Christmas with Dom Gueranger

WHY DOM GUÉRANGER? WHO IS DOM GUÉRANGER? WHAT IS SOLESMES?

The Liturgical Year (French: L'Année Liturgique) is a written work in fifteen volumes describing the liturgical year of the Catholic Church. The series was written by Dom Prosper Louis Pascal Guéranger, a French Benedictine priest and abbot of Solesmes. Dom Guéranger began writing the work in 1841, and died in 1875 after writing nine volumes. The remaining volumes were completed by another Benedictine under Dom Guéranger's name.

The series describes the liturgy of the Catholic Church throughout the liturgical year, including the Mass and the Divine Office. Also described is the historical development of the liturgy in both Western and Eastern traditions. Biographies of saints and their liturgies are given on their feast days.

The Liturgical Year has been likened to the "Summa Theologica" of St. Thomas Aquinas, which the Council of Trent placed alongside the Bible as a work of authority. Dom Guéranger's "The Liturgical Year" has thus been called the "Summa" of the liturgy of the Catholic Church. However, a word of warning to the reader, just like the :Summa Theologica", you will encounter some dry difficult parts (much like the Israelites in their forty years of penance in the desert), but there will also be found oases of deep spiritual refreshment. Persevere, read slowly, stop to think, and you will draw much fruit from this masterful work. Put away and put aside the modern-man's desire for fast-food, fast-service, being fast-tracked. There is no fast way of getting to Heaven (except for fasting perhaps!!). Besides, I don't think God appreciates being put quickly aside so that we can run off to do what we wrongly imagine to be "better" things. The season that we have entered should see us being more of a Mary than a Martha!

“Now it came to pass as they went, that Jesus entered into a certain town: and a certain woman named Martha, received Him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sitting also at the Lord’ s feet, heard his word. But Martha was busy about much serving. Who stood and said: ‘Lord, hast Thou no care that my sister hath left me alone to serve? speak to her therefore, that she help me!’ And the Lord answering, said to her: ‘Martha, Martha, thou art careful, and art troubled about many things: but one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her!’” (Luke 10:38-42).

DOM GUÉRANGER & SOLESMES

Dom Guéranger pictured here when he still a young monk. He was ordained a priest at the younger than usual age of 22.

Destined to be a Scholar, Priest and Monk, Dom Guéranger would begin his work in the aftermath of the French revolution, when religious life was effectively abolished in all of Europe. Aiming to restore all aspects of monastic life, the preservation of Gregorian chant - the sung liturgy of the church - would be an essential part of Dom Guéranger's goal. He would re-found the Abbey of St. Peter in Solesmes.

Dom Geuranger himself writes: “My youth, the complete lack of temporal resources, and the limited reliability of those with whom I hoped to associate — none of these things stopped me. I would not have dreamed of it; I felt myself pushed to proceed. I prayed with all my heart for the help of God; but it never occurred to me to ask His will concerning the projected work.”

That last statement may surprise us, but Dom Guéranger explains: “The need of the Church seemed to me so urgent, the ideas about true Christianity so falsified and so compromised in the lay and ecclesiastical worlds, that I felt nothing but an urgency to found some kind of center wherein to recollect and revive pure traditions.”

Dom Guéranger was born within walking distance of the Abbey of Solesmes that he was destined to reform. Sablé-sur-Sarthe is a little south-west of Solesmes.

The house, as it looks today, in Sablé-sur-Sarthe in which Prosper Guéranger was born.

Born in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, on April 4, 1805, Prosper Guéranger frequently made Solesmes the destination of his childhood walks, drawn by the charm of the church building and its life-sized saints in stone. Though as a child he never imagined himself a monk, he loved the solitude of the place. Aspiring first to the priesthood, a precocious vocation led him, after his high school studies in Angers, to the seminary in Le Mans. There, he was drawn intensely to the study of Church history, and soon he discovered what the institution of monasticism had been. Contact with the great scholarly works of the Maurists soon awoke in him a real desire for the monastic life.

Ordained a priest in 1827 (Guéranger was only 22 years old at the time, so that his bishop had to obtain a canonical dispensation), he pursued his work as the bishop's secretary in Paris and in Le Mans. In 1831, learning that the priory at Solesmes was destined to destruction for lack of a buyer, the idea came to him to find the means to acquire it and to take up the Benedictine life again. With the help of a few friends and encouraged by his bishop, he gathered together — with considerable difficulty — enough money to rent the monastery property, and subsequently moved in with three companions on July 11, 1833.

The more humble years of the Benedictine life in Solesmes, before the ambitious building projects of later years under Dom Guéranger's successors.

The fledgling community encountered, of course, difficult times. But its young prior, borne up by his absolute confidence in Providence, by his humility and by his natural mirth and optimism, proved to possess a calm tenacity. Without copying the past in a servile way, he took inspiration from solid monastic traditions pursuing above all the true spirit of St Benedict while accepting several very necessary material adaptations to modern times. As a result, by his uncommon intuition of the benedictine charism, liturgy and spiritual life, he became a living example to his monks. As for temporal matters, Solesmes' first friends saw to the most urgent needs. They inaugurated a second and long list of the monastery's benefactors: the Cosnards, the Landeaus, the Gazeaus, Mme Swetchine, Montalembert, the Marquis of Juigné, and so many others who thought constantly of the monks.

After a four-year tryout Dom Guéranger went to Rome, in 1837, to ask the Vatican for official recognition of Solesmes as a benedictine community. Rome not only granted Dom Guéranger's request, but on its own initiative raised Solesmes from the status of priory to that of an abbey making it the head of a new Benedictine Congregation de France, successor to the Congregations of St. Maurus and St. Vanne as well as the more venerable and ancient family of monasteries belonging to Cluny. On July 26, Dom Guéranger made his solemn profession in the presence of the abbot of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome.

From then on began a new period in the history of Solesmes.

An aerial view of the St. Peter's Abbey of Solesmes as it stands today, after the expansive building projects of the 20th century.

The abbey view from the bridge crossing the river

THE LITURGICAL LIFE
Extracts from the Commentary on the Daily Liturgy
by Dom Prosper Guéranger

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Article 1

The History Behind the Story

Dating from the eleventh century, the discipline of public penance began to fall into disuse, and the holy rite of putting ashes on the heads of all the faithful indiscriminately became so general that, at length, it was considered as forming an essential part of the Roman liturgy. Formerly, it was the practice to approach bare-footed to receive this solemn memento of our nothingness; and in the twelfth century, even the Pope himself, when passing from the church of St. Anastasia to that of St. Sabina, at which the station was held, went the whole distance bare-footed, as also did the Cardinals who accompanied him. The Church no longer requires this exterior penance; but she is as anxious as ever that the holy ceremony, at which we are about to assist, should produce in us the sentiments she intended to convey by it, when she first instituted it.

From the liturgy of Ash Wednesday we learn of the prophet Joel and how acceptable to God is the expiation of fasting. When the penitent sinner inflicts corporal penance upon himself, God's justice is appeased. We have a proof of it in the Ninivites. If the Almighty pardoned an infidel city, as Ninive was, solely because its inhabitants sought for mercy under the garb of penance; what will He not do in favor of His own people, who offer Him the twofold sacrifice, exterior works of mortification, and true contrition of heart? Let us, then, courageously enter on the path of penance.

We are living in an age when, through want of faith and of fear of God, those practices which are as ancient as Christianity itself, and on which we might almost say it was founded, are falling into disuse; it behoves us to be on our guard, lest we, too, should imbibe the false principles, which have so fearfully weakened the Christian spirit. Let us never forget our own personal debt to the divine justice, which will remit neither our sins nor the punishment due to them, except inasmuch as we are ready to make satisfaction.

We have just been told that these bodies, which we are so inclined to pamper, are but dust; and as to our souls, which we are so often tempted to sacrifice by indulging the flesh, they have claims upon the body, claims of both restitution and obedience.

In the Gradual, the Church again pours forth the expressions of her confidence in the God of all goodness, for she counts upon her children being faithful to the means she gives them of propitiating His justice.

The Tract is that beautiful prayer of the psalmist, which she repeats thrice during each week of Lent, and which she always uses in times of public calamity, in order to appease the angel of God.

Our Redeemer would not have us receive the announcement of the great fast as one of sadness and melancholy. The Christian who understands what a dangerous thing it is to be behindhand with divine justice, welcomes the season of Lent with joy; it consoles him. He knows that if he be faithful in observing what the Church prescribes, his debt will be less heavy upon him. These penances, these satisfactions (which the indulgence of the Church has rendered so easy), being offered to God unitedly with those of our Savior Himself, and being rendered fruitful by that holy fellowship which blends into one common propitiatory sacrifice the good works of all the members of the Church militant, will purify our souls, and make them worthy to partake in the grand Easter joy. Let us not, then, be sad because we are to fast; let us be sad only because we have sinned and made fasting a necessity. In this same Gospel, our Redeemer gives us a second counsel, which the Church will often bring before us during the whole course of Lent: it is that of joining almsdeeds with our fasting. He bids us to lay up treasures in Heaven. For this, we need intercessors; let us seek them amidst the poor.

We may be sure, that a season, so sacred as this of Lent, is rich in mysteries. The Church has made it a time of recollection and penance, in preparation for the greatest of all her Feasts; she would, therefore, bring into it everything that could excite the faith of her children, and encourage them to go through the arduous work of atonement for their sins. During Septuagesima, we had the number―“Seventy”―which reminded us of those seventy years’ captivity in Babylon, after which, God’s chosen people, being purified from idolatry, was to return to Jerusalem and celebrate the Pasch. It is the number Forty that the Church now brings before us―a number, as Saint Jerome observes, which denotes punishment and affliction (Commentary on Ezechiel, chapter 29).

Let us remember the forty days and forty nights of the Deluge (Genesis 7:12), sent by God in His anger, when He repented that he had made man, and destroyed the whole human race, with the exception of one family. Let us consider how the Hebrew people, in punishment for their ingratitude, wandered forty years in the desert, before they were permitted to enter the Promised Land (Numbers 14:33). Let us listen to our God commanding the Prophet Ezechiel to be forty days on His right side, as a figure of the siege, which was to bring destruction on Jerusalem (Ezechiel 4:6).

There are two, in the Old Testament, who represent, in their own persons, the two manifestations of God: Moses, who typifies the Law; and Elias, who is the figure of the Prophets. Both of these are permitted to approach God―the first on Sinai (Exodus 24:18), the second on Horeb (3 Kings 19:8)―but both of them have to prepare for the great favor by an expiatory fast of forty days.

With these mysterious facts before us, we can understand why it was, that the Son of God, having become Man for our salvation, and wishing to subject himself to the pain of fasting, chose the number of Forty Days. The institution of Lent is thus brought before us with everything that can impress the mind with its solemn character, and with its power of appeasing God and purifying our souls. Let us, therefore, look beyond the little world which surrounds us, and see how the whole Christian universe is, at this very time, offering this Forty Days’ penance as a sacrifice of propitiation to the offended Majesty of God; and let us hope, that, as in the case of the Ninivites, He will mercifully accept this year’s offering of our atonement, and pardon us our sins.

The number of our days of Lent is, then, a holy mystery: let us, now, learn from the Liturgy, in what light the Church views her Children during these Forty Days. She considers them as an immense army, fighting, day and night, against their Spiritual enemies. We remember how, on Ash Wednesday, she calls Lent a Christian Warefare. Yes―in order that we may have that newness of life, which will make us worthy to sing once more our Alleluia―we must conquer our three enemies the devil, the flesh, and the world. We are fellow combatants with our Jesus, for He, too, submits to the triple temptation, suggested to him by Satan in person. Therefore, we must have on our armor, and watch unceasingly. And whereas it is of the utmost importance that our hearts be spirited and brave, the Church gives us a war-song of heaven’s own making, which can fire even cowards with hope of victory and confidence in God’s help: it is the Ninetieth Psalm (Psalm Qui habitat in adjutorio altissimi, in the Office of Compline for Thursdays). She inserts the whole of it in the Mass of the First Sunday of Lent, and, every day, introduces several of its verses in the Ferial Office.

She there tells us to rely on the protection, wherewith our Heavenly Father covers us, as with a shield (Scuto circumdabit to veritas ejus, the Responsory during ferial days of Lent at None and the Office of Compline for Sundays]; to hope under the shelter of His wings (Et sub pennis ejus sperabis, the Responsory during ferial days of Lent at Sext and Sunday Compline); to have confidence in Him, for that He will deliver us from the snare of the hunter (Ipse liberavit me de laqueo venantium, the Responsory during ferial days of Lent at Tierce and Sunday Compline), who had robbed us of the holy liberty of the children of God; to rely upon the help of the Holy Angels, who are our Brothers, to whom our Lord hath given charge that they keep us in all our ways (Angelis suis mandavit de te, ut custodiant te in omnibus viis tuis, versicle during ferial days of Lent at Lauds and Vespers and Sunday Compline), and who, when our Jesus permitted Satan to tempt Him, were the adoring witnesses of His combat, and approached Him, after His victory, proffering to Him their service and homage. Let us get well into us these sentiments wherewith the Church would have us be inspired; and, during our six weeks’ campaign, let us often repeat this admirable Canticle, which so fully describes what the Soldiers of Christ should be and feel in this season of the great spiritual warfare.

Article 2

The Mystery of Christmas

Everything is Mystery in this holy season. The Word of God, whose generation is before the day-star (Psalm 109:3), is born in time — a Child is God — a Virgin becomes a Mother, and remains a Virgin — things divine are commingled with those that are human — and the sublime, the ineffable antithesis, expressed by the Beloved Disciple in those words of his Gospel, THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH, is repeated in a thousand different ways in all the prayers of the Church; and rightly, for it admirably embodies the whole of the great portent which unites in one Person the nature of Man and the nature of God.

The splendor of this Mystery dazzles the understanding, but it inundates the heart with joy. It is the consummation of the designs of God in time. It is the endless subject of admiration and wonder to the Angels and Saints; nay, is the source and cause of their beatitude. Let us see how the Church offers this Mystery to her children, veiled under the symbolism of her Liturgy.

The four weeks of our preparation are over — they were the image of the four thousand years which preceded the great coming — and we have reached the twenty-fifth day of the month of December, as a long desired place of sweetest rest. But why is it that the celebration of our Savior’s Birth should be the perpetual privilege of this one fixed day; whilst the whole liturgical Cycle has, every year, to be changed and remodeled, in order to yield that ever-varying day which is to be the feast of his Resurrection — Easter Sunday?

The question is a very natural one, and we find it proposed and answered, even so far back as the fourth century; and that, too, by St Augustine, in his celebrated Epistle to Januarius. The holy Doctor offers this explanation: We solemnize the day of our Savior’s Birth, in order that we may honor that Birth, which was for our salvation; but the precise day of the week, on which he was born, is void of any mystical signification. Sunday, on the contrary, the day of our Lord’s Resurrection, is the day marked, in the Creator’s designs, to express a mystery which was to be commemorated for all ages. St Isidore of Seville, and the ancient Interpreter of Sacred Rites who, for a long time, was supposed to be the learned Alcuin, have also adopted this explanation of the Bishop of Hippo; and our readers may see their words interpreted by Durandus, in his Rationale.

These writers, then, observe that as, according to a sacred tradition, the creation of man took place on a Friday, and our Savior suffered death also on a Friday for the redemption of man; that as, moreover, the Resurrection of our Lord was on the third day after his death, that is, on a Sunday, which is the day on which the Light was created, as we learn from the Book of Genesis — “the two Solemnities of Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection,” says St Augustine, “do not only remind us of those divine facts; but they moreover represent and signify some other mysterious and holy thing.” (Epist. ad Januarium.)

And yet we are not to suppose that because the Feast of Jesus’ Birth is not fixed to any particular day of the week, there is no mystery expressed by its being always on the twenty-fifth of December. For firstly we may observe, with the old Liturgists, that the Feast of Christmas is kept by turns on each of the days of the week, that thus its holiness may cleanse and rid them of the curse which Adam’s sin had put upon them. But secondly, the great mystery of the twenty-fifth of December, being the Feast of our Savior’s Birth, has reference, not to the division of time marked out by God himself, which is called the Week; but to the course of that great Luminary which gives life to the world, because it gives it light and warmth. Jesus, our Savior, the Light of the World (St John viii 12), was born when the night of idolatry and crime was at its darkest; and the day of his Birth, the twenty-fifth of December, is that on which the material Sun begins to gain his ascendency over the reign of gloomy night, and show to the world his triumph of brightness.

In our “Advent” we showed, after the Holy Fathers, that the diminution of the physical light may be considered as emblematic of those dismal times which preceded the Incarnation. We joined our prayers with those of the people of the Old Testament; and, with our holy Mother the Church, we cried out to the Divine Orient, the Sun of Justice, that he would deign to come and deliver us from the twofold death of body and soul. God has heard our prayers; and it is on the day of the Winter Solstice — which the Pagans of old made so much of by their fears and rejoicings — that he gives us both the increase of the natural light, and him who is the Light of our souls.

St Gregory of Nyssa, St Ambrose, St Maximus of Turin, St Leo, St Bernard, and the principal Liturgists, dwell with complacency on this profound mystery, which the Creator of the universe has willed should mark both the natural and the supernatural world. We shall find the Church also making continual allusion to it during this season of Christmas, as she did in that of Advent.

“On this the Day which the Lord hath made,” says St Gregory of Nyssa, “darkness decreases, light increases, and Night is driven back again. No, brethren, it is not by chance, nor by any created will, that this natural change begins on the day when He shows Himself in the brightness of His coming, which is the spiritual Life of the world. It is Nature revealing, under this symbol, a secret to them whose eye is quick enough to see it; to them, I mean, who are able to appreciate this circumstance of our Savior’s coming. Nature seems to me to say: Know, O Man! That under the things which I show thee Mysteries lie concealed. Hast thou not seen the night, that had grown so long, suddenly checked? Learn hence, that the black night of Sin, which had reached its height by the accumulation of every guilty device, is this day stopped in its course. Yes, from this day forward its duration shall be shortened, until at length there shall be naught but Light. Look, I pray thee, on the Sun; and see how his rays are stronger, and his position higher in the heavens: learn from that how the other Light, the Light of the Gospel, is now shedding itself over the whole earth.” (Homily On the Nativity.)

“Let us, my Brethren, rejoice,” cries out St Augustine: (Sermon On the Nativity of our Lord, iii) “this day is sacred, not because of the visible sun, but because of the Birth of him who is the invisible Creator of the sun. ... He chose this day whereon to be born, as he chose the Mother of whom to be born, and he made both the day and the Mother. The day he chose was that on which the light begins to increase, and it typifies the work of Christ, who renews our interior man day by day. For the eternal Creator having willed to be born in time, his Birthday would necessarily be in harmony with the rest of his creation.”

The same holy Father, in another sermon for the same Feast, gives us the interpretation of a mysterious expression of St John Baptist, which admirably confirms the tradition of the Church. The great Precursor said on one occasion, when speaking of Christ: He must increase, but I must decrease (St John iii 30). These prophetic words signify, in their literal sense, that the Baptist’s mission was at its close, because Jesus was entering upon his. But they convey, as St Augustine assures us, a second meaning: “John came into this world at the season of the year when the length of the day decreases; Jesus was born in the season when the length of the day increases.” (Sermon In Natali Domini, xi). Thus, there is mystery both in the rising of that glorious Star, the Baptist, at the summer solstice: and in the rising of our Divine Sun in the dark season of winter.

There have been men who dared to scoff at Christianity as a superstition, because they discovered that the ancient Pagans used to keep a feast of the sun on the winter solstice! In their shallow erudition they concluded that a Religion could not be divinely instituted, which had certain rites or customs originating in an analogy to certain phenomena of this world: in other words, these writers denied what Revelation asserts, namely, that God only created this world for the sake of his Christ and his Church. The very facts which these enemies of our holy Religion brought forward as objections to the true Faith are, to us Catholics, additional proof of its being worthy of our most devoted love.

Thus, then, have we explained the fundamental Mystery of these Forty Days of Christmas, by having shown the grand secret hidden in the choice made by God’s eternal decree, that the twenty-fifth day of December should be the Birthday of God upon this earth.

Article 3

The House of Bread

Let us now respectfully study another mystery: that which is involved in the place where this Birth happened. This place is Bethlehem. “Out of Bethlehem”, says the Prophet, “shall He come forth, that is to be the Ruler in Israel” (Micheas 5:2). The Jewish Priests are well aware of the prophecy, and a few days hence will tell it to Herod (Matthew 2:5). But why was this insignificant town chosen in preference to every other to be the birth-place of Jesus? Be attentive, Christians, to the mystery!

The name of this City of David signifies the “House of Bread”: therefore did He, Who is the living Bread come down from Heaven (John 6:41), choose it for His first visible home. Our Fathers did eat manna in the desert and are dead (John 6:49); but behold, here is the Savior of the world, come to give life to His creature Man by means of His own divine Flesh, which is meat indeed (John 6:56). Up to this time, the Creator and the creature had been separated from each other; henceforth they shall abide together in closest union. The Ark of the Covenant, containing the manna, which fed but the body, is now replaced by the Ark of a New Covenant, purer and more incorruptible than the other: the incomparable Virgin Mary, who gives us Jesus, the Bread of Angels, the nourishment which will give us a divine transformation; for this Jesus Himself has said: “He that eateth My flesh abideth in Me, and I in him” (John 6:57).

It is for this divine transformation that the world was in expectation, for four thousand years, and for which the Church prepared herself, by the four weeks of Advent. It has come at last, and Jesus is about to enter within us, if we will but receive Him (John 1:12). He asks to be united to each one of us in particular, just as He is united by His Incarnation to the whole human race; and for this end He wishes to become our Bread, our spiritual nourishment. His coming into the souls of men, at this mystic season, has no other aim than this union. He comes not to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by Him (John 3:17), and that all may have life, and may have it more abundantly (John 10:10).

This divine Lover of our souls will not be satisfied, therefore, until he have substituted Himself in our place, so that we may live, not we ourselves, but He in us; and in order that this mystery may be effected in a sweeter way, it is under the form of an Infant that this Beautiful Fruit of Bethlehem wishes first to enter into us, there to grow afterwards in wisdom and age before God and men (Luke 2:40, 52).

And when, having thus visited us by His grace and nourished us in His love, He shall have changed us into Himself, there shall be accomplished in us a still further mystery. Having become one in spirit and heart with Jesus, the Son of the heavenly Father, we shall also become sons of this same God our Father. The Beloved Disciple, speaking of this our dignity, cries out: “Behold! what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be the Sons of God!” (John 3:1). We will not now stay to consider this immense happiness of the Christian soul, as we shall have a more fitting occasion, further on, to speak of it, and show by what means it is to be maintained and increased.

Article 4

Christmas 'Lights' and Colors

Christmas ‘Lights’
There is another subject, too, which we regret being obliged to notice only in a passing way. It is that, from the day itself of our Savior’s Birth even to the day of our Lady’s Purification, there is, in the Calendar, an extraordinary richness of Saints’ Feasts, doing homage to the master feast of Bethlehem, and clustering in adoring love round the Crib of the Infant-God.

To say nothing of the four great Stars which shine so brightly near our Divine Sun, from whom they borrow all their own grand beauty — St Stephen, St John the Evangelist, the Holy Innocents, and our own St Thomas of Canterbury: what other portion of the Liturgical Year is there that can show within the same number of days so brilliant a constellation?

► The Apostolic College contributes its two grand luminaries, St Peter and St Paul: the first in his Chair of Rome; the second in the miracle of his Conversion.

► The Martyr-host sends us the splendid champions of Christ, Timothy, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Vincent, and Sebastian.

► The radiant line of Roman Pontiffs lends us four of its glorious links, named Sylvester, Telesphorus, Hyginus and Marcellus.

► The sublime school of holy Doctors offers us Hilary, John Chrysostom, and Ildephonsus; and in their company stands a fourth Bishop — the amiable Francis de Sales.

► The Confessor-kingdom is represented by Paul the Hermit, Anthony the conqueror of Satan, Maurus the Apostle of the Cloister, Peter Nolasco the deliverer of captives, and Raymond of Pennafort, the oracle of Canon Law and guide of the consciences of men.

► The army of defenders of the Church deputes the pious King Canute, who died in defense of our Holy Mother, and Charlemagne, who loved to sign himself “the humble champion of the Church.”

► The choir of holy Virgins gives us the sweet Agnes, the generous Emerentiana, the invincible Martina.

► And lastly, from the saintly ranks which stand below the Virgins — the holy Widows — we have Paula, the enthusiastic lover of Jesus’ Crib. Truly, our Christmastide is a glorious festive season! What magnificence in its Calendar! What a banquet for us in its Liturgy!

Christmas Colors
A word upon the symbolism of the colors used by the Church during this season. White is her Christmas Vestment; and she employs this color at every service from Christmas Day to the Octave of the Epiphany. To honor her two Martyrs, Stephen and Thomas of Canterbury, she vests in red; and to condole with Rachel wailing her murdered Innocents, she puts on purple: but these are the only exceptions. On every other day of the twenty she expresses, by her white Robes, the gladness to which the Angels invited the world, the beauty of our Divine Sun that has risen in Bethlehem, the spotless purity of the Virgin-Mother, and the clean heartedness which they should have who come to worship at the mystic Crib.

During the remaining twenty days, the Church vests in accordance with the Feast she keeps; she varies the color so as to harmonize either with the red Roses which wreathe a Martyr, or with the white Amaranths which grace her Bishops and her Confessors, or again, with the spotless Lilies which crown her Virgins. On the Sundays which come during this time — unless there occur a Feast requiring red or white or, unless Septuagesima has begun its three mournful weeks of preparation for Lent — the color of the Vestments is green. This, say the interpreters of the Liturgy, is to teach us that in the Birth of Jesus, who is the flower of the fields (Canticles 1:1),we first received the hope of salvation, and that after the bleak winter of heathendom and the Synagogue, there opened the verdant spring-time of grace.

With this we must close our mystical interpretation of those rites which belong to Christmas in general. Our readers will have observed that there are many other sacred and symbolical usages, to which we have not even alluded; but as the mysteries to which they belong are peculiar to certain days, and are not, so to speak, common to this portion of the Liturgical Year, we intend to treat fully of them all, as we meet with them on their proper Feasts.

Article 5

Are You Doing What You
Should Be Doing Over Christmas?

The time has now come for the faithful soul to reap the fruit of the efforts that they made during the penitential weeks of Advent to prepare a dwelling-place for the Son of God, Who desires to be born within them. The Nuptials of the Lamb are come, and his Spouse hath prepared herself (Apocalypse 19:7). Now the Spouse is the Church; the Spouse is also every faithful soul. Our Lord gives His whole self to the whole flock, and to each sheep of the flock with as much love as though He loved but that one. What garments shall we put on, to go and meet the Bridegroom? Where shall we find the pearls and jewels wherewith to deck our soul for this happy meeting? Our holy Mother the Church will tell us all this in her Liturgy. Our best plan for spending Christmas is, undoubtedly, to keep close to her, and do what she does; for she is most dear to God, and being our Mother, we ought to obey all her injunctions.

But, before we speak of the mystic Coming of the Incarnate Word into our souls; before we tell the secrets of that sublime familiarity between the Creator and the Creature; let us, first, learn from the Church the duties which human nature and each of our souls owes to the Divine Infant, whom the Heavens have at length given to us as the refreshing Dew we asked them to rain down upon our earth. During Advent, we united with the Saints of the Old Law, in praying for the coming of the Messias, our Redeemer; now that He is come, let us consider what is the homage we must pay Him.

The Church offers to the Infant-God, during this holy season, the tribute of her profound adoration, the enthusiasm of her exceeding joy, the return of her unbounded gratitude, and the fondness of her intense love. These four offerings, adoration, joy, gratitude, and love, must be also those of every Christian to his Jesus, his Emmanuel, the Babe of Bethlehem. The prayers of the Liturgy will express all four sentiments in a way that no other Devotions could do. But, the better to appropriate to ourselves these admirable formulas of the Church, let us understand thoroughly the nature of each of these four sentiments.

The first of our duties at our Savior’s Crib is Adoration. Adoration is Religion’s first act; but there is something in the Mystery of our Lord’s Birth which seems to make this duty doubly necessary. In Heaven the Angels veil their faces, and prostrate themselves before the throne of Jehovah; the Four-and-Twenty Elders are for ever casting their crowns before the throne (Apocalypse 4:10) of the Lamb; what, then, shall we do — we who are sinners, and unworthy members of the Tribe of the Redeemer — now that this same great God shows Himself to us, humbled for our sakes, and stripped of all His glory? Now that the duties of the creature to his Creator are fulfilled by the Creator Himself? Now that the eternal God bows down, not only before the Sovereign Majesty of the Godhead, but even before sinful man, His creature?

Let us endeavour to make, by our profound adorations, some return to the God who thus humbles Himself for us; let us thus give Him back some little of that whereof He has deprived Himself out of love for us, and in obedience to the will of His Father. It is incumbent on us to emulate, as far as possible, the sentiments of the Angels in Heaven, and never to approach the Divine Infant without bringing with us the incense of our soul’s adoration, the protestation of our own extreme unworthiness, and lastly, the homage of our whole being. All this is due to the infinite Majesty of the Babe of Bethlehem, Who is the more worthy of every tribute we can pay Him, because He has made Himself thus little for our sakes. Unhappy we, if the apparent weakness of the Divine Child, or the familiarity wherewith He is ready to caress us, should make us negligent in this our first duty, or forget what he is, and what we are!

The example of his Blessed Mother will teach us to be thus humble. Mary was humble in the presence of her God, even before she became His Mother; but, once His Mother, she carried herself before Him who was her God and her Child with greater humility than ever. We too, poor sinners, sinners so long and so often, we must adore with all the power of our soul Him Who has come down so low: we must study to find out how by our self-humiliation to make Him amends for this Crib, these swathing-bands, this eclipse of His glory. And yet all our humiliations will never bring us so low as that we shall be on a level with His lowliness. No; only God could reach the humiliations of God.

But our Mother, the Church, does not only offer to the Infant God the tribute of her profound adoration. The mystery of Emmanuel, that is, of God with us, is to her a source of singular joy. Look at her sublime Canticles for this holy Season, and you will find the two sentiments admirably blended — her deep reverence for her God, and her glad joy at his Birth. Joy! did not the very Angels come down and urge her to it? She therefore studies to imitate the blithe Shepherds, who ran for joy to Bethlehem (St Luke ii 16), and the glad Magi, who were well-nigh out of themselves with delight when, on quitting Jerusalem, the star again appeared and led them to the Cave where the Child was (St Matt. ii 10). Joy at Christmas is a Christian instinct, which originated those many Carols, which, like so many other beautiful traditions of the ages of Faith, are unfortunately dying out amongst us; but which Rome still encourages, gladly welcoming each year those rude musicians, the Pifferari, who come down from the Apennines, and make the streets of the Eternal City re-echo with their shrill melodies.

Come, then, faithful Children of the Church, let us take our share in her joy! This is not the season for sighing or for weeping. For unto us a Child is born! (Isa. ix 6). He for whom we have been so long waiting is come; and he is come to dwell among us (St John i 14). Great, indeed, and long was our suspense; so much the more let us love our possessing him. The day will too soon come when this Child, now born to us, will be the Man of Sorrows (Isa. liii 3), and then we will compassionate him; but at present we must rejoice and be glad at his coming and sing round his Crib with the Angels. Heaven sends us a present of its own joy: we need joy, and forty days are not too many for us to get it well into our hearts. The Scripture tells us that a secure mind is like a continual feast (Prov. xv 15), and a secure mind can only be where there is peace; now it is Peace which these blessed days bring to the earth; Peace, say the Angels, to men of good will!

Intimately and inseparably united with this exquisite mystic joy is the sentiment of gratitude. Gratitude is indeed due to him who, neither deterred by our unworthiness nor restrained by the infinite respect which becomes his sovereign Majesty, deigned to be born of his own creature, and have a stable for his birth-place. Oh! how vehemently must he not have desired to advance the work of our salvation, to remove everything which could make us afraid of approaching him, and to encourage us, by his own example, to return, by the path of humility, to the Heaven we had strayed from by pride!

Gratefully, therefore, let us receive the precious gift — this Divine Babe, our Deliverer. He is the Only- Begotten Son of the Father, that Father who hath so loved the world as to give his only Son (St John iii 16). He, the Son, unreservedly ratifies his Father’s will, and comes to offer himself because it is his own will (Isa. liii 7). How, as the Apostle expresses it, hath not the Father with him given us all things? (Rom. viii 32). O gift inestimable! How shall we be able to repay it by suitable gratitude, we who are so poor as not to know how to appreciate it? God alone, and the Divine Infant in his Crib, know the value of the mystery of Bethlehem, which is given to us.

Shall our debt, then, never be paid? Not so: we can pay it by love, which, though finite, gives itself without measure, and may grow for ever in intensity. For this reason, the Church, after she has offered her adorations and hymns and gratitude, to her Infant Savior, gives him also her tenderest Love. She says to him: “How beautiful art thou, my Beloved One, and how comely! (Canticles 1:15). How sweet to me is thy rising, O Divine Sun of Justice! How my heart glows in the warmth of thy beams! Nay, dearest Jesus, the means thou usest for gaining me over to thyself are irresistible — the feebleness and humility of a Child!” Thus do all her words end in love; and her adoration, praise, and thanksgiving, when she expresses them in her Canticles, are transformed into love.

Christians! Let us imitate our Mother, and give our hearts to our Emmanuel. The Shepherds offer Him their simple gifts, the Magi bring Him their rich presents, and no one must appear before the Divine Infant without something worthy His acceptance. Know, then, that nothing will please Him, but that which He came to seek — our love. It was for this that He came down from Heaven. Hard indeed is that heart which can say,” He shall not have my love!”

These, then, are the duties we owe to our Divine Master in this his first Coming, which, as St Bernard says, is in the flesh and in weakness, and is for the salvation, not for the judgment, of the world.

Article 6

Christmas Is Our Birthday Too!

Where shall we find an interpreter of the twofold mystery which is wrought at this holy season — the mystery of the Infancy of Jesus in the soul of man, and the mystery of the infancy of man’s soul in his Jesus? None of the Holy Fathers has so admirably spoken upon it as Pope St. Leo the Great. Let us listen to his grand words.

“Although that Childhood, which the majesty of the Son of God did not disdain to assume, has developed, by growth of age, into the fullness of the perfect man, and, the triumph of His Passion and Resurrection having been achieved, all the humiliations He submitted to, for our sakes, are passed; nevertheless, the Feast, we are now keeping, brings back to us the sacred Birth of the Virgin Mary’s Child, Jesus Our Lord. So that whilst adoring His Birth, we are, in truth, celebrating our own commencement of life; for the Generation of Christ is the origin of the Christian people, and the Birth Day of Him, that is our Head, is the Birth Day of us that are His Body. It is true, that each Christian has his own rank, and the children of the Church are born each in their respective times; yet the whole mass of the Faithful, once having been regenerated in the font of Baptism, are born, on this Day of Christmas, together with Christ; just as they are crucified together with Him in His Passion, and have risen together with His Resurrection, and in His Ascension are placed at the right hand of the Father. For every believer, no matter in what part of the work he may be living, is born again in Christ; his birth according to nature is not taken into account; he becomes a new man by his second birth; neither is he any longer called of the family of his father in the flesh, but of the family of our Redeemer, Who unto this was made a Son of Man, that we might become the Sons of God.” (Sixth Sermon on the Nativity of our Lord, Ch. 2).

Yes―this is the Mystery achieved in us by the holy Season of Christmas! It is expressed in those words of the passage from St John’s Gospel, which the Church has chosen for the third Mass of the great Feast: “As many as received Him, He gave them power to be made the Sons of God, to them that believe in his name; who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:22). So that all they who, having purified their souls, freed themselves from the slavery of flesh and blood, and renounced everything which is of man, inasmuch as man means sinner, wish now to open their hearts to the Divine Word, that is, to the LIGHT which shineth in darkness, which darkness did not comprehend (John 1:5), these, I say, are born with Jesus; they are born of God; they begin a new life, as did the Son of God Himself in this mystery of His Birth in Bethlehem.

How beautiful are these first beginnings of the Christian Life! How great is the glory of Bethlehem, that is, of our holy Mother the Church, the true House of Bread! For in her midst there is produced, during these days of Christmas, and everywhere throughout the world, a countless number of sons of God. O, the unceasing vitality of our mysteries! As the Lamb, who was slain from the beginning of the world (Apocalypse 13:8), sacrifices Himself without ceasing, ever since His real sacrifice; so also, once born of the Holy Virgin his Mother, He makes it a part of His glory to be ceaselessly born in the souls of men.

We are not, therefore, to think for a moment that the dignity of Mary’s divine Maternity is lessened, or that our souls enjoy the same grand honor, which was granted to her: far from that, “let us,” as Venerable Bede says, “raise our voice from amid the crowd, as did the woman in the Gospel, and say to our Savior, with the Catholic Church, of which that woman was the type: Blessed is the Womb that bore thee, and the Breasts that gave thee suck!” (Commentary on St Luke, Bk. 4, Ch. 49).

Article 7

Be Part of the Family

Speaking of Our Lady's spiritual and divine Maternity, Mary’s prerogative is indeed incommunicable, and it makes her the Mother of God, and the Mother of men. But we must also remember the answer made by our Savior to the woman, who spoke those words: “Yea rather”, said Jesus, “blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it!” (Matthew 12:50), “hereby declaring,” continues Venerable Bede, “that not only is she blessed, who merited to conceive in the flesh the Word of God, but they also who endeavour to conceive this same Word spiritually, by the hearing of faith, and to give him birth and nourish him by keeping and doing what is good, either in their own or their neighbour’s heart. For the Mother of God herself was Blessed in that she was made, for a time, the minister to the wants of the Incarnate Word; but much more Blessed was she, in that she was and ever will be the keeper and doer of the love due to that same her Son.”

Is it not this same truth which our Lord teaches us on that other occasion, where he says: “Whosoever shall do the will of My Father that is in Heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother?” (Matthew 12:50). And why was the Angel sent to Mary in preference to all the rest of the daughters of Israel, but because she had already conceived the Divine Word in her heart by the vehemence of her undivided love, the greatness of her profound humility and the incomparable merit of her virginity? Why again, is this Blessed among women, holy above all creatures, if not because, having once conceived and brought forth a Son of God, she continues for ever His Mother, by her fidelity in doing the will of the heavenly Father, by her love for the uncreated light of the Divine Word, and by her union as Spouse with the Spirit of sanctification?

But no member of the human race is excluded from the honor of imitating Mary, though at a humble distance, in this her spiritual Maternity: for, by that real birth which she gave Him in Bethlehem, which we are now celebrating, and which initiated the world into the mysteries of God, this ever Blessed Mother of Jesus has shown us how we may bear the resemblance of her own grand prerogative. We ought to have prepared the way of the Lord (Matthew 3:3; Isaias 40:3) during the weeks of Advent; and if so, our hearts have conceived Him: therefore now our good works must bring Him forth, that thus our heavenly Father, seeing not us ourselves, but His own Son Jesus now living within us, may say of each of us, in His mercy, what He heretofore said in very truth of the Incarnate Word: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!” (Matthew 3:17).

Article 8

Christmastide and Martyrdom

Let us give the holy Martyrs a thought, whose memory is offered to our veneration by the Church in her Martyrology of this Christmas season. Diocletian and his colleagues in the Empire had recently published the famous edict of persecution, which waged against the Church the fiercest war she has ever sustained. The edict was torn down from the Emperor’s palace at Nicomedia by one of the Christians, who paid for this holy daring by a glorious martyrdom. The faithful of the same city were ready for the combat, and feared not to brave the Emperor’s power by continuing to frequent their Church, which was condemned to be pulled down.

Christmas Day came, and several thousands of them had assembled there, in order to celebrate, for the last time within those walls, the Nativity of our Savior. Being informed of it, the Emperor became furious, and sent one of the officers of his court to order the Church doors to be fastened, and a fire to be enkindled on each side of the building. This being done, the clang of trumpets was heard, and then a herald’s voice proclaiming to the faithful, in the Emperor’s name, that they who wished to save their lives would be permitted to leave the Basilica, on the condition of their offering incense on an altar of Jupiter, which had been placed near the door; but that otherwise, all were to be left a prey to the flames. One of the Christians thus answered, in the name of the whole assembly: “We are all of us Christians; we honor Christ as the one only God and King; and we are all ready to lay down our lives for him on this Day.” Where upon the soldiers were commanded to set fire to the Church. In a very short time, it was one immense mass of flames, whence was offered to the Son of God — who deigned to begin on this same day the human life he had assumed — the generous holocaust of these thousands of lives, laid down as witness to his having come into this world. Thus was glorified, in the year 303, Emmanuel, who had come from Heaven to dwell among us. Let us, after the example of the Church herself, join our homage to the Babe of Bethlehem with that offered him by these courageous Christians, whose fame the Liturgy will perpetuate even to the end of time.

Once more let us visit in spirit the dear Cave, where Mary and Joseph are loving and nursing and adoring the Divine Infant. Let us, too, adore him, and ask his blessing. St Bonaventure, with an unction worthy of his seraphic soul, thus expresses the sentiments which a Christian should have on this Day, when admitted to the Crib of Jesus: “Do thou also kneel down — thou hast delayed too long. Adore the Lord thy God, and then reverence his Mother, and salute, with much respect, the saintly old man Joseph. After this, kiss the feet of the Infant Jesus, laid as he is on his little bed, and ask our Lady to give him to thee, or permit thee to take him up. Take him into thine arms, press him to thy heart, and look well at his lovely face, and reverently kiss him, and show him confidently the delight thou takest in him. Thou mayest venture on all this, because it is for sinners that he came, that he might save them: it was with sinners that he so humbly conversed, and at last gave himself to sinners, that he might be their food. I say, then, that his gentle love will permit thee to treat him as affectionately as thou pleasest, and will not call it too much freedom, but will set it down to thy love.” (Meditations on the Life of Christ, by St Bonaventure.)

Article 9

A New Life! A Spiritual Childhood

So that you, O Christians must become children; you must not disdain to be tied in the bonds of a spiritual childhood; you must come down from your proud spirit, and meet your Savior who has come down from Heaven, and with him hide yourselves in the humility of the crib. Thus will you begin, with him, a new life. Thus will the Light that goeth forwards and increaseth even to perfect day (Proverbs 4:18) illumine your path the whole remaining length of your Journey. Thus the sight of God which leaves room for faith, which you receive at Bethlehem, will merit for you the face-to-face vision on Thabor, and prepare you for the blissful UNION, which is not merely Light, but the plenitude and repose of Love.

So far we have been speaking only of the living members of the Church, whether they began the life of grace during the holy Season of Advent, or were already living in the grace of the Holy Ghost when the ecclesiastical year commenced, and spent their Advent in preparing to be born with Jesus to a new year of higher perfection. But how shall we overlook those of our Brethren who are dead in sin; and so dead, that neither the coming of their Emmanuel, nor the example of the Christians throughout the universal Church earnestly preparing for that coming, could rouse them? No, we cannot forget them: we love them, and come to tell them (for even now they may yield to grace, and live), that there hath appeared the goodness and kindness of God our Savior (Titus 3:4).

If this volume of ours should perchance fall into the hands of any of those who have not yielded to the solicitations of grace, which press them to be converted to the sweet Babe of Bethlehem, their Lord and their God; who, instead of spending the weeks of Advent in preparing to receive him at Christmas, lived them out, as they began them, in indifference and in sin: we shall, perhaps, be helping them to a knowledge of the grievousness of their state, by reminding them of the ancient discipline of the Church, which obliged all the Faithful, under pain of being considered as no longer Catholics, to receive Holy Communion on Christmas Day, as well as on Easter and Whit Sundays. We find a formal decree of this obligation given in the fifteenth Canon of the Council of Agatha (Agde) held in 506. We would also ask these poor sinners to reflect on the joy the Church feels at seeing, throughout the whole world, the immense number of her children, who still, in spite of the general decay of piety, keep the Feast of the birth of the Divine Lamb, by the sacramental participation of his Body and Blood.

Article 10

Do Not Neglect the Holy Name of Jesus

The second Sunday after the Epiphany, which recalls the Marriage feast of Cana, was at first chosen as the day on which to honor the most holy Name of Jesus. It is on the Wedding Day that the Bridegroom gives his Name to the Bride, and it is the sign that, from that day forward, she belongs to him alone. The Church, therefore, wishing to honor a name so precious to her with a special feast, could find no day more appropriate for it than that of the Marriage at Cana. But now she has chosen for the celebration of this august Name, a day closer to the Anniversary on which it was given, “after eight days were accomplished, His name was called Jesus”; she leaves, however, the commemoration of the Sacred Nuptials to the Sunday of which it has ever been the glory.

In the Old Covenant, the Name of God inspired fear and awe: nor was the honor of pronouncing it granted to all the children of Israel. We can understand this. God had not yet come down from Heaven to live on earth, and converse with men; He had not yet taken upon himself our poor nature, and become Man like ourselves; the sweet Name expressive of love and tenderness, could not be applied to Him.

But, when the fulness of time had come — when the mystery of love was about to be revealed — then did Heaven send down the Name of “Jesus” to our earth, as a pledge of the speedy coming of him who was to bear it. The archangel Gabriel said to Mary: “Thou shalt call His Name JESUS.”

“Jesus” means Savior. How sweet will this Name not be to poor lost man! It seems to link earth to Heaven! No name is so amiable, none is so powerful. Every knee in Heaven, on earth, and in hell, bows in adoration at hearing this Name! and yet, who can pronounce it, and not feel love spring up within his heart? But we need such a saint as Bernard, to tell us of the power and sweetness of this blessed Name. He thus speaks of it in one of his Sermons.

“The Name of Jesus is Light, and Food, and Medicine. It is Light, when it is preached to us; it is Food, when we think upon it; it is the Medicine that soothes our pains when we invoke it. Let us say a word on each of these. Tell me, whence came there, into the whole world, so bright and sudden a light, if not from the preaching of the Name of Jesus? Was it not by the light of this Name that God called us unto his admirable Light? Wherewith being enlightened, and in this light, seeing the Light, we take these words of Paul as truly addressed to ourselves: Heretofore, you were darkness; but now, light in the Lord (Ephesians 5:8).

“Nor is the Name of Jesus Light only; it is also Food. Art thou not strengthened, as often as thou thinkest of this Name? What is there that so feeds the mind of him that meditates upon this Name? What is there that so restores the wearied faculties, strengthens virtue, gives vigor to good and holy habits, and fosters chastity? Every food of the soul is dry, that is not steeped in this unction; it is insipid, if it be not seasoned with this salt. If thou write, I relish not thy writing, unless I read there the Name of Jesus. If thou teach me, or converse with me, I relish not thy words, unless I hear thee say the Name of Jesus. JESUS is honey to the mouth, and music to the ear, and gladness to the heart.

“It is also Medicine. Is any one among you sad? Let but Jesus come into his heart, and the mouth echo him, saying Jesus! and lo! The light of that Name disperses every cloud, and brings sunshine back again. Have any of you committed sin? and is despair driving you into the snare of death? Invoke the Name of life, and life will come back to the soul. Was there ever a man, that, hearing this saving Name, could keep up that common fault of hardness of heart, or drowsiness of sluggishness, or rancor of soul, or languor of sloth? If any one, perchance, felt that the fountain of his tears was dry, did it not gush forth more plentifully than ever, and flow more sweetly than ever, as soon as he invoked the Name of Jesus? If any of us were ever in danger, and our heart beat with fear, did not this Name of power bring us confidence and courage the moment we pronounced it? When we were tossed to and fro by perplexing doubts, did not the evidence of what was right burst on us as we called upon the Name of light? When we were discouraged, and well nigh crushed, by adversity, did not our heart take courage, when our tongue uttered the Name of help? All this is most true; for all these miseries are the sicknesses and faintings of our soul, and the Name of Jesus is our Medicine.

“But, let us see how all this comes to pass. Call upon me in the day of trouble, says the Lord; I will deliver thee, and thou shall glorify me (Psalm 49:15). There is nothing which so restrains the impulse of anger, calms the swelling of pride, heals the wound of envy, represses the insatiability of luxury, smothers the flame of lust, quenches the thirst of avarice, and dispels the fever of uncleanliness as the Name of Jesus. For when I pronounce this Name, I bring before my mind the Man, who, by excellence, is meek and humble of heart, benign, sober, chaste, merciful, and filled with everything that is good and holy, nay, who is the very God Almighty — whose example heals me, and whose assistance strengthens me. I say all this, when I say Jesus. Here have I my model, for he is Man; and my help, for he is God; the one provides me with precious drugs, the other gives them efficacy; and from the two I make a potion such as no physician knows how to make.

“Here is the electuary, my soul, hid in the casket of this Name Jesus; believe me, it is wholesome, and good for every ailment thou canst possibly have. Ever have it with thee, in thy bosom and in thy hand; so that all thy affections and actions may be directed to JESUS” (St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Fifteenth Sermon on the Canticle of Canticles).

The feast of the Holy Name is of comparatively recent origin, its first promoter was St Bernardine of Siena, who lived in the fifteenth century. This holy man established the practice of representing the Holy Name of Jesus surrounded with rays, and formed into a monogram of three first letters, IHS—for the Name was, anciently, often written “Ihesus”; hence, in its contracted form alluded to, the letter “H” would be given: the “E” following was virtually included in the aspirate.

The custom spread rapidly through Italy, and was zealously propagated by the great St. John of Capestrano, who, like St. Bernardine of Siena, was of the Order of Friars Minor. The Holy See gave its formal approbation to this manner of honoring the Name of our Savior, and, in the early part of the sixteenth century, Pope Clement VI, after long entreaties, granted to the whole Franciscan Order the privilege of keeping a special Feast in honor of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.

Rome extended the same favor to various Churches; and, at length, the Feast was inserted in the universal Calendar. It was in the year 1721, at the request of Charles VI, Emperor of Germany, that Pope Innocent XII decreed that the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus should be kept throughout the whole Church; he also chose the Second Sunday after the Epiphany as the day, but as we have already explained, the feast is now fixed for the Sunday following the Circumcision.

Article 11

Three In One!

The Feast of the Epiphany is the continuation of the mystery of Christmas; but it appears on the Calendar of the Church with its own special character. Its very name, which signifies "Manifestation", implies that it celebrates the apparition of God to his creatures.

For several centuries, the Nativity of Our Lord was kept on this day; and when, in the year 376, the decree of the Holy See obliged all Churches to keep the Nativity on the 25th December, as Rome did — the Sixth of January was not robbed of all its ancient glory. It was still to be called the Epiphany, and the Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ was also commemorated on this same Feast, which Tradition had marked as the day on which that Baptism took place.

The Greek Church gives this Feast the venerable and mysterious name of Theophania, which is of such frequent recurrence in the early Fathers, as signifying a divine Apparition. We find this name applied to this Feast by Eusebius, St. Gregory Nazianzum, and St. Isidore of Pelusium. In the liturgical books of the Melchite Church the Feast goes under no other name.

The Orientals call this solemnity also the holy on account of its being the day on which Baptism was administered—for, as we have just mentioned, our Lord was baptized on this same day. Baptism is called by the holy Fathers Illumination, and they who received it Illuminated.

Lastly, this Feast is called, in many countries, King’s Feast: it is, of course, an allusion to the Magi, whose journey to Bethlehem is so continually mentioned in today’s Office.

The Epiphany shares with the Feasts of Christmas, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost, the honor of being called, in the Canon of the Mass, a Day most holy. It is also one of the cardinal Feasts, that is, one of those on which the arrangement of the Christian Year is based; for, as we have Sundays after Easter, and Sundays after Pentecost, so also we count six Sundays after the Epiphany.

The Epiphany is indeed great Feast, and the joy caused us by the Birth of our Jesus must be renewed on it, for, as though it were a second Christmas Day, it shows us our Incarnate God in a new light. It leaves us all the sweetness of the dear Babe of Bethlehem, who hath appeared to us already in love; but to this it adds its own grand manifestation of the divinity of our Jesus. At Christmas, it was a few Shepherds that were invited by the Angels to go and recognize THE WORD MADE FLESH; but now, at the Epiphany, the voice of God himself calls the whole world to adore this Jesus, and hear him.

The mystery of the Epiphany brings upon us three magnificent rays of the Sun of Justice, our Savior. In the calendar of pagan Rome, this sixth day of January was devoted to the celebration of the triple triumph of Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire: but when Jesus, our Prince of peace, whose empire knows no limits, had secured victory to his Church by the blood of the Martyrs. Then did this his Church decree, that a triple triumph of the Immortal King should be substituted, in the Christian Calendar, for those other three triumphs which had been won by the adopted son of Caesar.

The Sixth of January, therefore, restored the celebration of our Lord’s Birth to the Twenty-Fifth of December; but, in return, there were united in the one same Epiphany, three manifestations of Jesus’ Glory: the mystery of the Magi coming from the East, under the guidance of a star, and adoring the Infant of Bethlehem as the Divine King; the mystery of the Baptism of Christ, who, whilst standing in the waters of the Jordan, was proclaimed by the Eternal Father as Son of God; and thirdly, the mystery of the divine power of this same Jesus, when he changed the water into wine at the marriage-feast of Cana.

But, did these three Mysteries really take place on this day? Is the Sixth of January the real anniversary of these great events? As the chief object of this work is to assist the devotion of the Faithful, we purposely avoid everything which would savor of critical discussion; and with regard to the present question, we think it enough to state, that Baronius, Suarez, Theophilus Raynaldus, Honorius De Sancta-Maria, Cardinal Gotti, Sandini, Benedict 14th, and an almost endless list of other writers, assert that the Adoration of the Magi happened on this very day.

That the Baptism of our Lord, also, happened on the sixth of January, is admitted by the severest historical critics, even by Tillemont himself; and has been denied by only two or three. The precise day of the miracle at the marriage-feast of Cana is far from being as certain as the other two mysteries, though it is impossible to prove that the sixth of January was not the day. For us the children of the Church, it is sufficient that our Holy Mother has assigned the commemoration of these three manifestations for this Feast; we need nothing more to make us rejoice in the triple triumph of the Son of Mary.

Article 12

In the Humble Court of the Humble King

Let us, then, open our hearts to the Joy of this grand Day; and on this Feast of the Theophany, of the Holy Lights, of the Three Kings, let us look with love at the dazzling beauty of our Divine Sun, who, as the Psalmist expresses it (Psalm 18:6), runs His course as a Giant, and pours out upon us floods of a welcome and yet most vivid light. The Shepherds, who were called by the Angels to be the first worshipers, have been joined by the Prince of Martyrs, the Beloved Disciple, the dear troop of Innocents, our glorious Thomas of Canterbury, and Sylvester the Patriarch of Peace; and now, today, these Saints open their ranks to let the Kings of the East come to the Babe in His crib, bearing with them the prayers and adorations of the whole human race.

The humble Stable is too little for such a gathering as this, and Bethlehem seems to be worth all the world besides. Mary, the Throne of the divine Wisdom, welcomes all the members of this court with her gracious smile of Mother and Queen; she offers her Son to man, for his adoration, and to God, that he may be well pleased. God manifests himself to men, because He is great: but He manifests Himself by Mary, because He is full of mercy.

His magnificence is manifested to us so brightly on this Feast! Our mother, the Church, is going to initiate us into the mysteries we are to celebrate. Let us imitate the faith and obedience of the Magi: let us adore, with the holy Baptist, the divine Lamb, over whom the heavens open: let us take our place at the mystic feast of Cana, where our dear King is present, thrice manifested, thrice glorified. In the last two mysteries, let us not lose sight of the Babe of Bethlehem; and in the Babe of Bethlehem let us cease not to recognize the Great God (in whom the Father was well-pleased) and the supreme Ruler and Creator of all things.

The day of the Magi, the day of the Baptism, the day of the Marriage Feast, has come: our divine Sun of Justice reflects upon the world these three bright rays of his glory. Material darkness is less than it was; Night is losing her power; Light is progressing day by day. Our sweet Infant Jesus, who is still lying in his humble crib, is each day gaining strength. Mary showed him to the shepherds, and now she is going to present him to the Magi. The gifts we intend to offer him should be prepared; let us, like the three Wise Men, follow the star, and go to Bethlehem, the House of the Bread of Life.

O the greatness of this glorious Day, on which begins the movement of all nations towards the Church, the true Jerusalem! Oh! the mercy of our heavenly Father, who has been mindful of all these people, that were buried in the shades of death and sin! Behold! The glory of the Lord has risen upon the Holy City; and Kings set out to find and see the Light. Jerusalem is not large enough to hold all this sea of nations; another city must be founded, and towards her shall be turned the countless Gentiles of Madian and Epha. Thou, O Rome! Art this Holy City, and thy heart shall wonder and be enlarged. Heretofore, thy victories have won thee slaves; but, from this day forward, thou shalt draw within thy walls countless Children. Lift up thine eyes, and see — all these, that is, the whole human race, give themselves to thee as thy sons and daughters; they come to receive from thee a new birth. Open wide thine arms, and embrace them that come from North and South, bringing gold and frankincense to Him, who is thy King and ours.

The Magi, the first-fruits of the Gentile-world, have been admitted into the court of the great King whom they have been seeking, and we have followed them. The Child has smiled upon us, as he did upon them. All the fatigues of the long journey — which man must take to reach his God — all are over and forgotten; our Emmanuel is with us, and we are with him. Bethlehem has received us, and we will not leave her again — for, in Bethlehem, we have the Child, and Mary his Mother. Where else could we find riches like these that Bethlehem gives us? O let us beseech this incomparable Mother to give us this Child of hers, (for He is our light, and our love, and our Bread of life,) now that we are about to approach the Altar, led by the Star of our faith. Let us, at once, open our treasures; let us prepare our gold, our frankincense, and our myrrh, for the sweet Babe, our King. He will be pleased with our gifts, and we know He never suffers himself to be outdone in generosity. When we have to return to our duties, we will, like the Magi, leave our hearts with our Jesus; and it shall be by another way, by a new manner of life, that we will finish our sojourn in this country of our exile, looking forward to that happy day, when life and light eternal will come and absorb into themselves the shadows of vanity and time, which now hang over us.

Article 13

Conquering King

In Cathedral and other principal Churches, after the Gospel has been sung, the approaching yet distant Feast of Easter Sunday is solemnly announced to the people. This custom, which dates from the earliest ages of the Church, shows both the mysterious connection which unites the great Solemnities of the year one with another, and the importance the Faithful ought to attach to the celebration of that which is the greatest of all, and the center of all Religion. After having honored the King of the universe on the Epiphany, we shall have to celebrate him, on the day which is now announced to us, as the conjuror of death. The following is the formula used for this Solemn announcement.

We also, O Jesus! come to adore thee on this glorious Epiphany, which brings all nations to thy feet. We walk in the footsteps of the Magi; for we, too have seen the Star, and we are come to thee. Glory be to thee, dear King! To thee who didst say in the Canticle of David thine ancestor: “I am appointed King over Sion, the holy mountain, that I “may preach the commandment of the Lord. The Lord hath said to me, that he will give me the Gentiles for mine inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for my possession. Now, therefore, O ye kings, understand: receive instruction, ye that judge the earth” (Psalm 2:6, 8, 10).

Thou wilt say, O Emmanuel! with thine own lips: All power is given to me in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18), and a few years after, the whole earth will have received thy law. Even now Jerusalem is troubled; Herod is trembling on his throne; but the day is at hand when the heralds of thy coming will go through out the whole world, proclaiming that He, who was the Desired of nations (Aggeus 2:8), is come. The word that is to subject the earth to thee, will go forth (Psalm 18:5), and, like an immense fire, will stretch to the uttermost parts of the universe. In vain will the strong ones of this world attempt to arrest its course. An Emperor will propose to the Senate, as the only means of staying the progress of thy conquests, that thy Name be solemnly enrolled in the list of those gods, whom thou comest to destroy. Other Emperors will endeavor to abolish thy kingdom by the slaughter of thy soldiers. But, all these efforts are vain. The day will come, when the Cross, the sign of thy power, will adorn the imperial banner; the Emperors will lay their crown at thy feet: and proud Rome will cease to be the Capital of the empire of this world’s strength and power, in order that she may become, for ever, the center of thy peaceful and universal kingdom.

We already see the dawn of that glorious day. Thy conquests, O King of ages, begin with thine Epiphany. Thou callest, from the extreme parts of the unbelieving East, the first-fruits of that Gentile-world, which hitherto had not been thy people, and which is now to form thine inheritance. Henceforth, there is to be no distinction of Jew and Greek, of Barbarian and Scythian (Colossians 3:11). Thou hast loved Man above Angel, for thou hast redeemed the one, whilst thou hast left the other in his fall. If thy predilection, for a long period of ages, was for the race of Abraham, henceforth thy preference is to be given to the Gentiles. Israel was but a single people; we are numerous as the sands of the sea, and the stars of the firmament (Genesis 22:17). Israel was under the law of fear; thou hast reserved the law of love for us.

From this day of thy Manifestation, O divine King, begins thy separation from the Synagogue, which refuses thy love; and on this same Day, thou takest, in the person of the Magi, the Gentiles as thy Spouse. Thy union with her will soon be proclaimed from the Cross, when, turning thy face from the ungrateful Jerusalem, thou wilt stretch forth thy hands towards the nations of the Gentiles. O ineffable joy of thy Birth! but O still better joy of thine Epiphany, wherein we, the once disinherited, are permitted to approach to thee, offer thee our gifts, and see thee graciously accept them, O merciful Emmanuel!

Thanks be to thee, O Infant God, for that unspeakable gift (2 Corinthians 9:15) of Faith, which, as thy Apostle teaches us, hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into thy kingdom, making us partakers of the lot of the Saints in Light (Colossians 1:12-13). Give us grace to grow in the knowledge of this thy Gift, and to understand the importance of this great Day, whereon thou makest alliance with the whole human race, which thou wouldst afterwards make thy Bride by espousing her. O the Mystery of this Marriage Feast, dear Jesus! “A Marriage,” says one of thy Vicars on earth (Innocent the Third), “that was promised to the Patriarch Abraham, confirmed by oath to King David, accomplished in Mary when she became Mother, and consummated, confirmed, and declared, on this day; consummated in the adoration of the Magi, confirmed in the Baptism in the Jordan, and declared in the miracle of the water changed into wine.” On this Marriage-Feast — where the Church, thy Spouse, already receives queenly honors — we will sing to thee, O Jesus! With all the fervor of our hearts, these words of today’s Office, which sweetly blend the Three Mysteries into one — that of thy Alliance with us.

Article 14

Sinners! Take Courage!

Sinners! Take courage! This Season of Christmas is one of grace and mercy, on which all, both just and sinners, meet in the fellowship of the same glad Mystery. The heavenly Father has resolved to honor the Birthday of his Son, by granting pardon to all save those who obstinately refuse it. O how worthy is the Coming of our dear Emmanuel to be honored by this divine amnesty!

Nor is it we that give this invitation; it is the Church herself. Yes, it is she that with divine authority invites you to begin the work of your new life on this day whereon the Son of God begins the career of his human life. That we may the more worthily convey to you this her invitation, we will borrow the words of a great and saintly Bishop of the Middle Ages, the pious Rabanus Maurus, who, in a homily on the Nativity of our Lord, encourages sinners to come and take their place, side by side with the just, in the stable of Bethlehem, where even the ox and the ass recognize their Master in the Babe who lies there.

“I beseech you, dearly beloved Brethren, that you receive with fervent hearts the words our Lord speaks to you through me on this most sweet Feast, on which even infidels and sinners are touched with compunction; on which the wicked man is moved to mercy, the contrite heart hopes for pardon, the exile despairs not of returning to his country, and the sick man longs for his cure; on which is born the Lamb who taketh away the sins of the world, that is, Christ our Savior. On such a Birthday, he that has a good conscience rejoices more than usual; and he whose conscience is guilty fears with a more useful fear ... Yes, it is a sweet Feast, bringing true sweetness and forgiveness to all true penitents. My little children, I promise you without hesitation that every one who, on this day, shall repent from his heart, and return not to the vomit of his sins, shall obtain all whatsoever he shall ask; let him only ask with a firm faith, and not return to sinful pleasures.

“On this day are taken away the sins of the entire world: why needs the sinner despair? ... On this day of our Lord’s Birth let us, dearest Brethren, offer our promises to this Jesus, and keep them, as it is written: Vow ye, and pay to the Lord your God (Psalm 75:12). Let us make our promises with confidence and love; he will enable us to keep them. ... And when I speak of promises, I would not have anyone think that I mean the promise of fleeting and earthly goods. No — I mean, that each of us should offer what our Savior redeemed, namely, our soul. “But how,” someone will say, “how shall we offer our souls to him, to whom they already belong?” I answer: by leading holy lives, by chaste thoughts, by fruitful works, by turning away from evil, by following that which is good, by loving God, by loving our neighbor, by showing mercy (for we ourselves were in need of it, before we were redeemed), by forgiving them that sin against us (for we ourselves were once in sin), by trampling on pride, since it was by pride that our first parent was deceived and fell.” (Fourth Homily On the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ.)

It is thus our affectionate Mother the Church invites sinners to the Feast of the Divine Lamb; nor is she satisfied until her House be filled (Luke 10:2). The grace of a New Birth, given her by the Sun of Justice, fills this Spouse of Jesus with joy. A new year has begun for her, and, like all that have preceded it, it is to be rich in flower and fruit. She renews her youth as that of an eagle. She is about to unfold another Cycle, or Year, of her mysteries, and to pour forth upon her faithful children the graces of which God has made the Cycle to be the instrument. In this season of Christmas, we have the first-fruits of these graces offered to us; they are the knowledge and the love of our Infant God: let us accept them with attentive hearts, that so we may merit to advance, with our Jesus, in wisdom and age and grace before God and men (Luke 2:52).

The Christmas Mystery is the gate of all the others of the rest of the year; but it is a gate which we may all enter, for, though most heavenly, yet it touches earth; since, as St Augustine beautifully remarks in one of his sermons for Christmas (Eleventh Sermon On the Nativity of our Lord): “We cannot as yet contemplate the splendor of him who was begotten of the Father before the Day Star (Psalm109:3); let us, then, visit him who was born of the Virgin in the night- hour. We cannot understand how his Name continued before the sun (Psalm 71:17); let us, then, confess that he hath set his tabernacle in her that is purer than the sun (Psalm 18:6). We cannot as yet see the Only-Begotten Son dwelling in the Father’s Bosom; let us, then, think on the Bridegroom that cometh out of his bridal chamber (Psalm 18:6).We are not yet ready for the banquet of our heavenly Father; let us, then, keep to the Crib of Jesus, our Master (Isaias 1:3).”

Article 15

Harbingers of Conversion

In order that we may the more fully enter into the spirit of the Church during this glorious Octave, we will contemplate, each day, the Mystery of the Vocation of the Magi, and we will enter, together with them, into the holy Cave of Bethlehem, there to offer our gifts to the Divine Infant, to whom the star has led the Wise Men.

These Magi are the harbingers of the conversion of all nations to the Lord their God; they are the Fathers of the Gentiles in the faith of the Redeemer that is come; they are the Patriarchs of the human race regenerated. They arrive at Bethlehem, according to the tradition of the Church, three in number; and this tradition is handed down by St Leo, by St. Maximus of Turin, by St. Cesarius of ArIes, and by the Christian paintings in the Catacombs of Rome, which paintings belong to the period of the Persecutions.

Thus is continued in the Magi the Mystery prefigured by the three just men at the very commencement of the world: Abel, who, by his death, was the figure of Christ; Seth, who was the father of the children of God, as distinct from the family of Cain; and Enos, who had the honor of regulating the ceremonies and solemnity to be observed in man's worship of his Creator. The Magi also continued in their own person that other Mystery of the three new parents of the human family, after the Deluge and from whom all races have sprung: Sem. Cham, and Japheth the Sons of Noe. And, thirdly, we behold in the Magi that third Mystery of the three fathers of God's chosen people: Abraham, the Father of believers; Isaac, another figure of Christ immolated; and Jacob, who was strong against God, and was the father of the twelve Patriarchs of Israel.

All these were but the receivers of the Promise, although the hope of mankind, both according to nature and grace, rested on them; they, as the Apostle says of them, saluted the accomplishment of that Promise afar off. The nations did not follow them, by serving the true God; nay, the greater the light that shone on Israel, the greater seemed the blindness of the Gentile world. The three Magi, on the contrary, come to Bethlehem, and they are followed by countless generations. In them the figure becomes the grand reality, thanks to the mercy of our Lord, who having come to find what was lost, vouchsafed to stretch out his arms to the whole human race, for the whole was lost.

These happy Magi were also invested with regal power, as we shall see further on; as such, they were prefigured by those three faithful Kings who were the glory of the throne of Juda, the earnest maintainers among the chosen people of the traditions regarding the future Deliverer, and the strenuous opponents of idolatry: David, the sublime type of the Messias; Ezechias, whose courageous zeal destroyed the idols; and Josias, who reestablished the Law of the Lord, which the people had forgotten.

And if we would have another type of these holy pilgrims, who come from a far distant country of the Gentiles to adore the King of Peace, and offer him their rich presents, the sacred Scripture puts before us the Queen of Saba, also a Gentile,' who hearing of the fame of the wisdom of Solomon, whose name means the Peaceful, visits Jerusalem; taking with her the most magnificent gifts-camels laden with gold, spices, and precious stones-and venerates, under one of the sublimest of his types, the kingly character of the Messias.

Thus, O Jesus! during the long and dark night, in which the justice of thy Father left this sinful world, did the gleams of grace appear in the heavens, portending the rising of that Sun of thine own Justice, which would dissipate the shadows of death, and establish the reign of Light and Day. But now all these shadows have passed away; we no longer need the imperfect light of types: it is thyself we now possess; and though we wear not royal crowns upon our heads, like the Magi and the Queen of Saba, yet thou receivest us with love.

The very first to be invited to thy Crib, there to receive thy teachings, were simple Shepherds. Every member of the human family is called to form part of thy court. Having become a Child, thou hast opened the treasures of thine infinite wisdom to all men. What gratitude do we not owe for this gift of the light of Faith, without which we should know nothing, even whilst flattering ourselves that we know all things! How narrow and uncertain and deceitful is human science, compared with that which has its source in thee! May we ever prize this immense gift of Faith, this Light, O Jesus, which thou makest to shine upon us, after having softened it under the veil of thy humble Infancy.

Preserve us from pride, which darkens the soul's vision and dries up the heart. Confide us to the keeping of thy Blessed Mother; and may our love attach us for ever to thee, and her maternal eye ever watch over us lest we should leave thee, O thou the God of our hearts! Let us now listen to the Hymns and Prayers of the several Churches in praise of the Mysteries of the glorious Epiphany. We will begin with this of Prudentius, in which he celebrates that never-setting Star, of which the other was but a figure.

Article 16

Foretold From All Ages

The great Mystery of the Alliance of the Son of God with the universal Church, which is represented in the Epiphany by the Magi, was looked forward to by the world in every age previous to the coming of our Emmanuel. The Patriarchs and Prophets had propagated the tradition; and the Gentile world gave frequent proofs that the tradition prevailed even with them.

When Adam in Eden first beheld her whom God had formed from one of his ribs, and whom he called Eve, because she was the Mother of all the living, he exclaimed: “This is the bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. Man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be two in one flesh.” In uttering these words, the soul of our first Parent was enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and, as we are told by the most profound interpreters of the Sacred Scriptures (such as Tertullian, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, etc.), he foretold the alliance of the Son of God with his Church, which issued from his Side, when opened by the spear, on the Cross; for the love of which Spouse he left the right hand of his Father, and the heavenly Jerusalem, his mother, that he might dwell with us in this our earthly abode.

The second father of the human race, Noe, after he had seen the Rainbow in the heavens, announcing that now God's anger was appeased, prophesied to his three Sons their own respective future, and in theirs, that of the world. Cham had drawn upon himself his father's curse; Sem seemed to be the favored son, for from his race there should come the Savior of the world; but, the Patriarch immediately adds: “May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Sem.” In the course of time, the ancient alliance that had been made between God and the people of Israel was broken; the Semitic race fluctuated in its religion, and finally fell into infidelity; and at length God adopts the family of Japheth, that is, the Gentiles of the West, as his own people; for ages, they had been without God, and now the very Seat of religion is established in their midst, and they are put at the head of the whole human race.

Later on it is the great God himself that speaks to Abraham, promising him that he shall be the father of a countless family. I will bless thee, says the Lord, and I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven. As the Apostle tells us, more numerous was to be the family of Abraham according to the faith than that which should be born to him of Sara. All they that have received the faith of a Mediator to come, and all they that, being warned by the Star, have come to Jesus as their God—all are the children of Abraham.

The Mystery is again expressed in Rebecca, the wife of Isaac. She feels that there are two children struggling within her womb; and this is the answer she received from God, when she consulted him: “Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples shall be divided out of thy womb; and one people shall overcome the other, and the elder shall serve the younger.” Now, who is this ‘younger’ child that overcomes the elder, but the Gentiles, who struggle with Juda for the light, and who, though but the child of the promise, supplants him who was son according to the flesh? Such is the teaching of St. Leo and St. Augustine.

Next it is Jacob, who, when dying, calls his twelve sons, the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel, around his bed, and prophetically assigns to each of them the career they were to run Juda is put before the rest; he is to be the king of his brethren, and from his royal race shall come the Messias. But the prophecy concludes with the prediction of Israel's humiliation, which humiliation is to be the glory of the rest of the human race. “The scepter shall not be taken away from Juda, nor a Ruler from his thigh, till he come that is to be sent, and he shall be the Expectation oj the Nations.”

When Israel had gone out of Egypt, and was in possession of the Promised Land, Balaam cried out, setting his face towards the desert where Israel was encamped: “I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not near. A Star shall rise out of Jacob, and a scepter shall spring up from Israel. ... Who shall live when God shall do these things? They shall come in galleys from Italy; they shall overcome the Assyrians, and shall waste the Hebrews, and at the last they themselves also shall perish.” And what kingdom shall succeed this? The kingdom of Christ, who is the Star, and the King that shall rule for ever.

David has this great day continually before his mind. He is for ever celebrating, in his Psalms, the Kingship of his Son according to the flesh: he shows him to us as bearing the Sceptre, girt with the Sword, anointed by God his Father, and extending his kingdom from sea to sea: he tells us how the Kings of Tharsis and the Islands, the Kings of the Arabians and of Saba, and the Princes of Ethiopia, shall prostrate at his feet and adore him: he mentions their gifts of gold.

In his mysterious Canticle of Canticles, Solomon describes the joy of the spiritual union between the divine Spouse and his Church, and that Church is not the Synagogue. Christ invites her, in words of tenderest love, to come and be crowned; and she, to whom He addresses these words, is dwelling beyond the confines of the land where lives the people of God. “Come from Libanus; my Spouse, come from Libanus, come! Thou shalt be crowned from the top of Amana, from the top of Sanir and Hermon, from the dens of the lions, from the mountains of the leopards.” This daughter of Pharaoh confesses her unworthiness: I am black, she says; but, she immediately adds that she has been made beautiful by the grace of her Spouse.

The Prophet Osee follows with his inspired prediction: “And it shall be in that day, saith the Lord, that she shall call Me ‘My Husband’, and she shall call me no more Baalim. And I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and she shall no more remember their name... , And I will espouse thee to me for ever .... And I will sow her unto Me in the earth, and I will have mercy on her that was without mercy. And I will say to that which was not My people: ‘Thou art My people’: and they shall say: ‘Thou art my God.’”

The elder Tobias, whilst captive in Babylon, prophesies the same alliance. The Jerusalem which was to receive the Jews after their deliverance by Cyrus, is not the City of which he speaks in such glowing terms; it is a new and richer and lovelier Jerusalem. “Jerusalem! City of God! Bless the God eternal, that he may rebuild his tabernacle in thee, and may call back all the captives to thee. Thou shalt shine with a glorious light. Nations from afar shall come to thee, and shall bring gifts, and shall esteem thy land as holy. For they shall call upon the great Name in thee. . .. All that fear God shall return thither. And the Gentiles shall leave their idols, and shall come into Jerusalem, and shall dwell in it. And all the kings of the earth shall rejoice in it, adoring the King of Israel."

It is true, the Gentiles shall be severely chastised by God on account of their crimes; but that justice is for no other end than to prepare those very Gentiles for an eternal alliance with the great Jehovah. He thus speaks by His Prophet Sophonias: “My judgement is to assemble the Gentiles, and to gather the kingdoms: and to pour upon them My indignation, all my fierce anger: for with the fire of my jealousy shall all the earth be devoured. Because then I will restore to the people a chosen lip, that all may call upon the name of the Lord, and may serve him with one shoulder. From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia shall My suppliants, the children of My dispersed people, bring Me an offering.”

He promises the same mercy by His Prophet Ezechiel: “One King shall be over all, and they shall no more be two nations, neither shall they be divided any more into two kingdoms. Nor shall they be defiled any more with their idols: and I will save them out of all the places in which they have sinned. And they shall be My people, and I will be their God. And they shall have One Shepherd. And I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will establish them, and will multiply them, and will set My Sanctuary in the midst of them for ever.”

After the prophet Daniel has described the three great Kingdoms which were successively to pass away, he says there shall be a Kingdom “which is an everlasting Kingdom, and all kings shall serve Him” (the King) , and shall obey him.' He had previously said: “The power” (that was to be given to the Son of man) “is an everlasting power that shall not be taken away; and His Kingdom shall not be destroyed.”

Aggeus thus foretells the great events which were to happen before the coming of the One Shepherd, and the establishment of that everlasting Sanctuary which was to be set up in the very midst of the Gentiles: “Yet one little while, and I will move the heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land. And I will move all nations, and the Desired of all nations shall come.”

But we should have to cite all the Prophets in order to describe in all its grandeur the glorious spectacle promised by God to the world, when, being mindful of the Gentiles, he should lead them to the feet of Jesus. The Church has quoted the Prophet Isaias in the Epistle of the Feast, and no Prophet is so explicit and so sublime as this son of Amos.

The expression of the same universal expectation and desire is found also among the Gentiles. The Sibyls kept up the hope in the heart of the people; and in Rome itself we find the Poet Virgil repeating in one of his poems'the oracles they had pronounced. “The last age,” says he, “foretold by the Cumean Sibyl, is at hand; a new and glorious era is coming: a new race is being sent down to earth from heaven. At the birth of this Child, the iron age will cease, and one of gold will rise upon the whole world... , No remnants of our crimes will be left, and their removal will free the earth from its neverending fear.”

If we are unwilling to accept, as didSt Augustine and so many other holy Fathers, these Sibylline oracles as the expression of the ancient traditions-we have pagan philosophers and historians, such as Cicero, Tacitus, and Suetonius, testifying that in their times the world was in expectation of a Deliverer; that this Deliverer would come, not only from the East, but from Judea; and that a Kingdom was on the point of being established which would include the entire world. O Jesus, our Emmanuel! This universal expectation was that of the holy Magi, to whom thou didst send the star. No sooner do they receive the signal of thy having come, than they set out in search of thee, asking, “Where is he born, that is King of the Jews?” The oracles of thy Prophets were verified in them; but if they received the first-fruits of the great promise, we posses; it in all its fuIlness. The Alliance is made, and our souls, for love of which thou didst come down from heaven, are thine.

The Church is come forth from thy divine side, with the Blood and Water; and all that thou dost for this thy chosen Spouse, thou accomplishest in each of her faithful children. We are the sons of Japheth, and we have supplanted the race of Sem, which refused us the entrance of its tents; the birthright which belonged to Juda has been transferred to us. Each age do our numbers increase, for we are to become numerous as the stars of heaven. We are no longer in the anxious period of expectation; the star has risen, and the Kingdom it predicted will now for ever protect and bless us. The Kings of Tharsis and the Islands, the Kings of Arabia and Saba, the Princes of Ethiopia, are come, bringing their gifts with them; all generations have followed them.

The Spouse has received all her honours, and has long since forgotten Amana, and Sanir, and Hermon, where she once dwelt in the mdist of wild beasts; she is not black, she is beautiful, with neither spot nor wrinkle upon her, but in every way is worthy of her divine Lord. Baal is forgotten for ever, and she lovingly speaks the language given her by her God. The One Shepherd feeds the one flock. The last Kingdom, the Kingdom which is to continue for ever, is faithfully fulfilling its glorious destiny.

It is Thou, O Divine Infant! That bringest us all these graces, and receivest all this devoted homage of Thy creatures. The time will soon come, dear Jesus! When Thou wilt break the silence Thou hast imposed on Thyself in order that Thou mightest teach us humility, Thou wilt speak to us as our Master. Caesar Augustus has long ruled over Pagan Rome, and she thinks herself the kingdom that is to have no end; but she and her Rulers must yield to the Eternal King and his eternal City: the throne of earthly power must now give place for the Throne of Christian charity, and a new Rome is to spring up, grander than the first. The Gentiles are looking for Thee, their King; but the day will come when they will have no need to seek Thee, but Thou, in Thy mercy, wilt go in search of them, by sending them apostles and missioners who will preach Thy Gospel to them. Show Thyself to them as He to whom all power has been given in Heaven and on earth; and show them also Her whom Thou hast made to be Queen of the universe. May this august Mother of Thine be raised up from the poor Stable of Bethlehem, and from the humble dwelling of Nazareth, and be taken on the wings of Angels to that throne of mercy which Thou hast made for her, and from which she will bless all peoples and generations with her loving protection.

Article 17

Wise, Docile & Courageous

The star foretold by Balaam having risen in the East, the three Magi, whose hearts were full of the expectation of the promised Redeemer, are immediately inflamed with the desire of going in search of Him. The annoWlcement of the glad coming of the King of the Jews is made to these holy Kings in a mysterious and silent manner; and hereby it differs from that made to the Shepherds of Bethlehem, who were invited to Jesus's Crib by the voice of an Angel. But the mute language of the star was explained to them by God himself, for He revealed His Son to them; and this made their Vocation superior in dignity to that of the Jewish Shepherds, who, according to the dispensation of the Old Law, could know nothing save by the ministry of Angels.

The divine grace which spoke, directly and by itself, to the souls of the Magi, met with a faithful and unhesitating
correspondence. St. Luke says of the Shepherds, that they came with haste to Bethlehem; and the Magi show their simple and fervent eagerness by the words they addressed to Herod: “We have seen his star in the East,” they say, “and we are come to adore him.”

When Abraham received the command from God, to go out of the land of Chaldea, which was the land of his fathers and kindred, and go into a strange country, he obeyed with such faithful promptitude as to merit being made the Father of all them that believe; so, likewise, the Magi, by reason of their equally docile and admirable Faith, have been judged worthy to be called the Fathers of the Gentile Church.

They, too, or at least one or more of them, went out from Chaldea, if we are to believe St. Justin and Tertullian. Several of the Fathers, among whom are the two just mentioned, assert that one, if not two, of these holy Kings was from Arabia. A popular tradition, now for centuries admitted into Christian Art, tells us that one of the three was from Ethiopia; and certainly, as regards this last opinion, we have David and other Prophets telling us that the colored inhabitants of the banks of the Nile were to be objects of God's special mercy.

The term Magi implies that they gave themselves to the study of the heavenly bodies, and that, too, for the special intention of finding that glorious star, whose rising had been prophesied. They were of the number of those Gentiles who, like the centurion Cornelius, feared God, had not been defiled by the worship of idols, and maintained, in spite of all the ignorance which surrounded them, the sacred traditions of the religion that was practiced by Abraham and the Patriarchs.

The Gospel does not say that they were Kings, but the Church applies to them those verses of the Psalm, where David speaks of the Kings of Arabia and Saba, that should hereafter come to the Messias bringing their offerings of gold. The tradition of their being Kings rests on the testimony of St. Hilary of Poitiers, of St. Jerome, of the poet Juvencus, of St. Leo, and several others; and it would be impossible to controvert it by any well-grounded arguments.

Of course, we are not to suppose them to have been Monarchs, whose kingdoms were as great as those of the Roman Empire; but we know that the Scripture frequently applies this name of King to petty princes, and even to mere governors of provinces. The Magi, therefore, would be called Kings if they exercised authority over a considerable number of people; and that they were persons of great importance, we have a strong proof in the consideration and attention showed them by Herod, into whose palace they enter, telling him that they are come to pay their homage to the new-born King of the Jews.

The city of Jerusalem is thrown into a state of excitement by their arrival, which would scarce have occurred had not the three strangers, who came for a purpose which few heeded, been attended by a numerous retinue, or had they not attracted attention by their imposing appearance. These Kings, then, docile to the divine inspiration, suddenly leave their country, their riches, their quiet, in order to follow a star: the power of that God, who had called them, unites them in the same path, as they were already one in faith. The star goes on before them, marking out the route they were to follow: the dangers of such a journey, the fatigues of a pilgrimage which might last for weeks or months, the fear of awakening suspicions in the Roman Empire towards which they were evidently tending―all this was nothing to them; they were told to go, and they went.

Their first stay is at Jerusalem, for the star halts there. They, Gentiles, come into this Holy City, which is soon to have God's curse upon it, and they come to announce that Jesus Christ is come! With all the simple courage and all the calm conviction of Apostles and Martyrs, they declare their firm resolution of going to Him and adoring Him. Their earnest inquiries constrain Israel, who was the guardian of the divine prophecies, to confess one of the chief marks of the Messias―His Birth in Bethlehem. The Jewish Priesthood fullfils, though with a sinful ignorance, its sacred ministry, and Herod sits restlessly on his throne, plotting murder.

The Magi leave the faithless City, which has turned the presence of the Magi into a mark of its own reprobation. The Star reappears in the heavens, and invites them to resume their journey. Yet a few hours, and they will be at Bethlehem, at the feet of the King of whom they are in search.

O dear Jesus! We also are following Thee; we are walking in Thy light, for Thou hast said, in the Prophecy of Thy beloved Disciple: “I am the bright and morning Star.” The meteor that guides the Magi is but Thy symbol, O divine Star! Thou art the morning Star; for Thy Birth proclaims that the darkness of error and sin is at an end. Thou art the morning Star; for, after submitting to death and the tomb, Thou wilt suddenly arise from that night of humiliation to the bright morning of Thy glorious Resurrection. Thou art the morning Star; for by Thy Birth and the Mysteries which are to follow, Thou announcest unto us the cloudless day of eternity.

May Thy light ever beam upon us! May we, like the Magi, be obedient to its guidance, and ready to leave all things in order to follow it! We were sitting in darkness when Thou didst call us to Thy grace, by making this Thy light shine upon us. We were fond of our darkness, and Thou gavest us a love for the Light. Dear Jesus! Keep up this love within us. Let not sin, which is darkness, ever approach us. Preserve us from the delusion of a false conscience. Avert from us that blindness into which fell the City of Jerusalem and her king, and which prevented them from seeing the Star. May Thy Star guide us through life, and bring us to Thee, our King, our Peace, our Love!

We salute thee, too, O Mary, thou Star of the Sea that shinest on the waters of this life, giving calm and protection to thy tempest-tossed children who invoke thee! Thou didst pray for the Magi as they traversed the desert; guide also our steps, and bring us to Him Who is thy Child and thy Light eternal.

Article 18

The Beginnings of the Church

The Magi have reached Bethlehem; the humble dwelling of the King of the Jews has been thrown open to them; there, says St Matthew, “they found the Child with Mary His Mother” (Matthew 2:11). Falling down, they adore the divine King they have so fervently sought after, and for Whom the whole earth has been longing.

Here we have the commencement of the Christian Church. In this humble stable we have the Son of God made Man, presiding as Head over His mystical body; Mary is present, as the co-operatrix in the world's salvation, and as the Mother of divine Grace; Juda is represented by this holy Queen and her Spouse, St. Joseph; the Gentiles are adoring, in the person of the Magi, whose Faith is perfect now that they have seen the Child. It is not a Prophet that they are honoring, nor is it to an earthly King that they open their treasures; He before Whom they prostrate in adoration is their God .

“See, I pray you,” says St Bernard, “and attentively consider how keen is the eye of Faith. It recognizes the Son of God, whether feeding at His Mother's breasts,or hanging on the Cross, or dying in the midst of suffering; for the Good Thief recognizes Him on the Cross, and the Magi recognize Him in the stable; He, in spite of the nails which fasten Him, and they in spite of the clouts which swathe Him.”

So that all is consummated, Bethlehem is not merely the birthplace of our Redeemer; it is the cradle of the Church. Well did the Prophet say of it: “And thou, Bethlehem, art not the least among the princes of Juda.” We can understand St Jerome leaving all the ambitions and comforts of Rome to go and bury himself in the seclusion of this cave, where all these mysteries were accomplished. Who would not gladly live and die in this privileged place, sanctified as it is by the presence of our Jesus, embalmed with the fragrance of the Queen of Heaven, filled with the lingering echoes of the songs of Angels, and fresh, even yet, with the memory of those ancestors of our Faith, the holy Magi!

These happy kings are not scandalized at the sight they behold on entering the humble dwelling. They are not disappointed at finding at the end of their long journey a weak Babe, a poor Mother, and a wretched stable. On the contrary, they rightly understand the mystery. Once believing in the promise that the Infinite God would visit His creature Man, and show him how He loved him, they are not surprised at seeing Him humble Himself, and take upon Himself all our miseries that He might be like us in all, save sin. Their own hearts told them that the wound inflicted on man by pride was too deep to be healed by anything short of an extreme remedy; so that, to them, these strange humiliations at Bethlehem, bespeak the design and action of a God. Israel, too, is in expectation of the Messias, but He must be mighty and wealthy and exalted above all other kings in earthly glory; the Magi, on the contrary, see, in the humility and poverty of this weak Babe of Bethlehem, the indications of the true Messias. The grace of God has triumphed in these faithful men; they fall down before Him, and, full of admiration and love, they adore Him.

Who could describe the sweet conversations they held with His blessed Mother? For the King Himself, of Whom they were come in search, broke not, even for their sakes, the voluntary silence He had imposed on Himself by becoming an Infant. He accepted their homage, He sweetly smiled upon them, He blessed them; but He would not speak to them; Mary alone was to satisfy, by her sublime communications, the holy curiosity of the three pilgrims, who represented the entire human race.

How amply must she not have rewarded their faith and love, by announcing to them the Mystery of that virginal Birth, which was to bring salvation to the world; by telling them of the joys of her own maternal heart; and by describing to them the sweet perfections of the divine Child! They themselves would fix their eyes on the Blessed Mother, and listen to her every word with devout attention; and oh, how sweetly must not divine grace have penetrated their hearts, through the words of her whom God Himself has chosen as the means to lead men to the knowledge and the love of His sovereign Majesty!

The star which, but an hour ago, had brightly shone for them in the heavens, was replaced by another, of a lovelier light and stronger influence; and it prepared them for the contemplation of that God who calls Himself the bright and morning Star. The whole world seemed now a mere nothing in their eyes; the stable of Bethlehem held within it all the riches of Heaven and earth. They had shared in that long expectation of the human race, the expectation of four thousand years and now it seemed but as a moment, so full and perfect was their joy at having found the God, Who alone can satisfy the desires of man's heart.

They understood and entered into the merciful designs of their Emmanuel; they gratefully and humbly contracted with Him the alliance He so mercifully made, through them, with the human race; they adored the just judgements of God, Who was about to cast off an unbelieving people; they rejoiced at the glories of the Christian Church, which had thus been begun in their persons; they prayed for us, their posterity in that same Church.

We, dear Babe of Bethlehem, we, the Gentiles, Who, by our regeneration, have become the posterity of these first Christians—we adore Thee as they did. Since their entrance into Bethlehem, long ages have passed away; but there has been an unbroken procession of people and nations tending towards Thee under the guidance of the Star of Faith. We have been made members of Thy Church, and we adore Thee with the Magi.

In one thing are we happier than these first-born of the Church; we have heard Thy sacred words and teachings, we have contemplated Thy sufferings and Thy Cross, we have been witnesses of Thy Resurrection, we have heard the whole universe, from the rising to the setting of the sun, hymning Thy blessed and glorious Name! Well may we adore and love Thee as King of the earth!

The Sacrifice, whereby all Thy Mysteries are perpetuated and renewed, is now offered up daily in every part of the world; the voice of Thy Church is heard speaking to all men; and all this light and all these graces are ours! The Church, the ever-enduring Bethlehem, the House of the Bread of Life, gives Thee to us; and we are for ever feasting on Thy adorable beauty. Yea, sweet Jesus, we adore Thee with the Magi.

And thou, O Mary, teach us as thou didst teach the Magi. Unfold to us, and each year more clearly, the sweet Mystery of thy Jesus, and, at length, win us over unreservedly to His service. Thou art our Mother; watch over us and suffer us not to lose any of the lessons He teaches us. May Bethlehem, wherein we have entered in company with the holy Magi, work in us the renovation of our whole lives.

Article 19

Unwrapping the Gifts

The Magi were not satisfied with paying their adorations to the great King whom Mary presented to them. After the example of the Queen of Saba, who paid her homage to the Prince of Peace in the person of King Solomon, these three Eastern Kings opened their treasures and presented their offerings to Jesus. Our Emmanuel graciously accepted these mystic gifts, and suffered them not to leave Him until He had loaded them with gifts infinitely more precious than those He had vouchsafed to receive. The Magi had given Him of the riches which this earth produces; Jesus repays them with heavenly gifts. He strengthened in their hearts the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity; He enriched, in their persons, the Church of which they were the representatives; and the words of the Canticle of Mary were fulfilled in them: “He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He hath sent empty away”, for the Synagogue refused to follow them in their search after the King of the Jews.

But let us consider the gifts made by the Magi, and let us, together with the Church and the Holy Fathers, acknowledge the Mysteries expressed by them. The gifts were three in number, in order to honor the sacred number of the Persons in the divine Essence, as likewise to express the triple character of Emmanuel. He had come that He might be King over the whole world; it was fitting that men should offer gold to Him, for it is the emblem of sovereign power. He had come to be High Priest, and, by His mediation, reconcile earth to Heaven; incense, then, was an appropriate gift, for the Priest uses it when he offers sacrifice. But thirdly, it was only by His own death that He was to obtain possession of the throne which was prepared for His glorified Human Nature, and the perpetual Sacrifice of the Divine Lamb was to be inaugurated by this same, His Death; the gift of Myrrh was expressive of the Death and Burial of an immortal Victim. The Holy Ghost, Who inspired the Prophets, had guided the Magi in their selection of these three gifts. Let us listen to St. Leo the Great, who, speaking of this Mystery, says with his usual eloquence:

“O admirable Faith, which leads to Knowledge and perfect Knowledge, and which was not taught in the school of earthly wisdom, but was enlightened by the Holy Ghost Himself! For whence had they learnt the supernatural beauty of their three Gifts? They that had come straight from their own country, and had not as yet seen Jesus, nor beheld, in His infant Face, the Light which directed them in the choice of their offerings? While the star met the gaze of the bodily eye, their hearts were instructed by a stronger light-the ray of Truth. Before setting out on the fatiguing journey they knew Him, to Whom were due, by Gold, the honors of a King; by Incense, the worship of God; by Myrrh, the Faith in His Mortal Nature.”

But these three gifts, which so sublimely express the three characters of the Man-God, are fraught with instruction for us. They signify three great virtues, which the Divine Infant found in the souls of the Magi, and to which He added increase by His grace. Gold signifies charity, which unites us to God; Frankincense prayer, which brings God into man’s heart; and Myrrh self-abnegation, suffering and mortification, whereby we are delivered from the slavery of corrupt nature. Find a heart that loves God, that raises herself up to Him by prayer, that understands and relishes the power of the cross―and you have in that heart the worthiest offering which can be made to God, and one which He always accepts.

We, too, O Jesus, offer Thee our treasure and our gifts. We confess Thee to be God and Priest and Man. We beseech Thee to accept the desire we have of corresponding to the love Thou showest us by giving Thee our love in return; we love Thee, dear Savior! Do Thou increase our love! Receive also the gift of our Prayer, for though, of itself, it be tepid and poor, yet it is pleasing to Thee because united with the prayer of Thy Church: teach us how to make it worthy of Thee and how to give it the power of obtaining what Thou desirest to grant: form within us the gift of prayer, that it may unceasingly ascend up like sweet Incense in Thy sight. And lastly, receive the homage of our contrite and humble hearts, and the resolution we have formed of restraining and purifying our senses by mortification and penance.

The sublime Mysteries which we are celebrating during this holy season have taught us the greatness of our own misery, and the immensity of Thy love for us, and we feel, more than ever, the obligation we are under of fleeing from the world and its concupiscences, and of uniting ourselves to thee. The Star shall not have shone upon us in vain: it has brought us to Thee, dear King of Bethlehem! And Thou shalt be King of our hearts. What have we that we prize and hold dear, which we can hesitate to give Thee in return for the sweet infinite treasure of Thyself, which Thou hast given to us?

Dear Mother of our Jesus! We put these our offerings into thy hands. The gifts of the Magi were made through thee, and they were pleasing to thy Son; thou must present ours to Him, and He will be pleased with them, in spite of their poverty. Our love is deficient; fill up its measure by uniting it with thine own immense love. Second our prayer by thy maternal intercession. Encourage us in our warfare against the world and the flesh. Make sure our perseverance, by obtaining for us the grace of a continual remembrance of the sweet Mysteries, which we are now celebrating; pray for us that, after thine own example, we may keep all these things in our hearts. That must be a hard and depraved heart which could offend Jesus in Bethlehem; or refuse him anything now that He is seated on thy lap, waiting for our offering! O Mary! Keep us from forgetting that we are the children of the Magi, and that Bethlehem is ever open to receive us.

Article 20

The New Life of a King

Having laid their offerings at the feet of Jesus, as the sign of the alliance they had, in the name of all mankind, contracted with Him, and laden with His graces and blessings, the Magi take their leave of the Divine Babe; for such was His will. They take their departure from Bethlehem, and the rest of the world seems a wilderness to them. Oh, if they might be permitted to fix their abode near the new-born King and His incomparable Mother! But no; God's plan for the salvation of the world requires that everything savoring of human pomp and glory should be far from Him Who had come to take upon Himself all our miseries.

Besides, they are to be the first messengers of the Gospel; they must go and tell to the Gentiles that the Mystery of Salvation has begun, that the earth is in possession of its Savior, and that their salvation is nigh at hand. The star does not return to them; they needed it to find Jesus; but now they have Him in their hearts, and will never lose Him. These three men are sent back into the midst of the Gentile world, as the leaven of the Gospel which, notwithstanding its being so little, is to leaven the whole paste. For their sakes, God will bless the nations of the earth; from this day forward infidelity will lose ground, and Faith will progress; and when, the Blood of the Lamb having been shed, Baptism shall be promulgated, the Magi shall be, not merely men of desire, but perfect Christians, initiated into all the Mysteries of the Church.

The ancient tradition, which is quoted by the author of The Imperfect Work on St. Matthew, which is put in all the editions of St. John Chrysostom, and was probably written about the close of the 6th century, tells us that the three Magi were baptized by St. Thomas the Apostle, and devoted themselves to the preaching of the Gospel.

But we scarcely need a tradition on such a point as this. The vocation of these three Princes could never be limited to the mere privilege of being the first among the Gentiles to visit the eternal King, Who had come down from Heaven to be born on this earth and show Himself to His creatures; a second vocation was the consequence of the first, the vocation of preaching Jesus to men.

There are many details relating to the life and actions of the Magi, after they had become Christians, which have been handed down to us; but we refrain from mentioning them, as not being sufficiently ancient or important traditions to have induced the Church to give them place in her Liturgy. We would make the same observation with regard to the names assigned to them of Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthassar, the custom of thus naming them is too modern to deserve credit; and though it might be indiscreet to deny that these were their true names, it seems very difficult to give proofs of their correctness.

The Relics of these holy Kings were translated from Persia to Constantinople, under the first Christian Emperors, and, for a long time, were kept in the Church of Saint Sophia. At a later period, they were translated to Milan, when Eustorgius was Bishop of that city. There they remained till the 12th century, when, through the influence of the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, they were translated to the Cathedral Church of Cologne by Reynold, Archbishop of that metropolitan see. The Relics are in a magnificent Shrine, perhaps the finest specimen now extant of medieval metallic art, and the superb Cathedral ,where it is religiously kept, is, by its size and architectural beauty, one of the grandest Churches of the Christian world.

Thus have we followed you, O Blessed Magi! Fathers of the Gentile world! From your first setting out from the East for Bethlehem to your return to your own country, and even to your sacred resting-place; which the goodness of God has made to be in this cold West of ours.

It was the love of children for their parents that made us thus cling to you. Besides, were we not ourselves in search of that dear King, Whom you so longed for and found? Blessed be those ardent desires of yours, blessed be your obedience to the guidance of the star, blessed be your devotion at the Crib of Jesus, blessed be the gifts you made Him, which, while they were acceptable to God, were full of instruction to us! We revere you as Prophets, for you foretold the characters of the Messias by the selection of your three gifts.

We honor you as Apostles, for you preached, even to Jerusalem herself, the Birth of the humble Jesus of Bethlehem, of that Jesus Whom His Disciples preached not till after the triumph of His Resurrection. We hail you as the Spring Flowers of the Gentile world, but Flowers which produced abundant and rich fruits, for you brought over entire nations and countless people to the service of our divine King.

Watch over us, and protect the Church. Be mindful of those Eastern countries, whence rises to the earth the light of day, the beautiful image of your own journey towards Bethlehem.

Bless this Western world of ours, which was buried in darkness when you first saw the star, and is now the favored portion of God's earth, and on which the Divine Sun of Justice pours forth his brightest and warmest rays. Faith has grown weak among us; re-enkindle it.

Obtain of the divine mercy, that the West may ever send forth her messengers of salvation to the South and North, and even to that infidel East, where are laid the tents of Sem, and where the light that you gave her has been long extinguished by her apostasy.

Pray for the Church of Cologne, that illustrious sister of our holiest Churches in the West; may she preserve the Faith, may she defend her sacred rights and liberty; may she be the bulwark of Catholic Germany, and be ever blessed by the protection of her Three Kings, and the patronage of the glorious Ursula and her virginal army.

Lastly, we beseech you, O venerable Magi, to introduce us to the Infant Jesus, and His Blessed Mother; and grant us to go through these forty days, which the Church consecrates to the Mystery of Christmas, with hearts burning with love for the Divine Child, and may that same love abide with us during the pilgrimage of our life on this earth.

Article 21

The Waters of Baptism

The thoughts of the Church today are fixed on the Baptism of Our Lord in the Jordan, which is the second of the three Mysteries of the Epiphany. The Emmanuel manifested himself to the Magi, after having shown Himself to the Shepherds; but this manifestation was made within the narrow space of a stable at Bethlehem, and the world knew nothing of it. In the Mystery of the Jordan, Christ manifested himself with greater publicity. His coming is proclaimed by the Precursor; the crowd that is flocking to the river for Baptism is witness of what happens; Jesus makes this the beginning of His public life. But who could worthily explain the glorious circumstances of this second Epiphany?

It resembles the first in this, that it is for the benefit and salvation of the human race. The star has led the Magi to Christ; they had long waited for His coming, they had hoped for it; now they believe. Faith in the Messias having come into the world is beginning to take root among the Gentiles. But Faith is not sufficient for salvation; the stain of sin must be washed away by water. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. The time is come, then, for a new manifestation of the Son of God, whereby there shall be inaugurated the great remedy, which is to give to Faith the power of producing life eternal.

Now the decrees of divine Wisdom had chosen water as the instrument of this sublime regeneration of the human race. Hence, in the beginning of the world, we find the Spirit of God moving over the waters, in order that they might even then conceive a principle of sanctifying power: as the Church expresses it in her Office for Holy Saturday. But before being called to fulfill the designs of God's mercy, this element of water had to be used by the Divine Justice for the chastisement of a sinful world. With the exception of one family, the whole human race perished, by the terrible judgement of God, in the Waters of the Deluge.

A fresh indication of the future supernatural power of this chosen element, was given by the Dove, which Noe sent forth from the Ark; it returned to him, bearing in its beak an olive-branch, the symbol that peace was given to the earth by its having been buried in water. But this was only the announcement of the mystery; its accomplishment was not to be for long ages to come. Meanwhile, God spoke to His people by many events, which were figurative of the future Mystery of Baptism.

Thus, for example, it was by passing through the waters of the Red Sea that they entered into the Promised Land, and during the miraculous passage, a pillar of a cloud was seen covering both the Israelites and the waters to which they owed their deliverance.

But in order that water should have the power to purify man from his sins, it was necessary that it should be brought in contact with the Sacred Body of the Incarnate God. The Eternal Father had sent His Son into the world, not only that He might be its Lawgiver, and Redeemer, and the Victim of its salvation, but that He might also be the Sanctifier of water; and it was in this sacred element that He would divinely bear testimony to His being His Son, and manifest Him to the world a second time.

Jesus, therefore, being now thirty years of age, comes to the Jordan, a river already celebrated for the prophetic miracles, which had been wrought in its waters. The Jewish people, roused by the preaching of John the Baptist, were flocking thither in order to receive a Baptism which could indeed excite a sorrow for sin, but could not effect its forgiveness. Our divine King approaches the river, not, of course, to receive sanctification, for He Himself is the author of all Justice―but to impart to water the power of bringing forth, as the Church expresses the mystery, a new and heavenly progeny. He goes down into the stream, not, like Josue, to walk dry-shod through its bed, but to let its waters encompass Him, and receive from Him, both for itself and for the waters of the whole earth, the sanctifying power which they would retain for ever. The saintly Baptist places his trembling hand upon the Sacred Head of the Redeemer, and bends it beneath the water; the Sun of Justice vivifies this His creature; He imparts to it the glow of life-giving fruitfulness; and water thus becomes the prolific source of supernatural life.

But in this the commencement of a new creation, we look for the intervention of the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. All Three are there. The heavens open; the Dove descends, not as a mere symbol, prophetic of some future grace, but as the sign of the actual presence of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of love, Who gives peace to men and changes their hearts. The Dove hovers above the head of Jesus, overshadowing at one and the same time the Humanity of the Incarnate Word and the water which bathed His sacred Body. The manifestation is not complete; the Father's voice is still to be heard speaking over the water, and moving by its power the entire element throughout the earth. Then was fulfilled the prophecy of David: “The Voice of the Lord is upon the waters, the God of majesty hath thundered. The Voice of the Lord breaketh cedars”, that is, the pride of the devils. “The Voice of the Lord divideth the flame of fire”, that is, the anger of God. “The Voice of the Lord shaketh the desert, and maketh the flood to swell”, that is, announces a new Deluge, the Deluge of divine Mercy. And what says this Voice of the Father? “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.”

Thus was the Holiness of Emmanuel, manifested by the presence of the Dove and by the voice of the Father, as His kingly character had been previously manifested by the mute testimony of the star. The mystery is accomplished, the waters are invested with a spiritual purifying power, and Jesus comes from the Jordan and ascends the bank, raising up with Himself the world, regenerated and sanctified, with all its crimes and defilements drowned in the stream. Such is the interpretation and language of the Holy Fathers of the Church regarding this great event of Our Lord's Life.

The Feast of the Epiphany celebrates this wonderful mystery of Jesus' Baptism; and we cannot be surprised at the Eastern Church having selected this day for one of the solemn administrations of the sacrament of Baptism. The same custom was observed, as we learn from ancient documents, in certain Churches in the West. John Mosch tells us that, as regards the Oriental Church, the font was more than once miraculously filled with water on the Feast of the Epiphany, and that immediately after having administered the Sacrament, the people saw the water disappear.

The Roman Church, even so early as the time of St. Leo, decreed that Easter and Pentecost should be the only two days for the solemn administration of Baptism; but the custom of blessing the baptismal water with great solemnity on the Epiphany, was still retained and is observed even now in some parts of the West.

The Eastern Church has always religiously observed it. Amidst all the pomp of sacred rites, accompanied by his priests and ministers, who are clothed in the richest vestments, and followed by the whole people, the Bishop repairs to the banks of a river. After reciting certain beautiful prayers, which we regret not being able to offer to our readers, the Bishop plunges into the water a Cross richly adorned with precious stones; it represents Our Lord being baptized by 5t. John. At St. Petersburg, in Russia, the ceremony takes place on the River Neva, and it is through a hole made on the ice that the Metropolitan dips the Cross into the Water. This same ceremony is observed by those Churches in the West which have retained the custom of blessing the baptismal water on this Feast.

The faithful are very anxious to carry home with them the water of the stream thus sanctified; and St. John Chrysostom, in his twenty-fourth Homily, on the Baptism of Christ, speaks to his audience of the circumstance, which was well known by all of them, of this water never turning corrupt. The same has been often seen in the Western Church.

Let us honor Our Lord in this second Manifestation of His divinity, and thank Him, with the Church, for having given us both the star of Faith, which enlightens us, and the water of Baptism, which cleanses us from our iniquities. Let us lovingly appreciate the humility of our Jesus, Who permits Himself to be weighed down by the hand of a mortal man, in order, as He says Himself, that He might fulfill all justice; for having taken on Himself the likeness of sin, it was requisite that He should bear its humiliation, that so He might raise us from our debasement. Let us thank Him for this grace of Baptism, which has opened to us the gates of the Church, both of Heaven and earth; and let us renew the engagements we made at the holy font, for they were the terms on which we were regenerated to our new life in God.

Article 22

Changing For The Better

The third Mystery of the Epiphany shows us the completion of the merciful designs of God upon the world, at the same time that it manifests to us, for the third time, the glory of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The star has led the soul to faith; the sanctified Waters of the Jordan have conferred purity upon her; the Marriage-Feast unites her to her God. We have been considering, during this Octave, the Bridegroom revealing Himself to the Spouse; we have heard Him calling her to come to Him from the heights of Libanus; and now, after having enlightened and purified her, He invites her to the heavenly feast, where she is to receive the Wine of His divine love.

A Feast is prepared; it is a Marriage-Feast; and the Mother of Jesus is present at it, for it is just that, having cooperated in the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, she should take part in all that her Son does, and in all the favors He bestows on His elect. But, in the midst of the Feast, the Wine fails. Wine is the symbol of Charity or Love, and Charity had failed on the earth; for the Gentiles had never tasted its sweetness; and as to the Synagogue, what had it produced but wild grapes? The True Vine is our Jesus, and He calls Himself by that name. He alone could give that Wine which gladdeneth the heart of man , He alone could give us that Chalice which inebriateth, and of which the Royal Psalmist prophesied.

Mary said to Jesus: “They have no Wine.” It is the office of the Mother of God to tell Him of the wants of men, for she is also their Mother. But Jesus answers her in words which are apparently harsh: “Woman I what is it to me and to thee? My hour is not yet come.” The meaning of these words is, that, in this great Mystery, He was about to act, not as the Son of Mary, but as the Son of God. Later on, the hour will come when, dying upon the Cross, He will do a work, in the presence of His Mother, and He will do it as Man:, that is, according to that human nature which He has received from her. Mary at once understands the words of her Son, and she says to the waiters of the Feast, what she is now ever saying to her children: “Do whatsoever He shall say to you!”

Now, there were six large waterpots of stone there, and they were empty. The world was then in its Sixth Age, as St Augustine and other Holy Doctors tell us. During these six ages, the earth had been awaiting. Its Savior, who was to instruct and redeem it. Jesus commands these waterpots to be filled with water; and yet water does not suit the Feast of the Spouse. The figures and the prophecies of the ancient world were this water, and until the opening of the Seventh Age, when Christ, who is the Vine, was to be given to the world, no man had contracted an alliance with the Divine Word.

But, when the Emmanuel came, He had but to say, “Now draw out”, and the waterpots were seen to be filled with the wine of the New Covenant, the wine which had been kept to the end. When He assumed our human nature, a nature weak and unstable as water, He effected a change in it; He raised it up even to Himself, by making us partakers of the divine nature; He gave us the power to love Him, to be united to Him, to form that one Body, of which He is the Head, that Church of which He is the Spouse, and which He loved from all eternity, and with such tender love, that He came down from Heaven to celebrate His nuptials with her.

St Matthew, the Evangelist of the Humanity of our Lord, has received from the Holy Ghost the commission to announce to us the Mystery of Faith by the star; St Luke, the Evangelist of Jesus' Priesthood, has been selected, by the same Holy Spirit, to instruct us in the Mystery of the Baptism in the Jordan; but the Mystery of the Marriage-Feast was to be revealed to us by the Evangelist John, the Beloved Disciple. He suggests to the Church the object of this third Mystery, by this expression: This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and He MANIFESTED His glory.

At Bethlehem, the Gold of the Magi expressed the Divinity of the Babe; at the Jordan, the descent of the Holy Ghost and the voice of the Eternal Father proclaimed Jesus (known to the people as a carpenter of Nazareth) to be the Son of God; at Cana, it is Jesus Himself that acts, and He acts as God, for, says St Augustine, He who changed the water into wine in the waterpots could be no other than the same who, every year, works the same miracle in the vine. Hence it was that, from that day, as St John tells us, His disciples believed in Him and the Apostolic College began to be formed.

Article 23

A Wine That Makes You Peaceful

This name of Sons of God which has become ours by right through the bond of the sacred nuptials is none other, as Jesus Himself tells us in His Beatitudes, than Peace—the Peace of God, ours truly through the action of His grace ever working it out within us.

This peace which characterizes, in the abode of saints, the Sons of God, effects in like measure on Earth the oneness of the Bride, that is of the Church: peace it is that makes her to be but one body, wherein the many members find their multiplicity, upheld and guided by the head, the one lord; their functions, so diverse in themselves, regulated and brought under the rule and love of the Bridegroom, Christ Jesus.

This peace which has as its ruling motive Charity, the Queen of virtues, and which is so essential to Christianity; the Apostle specifies in detail its forms and conditions and adapts its practice to every social condition and circumstance of life.

Far from a divine life in the peace of God which was its precious gift, the human race incurred death with its penalty of separation. Let us then sing of this wonder that has been wrought in our midst, and with the angelic choirs exalt the Lord in praise and admiration.

O the wonderful dignity of man! God has vouchsafed, says the Apostle, to show the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which had no claim to, nay, were unworthy of such an honor. Jesus bids the waiters fill the vessels with water and the water of Baptism purifies us; but, not satisfied with this, He fills these vessels, even to the brim, with that heavenly and new Wine, which was not to be drunk save in the Kingdom of His Father.

Thus, divine Charity, which dwells in the Sacrament of Love, is communicated to us; and that we might not be unworthy of the espousals with Himself, to which he called us, He raises us up even to Himself. Let us, therefore, prepare our souls for this wonderful union, and, according to the advice of the Apostle, let us labor to present them to our Jesus with such purity as to resemble that chaste Virgin, who was presented to the spotless Lamb.

Article 24

A Wine That Binds Men to God and Each Other

Love of our neighbor is a consequence of that universal brotherhood which our Savior, by His Birth, brought us from Heaven. He came to establish peace between Heaven and Earth; men, therefore, ought to be at peace one with another. Our Lord bids us not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil by good. And did not He first practice this, by coming among us, who were children of wrath, that He might make us children of adoption by His humiliations and His sufferings?

The human race was infected with the leprosy of sin: the Son of God touches it by the mystery of the Incarnation, and restores it to health. But He requires that the sick man, now that he is healed, shall go and show himself to the priest, and comply with the ceremonies prescribed by the law; and this, to show that He allows a human priesthood to cooperate in the work of our salvation.

The vocation of the Gentiles, of which the Magi were the first-fruits, is again brought before us in the faith of the centurion. A Roman soldier, and millions like him, shall be reputed as true children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; while they who are the sons of this Patriarch according to the flesh, shall be cast out, from the feast-chamber, into the gloom of blindness; and their punishment shall be given as a spectacle to the whole Earth.

Let man, then, saved as he has been by the coming of Emmanuel, sing a hymn of praise to the power of God, Who has wrought our salvation by the strength of His almighty arm. Man had been sentenced to death; but now that he has God for a Brother, he shall not die: he will live: and could he spend his life better than in praising the works of this God that has saved him?

Article 25

Calming the Storm

Let us adore the power of our Emmanuel, Who is come to calm the tempest which threatened the human race with death. In the midst of their danger, the successive generations of men had cried out: “Lord! Save us! We perish!” When the fullness of time had come, He awoke from His rest; He had but to command, and the power of our enemies was destroyed. The malice of the devils, the darkness of idolatry, the corruption of paganism—all yielded. Nation after nation was converted to Jesus. They had said, when in their misery and blindness: “Who is this Jesus, whom no power can resist?” and then they embraced His Law.

This power of Jesus to break down every obstacle, and that, too, at the very time when men were disquieted at His apparent slumbering, has often shown itself in the past ages of the Church. How many times has he not chosen for saving the world, that period which seemed the least likely for rescue! The same happens in the life of each one among us. Oftentimes we are tossed to and fro by violent temptations; it would seem as though the billows must sink us; and yet our will is firmly anchored to God. And what is all this, if not Jesus sleeping in the storm-tossed boat, protecting us by this His sleeping? And if our cry for help at length awaken Him, it is only to proclaim His own and our victory; for He has already conquered, and we have conquered in Him.

Article 26

Lessons from the Christmas Saints―St. Hilary
Part 1

After having consecrated the joyous Octave of the Epiphany to the glory of the Emmanuel who was manifested to the Earth, the Church—incessantly occupied with the Divine Child and his august Mother, during the whole time from Christmas Day to that whereon Mary will bring Jesus to the Temple, there to be offered to God, as the law prescribes—the Church, we say, has on her Calendar of this portion of the year the names of many glorious Saints, who shine like so many stars on the path which leads us, from the joys of the Nativity of our Lord, to the sacred mystery of our Lady's Purification.

And firstly there comes before us, after the very day consecrated to the Baptism of Jesus, the faithful and courageous Hilary—the pride of the Churches of Gaul, and the worthy associate of Athanasius and Eusebius of Vercelli in the battle fought for the Divinity of our Emmanuel. Scarcely were the cruel persecutions of paganism over, when there commenced the fierce contest with Arianism, which had sworn to deprive of the glory and honors of his divinity that Jesus who had conquered, by his Martyrs, the violence and craft of the Roman Emperors.

The Church had won her liberty by shedding her blood, and it was not likely that she would be less courageous on the new battlefield into which she was driven. Many were the Martyrs that were put to death by her new enemies ― Christian, though heretical, Princes: it was for the Divinity of that Lord, who had mercifully appeared on the Earth in the weakness of human flesh, that they shed their blood.

Side by side with these stood those holy and illustrious Doctors, who, with the martyr-spirit within them, defended by their learning and eloquence the Nicene Faith, which was the Faith of the Apostles. In the foremost rank of these latter we behold the Saint of today, covered with the rich laurels of his brave confessorship, Hilary: who, as St Jerome says of him, was brought up in the pompous school of Gaul, yet had culled the flowers of Grecian science, and became the Rhone of Latin eloquence. St Augustine calls him the illustrious Doctor of the Churches.

Though gifted with the most extraordinary talents, and one of the most learned men of the age, yet St. Hilary's greatest glory is his intense love for the Incarnate Word, and his zeal for the liberty of the Church. His great soul thirsted after martyrdom, and, by the unflinching love of truth which such a spirit gave him, he was the brave champion of the Church in that trying period when Faith, that had stood the brunt of persecution, seemed to be on the point of being betrayed by the craft of Princes, and the cowardice of temporizing and unorthodox Pastors.

The Divine Office (Breviary) reading tell us that:

“Hilary was born of a noble family in Aquitaine, and was distinguished for his learning and eloquence. He was married, but the life he led was almost that of a monk, so that later on, on account of his great virtues, he was made Bishop of Poitiers, and so well did he discharge the episcopal office, as to be the object of the deepest veneration on the part of the faithful. At that time the Emperor Constantius was inflicting every sort of harsh treatment, intimidation, confiscation of their property, and banishment, on the Catholics who refused to side with the Arians. Hilary set himself as a bulwark against the Arians, thereby bringing on himself all their fury. On this account they many times sought to ensnare him, and at length, by the treachery of Saturninus, the Bishop of Aries, he was banished from the Council at Beziers into Phrygia. There he raised a dead man to life, and wrote his twelve-books on the Trinity against the Arians.

“Four years after, a Council was called at Seleucia, a town in lsauria, at which Hilary was compelled to assist. Thence he set out for Constantinople. Where, seeing the extreme dangers to which the true Faith had been exposed, he petitioned the Emperor, by three public petitions, to grant him an audience, in order that he might obtain permission to hold a controversy with his adversaries concerning matters of Faith. But Ursacius and Valens, two Arian Bishops, whom Hilary had refuted in his writings, were afraid of allowing so learned a man to continue there any longer, and persuaded Constantius to restore him to his episcopal see under the pretense of showing him honor. Then did the Church of Gaul open her arms, as St Jerome says, to receive Hilary on his return from battle with the heretics. St. Martin, who was afterwards Bishop of Tours, followed the holy Doctor to Poitiers; how much he profited by the instructions of such a master is evidenced by the sanctity of his after-life.

“From that time, he was left in perfect peace in the government of the Church of Poitiers. He led the whole of Gaul to condemn the Arian blasphemies. He composed a great many exceedingly Iearned books, of which St Jerome says that they may be all read without the slightest fear of meeting any false doctrine in them; he assures her that she may run through the books of Hilary without stumbling on anything dangerous. He passed from this Earth to Heaven on the Ides of January (January 13th), during the reign of the Emperors Valentinian and Valens, in the year of our Lord 369.

“Hilary was called by several Fathers and Councils an illustrious Doctor of the Church, and was publicly honored as such in certain dioceses. At length, at the petition of the Council of Bordeaux, the Supreme Pontiff, Pius the Ninth, after having consulted the Sacred Congregation of Rites, declared him to have been justly called, and to be in effect, a Doctor of the universal Church; and ordered that on his Feast all should recite the Mass and Office of Doctors” (Reading from the Divine Office for the the feast of St. Hilary).

The ancient Gallican Liturgy, of which a few precious remnants have been handed down to us, thus celebrated the praise of the most illustrious of the Bishops of that great country. Our first extract is an Allocution addressed to the Faithful, taken from an ancient Sacramentary.

The Church of Poitiers has ever cherished with the utmost devotion the memory of her heroic Pontiff, and his Feast, as we may suppose, is kept there with great solemnity. She formerly sang in the Mass of his feast day the Preface of the Blessed Trinity, to express more forcibly her admiration of the zeal wherewith Hilary defended the master-dogma of our holy Faith the mystery of Three Persons in one God. It will be interesting to our readers to hear a few passages from the ancient liturgical books of this illustrious Church of Poitiers.

Thus did the holy bishop, Hilary of Poitiers, receive the honors of the Church's love for his having so courageously, and even at the peril of his life, fought in defense of the great Mystery. Another of his glories is that he was one of the most intrepid champions of that principle, which cannot be compromised without the vitality and very existence of the Church being endangered—the principle of that Church's liberty. A short while ago we were celebrating the Feast of our holy Martyr, St. Thomas of Canterbury; today, we have the Feast of the glorious Confessor, whose example enlightened and encouraged him in the great struggle. Both Hilary and Thomas a Becket were obedient to the teaching left to the Pastors of the Church by the Apostles; who, when they were arraigned the first time before the authorities of this world, uttered this great maxim: “We ought to obey God rather than men.”

The Apostles and the Saints were strong in the battle against flesh and blood, only because they were detached from earthly goods, and were convinced that the true riches of a Christian and a Bishop consist in the humility and poverty of the Crib, and that the only victorious power is in the imitation of the simplicity and the weakness of the Child that is born unto us. They relished the lessons of the School of Bethlehem; hence no promise of honors, of riches, or even of peace, could make them swerve from the principles of the Gospel. How dignified is this family of Soldiers of Christ, which springs up in the Church! If the policy of tyrants, who insist on being Christians without Christianity, carry on a persecution, in which they are determined that no one shall have the glory of Martyrdom, these brave Champions raise their voice and boldly reproach the persecutors for their interference with that liberty which is due to Christ and his Ministers. They begin by telling them their duty, as Hilary did to Constantius, when he sent him his first Memorial:

“My Lord and most gracious Augustus! Your admirable prudence will tell you that it is unreasonable and impossible either to force submission on men who resist you with all their strength, or to compel them to take part with the sowers of the seed of false doctrine. The one end of your endeavors, wise counsels, government and vigilance should be that all your subjects may enjoy the sweets of liberty. There is no other means of settling the troubles of the state, or of uniting what discord has separated, than that everyone be master of his own life, unconstrained by slavish compulsion. You should not tum a deaf ear to the voice of any subject who thus appeals to you for support: “I am a Catholic; I will not be a heretic: I am a Christian, and not an Arian: I would rather lose my life than allow the tyranny of any man to corrupt the purity of my Faith.”

Article 27

Lessons from the Christmas Saints―St. Hilary
Part 2

When some people spoke to Hilary in favor of those who had been traitors to the Church, and had been disloyal to Jesus Christ, in order to keep in the good graces of the Emperor, they ventured to tell the Saint that their conduct was justifiable, on the ground that they had but obeyed the Law! The holy Pontiff was indignant at this profanation of the word, and, in his Book against Auxentius, courageously reminds his fellow Bishops of the origin of the Church: how her very establishment depended on the breaking of unjust human laws, and how she counts it one of her glories to infringe all such laws as would oppose her existence, her development, and her action.

We have a contempt for all the trouble that men of these days are giving themselves; and I am grieved to see them holding such mad opinions as that God needs man’s patronage, and that the Church of Christ requires to be upheld by an ambition that curries favor with the world. I ask of you Bishops, what favor did the Apostles court, in order that they might preach the Gospel? Who were the princes that helped them to preach Christ, and convert almost the whole world from idolatry to God? Did they, who sang hymns to God in prisons and chains, and whilst bleeding from being scourged—did they accept offices from the state? Did Paul wait for a royal permission to draw men to the Church of Christ? Did he, think you, cringe for the patronage of a Nero, or a Vespasian, or a Decius, whose very hatred of our Faith was the occasion of its being more triumphantly preached?

These Apostles, who lived by the labor of their own hands, who assembled the Faithful in garrets and hiding-places, who visited villages and towns, and well nigh the whole world, traveling over sea and land, in spite of the Senate’s decrees and Imperial Edicts—these men, according to your principles, had not received the keys of the kingdom of Heaven! What say you to all this manifestation of God’s power in the very face of man’s opposition, when the more there was a prohibition to preach Christ, the more that preaching was exercised?

But the time came at last to speak to the Emperor himself, and to protest against the system whereby he aimed at making the Church a slave; then did Hilary, who was exceedingly gentle in disposition, put on that holy indignation which Our Lord Himself had, when He scourged the profaners of His Father’s House, and drove them out of the Temple. He braved every danger, and held up to execration the system invented by Constantius for insulting and crushing the Church of Christ. Let us listen to the language of his apostolic zeal.

“The time for speaking is come; the time for silence is past. Let Christ now appear, for Antichrist has begun his reign. Let the Shepherds give the alarm, for the hirelings have fled. Let us lay down our lives for our sheep, for thieves have got into the fold, and a furious lion is prowling around it. Let us prepare for martyrdom ... for the angel of satan hath transformed himself into an angel of light. ...

“Why, O my God, didst thou not permit me to confess thy holy Name, and be the minister of thine Only Begotten Son, in the times of Nero or Decius? Full of the fire of the Holy Spirit, I would not have feared the rack, for I would have thought of Isaias, how he was sawn in two. I would not have feared fire, for I would have said to myself that the Hebrew Children sang in their fiery furnace. The cross and the breaking of every bone of my body should not have made me a coward, for the good thief would have encouraged me, who was translated into thy kingdom. If they had threatened to drown me in the angry billows of the deep ocean, I would have laughed at their threats, for thou hast taught us, by the example of Jonas and Paul, that thou canst give life to thy servants even in the sea.

“Happy I, could I thus have fought with men who professed themselves to be the enemies of thy name; every one would have said that they who had recourse to tortures, and sword, and fire, to compel a Christian to deny thee, were persecutors; and my death would have been sufficient testimony to thy truth, O God! The battle would have been an open one, and no one would have hesitated to call by the honest name these men that denied thee, and racked and murdered us; and thy people, seeing that it was an evident persecution, would have followed their Pastors in the confession of their Faith.

“But nowadays, we have to do with a disguised persecutor, a smooth-tongued enemy, a Constantius who has put on Antichrist; who scourges us, not with lashes, but with caresses; who instead of robbing us, which would give us spiritual life, bribes us with riches, that he may lead us to eternal death; who thrusts us not into the liberty of a prison, but into the honors of his palace, that he may enslave us: who tears not our flesh, but our hearts; who beheads not with a sword, but kills the soul with his gold; who sentences not by a herald that we are to be burnt, but covertly enkindles the fire of Hell against us. He does not dispute with us, that he may conquer; but he flatters us, that so he may lord it over our souls. He confesses Christ, the better to deny him; he tries to procure a unity which shall destroy peace; he puts down some few heretics, so that he may also crush the Christians; he honors Bishops, that they may cease to be Bishops; he builds up Churches, that he may pull down the Faith ....

“Let men talk as they will, and accuse me of strong language, and calumny: it is. the duty of a minister of the truth to speak the truth. If what I say be untrue, let me be branded with the name of an infamous calumniator: but if I prove what I assert, then I am not exceeding the bounds of apostolic liberty, nor transgressing the humility of a successor of the Apostles by speaking thus, after so long observing silence. . .. No, this is not rashness, it is Faith; it is not inconsiderateness, it is duty; it is not passion, it is conscience.

“I say to thee, Constantius, what I would have said to Nero, or Decius, or Maxirnian: You are fighting against God, you are raging against the Church, you are persecuting the saints, you are hating the preachers of Christ, you are destroying religion, you are a tyrant, not in human things, but in things that appertain to God. Yes, this is what I should say to thee as well as to them; but listen, now, to what can only be said to thyself: Thou falsely callest thyself a Christian, for thou art a new enemy of Christ; thou art a precursor of Antichrist, and a doer of his mystery of iniquity; thou, that art a rebel to the Faith, art making formulas of Faith; thou art intruding thine own creatures into the sees of the Bishops; thou art putting out the good and putting in the bad .... By a strange ingenious plan, which no one had ever yet discovered, thou hast found a way to persecute, without making Martyrs.

“We owe much to you, Nero, Decius, and Maximian! Your cruelty did us service. We conquered the devil by your persecutions. The blood of the holy Martyrs you made has been treasured up throughout the world, and their venerable relIcs are ever strengthenmg us in Faith by their mute unceasing testimony. . .. But thou, Constantius, cruel with thy refinement of cruelty, art an enemy that ragest against us, doing us more injury, and leaving us less hope of pardon .... Thou deprivest the fallen of the excuse they might have had with their Eternal Judge, when they showed him the scars and wounds they had endured for him, for perhaps their tortures might induce him to forgive their weakness. Whereas thou, most wicked of men! Thou hast invented a persecution which, if we fall, robs us of pardon, and, if we triumph, does not make us Martyrs!

“We see thee, ravenous wolf, under thy sheep’s clothing. Thou adornest the sanctuaries of God’s temples with the gold of the State, and thou offerest to him what is taken from the temples, or taxed by edict, or extorted by penalty. Thou receivest his Priests with a kiss like that which betrayed Christ. Thou bowest down thy head for a blessing, and then thou tramplest on our Faith. Thou dispensest the clergy from paying tributes and taxes to Cresar, that thou mayest bribe them to be renegades to Christ, foregoing thy own rights, that God may be deprived of His!”

Glorious Hilary! Thou didst well deserve that thy Church of Poitiers should, of old, address to thee the magnificent praise given by the Roman Church to thy illustrious disciple, St Martin: “O blessed Pontiff! Who with his whole heart loved Christ our King, and feared not the majesty of emperors! O most holy soul! Which, though not taken away by the sword of the persecutor, yet lost not the palm of martyrdom!”

If the Palm of a Martyr is not in thy hand, yet hadst thou a Martyr’s spirit, and well might we add to thy other titles, of Confessor, Bishop and Doctor, the glorious one of Martyr, just as our holy Mother the Church has conferred it upon thy fellow-combatant, Eusebius, who was but Martyr in heart like thyself. Yes, thy glory is great; but it is all due to thee for thy courage in confessing the Divinity of that Incarnate Word, whose Birth and Infancy we are now celebrating. Thou hadst to stand before a Herod, as had the Magi, and like them thou hadst no fear: and when the Caesar of those times banished thee to a foreign land, thy soul found comfort in the thought that the Infant Jesus, too, was exiled into Egypt. Oh, that we could imitate thee in the application of these Mysteries to ourselves!

Now that thou art in Heaven, pray for our Churches, that they may be firm in the Faith, and may study to know and love Jesus, our Emmanuel. Pray for thy Church of Poitiers, which still loves thee with the reverence and affection of a child; but since the ardor of thy zeal embraced all the world, pray also for all the world. Pray that God may bless his Church with Bishops powerful in word and work, profound in sacred science, faithful in the guardianship of that which is entrusted to them, and unswerving defenders of ecclesiastical liberty.

Article 28

Lessons from the Christmas Saints―St. Agnes

How rich is the constellation of Martyrs, which shines in this portion of the sacred cycle! We find the gentle Agnes decked with the roses and lilies of her virginity. It is to a girl of thirteen that our Emmanuel gave this stern courage of martyrdom, which made her meet the enemy with as bold a front as either the valiant captain of the pretorian band, or the dauntless deacon of Saragossa. If they are the soldiers of Jesus, she is his tender and devoted Spouse. These are the triumphs of the Son of Mary! Scarcely has he shown himself to the world, and every noble heart flies towards him, according to that word of his: “Wheresoever the body shall be, there 'shall the eagles also be gathered together.”

It is the admirable result of the Virginity of his Blessed Mother, who has brought honor to the fecundity of the soul, and set it far above that of the body. It was Mary that first opened the way whereby certain chosen souls mount up even to the Divine Son, and fix their gaze in a cloudless vision on his beauty; for he himself said: “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.”

What a glory it is for the Catholic Church, that she alone has the gift of this holy state of virginity, which is the source of every other sacrifice, because nothing but the love of God could inspire a human heart to vow virginity! And what a grand honor for Christian Rome that she should have produced a Saint Agnes, that angel of Earth, in comparison with whom the Vestals of paganism are mere pretenses of devotedness, for their Virginity was never punished by fire and sword, nay, rather, was flattered by the recompense of earthly honors and riches!

Not that our Saint is without her recompense; only her recompense is not marred with the flaw of all human rewards. The name of this child, who lived but thirteen short years, will be echoed, to the end of time, in the sacred Canon of the universal Sacrifice. The path trod by the innocent maiden, on the way to her trial, is still marked out in the Holy City. In the Circus Agonalis, there rises the beautiful Church of Saint Agnes, with its rich cupola; and beneath are the vaults which were once the haunts of infamy, but now are a holy sanctuary, where everything reminds us of her who here won her glorious victory.

Further on, on the Nomentan Road, outside the ramparts, is the beautiful Basilica, built by Constantine; and here, under an altar covered with precious stones, lies the body of the young Saint. Round this Basilica there are immense crypts; and in these did Agnes' relics repose until the epoch of peace, surrounded by thousands of martyrs, whose holy remains were also deposited here.

Nor must we pass over in silence the gracious tribute of honor paid by Rome each year, on this feast, to her beloved Martyr. Two lambs are placed on the altar of the Basilica Nomentana; they are emblems of the meekness of Jesus and the innocence of the gentle Agnes. After they have been blessed by the Abbot of the religious community which serves this Church, they are taken to a monastery of nuns, where they are carefully reared. Their wool is used for making the Palliums, which the Pope sends to all Patriarchs and Metropolitans of the Catholic world, as the essential emblem of their jurisdiction.

Thus, this simple woolen ornament, which these prelates wear on their shoulders as a symbol of the sheep carried on the shoulders of the good Shepherd, and the Sovereign Pontiff takes from off the Altar of Saint Peter in order to send it to its destination, carries to the very ends of the world the sublime union of these two sentiments—the vigor and power of the Prince of the Apostles, and the gentleness of Agnes the Virgin. We will now quote the beautiful eulogy on St. Agnes written by St Ambrose in his Book On Virgins.

The Church gives almost the entire passage in the Office of her feast; and, assuredly, the Virgin of Christ could not have had a finer panegyrist than the great Bishop of Milan, who is the most eloquent and persuasive of all the Fathers on the subject of holy virginity. We read that in the cities where Ambrose preached, mothers were afraid of their daughters being present at his sermons, lest he should persuade them to such love of Christ as to choose the better part.

“Having resolved,” says the holy Bishop “to write a book on virginity, I think myself happy in being able to begin it on the feast we are keeping of the Virgin Agnes. It is the feast of a virgin; let us walk in the path of purity. It is the feast of a martyr; let us offer up our Sacrifice. It is the feast of St Agnes; let men admire, and children not despair; let the married wonder, and the unmarried imitate. But what can we speak worthy of this Saint, whose very name is not void of praise? As her devotedness is beyond her years, and her virtue superhuman—so, as it seems to me, her name is not an appellation, but a prophecy, presaging that she was to be a martyr.”

The holy Doctor is here alluding to the word Agnus, from which some have derived the name Agnes and he says that the young Saint had immolation in her very name, for it called her victim. He goes on to consider the other etymology of Agnes, from the Greek word agnos, which means pure, and he thus continues his discourse:

“Martyr then, and Virgin! Is not that praise enough? There is no praise so eloquent as merit that is too great to need seeking. No one is so praiseworthy as he who may be praised by all. Now all men are the praisers of Agnes, for when they pronounce her name they say her praise, for they say a Martyr.

“There is a tradition that she suffered martyrdom at the age of thirteen. Detestable indeed the cruelty that spared not even so tender an age! But, O, the power of faith, that could find even children to be its witnesses! Here was a victim scarce big enough for a wound, for where could the sword fall? And yet she had courage enough to conquer the sword.

“At such an age as this, a girl trembles if she but see her mother angry, and cries as though it were a grievous thing if but pricked with a needle's point. And Agnes, who stands amidst blood-stained murderers, is fearless! She is stunned with the rattle of the heavy chains, and yet not a flutter in that heart! She offers her whole body to the sword of the furious soldier, for though she knows not what death is, yet she is quite ready to endure it. Perchance they will take her by force to the altars of their gods! If they do, she will stretch out her hands to Jesus, and amidst those sacrilegious fires she will sign herself with that blessed sign, the trophy of our divine Conqueror; and then, if they will, and they can find shackles small enough to fit such tender limbs, they may fasten her hands and neck in their iron fetters!

“How strange a martyrdom! She is too young to be punished, yet she is old enough to win a victory. She cannot fight, yet she easily gains a crown. She has but the age of a scholar, yet has she mastered every virtue. Bride never went to nuptials with so glad a heart, nor so light a step, as this young virgin marches to the place of execution. She is decked not with the joyful show of plaited tresses, but with Christ; she is wreathed not with flowers, but with purity.

“All stood weeping; Agnes shed not a tear. Some wondered how it could be that she, who had but just begun her life, should be as ready to sacrifice it as though she had lived it out; and everyone was amazed that she, who was too young to give evidence even in her own affairs, should be so bold a witness of the divinity. Her oath would be invalid in a human cause; yet she is believed when she bears testimony for God. Their surprise was just: for a power thus above nature could only come from him who is the author of all nature.

“Her executioner does all he can to frighten her; he speaks fair words to coax her; he tells her of all the suitors who have sought her as their bride; but she replies: ‘The Spouse insults her Beloved if she hesitate. I belong to him who first betrothed me: why, executioner, dost thou not strike? Kill this body, which might be loved by eyes I would not wish to please.’

“She stood, she prayed, she bowed down her head. The executioner trembles, as though himself were going to be beheaded. His hand shakes, and his cheek grows pale, to strike this girl, who loves the danger and the blow. Here, then, have we a twofold martyrdom in a single victim, one for her chastity, the other for her faith. She was a Virgin before; and now she is a Martyr.”

Article 29

Lessons from the Christmas Saints―St. Kentigern

Saint Kentigern, whose feast is kept in several dioceses of the North of England and in Scotland, stands out as one of the zealous monks of the sixth century, who labored incessantly for the conversion of the inhabitants of those islands. He was brought up in the monastery at Culross from early childhood, and was thus trained from his youth in all the practices of monastic observance.

However, when he reached man's estate, feeling called to a more rigorous manner of life, he left Culross and took up his abode in a solitude in the neighborhood of Glasgow, where he led a most mortified life, eating but once in three or four days, spending the night in prayer, and wearing a garment of haircloth. This manner of life gave the greatest edification to all who came in contact with him, and his virtue was such that, at the age of twenty-five, he was elected to the bishopric of Glasgow. He had grave misgivings as to the validity of his ordination, on account of his age, but was forced to bow before the importunities of those who had chosen him for their pastor.

He ruled his vast diocese, which was bordered by the North Sea on the east and by the Atlantic Ocean on the west, with wisdom and prudence, though his manner of living remained unchanged, and, moreover, each Lent it was his custom to retire into solitude, giving himself entirely to prayer and living upon roots and herbs. He was assiduous in visiting his flock, travelling always on foot, and the force of his preaching together with the mildness and sweetness of his character and the asceticism of his life was the means whereby innumerable pagans were brought into the Church and many Pelagian heretics converted to the true Faith. This devoted prelate was the father of many monks, a great number of whom he sent to evangelize the north of Scotland, the Orkney Isles, and even Norway and Iceland.

The enemy of mankind, the devil, however, would not suffer so many souls to be snatched from his grasp without molestation, and he caused the royal family to raise such a bitter persecution against the saint that he was forced to leave the country. He took refuge in Wales, first at Caerleon, now Usk, where he built a church, then with Saint David, and finally he settled at the junction of the Rivers Elwy and Cluid, where he built a monastery, now known as Saint Asaph's. One of the princes of the country opposed this undertaking, whereupon he was struck with blindness, but was cured by the intercession of Saint Kentigern and thereafter became his great benefactor.

The great crime committed against Saint Kentigern in Scotland was not permitted to remain unpunished. All those who had persecuted the saint were visited by the just vengeance of Almighty God, and a prince, virtuous and loyal to the Church, ascended the throne, and his first act was to recall Saint Kentigern, who returned bringing with him some monks from Saint Asaph's. In 593 the Saint visited Pope Saint Gregory the Great and unburdened his soul of the doubts he had always held regarding his ordination. The supreme Pontiff set his mind at rest, and confirming him in office sent him back to his see, which he governed in peace for eight years more. On January 13, 601, he was called to his eternal reward at the advanced age of eighty-five, and was buried in his Cathedral Church at Glasgow.

The following is an abridgement of the account given of Saint Kentigern in the Breviary lessons for his feast.

Kentigern, whom the Scots, account of his innocence and sweetness of disposition, called Mungo, that is well-beloved, was of the royal family of the Picts of Northern Britain. While still a boy he was sent to the monastery of Culross, where, under Saint Servanus, he made great progress both in secular and in religious learning. Thence he withdrew into solitude, near Glasgow, in Scotland, where he led an austere life of continual prayer and meditation upon heavenly things. He was elected bishop and when he was thus raised to the pastoral charge, his virtues shone forth as from a candle set upon a candlestick. God confirmed his preaching by many and great miracles, so much so that the holy bishop, mighty in word and deed, kept his flock safe from the Pelagian heresy and added a countless multitude of pagans to Christ's Church.

A certain impious tyrant banished him to Wales, where, after having spent some time with the holy bishop, Saint David, he founded a celebrated monastery at the junction of the rivers Elwy and Cluid, where he had as his disciple Saint Asaph. At length, in the seventh century, full of days, he slept in the Lord. His body was buried in the cathedral church of Glasgow, where it was held in great veneration until the time when the fury of the Calvinists almost extinguished the Catholic Faith in Scotland.

Article 30

Lessons from the Christmas Saints―St. Maurus

St. Maurus is one of the greatest masters of the Cenobitical Life, and the most illustrious of the Disciples of St. Benedict, the Patriarch of the Monks of the West. He shares with the First Hermit—St. Paul—the honors of this fifteenth day of January. Faithful, like the holy Hermit, to the lessons taught at Bethlehem, Maurus has a claim to have his Feast kept during the forty days, which are sacred to the sweet Babe Jesus. He comes to us, each January, to bear witness to the power of that Babe's humility. Who, indeed, will dare to doubt of the triumphant power of the poverty and the obedience shown in the Crib of our Emmanuel, when he is told of the grand things done by those virtues in the cloisters of fair France?

It was to Maurus that France was indebted for the introduction, into her territory, of that admirable Rule, which produced the great Saints and the great men to whom she owes the best part of her glory. The children of St. Benedict, trained by St. Maurus, struggled against the barbarism of the Franks under the first race of her kings; under the second, they instructed in sacred and profane literature the people in whose civilization they had so powerfully cooperated; under the third—and even in modern times, when the Benedictine Order, enslaved by the system of Commendatory Abbots, and decimated by political tyranny or violence, was dying out amidst every kind of humiliation—they were the fathers of the poor by the charitable use of their large possessions, and the ornaments of literature and science, by their immense contributions to ecclesiastical science and archeology, as also to the history of their own country.

St. Maurus built his celebrated Monastery of Glanfeuil, and Glanfeuil may be considered as the mother house of the principal Monasteries in France―Saint Germain and Saint Denis of Paris, Marmoutier, Saint Victor, Luxeuil, Jumieges, Fleury, Corbie, Saint Vannes, Moyen-Moutier, Saint Wandrille, Saint Waast, La Chaise-Dieu, Tiron, Cheza, Benoit, Le Bec, and innumerable other Monasteries in France, that gloried in being daughters of Monte-Cassino by the favorite Disciple of St. Benedict.

The monastery of Cluny, which gave several Popes to the Church, and among them St. Gregory the Seventh and Urban the Second, was indebted to St. Maurus for that Rule, which gave her her glory and her power. We must count up the Apostles, Martyrs, Bishops, Doctors, Confessors and Virgins, who were formed, for twelve hundred years, in the Benedictine Cloisters of France; we must calculate the services, both temporal and spiritual, done to this great country, by the Benedictine Monks during all that period; and we shall have some idea of the results produced by the mission of St. Maurus, results whose whole glory redounds to the Babe of Bethlehem, and to the mysteries of His humility, which are the source and model of the Monastic Life. When, therefore, we admire the greatness of the Saints, and recount their wonderful works, we are glorifying Jesus, the King of all Saints.

The Monastic Breviary, in the Office of this Feast, gives us the following sketch of the Life of St. Maurus.

Maurus was, by birth, a Roman. His father, whose name was Eutychius, a Senator by rank, had placed him, when a little boy, under the care of St. Benedict. Trained in the school of such and so great a Master of holiness, he attained to the highest degree of monastic perfection, even before he had ceased to be a child; so that Benedict himself was in admiration, and used to speak of his virtues to everyone, holding him forth to the rest of the house as a model of religious discipline. He subdued his flesh by austerities, such as wearing a hair-shirt, night watching, and frequent fasting; giving, meanwhile, to his spirit the solace of assiduous prayer, holy compunction, and reading the Sacred Scriptures. During Lent, he took food only twice in the week, and that so sparingly as to seem rather to be tasting than taking it. He slept standing, or when excessive fatigue obliged him to it, sitting, or at times lying down on a heap of lime and sand, over which he threw his hair-shirt. His sleep was exceedingly short, for he always recited very long prayers, and often the whole of the Psalms, before the midnight Office.

He gave a proof of his admirable spirit of obedience on the occasion of Placid's fall into the lake. Maurus, at the bidding of the Holy Father, ran to the lake, walked dry-shod upon the water, and taking the child by the hair of his head, drew him safe to the bank; for Placid was to be slain by the sword as a martyr, and Our Lord reserved him as a victim which should be offered to Him. On account of such signal virtues as these, the same Holy Father made Maurus share the care of his duties; for, from his very entrance into the monastic life, he had had a part in his miracles. He had been raised to the holy order of Deaconship by St. Benedict's command; and, by placing the stole he wore on a dumb and lame boy, he gave him the power both to speak and walk.

Maurus was sent by his Holy Father into France. Scarcely had he set his foot in that land, than he had a vision of the triumphant entrance of that great saint into Heaven. He promulgated in that country the Rule which St. Benedict had written with his own hand, and had given to him on his leaving Italy; though the labor and anxiety he had to go through, in the accomplishment of his mission, were exceedingly great. Having built the celebrated Monastery, which he governed for forty years, so great was the reputation of his virtues, that several of the noblest lords of King Theodebert's court put themselves under Maurus' direction, and enrolled in the holier and more meritorious warfare of the monastic life.

Two years before his death, he resigned the government of his Monastery, and retired into a cell near the Oratory of St. Martin. There he exercised himself in most rigorous penance, wherewith he fortified himself for the contest he had to sustain against the enemy of mankind, who threatened him with the death of his Monks. In this combat a holy Angel was his comforter, who, after revealing to him the snares of the wicked spirit, and the designs of God, bade him and his disciples win the crown prepared for them.

Having, therefore, sent to Heaven before him, as so many forerunners, a hundred and more of his brave soldiers, and knowing that he, their leader, was soon to follow them, he signified his wish to be carried to the Oratory, where, being strengthened by the Sacrament of Life, and lying on his hair-shirt, as a victim before the Altar, he died a saintly death. He was upwards of seventy years of age. It would be difficult to describe the success wherewith he propagated Monastic discipline in France, or to tell the miracles which, both before and after his death, rendered him glorious among men.

Article 31

Lessons from the Christmas Saints―St. Felix

Encircled by the radiant splendors of the post-Epiphany season, there comes before us, in company with Hilary of Poitiers, a humble lover of the virtues of the Crib of our Emmanuel. Though withdrawn by God himself from the fury of his persecutors, and thus from a martyr’s death which would have crowned his cruel torments and imprisonment, Felix nevertheless has won the right to his palm by the invincible courage he showed amidst all his sufferings. In Heaven he was already accounted worthy of his reward, but he was yet for a long time to gladden and strengthen the Church on Earth by those examples of wonderful poverty, humility, and ardent charity, which now claim for him a place in the sacred cycle near to the lowly manger of the King of Peace.

The Infant God, in all his hidden lowliness, was to Felix his one love and exemplar, hence to-day this King of angels and men who is now manifested to the world and adored by kings, hastens to share with him the honors of his triumphant Epiphany. To him that shall overcome, I will give to sit with me in my throne, saith the Lord (Apocalypse 3:21), and in whom, other than Felix, has the realization of this blessed promise of the Divine Head to his members been more apparent?

A poor tomb received the mortal remains of the humble priest of Campania, and in its silence and obscurity, emblems of his earthly desires, he seemed destined to await the blast of the angel’s trumpet at the final Resurrection. But miracles, many and great, suddenly rendered this tomb illustrious; the name of Felix was carried far and wide, and everywhere wrought the like prodigies of grace. Hardly had peace been given to the Church and world by the accession of Constantine to the throne, when on all sides the people were aroused, and in countless flocks thronged to the martyr’s tomb; on certain days Rome herself seemed deserted, and the ancient Appian Road, the very soil of which was worn away by the tramp of the pilgrims, appeared to have no other purpose than to carry to the feet of Felix the homage, gratitude, and love of the entire world. Five basilicas did not suffice for the immense concourse; a sixth was erected, and the lowly field where once the remains of the martyr lay hid was encircled by a new town.

The fourth century, so rich in Christian developments, saw the beginning of pilgrimages, and the city of Nola in Campania was, after Rome, the principal center of this devotion. “O happy city of Nola,” cries a contemporary, eyewitness of these wonders, “O happy city which through the merits of the blessed Felix has become second only to Rome herself, Rome ever the mistress, yesterday by her empire and victorious armies, to-day by the tombs of the Apostles!”

We have cited Paulinus, the illustrious consul whose name is inseparably linked with that of Felix, Paulinus whom we shall find, in the time after Pentecost, through the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, giving also admirable examples of renunciation to the world. In the flower of a brilliant youth and already surrounded by honors and glory, Paulinus once found himself by the tomb of Felix―here it was given to him to understand true greatness, to realize the emptiness of human ambitions and glory.

The Roman Senator, the consul, the descendant of Paulus Amelius and of the Scipios, here vowed himself to Felix who had conquered. Riches, honors, country, he sacrificed all and aspired only to dwell near to this tomb. A poet of no small merit, whose talents had already won applause in Rome, his inspiration now found expression in singing the praises of the blessed Felix on his feast day and in proclaiming himself the slave and humble doorkeeper of the servant of Christ. Such then is the triumph of our Emmanuel in His saints, such is the glory of His members―does it not seem that the Divine Head, mindful of His promises, is desirous only of the glory which this feast of Manifestation brings, so that they, enthroned with Him, may also receive the homage of peoples and kings?

Article 32

Lessons from the Christmas Saints
St. Paul the First Hermit

During January, the Church honors the memory of one of those men who were expressly chosen by God to represent the sublime detachment from all things which was taught to the world by the example of the Son of God, born in a Cave, at Bethlehem. Paul the Hermit so prized the poverty of his Divine Master that he fled to the desert, where he could find nothing to possess and nothing to covet. He had a mere cavern for his dwelling; a palm-tree provided him with food and clothing; a fountain gave him wherewith to quench his thirst; and Heaven sent him his only luxury, a loaf of bread, brought to him daily by a crow. For sixty years did Paul thus serve, in poverty and in solitude, that God who was denied a dwelling on the earth that He came to redeem, and could have but a poor Stable wherein to be born.

But God dwelt with Paul in his cavern; and in him began the Anchorites, that sublime race of men who, the better to enjoy the company of their God, denied themselves, not only the society, but the very sight of men. They were the Angels of earth, in whom God showed forth, for the instruction of the rest of men, that he is powerful enough and rich enough to supply the wants of his creatures, who, indeed, have nothing but what they have from him. The Hermit, or Anchoret, is a prodigy in the Church, and it behooves us to glorify the God who has produced it. We ought to be filled with astonishment and gratitude, at seeing how the Mystery of a God made Flesh, has so elevated our human nature, as to inspire a contempt and abandonment of those earthly goods, which heretofore had been so eagerly sought after.

The two names, Paul and Antony, are not to be separated; they are the two Apostles of the Desert; both are Fathers-Paul of Anchorites, and Antony of Cenobites; the two families are sisters, and both have the same source, the Mystery of Bethlehem. The sacred Cycle of the Church’s year unites, with only a day between their two Feasts, these two faithful disciples of Jesus in his Crib. The Church reads in her Office the following abridgement of St. Paul’s wonderful Life.

“Paul, the institutor and master of Hermits, was born in the Lower Thebaid. He lost his parents when he was fifteen years of age. Not long after that, in order to escape the persecution of Decius and Valerian, and to serve God more freely, he withdrew into the desert, where he made a cave his dwelling. A palm-tree afforded him food and clothing, and there he lived to the age of a hundred and thirteen. About that time, he received a visit from Antony, who was ninety years old. God bade him visit Paul. The two Saints, though they had not previously known each other, saluted each other by their names. Whilst holding a long conversation on the kingdom of God, a crow, which every day brought half a loaf of bread, carried them a whole one.

“When the crow had left them, Paul said: ‘See! Our truly good and truly merciful Lord has sent us our repast. For sixty years I have daily received a half loaf; now, because thou art come to see me, Christ has doubled the portion for His soldiers.’ Wherefore they sat near the fountain, and giving thanks, they ate the bread and when they were refreshed, they again returned the accustomed thanks to God, and spent the night in the divine praises. At daybreak, Paul tells Antony of his approaching death, and begs him go and bring the cloak which Athanasius had given him, and wrap his corpse in it. As Antony was returning from his cell, he saw Paul’s soul going up into Heaven amidst choirs of Angels, and a throng of Prophets and Apostles.

“When he had reached the hermit’s cell, he found the lifeless body: the knees were bent, the head erect, and the hands stretched out and raised towards Heaven. He wrapped it in the cloak, and sang hymns and psalms over it, according to the custom prescribed by Christian tradition. Not having a tool wherewith to make a grave, two lions came at a rapid pace from the interior of the desert, and stood over the body of the venerable Saint, showing how, in their own way, they lamented his death. They began to tear up the earth with their feet, and seemed to strive to outdo each other in the work, until they had made a hole large enough to receive the body of a man. When they had gone, Antony carried the holy corpse to the place, and covering it with the soil, he arranged the grave after the manner of the Christians. As to the tunic, which Paul had woven for himself out of palm leaves, as baskets are usually made, Antony took it away with him, and as long as he lived, wore it on the great days of Easter and Pentecost.”

Father and Prince of Hermits! Thou art now contemplating, in all His glory, that God whose weakness and lowliness thou didst study and imitate during the sixty years of thy desert life: thou art now with Him in the eternal union of the Vision. Instead of thy cavern, where thou didst spend thy life of unknown penance, thou hast the immensity of the heavens for thy dwelling; instead of thy tunic of palm-leaves, thou hast the robe of Light; instead of the pittance of material bread, thou hast the Bread of eternal life; instead of thy humble fountain, thou hast the waters which spring up to eternity, filling thy soul with infinite delights.

Thou didst imitate the silence of the Babe of Bethlehem by thy holy life of seclusion; now thy tongue is forever singing the praises of God, and the music of infinite bliss is forever falling on thine ear. Thou didst not know this world of ours, except by its deserts; but now thou must compassionate and pray for us who live in it; speak for us to our dear Jesus; remind Him how He visited it in wonderful mercy and love; pray His sweet blessing upon us, and the graces of perfect detachment from transitory things, love of poverty, love of prayer, and love of our heavenly country.

Article 33

Lessons from the Christmas Saints
St. Anthony of Egypt

The East and West unite, today, in honouring St. Antony, the Father of Cenobites. The Monastic Life existed before his time, as we know from indisputable testimony; but he was the first Abbot, because he was the first to bring Monks under the permanent government of one Superior or Father.

Antony began with seeking solely his own sanctification; he was known only as the wonderful Solitary, against whom the wicked spirits waged an almost continuous battle: but, in course of time, men were attracted to him by his miracles and by the desire of their own perfection. This gave him disciples and he permitted them to cluster round his cell; thus monasteries began to be built in the desert.

The age of the Martyrs was near its close; the persecution under Diocletian, which was to be the last, was over, as Antony entered on the second half of his course: and God chose this time for organizing a new force in the Church. The Monastic Life was brought to bear upon the Christian world; the Ascetics, as they were called, not even such of them as were consecrated, were not a sufficient element of power. Monasteries were built in every direction, in solitudes and in the very cities; and the Faithful had but to look at these communities living in the fervent and literal fulfilment of the Counsels of Christ, and they felt themselves encouraged to obey the Precepts.

The apostolic traditions of continual prayer and penance were perpetuated by the monastic system; it secured the study of the Sacred Scriptures and Theology; and the Church herself would soon receive from these arsenals of intellect and piety her bravest defenders, her holiest Prelates, and her most zealous Apostles. Yes, the Monastic Life was to be and give all this to the Christian world, for the example of St. Antony had given her a bias to usefulness. If there ever were a monk to whom the charms of solitude and the sweetness of contemplation were dear, it was our Saint; and yet they could not keep him in his desert, when he could save souls by a few days spent in a noisy city. Thus, we find him in the streets of Alexandria, when the pagan persecution was at its height; he came to encourage the Christians in their martyrdom.

Later on, when that still fiercer foe of Arianism was seducing the Faith of the people, we again meet the great Abbot in the same capital, this time preaching to its inhabitants that the Word is consubstantial with the Father, proclaiming the Nicene faith, and keeping up the Catholics in orthodoxy and resolution.

There is another incident in the life of St. Antony which tells in the same direction, inasmuch as it shows how an intense interest in the Church must ever be where the Monastic Spirit is. We are alluding to our Saint’s affection for the great St. Athanasius, who on his part reverenced the Patriarch of the Desert, visited him, promoted the Monastic Life to the utmost of his power, used to say that he considered the great hope of the Church to be in the good discipline of monasticism, and wrote the Life of his dear St. Antony.

But to whom is the glory of the institution of monasticism due, with which the destinies of the Church were, from that time forward, to be so closely connected, that the period of her glory and power was to be when the monastic element flourished, and the days of her affliction were to be those of its decay? Who was it that put into the heart of Antony and his disciples the love of that poor and unknown, yet ever productive life? It is Jesus, the humble Babe of Bethlehem. To him, then, wrapt in his swaddling-clothes, and yet the omnipotent God, be all the glory!

It is time to hear the account of some of the virtues and actions of the great St. Antony, given by the Church in her Office of his Feast.

Antony was born in Egypt, of noble and Christian parents, who left him an orphan at an early age. Having one day entered a Church, he heard these words of the Gospel being read: If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all thou hast, and give to the poor. He took them as addressed to himself, and thought it his duty to obey these words of Christ his Lord.

Selling therefore his possessions, he distributed all the money among the poor. Being freed from these obstacles, he resolved to lead on earth a heavenly life. But at his entrance on the perils of such a combat, he felt that besides the shield of faith, wherewith he was armed, he must needs fortify himself with the other virtues; and so ardent was his desire to possess them, that whomsoever he saw excelling in any virtue, him did he study to imitate. Nothing, therefore, could exceed his continency and vigilance. He surpassed all in patience, meekness, mercy, humility, manual labor, and the study of the Sacred Scriptures.

So great was his aversion for the company of, or conversation with, heretics, especially the Arians, that he used to say that we ought not even to go near them. He lay on the ground when necessity obliged him to sleep. As to fasting, he practiced it with so much fervor that his only nourishment was bread seasoned with salt, and he quenched his thirst with water; neither did he take this his food and drink until sunset, and frequently abstained from it altogether for two successive days. He very frequently spent the whole night in prayer.

Antony became so valiant a soldier of God that the enemy of mankind, ill-brooking such extraordinary virtue, attacked him with manifold temptations; but the Saint overcame them all by fasting and prayer. Neither did his victories over Satan make him heedless, for he knew how innumerable are the devil’s artifices for injuring souls.

Knowing this, he betook himself into one of the largest deserts of Egypt, where such was his progress in Christian perfection that the wicked spirits, whose attacks grew more furious as Antony’s resistance grew more resolute, became the object of his contempt, so much so indeed, that he would sometimes taunt them for their weakness.

When encouraging his disciples to fight against the devil, and teaching them the arms wherewith they would vanquish him, he used often to say to them: “Believe me, Brethren. Satan dreads the watchings of holy men, and their prayers, and fasts, and voluntary poverty, and works of mercy, and humility, and above all, their ardent love for Christ our Lord, at the mere sign of whose most holy Cross he is disabled and put to flight.”

So formidable was he to the devils that many persons in Egypt who were possessed by them were delivered by invoking Antony’s name. So great, too, was his reputation for sanctity, that Constantine the Great and his sons wrote to him, commending themselves to his prayers. At length, having reached the hundred and fifth year of his age, and having received a countless number into his institute, he called his Monks together; and having instructed them how to regulate their lives according to Christian perfection, he, venerated both for the miracles he had wrought, and for the holiness of his life, departed from this world to Heaven on the sixteenth of the Kalends of February (January 17th).

Article 34

Lessons from the Christmas Saints
St. John Chrysostom

Before our Emmanuel came upon this earth, men were as sheep without a shepherd; the flock was scattered, and the human race was hastening on to perdition. Jesus would, therefore, not only be the Lamb that was to be slain for our sins; He made Himself, moreover, a Shepherd, that so He might bring us all back to the divine fold. But as He had to leave us when He ascended into Heaven, he has provided for the wants of His sheep by providing us with a succession of Pastors, who should in His Name feed the flock even to the end of the world.

Now instruction, which is the light of life, is what the flock of Christ needs above all other things; and therefore our Emmanuel required that the Pastors of His Church should also be Doctors of sacred science. The Pastor owes two things to his people; namely, the Word of God and the Sacraments. He is under the obligation of dispensing, personally and unceasingly, this twofold nourishment to his flock, and of laying down his very life, if needed, in the fulfilment of a duty on which rests the whole work of the world’s salvation.

But since the disciple is not above his Master, the Pastors and Doctors of the Christian people, if they are faithful in the discharge of their duties, are sure to be hated by the enemies of God; for they cannot spread the Kingdom of Christ, without, at the same time, taking from the power of Satan. Hence it is that the history of the Church is filled with the persecutions endured by her Pastors and Doctors, who continued the ministry of zeal and charity begun by Christ upon the earth. These contests have been threefold, and gave occasion to three admirable victories.

The Pastors and Doctors of the Church have had to struggle with Paganism, which sought, by inflicting tortures and death, to oppose the preaching of the law of Christ. It was this sort of persecution which gave the Church such saints as those whom we celebrate during this season of Christmas—Polycarp, Ignatius, Fabian, Marcellus, Hyginus, and Telesphorus.

When the era of Persecution was over, the Pastors and Doctors of the Christian people had to engage with enemies of another kind. Kings and Princes became children of the Church, and then sought to make her their own slave. They imagined that it would serve their political interests to interfere with the liberty of the Word of God, which, like the light of the sun, was intended to be carried, without hindrance, throughout the whole earth. They usurped the priestly power, as did the Pagan Caesars, and presumed to set limits to the administration of those sources of life which become corrupt as soon as they are touched by a profane hand. This usurpation gave rise to an incessant contest between the temporal and spiritual powers, and produced a second class of martyrs. God has glorified His Church during this long period of struggle, and has given her, from time to time, a brave defender of ecclesiastical liberty. We have met two of these champions of the Word and the holy ministry during Christmastide―Thomas of Canterbury, and Hilary of Poitiers.

But there is a third sort of battle in which the Pastors and Doctors of the flock of Christ have had to fight―it is the battle with the world and its vices. It began when Christianity began, and will continue to the day of Judgement. It was their courage in this battle that made so many saintly prelates hated for the Name of Jesus Christ. Neither their charity, nor their services to mankind, nor their humility, nor their meekness, protected them from ingratitude, spleen, calumny, and persecution. And what was their offence? They had been faithful in their duty of preaching the doctrines of their Divine Master, of encouraging virtue, and of chiding the sins of men. The amiable Francis de Sales was as much disliked and even hated by bad men, as was John Chrysostom himself, whose triumph gladdens the Church today, and who stands near the Crib of his Lord as one of the most illustrious martyrs of pastoral duty courageously discharged.

Fervent in the service of his Saviour, even to the observance of the divine Counsels (for he had embraced the monastic life), this golden-mouthed Preacher made no other use of his wonderful gift of eloquence than that of urging men to the observance of the virtues taught in the Gospel, and of reproving every vice.

Satan sought to have his revenge against our Saint by raising against him many enemies. Among these were an Empress, whose vanities and sins he had rebuked; men in power, whose wickedness he had held up to notice; women of influence, who would have him preach a morality more in accordance with their own depravity; a Bishop of Alexandria, and certain Prelates of the Court, who were jealous of his virtues, and still more so of his reputation. He was exceedingly loved by his people—but neither that, nor his great virtues, protected him from persecution. He, whose eloquence had enraptured the people of Antioch, and won for him the enthusiastic admiration of the citizens of Constantinople, was deposed in a council convened for the purpose, his name was ordered to be cancelled from the diptychs of the Altar, notwithstanding the energetic protest of the Roman Pontiff; and at length he was condemned to exile, and died on the way, worn out by the hardships and fatigues he had to undergo.

But this Pastor, and Doctor, was not vanquished. He said, in the midst of all his persecutions, “Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel!” (1 Corinthians 9:16). He made use, too, of those other words of the great Apostle: “The word of God is not bound!” (2 Timothy 2:9). The Church triumphed in him; she was more glorified and more consoled by the unflinching courage of Chrysostom, who was led into captivity for having preached the Gospel of Christ, than she had been by the success achieved by his eloquence, an eloquence which Libanius was heard to covet for his pagan orators.

Let us listen to the thrilling words of Chrysostom, which he addressed to the faithful immediately before his last banishment. He had been sent into exile once before; but a terrific earthquake immediately after his departure was looked upon as sent by Heaven to punish the authors of so crying an injustice, and the Empress herself went, with tears in her eyes, to ask the Emperor to recall him. Accordingly, he was permitted to return. Shortly after, fresh occasions were sought for, and John was again sentenced to exile. He received the intimation with all the calmness of a Saint who knows that the whole Church is on his side. Let us study this glorious model of a Bishop trained in the school of our Lord who is, as the Apostle calls him, the Shepherd and Bishop oj our souls.

“Many are the waves, and threatening are the storms, which surround me; but I fear them not; for I am standing on the Rock. Let the sea roar; it cannot wash away the Rock! Let the billows mount as they will; they cannot sink the barque of our Lord Jesus Christ! And tell me, what would you have me fear? Death? To me, to live is Christ; and to die is gain. Exile? The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof. Confiscation of my goods? We brought nothing into this world; and certainly we can carry nothing out! No—the evils of this world are contemptible, and its goods deserve but to be laughed at. I fear not poverty, I desire not riches; I neither fear to die, nor wish to live, save for your advantage. Your interest alone induces me to speak of these things, and to ask of you, by the love you bear me, to take courage.

“For no one can separate us; no human power can part what God has united. It is said of husband and wife: ‘Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be two in one flesh’ and ‘Therefore what God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.’ Thou canst not, O man, dissolve the nuptial tie: how hopest thou to divide the Church of God? It is she whom thou attackest, because thou canst not reach him whom thou fain wouldst strike. Thou makest me more glorious, and thou dost but waste thy strength in warring against me, for it is hard for thee to kick against the sharp goad. Thou canst not blunt its point, and thou makest thine own foot bleed, just as the billows, when they dash against the rock, fall back mere empty froth.

“Believe me, O man, there is no power like the power of the Church. Cease thy battling, lest thou lose thy strength; wage not war with Heaven. When it is with man thou warrest, thou mayst win or lose; but when thy fighting is against the Church, it is impossible thou shouldst conquer, for God is above all in strength. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He? (1 Corinthians 10:22). God founded, God gave firmness: who shall be so bold as to attempt to pull down? Knowest thou not His power? ‘He looketh upon the earth, and maketh it tremble’ (Psalm 103:32); He gives His order, and that which trembled is made firm again. If He made firm the City after an earthquake had shaken it, how much more could He not glve firmness to the Church? The Church is stronger than Heaven itself: ‘Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass away’ (Matthew 24:35). What words: ‘Thou art Peter; and upon this Rock will I build my Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it’ (Matthew 16:18)!

“If thou wilt not believe His word, believe facts. How many tyrants have sought to crush the Church? They had their gridirons and fiery furnaces, and wild beasts, and swords―and all failed. Where are those enemies now? Buried and forgotten! And the Church? Brighter than the sun! All they had, is now past; but her riches are immortal. If the Christians conquered when they were but few in number, canst thou hope to vanquish them, now that the whole earth is filled with the holy religion? ‘Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass away.’ Wonder not at it; for the Church is dearer unto God than the very heavens. He took flesh not from Heaven, but from his Church on earth; and Heaven is for the Church, not the Church for Heaven.

“Be not troubled at what has happened. I ask this favour of you―be firm in your Faith. Have you not observed that when Peter was walking on the waters, and began to fear, he was in danger of sinking, not because the sea was rough, but because his faith was weak? Have I been raised to this dignity by human intrigue? Was it man that brought me to it, or can man now depose me? I say not this from arrogance or boasting; God forbid! I say it from the desire of calming your trouble.

“The devil no sooner saw that your City was tranquillized, than he plotted how he might disturb the Church. Thou wicked and most impious spirit! Thou couldst not throw down the walls of a city; and thinkest thou thou canst make the Church fall? Does the Church consist of walls? The Church consists of the multitude of the faithful. Look at her pillars, and see how solid they are, fastened, not by iron, but by Faith. Not only is the great multitude itself more vehement than fire, but even one single Christian would conquer thee. Hast thou forgotten the wounds thou receivedst from the martyrs? Oftentimes the combatant was a tender maiden: delicate as a flower, yet firmer than a rock. Thou didst mangle her flesh, but her faith was proof against all thy tortures Her blood fell as nature felt the wounds, but her faith fell not; her body was torn,but her manly soul flinched not; what was material was spoilt, what was spiritual was untouched. Thou couldst not vanquish one woman; and yet thou hopest to vanquish a whole people I Hast thou not heard these words of the Lord: ‘Where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them’(Matthew 18:20). And thinkest thou He will not be in the midst of a numerous people, united together by the ties of charity?

“I have his pledge, and on that I trust, not on my own strength. I have His written promise. That is my staff, and my guarantee, and my tranquil port. What matters it to me if the whole world be upset? Have I not His written word? Have I not His letters? There is my rampart, and there my defence. What letters? I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world―Christ is with me―of whom shall I be afraid? Though stormy billows should rise up against me, though the sea should open to swallow me, though the wrath of kings should be enkindled against me, I will heed them no more than if they were so many spider’s webs. Had not my love for you kept me, I would have started this very day on my exile, for this is my constant prayer: ‘O Lord! Thy will be done!’ (Matthew 6:10); I will do Thy will; not what such or such an one may will, but what Thou willest. This is my tower of strength, this is my firm rock, this is my trusty staff. If God will that I go, I will go. If He will me to remain here, I will give Him thanks. Yea, whithersoever He wills me to go, I will bless His holy Name."

What humility and courage in this saintly minister of Christ! What a consolation for the Church when God sends her men like this! He has given four to the Eastern Church: Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzum, Basil and Chrysostom. In spite of the immense dangers to which faith was exposed during the age in which they lived, these four holy Doctors, by their sanctity, learning, and courage, kept it alive among the people. Athanasius and Gregory appear to us in that period of the Ecclesiastical Year when the Church is radiant with her Easter joy, and celebrates the Resurrection of her Divine Spouse. Basil’s feast gladdens us in the season of Pentecost, when the Church is filled with the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Chrysostom comes at Christmastide, and adds to the joy of the dear Mystery of Bethlehem. Let us, the favoured children of the Latin Church, which alone has preserved the primitive faith, because Peter is with her—let us honour these four faithful guardians of Tradition; let us today pay the homage of our devotion to Chrysostom, the Doctor of the universal Church, the conqueror of the world, the dauntless Pastor, the successor of the Martyrs, the Preacher par excellence, the admirer of St. Paul, and the fervent imitator of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Roman Church, in the lessons of today’s Office, thus speaks the praises of our Saint.

John, surnamed Chrysostom on account of his golden eloquence, was born at Antioch. Having gone through the study of the law and the profane sciences, he applied himself with extraordinary application and success to the study of the Sacred Scriptures. Having been admitted to holy orders, and made a Priest of the Church at Antioch, he was appointed Bishop of Constantinople, after the death of Nectarius, by the express wish of the Emperor Arcadius. No sooner had he entered upon the pastoral charge than he began to inveigh against the licentious lives led by the rich. This courageous preaching procured him many enemies. He likewise gave great offence to the Empress Eudoxia, because he had reproved her for having appropriated to herself the money belonging to a widow named Callitropa, and for having taken possession of some land which was the property of another widow.

At the instigation. Therefore, of Eudoxia, several Bishops met together at Chalcedon. Chrysostom was cited to appear, which he refused to do, because it was not a Council either lawfully or publicly convened. Whereupon he was sent into exile. He had not been gone long before the people rose in sedition, on account of the saint’s banishment, and he was recalled to the immense joy of the whole city. But his continuing to preach against the scandals which existed, and his forbidding the games held before the silver statue of Eudoxia, which was set up in the space opposite Sancta Sophia, were urged by certain Bishops, enemies of the saint, as motives for a second banishment. The widows and the poor of the city bewailed his departure as that of a father. It is incredible how much Chrysostom had to suffer in this exile, and how many he converted to the Christian Faith.

At the very time that Pope Innocent the First, in a Council held at Rome, was issuing a decree ordering that Chrysostom should be set at liberty, he was being treated by the soldiers, who were taking him into exile, with unheard-of harshness and cruelty. Whilst passing through Armenia, the holy Martyr Basiliscus, in whose Church he had offered up a prayer, thus spoke to him during the night: “Brother John I we shall be united together tomorrow.”

Whereupon on the following morning, Chrysostom received the sacrament of the Eucharist, and signing himself with the sign of the cross, he breathed forth his soul to his God, on the eighteenth of the Kalends of October (September 14th). A fearful hail-storm happened at Constantinople after the Saint’s death, and four days after, the Empress died. Theodosius, the son of Arcadius, had the saint’s body brought to Constantinople with all due honour, where, amidst a large concourse of people, it was buried on the sixth of the Kalends of February (January 27th). Theodosius, whilst devoutly venerating the saint’s relics, interceded for his parents, that they might be forgiven.

The body was, at a later period, translated to Rome, and placed in the Vatican Basilica. All men agree in admiring the unction and eloquence of his numerous sermons, as indeed of all his other writings. He is also admirable in his interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures, which he explains in their genuine sense. It has always been thought that he was aided, in his writings and sermons, by St. Paul the Apostle, to whom he entertained an extraordinary devotion. This most renowned Doctor of the Church was by Pope St. Pius X declared and appointed heavenly Patron of the preachers of holy things.

Article 35

Lessons from the Christmas Saints
St. Vincent & St. Anastasius

Saint Vincent, Deacon and Martyr Vincent, the Victorious, vested in the sacred dalmatic, and holding his palm in his hand, comes, today, to the Crib, and right welcome is he to Stephen, the Crowned, his leader and his brother. Spain is his country. He is a deacon of the glorious Church of Saragossa, and, by the strength and warmth of his faith, he is a type of that land, which is pre-eminently the Catholic Kingdom. But he does not belong to Spain only: like Stephen, and like Laurence, Vincent is the favorite and hero of the whole Church. Stephen, the deacon, preached the divinity of Jesus amidst the shower of stones which were hurled upon him as a blasphemer; Vincent, the deacon, confessed his faith in Jesus upon his red-hot gridiron, as did that other deacon, Laurence. This triumvirate of Martyr-deacons cluster together in the sacred Litany, and when we hear their three grand names, the Crown, the Laurel, and the Conqueror, we hail them as the three bravest Knights of our most dear Lord.

Vincent triumphed over the torture of fire, because the flame of divine love which burned within his soul was keener than that which scorched his body. He was comforted in the most miraculous manner during his great sufferings; but God worked these prodigies not to deprive Vincent of his crown, but to show his own power. The holy deacon had but one thought in the midst of all his pains; he was ambitious to make a return, by the gift of his own life, for that sacrifice whereby his divine Master had died for him and for all men. And now, is it not right and just that so generous a lover of God should be found beside the, Crib? How he urges us, every Christmas, to love this Divine Infant! He that hesitated not, when called on to give himself to his Lord, even though it was to cost him such cruel pains-what cowards would he not call us, who can come so many Christmases to Bethlehem, and have nothing to give but cold and divided hearts!

His sacrifice was to be burnt alive and torn and cut, and he smiled as he offered it: what are we to say of ourselves, who take years to think before we will give up those childish things which prevent us from ever seriously beginning a new life with our new-born Jesus! Would that the sight of all these Martyrs, in whose company the Church has made us live during these few last days, would touch our hearts, and make them resolute and simple!

There is an ancient Christian tradition, which makes St Vincent the patron of vineyards and laborers in vineyards. This was, no doubt, suggested by the Saint's having held the office of deacon; for the deacon has to pour wine into the chalice during the holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and that wine is to be changed into the Blood of Christ. A few days ago, we assisted at the mystery of the Feast at Cana; Jesus then offered us the sacred cup, the wine of his love: today, again, he offers it to us by the hand of his Martyr Vincent. To make himself worthy of his high office, the holy deacon mingled his own blood, as a generous wine, in the cup that holds the price of the world's salvation. It is thus that we are to understand that expression of St. Paul, which says that the Saints fill up in the flesh, by the merit of their sufferings, those things that are wanting, not in their efficacy, but in their fullness, of the Sufferings of Christ, whose members the Saints are.

Article 36

Lessons from the Christmas Saints
St. Peter Nolasco

The Ransomer of Captives, Peter Nolasco, is thus brought before us by the Calendar, a few days after the Feast of his master, Raymund of Pennafort. Both of them offer to the Divine Redeemer the thousands of Christians they ransomed from slavery. It is an appropriate homage, for it was the result of the Charity which first began in Bethlehem, in the heart of the Infant Jesus, and was afterwards so fervently practiced by these two Saints.

Peter was born in France, but made Spain his adopted country, because it offered him such grand opportunities for zeal and self-sacrifice. In imitation of our Redeemer, he devoted himself to the ransom of his brethren; he made himself a prisoner to procure them their liberty; and remained in exile, that they might once more enjoy the happiness of home. His devotedness was blessed by God. He founded a new Religious Order in the Church, composed of generous-hearted men, who for six hundred years prayed, toiled, and spent their lives in obtaining the blessing of liberty for countless captives, who would else have led their whole lives in chains, exposed to the imminent danger of losing their Faith.

Glory to the Blessed Mother of God, who raised up these ransomers of Captives! Glory to the Catholic Church, whose children they were! But above all glory be to our Emmanuel, who, on his entrance into this world, thus spoke to his Eternal Father: “Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldst not, neither are they pleasing to thee; but a Body thou hast fitted unto Me. Then said I: ‘Behold I come’―that is, ‘Behold, I come to offer Myselfas a Sacrifice.’” The Divine Infant has deigned to call us his brethren, and has given himself for our salvation; it is this same spirit of charity which made St Peter Nolasco devote his life to his suffering fellow-men.

Our Lord rewarded him by calling him to Heaven at that very hour wherein twelve hundred years before He Himself had been born at Bethlehem. It was during the joyful celebrations of Christmas night that the liberator of so many from bodily captivity was united for ever to the Divine Liberator of souls.

Peter’s last hymn on Earth was the 110th Psalm: and as his faltering voice uttered the words: “He hath sent redemption to Hs people, He hath commanded His covenant for ever”― his soul took its flight to Heaven.

The Church, in fixing a day for the feast of our Saint, could not of course take the anniversary of his death, which belongs so exclusively to Jesus: but it was just that he, who had been honored with being born to Heaven at the very hour which God had chosen for the Birth of His Son upon the Earth, should receive the tribute of our festive commemoration on one of the forty days of Christmas; this last day of January was selected.

Article 37

Lessons from the Christmas Saints
St. Ignatius of Antioch

Two days more, and the happy season of Christmas will be over! This is the vigil of its termination, and, behold, there comes to gladden us one of the grandest martyrs of the year―Ignatius, surnamed the Theophorus, Bishop of Antioch. A venerable tradition tells us that this old man, who so generously confessed the Faith before Trajan, was the child whom Jesus took into His arms, and showed to His Disciples as a model of that simplicity which we must all have if we would enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Today he appears before us, standing near the Crib in which this same Jesus gives us His own divine lessons of humility and simplicity.

But, in this the Court of our Emmanuel, Ignatius stands near to Peter, the Feast of whose Chair we kept a few days since; for the Prince of the Apostles made him his second successor in his first See of Antioclh. From so honoured a position Ignatius derived that courage which made him resist a powerful Emperor―even to his face―defy the wild beasts of the amphitheater, and triumph by a glorious martyrdom. As it were to show the supremacy of the See of Rome, Divine Providence willed that he, with his chains upon him, should go to see Peter, and finish his course in the Holy City, and thus mingle his blood with that of the Apostles. Rome would have been imperfect without the glory of Ignatius' martyrdom, which is the pride of her Coliseum, rich as it is with the blood of so many thousands of martyrs.

His chief characteristic is impetuous love for God. He has but one fear―it is that the prayers of the Romans will stay the lions from devouring him, and his desire of being united to Christ be thus denied him. Let us admire this superhuman fortitude, which shows itself thus suddenly in the pagan world, and let us acknowledge that so ardent a love of God, and so vehement a longing to possess Him, could only have come from the accomplishment of the Mysteries of our Redemption, which showed man how much God loved him. The Crib of Bethlehem, even had there never been the Sacrifice of Calvary, would of itself be sufficient to convince us of all this. God comes down from Heaven for the sake of His creature, man; He Himself becomes Man, nay, a Child, and is laid in a manger! Such miracles of love would have sufficed to save the guilty world; how then shall they not have power to prompt men to give their whole heart to their loving God? And would it be too much if we made a sacrifice of' our very lives to repay Jesus for only that much of His love which He showed us by being born among us?

Article 38

Lessons from the Christmas Saints
St. Timothy

Before giving thanks to God for the miraculous Conversion of the Apostle of the Gentiles, the Church assembles us together for the feast of his favorite disciple. Timothy ― the indefatigable companion of St Paul ― the friend to whom the great Apostle, a few days before shedding his blood for Christ, wrote his last Epistle ― comes now to await his master's arrival at the Crib of the Emmanuel.

He there meets John the Beloved Disciple, together with whom he bore the anxieties attendant on the government of the Church of Ephesus; Stephen too, and the other martyrs, welcome him, for he also bears a martyr's palm in his hand. He presents to the august Mother of the Divine Babe the respectful homage of the Church of Ephesus, which Mary had sanctified by her presence, and which shares with the Church of Jerusalem the honor of having had her as one of its number, who was not only, like the Apostles, the witness, but moreover, in her quality of Mother of God, the ineffable instrument of the salvation of mankind.

Let us now read, in the Office of the Church, the abridged account of the actions of this zealous disciple of the Apostles.

Timothy was born at Lystra in Lycaonia. His father was a Gentile, and his mother a Jewess. When the Apostle Paul came into those parts, Timothy was a follower of the Christian. The Apostle had heard much of his holy life, and was thereby induced to take him as the companion of his travels: but on account of the Jews, who had become converts to the faith of Christ, and were aware that the father of Timothy was a Gentile, he administered to him the rite of circumcision.

As soon as they arrived at Ephesus, the Apostle ordained him Bishop of that Church.

The Apostle addressed two of his Epistles to him-one from Laodicea, the other from Rome to instruct him how to discharge his pastoral office. He could not endure to see sacrifice, which is due to God alone, offered to the idols of devils; and finding that the people of Ephesus were offering victims to Dianaon her festival, he strove to make them desist from their impious rites. But they, turning upon him, stoned him.

The Christians could not deliver him from their hands, till he was more dead than alive. They carried him to a mountain not far from the town, and there, on the ninth of the Kalends of February (January24), he slept in the Lord.

In thee, O holy Pontiff, we honor one of the disciples of the Apostles-one of the links which connect us immediately with Christ. Thou appearest to us all illumined by thy intercourse with Paul the great Doctor of the Gentiles.

Another of his disciples, Dionysius the Areopagite, made thee the confidant of his sublime contemplations on the Divine Names; but now, bathed in light eternal, thou thyself art contemplating the Sun of Justice, in the beatific vision.

Intercede for us, who enjoy but a glimpse of his beauty through the veil of his humiliations, that we may so love him, as to merit to see him one day in his glory.

In order to lessen the pressure of the corruptible body, which weighs down the soul, thou didst subject thy outward man to so rigorous a penance that St. Paul exhorted thee to moderate it: do thou assist us in our endeavors to reduce our flesh to obedience to the spirit.

The Church reads without ceasing the counsels, which the Apostle gave to thee, and to all Pastors through thee, for the election and the conduct of the clergy: pray that the Church may be blessed with Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, endowed with all those qualifications which he requires from the dispensers of the mysteries of God.

Lastly, we beseech thee, who didst ascend to heaven decked with the aureole of martyrdom, encourage us who are also soldiers of Christ, that we may throw aside our cowardice, and win that kingdom where he welcomes and crowns his elect for all eternity.

Article 39

Lessons from the Christmas Saints
The Conversion of St. Paul

We have already seen how the Gentiles, in the person of the Three Magi, offered their mystic gifts to the Divine Child of Bethlehem, and received from Him in return the precious gifts of Faith, Hope and Charity.

The harvest is ripe; it is time for the reaper to come. But who is to be God’s laborer? The Apostles of Christ are still living under the very shadow of Mount Sion. All of them have received the mission to preach the gospel of salvation to the uttermost parts of the world; but not one among them has as yet received the special character of Apostle of the Gentiles.

Peter, who had received the Apostleship of Circumcision, is sent specially, as was Christ himself, to the sheep that are lost of the house of Israel. And yet, as he is the Head and the Foundation, it belongs to him to open the door of Faith to the Gentiles; which he solemnly does by conferring Baptism on Cornelius, the Roman Centurion.

But the Church is to have one more Apostle, an Apostle for the Gentiles; and he is to be the fruit of the martyrdom and prayer of St. Stephen. Saul, a citizen of Tarsus, has not seen Christ in the flesh, and yet Christ alone can make an .Apostle. It is then from Heaven, where he reigns impassible and glorified, that Jesus will call Saul to be his disciple, just as, during the period of his active life, he called the fishermen of Genesareth to follow him and hearken to his teachings. The Son of God will raise Saul up to the third heaven, and there will reveal to him all his mysteries: and when Saul, having come down again to this Earth, shall have seen Peter, and compared his Gospel with that recognized by Peter,· he can say, in all truth, that he is an Apostle of Christ Jesus, and that he has done nothing less than the great Apostles.

It is on this glorious day of the Conversion of Saul. who is soon to change his name into Paul, that this great work is commenced. It is on this day that there is heard the Almighty voice which breaketh the cedars of Libanus,6 and can make a persecuting Jew become first a Christian and then an Apostle. This admirable transformation had been prophesied by Jacob, when upon his deathbed he unfolded to each of his sons the future of the tribe of which he was to be the father. Juda was to have the precedence of honor; from his royal race was to be born the Redeemer, the Expected of nations. Benjamin’s turn came; his glory is not to be compared with that of his brother ]uda, and yet it was to be very great-for from his tribe is to be born Paul, the Apostle o~ the Gentile nations.

These are the words of the dying Prophet: Benjamin. a ravenous wolf, in the morning shall eat the prey, and in the evening shall divide the spoil.· Who, says an ancient writer, is he that in the morning of impetuous youth goes like a wolf in pursuit of the sheep of Christ, breathing threatenings and slaughter against them? Is it not Saul on the road to Damascus, the bearer and doer of the high-priest’s orders, and stained with the blood of Stephen, whom he has stoned by the hands of all those over whose garments he kept watch? And he who in the evening, not only does not despoil, but with a charitable and peaceful hand breaks to the hungry the bread of life-is it not Paul, of the tribe of Benjamin, the Apostle of Christ, burning with zeal for his brethren, making himself all to all, and wishing even to be an anathema for their sakes?

Oh! the power of our dear Jesus! how wonderful I how irresistible I He wishes that the first worshippers at his Crib should be humble Shepherds-and he invites them by his Angels, whose sweet hymn was enough to lead these simple-hearted men to the Stable, where, in swaddling-clothes, he lies who is the hope of Israel. He would have the Gentile Princes, the Magi, do him homage-and bids a star to arise in the heavens, whose mysterious apparition, joined to the interior speaking of the Holy Ghost, induces these men of desire to come from the far East, and lay at the feet of an humble Babe their riches and their hearts.

When the time is come for forming the Apostolic College, He approaches the banks of the sea of Tiberias, and with this single word: “Follow Me!” He draws after Him such as He wishes to have as His Disciples.

In the midst of all the humiliations of His Passion, He has but to look at the unfaithful Peter, and Peter is a penitent. Today, it is from Heaven that He evinces His power: all the mysteries of our redemption have been accomplished, and He wishes to show mankind that He is the sole Author and Master of the Apostolate, and that His alliance with the Gentiles is now perfect: He speaks; the sound of His reproach bursts like thunder over the head of this hot Pharisee, who is bent on annihilating the Church; He takes this heart of the Jew, and, by His grace, turns it into the heart of the Apostle, the Vessel of election, the Paul who is afterwards to say of himself: “I live, not I, but Christ liveth in me!” (Galatians 2:20)

The commemoration of this great event was to be a Feast in the Church, and it had a right to be kept as near as might be to the one which celebrates the martyrdom of St. Stephen, for Paul is the Protomartyr’s convert.

The anniversary of his martyrdom would, of course, have to be solemnized at the summer solstice; where, then, place the feast of his Conversion if not near Christmas, and thus our own Apostle would be at Jesus’ Crib, and Stephen’s side? Moreover, the Magi could claim him, as being the conqueror of that Gentile world of which they were the first-fruits.

And lastly, it was necessary, in order to give the court of our Infant-King its full beauty, that the two Princes of the Church―the Apostle of the Jews, and the Apostle of the Gentiles―should stand close to the mystic Crib; Peter with his Keys, and Paul with his Sword. Bethlehem thus becomes the perfect figure of the Church, and the riches of this season of the Cycle are abundant beyond measure.

Article 40

The Final Day of the Christmas Season
The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The Forty Days of Mary’s Purification are now completed, and she must go up to the Temple, there to offer to God her Child Jesus. Before following the Son and His Mother in this their mysterious journey, let us spend our last few moments at Bethlehem, in lovingly pondering over the mysteries at which we are going to assist.

The Law commanded that a woman, who had given birth to a son, should not approach the Tabernacle for the term of forty days; after which time she was to offer a sacrifice for her purification. She was to offer up a lamb as a holocaust, and a turtle or dove as a sin-offering. But if she were poor, and could not provide a lamb, she was to offer, in its stead, a second turtle or dove.

By another ordinance of the Law, every first-born son was to be considered as belonging to God, and was to be redeemed by five sicles―each sicle weighing, according to the standard of the Temple, twenty obols. Mary was a Daughter of Israel―she had given birth to Jesus―he was her First-born Son. Could such a Mother and such a Son be included in the laws we have just quoted? Was it becoming that Mary should observe them?

If she considered the spirit of these legal enactments, and why God required the ceremony of Purification, it was evident that she was not bound to them. They, for whom these laws had been made, were espoused to men; Mary was the chaste Spouse of the Holy Ghost, a Virgin in conceiving and a Virgin in giving birth to her Son; her purity had ever been spotless as that of the Angels; but it received an incalculable increase, by her carrying the God of all sanctity in her womb, and bringing Him into this world. Moreover, when she reflected upon her Child being the Creator and Sovereign Lord of all things, how could she suppose that He was to be submitted to the humiliation of being ransomed as a slave, whose life and person are not his own?

And yet the Holy Spirit revealed to Mary that she must comply with both these laws. She, the holy Mother of God, must go to the Temple like other Hebrew mothers, as though she had lost something which needed restoring by a legal sacrifice. He, that is the Son of God and Son of Man, must be treated in all things as though He were a servant, and be ransomed in common with the poorest Jewish boy. Mary adores the will of God, and embraces it with her whole heart.

The Son of God was only to be made known to the world by gradual revelations. For thirty years He led a hidden life in the insignificant village of Nazareth; and during all that time men took Him to be the son of Joseph. It was only in His thirtieth year, that John the Baptist announced Him, and then only in mysterious words, to the Jews, who flocked to the Jordan, there to receive from the Prophet the baptism of penance. Our Lord Himself gave the next revelation, the testimony of His wonderful works and miracles. Then came the humiliations of His Passion and Death, followed by His glorious Resurrection, which testified to the truth of His prophecies, proved the infinite merits of His Sacrifice, and in a word, proclaimed His Divinity. The Earth had possessed its God and its Savior for three and thirty years, and men, with a few exceptions, knew it not.

The Shepherds of Bethlehem knew it; but they were not told, as were afterwards the Fishermen of Genesareth, to go and preach the Word to the furthermost parts of the world. The Magi, too, knew it; they came to Jerusalem and spoke of it, and the City was in a commotion; but all was soon forgotten, and the Three Kings went back quietly to the East. These two events, which would, at a future day, be celebrated by the Church as events of most important interest to mankind, were lost upon the world, and the only ones that appreciated them were a few true Israelites, who had been living in expectation of a Messias, who was to be poor and humble, and was to save the world. The majority of the Jews would not even listen to the Messias having been born; for Jesus was born at Bethlehem, and the Prophets had distinctly foretold that the Messias was to be called a Nazarene.

The same Divine plan, which had required that Mary should be espoused to Joseph, in order that her fruitful Virginity might not seem strange in the eyes of the people, now obliged her to come, like other Israelite mothers, to offer the sacrifice of Purification for the birth of the Son, Whom she had conceived by the operation of the power of the Holy Ghost, but Who was to be presented in the Temple as the Son of Mary, the Spouse of Joseph. Thus, it is that Infinite Wisdom delights in showing that His thoughts are not our thoughts, and in disconcerting our notions; He claims the submissiveness of our confidence, until the time that He has fixed for withdrawing the veil, and showing Himself to our astonished view.

The Divine Will was dear to Mary in this as in every circumstance of her life. The Holy Virgin knew that by seeking this external rite of Purification, she was in no wise risking the honor of her Child, or failing in the respect due to her own Virginity. She was, in the Temple of Jerusalem, what she was in the house of Nazareth, when she received the Archangel’s visit; she was the Handmaid of the Lord. She obeyed the Law because she seemed to come under the Law. Her God and her Son submitted to the ransom as humbly as the poorest Hebrew would have to do; He had already obeyed the edict of the emperor Augustus in the general census; He was to be obedient even unto death, even to the death of the Cross. The Mother and the Child both humbled themselves in the Purification, and man’s pride received, on that day, one of the greatest lessons ever given it.

What a journey was this of Mary and Joseph, from Bethlehem to Jerusalem! The Divine Babe is in His Mother’s arms; she had Him on her heart the whole way. Heaven and Earth and all nature are sanctified by the gracious presence of their merciful Creator. Men look at this Mother, as she passes along the road, with her sweet Jesus; some are struck with her appearance, others pass her by as not worth a look; but of the whole crowd, there was not one that knew he had been so close to the God Who had come to save him.

Joseph is carrying the humble offering, which the Mother is to give to the Priest. They are too poor to buy a lamb; besides, their Jesus is the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world. The Law required that a turtle or dove should be offered in the place of a lamb, when the mother was poor. Innocent birds, emblems of purity, fidelity and simplicity. Joseph has also provided the five sides, the ransom to be given for the First-born Son-Mary’s only Son, who has vouchsafed to make us His brethren, and, by adopting our nature, to render us partakers of His.

At length the Holy Family enter Jerusalem. The name of this holy City signifies Vision of Peace; and Jesus comes to bring her Peace. Let us consider the names of the three places in which our Redeemer began, continued and ended His life on Earth. He is conceived at Nazareth, which signifies a Flower; and Jesus is, as He tells us in the Canticle, the Flower of the field and the Lily of the valley, by whose fragrance we are refreshed. He is born at Bethlehem, the House of Bread; for He is the nourishment of our souls. He dies on the Cross in Jerusalem. And, by His Blood, He restores peace between Heaven and Earth, peace between men, peace within our own souls; and. on this day of His Mother’s Purification, we shall find Him giving us the pledge of this peace.

Whilst Mary, the Living Ark of the Covenant, is ascending the steps which lead up to the Temple, carrying Jesus in her arms, let us be attentive to the mystery; one of the most celebrated of the prophecies is about to be accomplished in this Infant. We have already had the other predictions fulfilled of His being conceived of a Virgin and born in Bethlehem; today He shows us a further title to our adoration―He enters the Temple.

This edifice is not the magnificent Temple of Solomon, which was destroyed by fire during the Jewish captivity. It is the second Temple, which was built after the return from Babylon, and is not comparable to the first in beauty. Before the century is out, it also is to be destroyed; and our Savior will soon tell the Jews that not a stone shall remain on stone that shall not be thrown down. Now. the Prophet Aggeus, in order to console the Jews, who had returned from banishment and were grieving, because they were unable to raise a House to the Lord equal in splendor to that built by Solomon, addressed these words to them, which mark the time of the coming of the Messias:

“Take courage, O Zorababel, saith the Lord; and take courage, O Jesus, the son of Josedec, the High Priest; and take courage, all ye people of the land―for thus saith the Lord of hosts: Yet one little while, and I will move the Heaven, and the Earth, and the sea, and the dry land. And I will move all nations; and the Desired of all nations shall come; and I will fill this House with glory. Great shall be the glory of this House, more than of the first and in this place I will give Peace, saith the Lord of hosts.” The hour is come for the fulfillment of this prophecy.

The Emmanuel has left Bethlehem; He has come among the people; He is about to take possession of His Temple, and the mere fact of His entering it, will at once give it a glory, which is far above that of its predecessor. He will often visit it during His mortal life; but His coming to it today, carried as He is in Mary’s arms, is enough for the accomplishment of the promise, and all the shadows and figures of this Temple at once pale before the rays of the Sun of Truth and Justice. The blood of oxen and goats will, for a few years more, flow on its altar; but the Infant, Who holds in His veins the Blood that is to redeem the world, is at this moment standing near that very altar. Amidst the Priests who are there, and amidst the crowd of Israelites, who are moving to and fro in the sacred building, there are a few faithful ones, who are in expectation of the Deliverer, and they know that the time of His manifestation is at hand; but there is not one among them who knows that, at this very moment, the Messias has entered the House of God.

But this great event could not be accomplished without a prodigy being wrought by the Eternal God, as a welcome to His Son. The Shepherds had been summoned by the Angel, and the Magi had been called by the Star, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem―this time it is the Holy Ghost Himself who sends a witness to the Infant, now in the great Temple.

There was then living in Jerusalem an old man, whose life was weII-nigh spent. He was a man of desires, and his name was Simeon; his heart had longed unceasingly for the Messias, and at last his hope was recompensed. The Holy Ghost revealed to him that he should not see death without first seeing the rising of the Divine Light. As Mary and Joseph were ascending the steps of the Temple, to take Jesus to the altar, Simeon felt within himself the strong impulse of the Spirit of God, he leaves his house, and walks towards the Temple; the ardor of his desire makes him forget the feebleness of age. He reaches the porch of God’s House, and there, amidst the many mothers who had come to present their children, his inspired gaze recognizes the Virgin, of whom he had so often read in Isaias, and he presses through the crowd to the Child she is holding in her arms.

Mary, guided by the same Divine Spirit, welcomes the saintly old man, and puts into his trembling arms the dear object of her love, the Salvation of the world. Happy Simeon! Figure of the ancient world, grown old in its expectation, and near its end. No sooner has he received the sweet Fruit of Life, than his youth is renewed as that of the eagle, and in his person is wrought the transformation, which was to be granted to the whole human race. He cannot keep silence; he must sing a Canticle; he must do as the Shepherds and Magi had done, he must give testimony: Now, says he, now, O Lord, Thou dost dismiss Thy servant in Peace, because my eyes have seen Thy Salvation, which Thou hast prepared―a Light that is to enlighten the Gentiles, and give glory to Thy people Israel.

Immediately there comes, attracted to the spot by the same Holy Spirit, the holy Anna, Phanuel’s daughter, noted for her piety, and venerated by the people on account of her great age. Simeon and Anna, the representatives of the Old Testament, unite their voices, and celebrate the happy coming of the Child, Who is to renew the face of the Earth; they give· praise to the mercy of Jehovah, Who, in this place, in this second Temple, gives Peace to the world, as the Prophet Aggeus had foretold.

This was the Peace so long looked forward to by Simeon, and now in this Peace will he sleep. Now, O Lord, as he says in his Canticle, Thou dost dismiss Thy servant, according to Thy word, in Peace! His soul, quitting its bond of the flesh, will now hasten to the bosom of Abraham, and bear to the elect, who rest there, the tidings that Peace has appeared on the Earth, and will soon open Heaven. Anna has some years still to pass on Earth; as the Evangelist tells us, she has to go and announce the fullfihnent of the promises to such of the Jews as were spiritually minded, and looked for the Redemption of Israel. The divine seed is sown; the Shepherds, the Magi, Simeon and Anna, have all been its sowers; it will spring up in due time; and when our Jesus has spent His thirty years of hidden life in Nazareth, and shall come for the harvest-time, He will say to his Disciples: Lift up your eyes, and see the countries, for they are white, all ready for the harvest; pray ye the Lord of the harvest, that He send laborers into His harvest.

Simeon gives back to Mary the Child she is going to offer to the Lord. The two doves are presented to the Priest, who sacrifices them on the Altar; the price for the ransom is paid; the whole law is satisfied; and after having paid her homage to her Creator in this sacred place, where she spent her early years, Mary, with Jesus pressed to her bosom, and her faithful Joseph by her side, leaves the Temple.

Such is the mystery of this fortieth day, which closes, by this admirable feast of the Purification, the holy season of Christmas. Several learned writers, among whom we may mention Henschenius and Pope Benedict the Fourteenth, are of opinion that this Solemnity was instituted by the Apostles themselves. This much is certain, that it was a long-established feast even in the fifth century.

The Greek Church and the Church of Milan, count this feast among those of Our Lord; but the Church of Rome has always considered it as a feast of the Blessed Virgin. It is true, it is our Savior Who is this day offered in the Temple; but this offering is the consequence of Our Lady’s Purification. The most ancient of the Western Martyrologies and Calendars call it “The Purification.” The honor, thus paid by the Church to the Mother, tends in reality to the greater glory of her Divine Son, for He is the Author and the End of all those prerogatives which we revere and honor in Mary.