than all their predecessors. The one fragile barrier, which the Græco-Slavonian civilization could oppose to the Mongols had been swept away by the first wave of the invasion; not one of the States formed under the protection of the Byzantine Church had any prospect for the future. But beyond this Ruthania, which had fallen into dissolution before being conquered, the Roman Church had had time to form a brave and generous people: when the hour arrived,...

White Double “ALTHOUGH THE CHURCH TRIUMPHANT IN HEAVEN, and the Church mourning here on earth appear to be completely separated,” says Bossuet on this feast, “they are nevertheless united by a sacred bond. This bond is charity, which is found in this land of exile as well as in our heavenly country; which rejoices the triumphant Saints and animates those still militant; which, descending from heaven to earth, and from Angels to men, causes earth to become a heaven, and men to become Angels. For, O holy Jerusalem, happy Church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven,...

NOVENA IN HONOR OF ST. RAPHAEL, ARCHANGEL (Beginning October 15) (May be said in public or private. i. 300 Days each day. ii. Plenary, once during the Novena. I, II, IV. See Instructions, p. I, 1910 Raccolta.) ℣. O God, come to my assistance; ℟. O Lord, make haste to help me.     “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost: as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. O CHRIST, Splendor of the Father, Life and Strength of the heart, in the presence of the...

Red Double HE WAS A SIGN OF CONTRADICTION in Israel. In his own time, Christians were ranged either around him or against him. The trouble excited by his mere name sixteen hundred years ago was renewed in the middle of the nineteenth century by the discovery of a famous book, which gave an occasion to the sectaries of our own days to stand with those of old against Callixtus and the Church. The book, entitled Philosophumena or refutation of heresies, was composed in the third century; it represented Callixtus, whose life and character were painted in the darkest colors,...

White Semidouble THIS GLORIOUS SAINT was like a beautiful lily, crowning the ancient branch of the kings of Wessex. The times had progressed since that sixth century, when the pagan Cerdic and other pirate chiefs from the North Sea scattered with ruins the island of saints. Having accomplished their mission of wrath, the Anglo-Saxons became instruments of grace to the land they had conquered. Evangelized by Rome, even as the Britons they had just chastized, they remembered, better than the latter, whence their salvation had come; a spring-tide blossoming of sanctity showed the pleasure God took once more in...