Saints Biographical Index

(When the first Sunday occurring in the year falls on January 1 or 6, or 7, the feast of the holy Name is kept on January 2.) The second Sunday after the Epiphany, which recalls the Marriage feast of Cana, was at first chosen as the day on which to honour 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 honour 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.

St Benet Biscop is one of the great Benedictine saints to whom England owes so much. His devotion and loyalty to the Holy See, his love of learning, his zeal for the beauty of the house of God, for the monastic observance and for the Church's chant, show him to be a true monk, though his influence extended far wider than the narrow limits of his monastery, and affected the social condition of the people and the whole life of the Church in England. His feast is kept in several dioceses in England, but as there is no uniformity with regard to the date, we have inserted it in our calendar on the day of his death.

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR ST KENTIGERN, whose feast is kept to-day in several dioceses of the North of England and in Scotland, stands out as one of the zealous monks of the sixth century who laboured incessantly for the conversion of the inhabitants of these 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 neighbourhood 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.

BISHOP, CONFESSOR, AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH 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, on the very morrow of the day consecrated to the Baptism of Jesus, the faithful and courageous Hilary—the pride of the...

PRIEST AND MARTYR ENCIRCLED by the radiant splendours of the Epiphany, there comes before us to-day, 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.

Saint Maurus—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—shares with the First Hermit the honours 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.

POPE AND MARTYR The name of Marcellus is brought before us by the Calendar to-day: he was a successor of the glorious Hyginus in the papacy and in martyrdom, and their Feasts fall in the same season of the year. Each Christmastide shows us these two Pontiffs offering their Keys in homage to Jesus, the invisible Head of the Church they governed. In a few days hence, we shall find our Christmas list of Saints giving us the name of a third Pope and Martyr, Fabian.

The East and West unite, to-day, 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; he permitted them to cluster round his cell; and monasteries thus began to be built in the desert.

The Archangel Gabriel told Mary, in the Annunciation, that the Son who was to be born of her should be a King, and that of his Kingdom there should be no end. Hence, when the Magi were led from the East to the Crib of Jesus, they proclaimed it in Jerusalem that they came to seek a King. But this new Empire needed a capital; and whereas the King, who was to fix his throne in it, was, according to the eternal decrees, to re-ascend into heaven, it was necessary that the visible character of his Royalty should be left here on earth, and this even to the end of the world.

KING AND MARTYR THE Magi Kings, as we have already observed, have been followed to the Crib of Jesus by saintly Christian monarchs; and it was just that these should be represented on the Church's Calendar during the season which is consecrated to the Mystery of his Birth. The eleventh century is one of the most glorious of the Christian era, and gave, both to the Church and the various States of Europe, a great number of saintly Kings. Among them Canute the Fourth of Denmark stands pre-eminent by reason of the aureole of his martyrdom.

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR SEVERAL dioceses in England celebrate on this day the feast of St Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester. The last of the Anglo-Saxon saints, Wulstan was worthy to close the long line of men and women who had earned for the country the proud title of 'Insula Sanctorum.' His character as sketched by a contemporary is singularly attractive. A simple man, strong in his simplicity, yet kindly and gifted with a merry wit, he held straight on his course in God's service as priest, monk, prior, and bishop, spending himself in the laborious offices of his ministry, much more intent on the burdens of his position than on its emoluments.

CHRISTIANS from all parts of the world have ever flocked to Rome as to the rock of faith and the foundation of the Church, and honoured with the greatest reverence and piety the spot hallowed by the sepulchre of the Prince of the Apostles.¹ These words of Holy Church are exemplified in the Martyrs of to-day. Fired with ambition to have some part and fellowship in the glorious Society of the holy Apostles and Martyrs, they left all things and hastened to the Eternal City, there to receive in fullest measure what they sought. Like the Magi of old they came from the far East.

POPE AND MARTYR SAINT SEBASTIAN TWO great Martyrs divide between them the honours of this twentieth day of January:—one, a Pontiff of the Church of Rome; the other, a member of that Mother-Church. Fabian received the crown of martyrdom, in the year 250, under the persecution of Decius; the persecution of Diocletian crowned Sebastian in the year 288. We will consider the merits of these two champions of Christ separately.

St Fabian, like St Clement and St Antherus, two of his predecessors, was extremely zealous in seeing that the Acts of the Martyrs were carefully drawn up. This zeal was no doubt exercised by the clergy in the case of our holy Pontiff himself, and his sufferings and martyrdom were carefully registered; but all these interesting particulars have been lost, in common with an immense number of other precious Acts, which were condemned to the flames, by the Imperial Edicts, during the persecution under Diocletian. Nothing is now known of the life of St Fabian, save a few of his actions as Pope; but we may have some idea of his virtues by the praise given him by St Cyprian, who, in a letter written to St Cornelius, the immediate successor of St Fabian, calls him an incomparable man.

At the head of her list of heroes, after the two glorious Apostles Peter and Paul, who form her chief glory, Rome puts her two most valiant Martyrs, Laurence and Sebastian, and her two most illustrious Virgins, Cecily and Agnes. Of these four, two are given us by the Calendar of Christmastide as attendants in the court of the Infant Jesus at Bethlehem. Laurence and Cecily come later in the year, when other mysteries are brought before us by the Liturgy: but Christmas calls forth Sebastian and Agnes.

VIRGIN AND MARTYR How rich is the constellation of Martyrs, which shines in this portion of the sacred cycle! Yesterday we had St Sebastian; to-morrow we shall be singing the name which means Victory, for it is the Feast of Vincent; and now to-day, between these two stalwart palm-branches, 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 prætorian band or the dauntless deacon of Saragossa.

On this same 22nd of January, the Church honours the memory of the holy Persian monk Anastasius, who suffered Martyrdom in the year 628. Chosroes, having made himself master of Jerusalem, had carried with him into Persia the wood of the True Cross, which was afterwards recovered by Heraclius. The sight of this Holy Wood excited in the heart of Anastasius, who was then a Pagan, the desire to know the religion of which it is the trophy.

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 surnamed the Catholic Kingdom.

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR The Gothic Church of Spain deputes, today, one of her most glorious Prelates, to represent her at the Crib of the Divine Babe, and to celebrate his ineffable Birth. The praise, which falls from Ildephonsus' lips, seems, at our first hearing it, to have the Mother's dear honour for its only theme: but, how can we honour the Mother, without at the same time proclaiming the praise of the Son, to whose Birth she owes all her greatness? Among the glorious Pontiffs, who honoured the noble episcopate of Spain, during the 7th and 8th centuries — for example: Leander, Isidore, Fulgentius, Braulio, Eugenius, Julian, Helladius — among them, and in the foremost rank, stands Ildephonsus, with his glory of having been the Doctor of the Virginity of the Mother of God, just as...

The glorious choir of martyrs, that stands round our Emmanuel till the day of his Presentation in the Temple, opens its ranks from time to time to give admission to the confessors, whom divine Providence has willed should grace the cycle during this sacred season. The martyrs surpass all the other saints in number; but still, the confessors are well represented. After Hilary, Paul, Maurus, and Antony, comes Raymund of Pennafort, one of the glories of the Order of St Dominic and of the Church, in the thirteenth According to the saying of the Prophets, the Messias is come to be our Lawgiver; nay, he is himself our law.

BISHOP AND MARTYR 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 favourite 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.

THE FIRST HERMIT To-day the Church honours 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.

BISHOP AND MARTYR MIDST the sweetness he is enjoying from the contemplation of the Word made Flesh, John, the Beloved Disciple, beholds coming towards him his dear Polycarp, the Angel of the Church of Smyrna,¹ all resplendent with the glory of martyrdom. This venerable Saint has in his soul the fervent love that made him say in the amphitheatre, when asked by the Proconsul to curse his Divine Master: "Six-and-eighty years have I served Him, and he has never done me any wrong; nay, he has laden me with kindness. How could I blaspheme my King, who has saved me?" After having suffered fire and the sword, he was admitted into the presence of this King his Saviour, in reward for the eighty-six years of his faithful service, for the labours he had gone through in order to maintain faith and...

BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH 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.

In many Churches, especially in Germany, there is kept, on the second Feast of the Martyr Agnes, the Feast of the pious Emperor Charlemagne. The Emmanuel, who is come into this world, is to receive the title of King of kings and Lord of lords; he is to gird himself with the sword, and bring all nations into subjection; what could be more fitting than that he should lead to his Crib the greatest of Christian Princes, who ever made it his glory to use his sword in the service of Christ and his Church? Charlemagne was held as a Saint by the people, and the decree of his canonization was given by the Antipope Paschal the Third, in the year 1165, at the request of Frederic Barbarossa; on which account, the Holy See has permitted this public veneration to be continued in all those places where...

HER SECOND FEAST Five days after the martyrdom of the Virgin Emerentiana, the parents of the glorious Saint Agnes visited the tomb of their child, during the night, there to weep and pray. It was the eighth day since her martyrdom. Whilst they were thinking upon the cruel death, which, though it had enriched their child with a Martyr's palm, had deprived them of her society, Agnes suddenly appeared to them: she was encircled with a bright light, and wore a crown on her head, and was surrounded by a choir of virgins of dazzling beauty.

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 practised by these two Saints.

The angelical Bishop Francis of Sales has a right to a distinguished position near the Crib of Jesus, on account of the sweetness of his virtues, the childlike simplicity of his heart, and the humility and tenderness of his love. He comes with the lustre of his glorious conquests upon him—seventy-two thousand heretics converted to the Church by the ardour of his charity; an Order of holy servants of God, which he founded; and countless thousands of souls trained to piety by his prudent and persuasive words and writings. God gave him to the Church at the very time that heresy was holding her out to the world as a worn-out system, that had no influence over men's minds.

VIRGIN AND MARTYR FOURTH Roman Virgin, wearing on her brow a martyr's crown, comes today to share the honours given to Agnes, Emerentiana, and Prisca, and offer her palm to the Lamb. Her name is Martina, which the pagans were wont to give to their daughters in honour of their god of war. Her sacred relics repose at the foot of the Capitoline hill, in the ancient temple of Mars, which has now become the beautiful Church of Saint Martina.

BISHOP AND MARTYR TWO days more, and the happy season of Christmas will be over! This is the vigil of its termination, and lo! there comes to gladden us one of the grandest Martyrs of the year—Ignatius surnamed the Theophorus,¹ 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.

Mass .......................................................................................... 482 Second Vespers ......................................................................... 487 SEPTUAGESIMA SUNDAY ........................................................... 506 Mass .......................................................................................... 506 Vespers ..................................................................................... 510 SEXAGESIMA SUNDAY ............................................................... 511 Mass .......................................................................................... 511 Vespers ..................................................................................... 516 QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY...

Now that the Church has closed the joyous period of her forty days of Christmas, and is putting us through a course of meditations on subjects which are to excite a spirit of penance within us, each of the saints' feasts must produce an impression, which shall be in accordance with that spirit. From this day till Easter, we will study the saints, as they come to us, in this special light: how much they laboured and suffered during their pilgrimage of life, and what was the plan they took for conquering the world and the flesh. "They went," says the psalmist, "and wept, casting their seeds: but coming they shall come with joyfulness, carrying their sheaves."¹ It shall be the same with us; and at the end of our lenten labours, our risen Jesus will hail us as His living, regenerated...

The saintly bishop, whose feast we keep to-day, pressingly invites us, by his austere life and his burning zeal for the salvation of souls, to procure, at all costs, our own reconciliation with the divine justice. We are indebted for this feast to a member of the illustrious family of the Corsini, Pope Clement XII., who, however, was but the instrument used by divine Providence. The holy bishop of the little town of Fiesole ever sought to be unknown during his life, and God, who willed that he should be glorified by the whole Church, inspired the sovereign Pontiff to inscribe his name among the saints of the universal calendar.

Since the commencement of the ecclesiastical year, we have kept the feasts of two out of the four illustrious virgins whose names are daily honoured in the holy Sacrifice of the Lamb: the third comes to-day, lighting up the heaven of the Church with her bright soft rays. Lucy first, then Agnes, and now the gracious visit of Agatha. The fourth, Cecily, the immortal Cecily, is to be one of that magnificent constellation which gives such splendour to the closing of the year.

To-day again, it is one of the most amiable of Christ's brides that comes to console us by her presence; it is Dorothy, the simple and intrepid virgin, who strews the path of her martyrdom with prodigies of sweetest charity. The religion of Christ alone can produce in timid women, like the saint of to-day, an energy which at times surpasses that of the most valiant martyrs among men. Thus does our Lord glorify His infinite power, by crushing Satan's head with what is by nature so weak.

We are to celebrate, to-day, the Feast of a holy Bishop of the Apostolic Age—a Disciple of the Apostle St. Little is known of his life; but, by addressing to him one of his inspired Epistles, the Apostle of the Gentiles has immortalised his memory. Wheresoever the Faith of Christ has been or shall be preached, Titus' name has been venerated by the Faithful; and as long as the world lasts, the holy Church will read to her children this Epistle, which was written, indeed, to a simple Bishop of the Isle of Crete, but was dictated by the Holy Ghost, and therefore destined to be a part of those Sacred Scriptures, which contain the Word of God.

The calendar's list of martyrs is interrupted for two days; the first of these is the feast of Romuald, the hero of penance, the saint of the forests of Camaldoli. He is a son of the great patriarch St. Benedict, and, like him, is the father of many children.

We were celebrating, not many days ago, the memory of Peter Nolasco, who was inspired, by the holy Mother of God, to found an Order for the ransoming of Christian captives from the infidels: to-day, we have to honour the generous saint, to whom this sublime work was first revealed. He established, under the name of the most holy Trinity, a body of religious men, who bound themselves by vow to devote their energies, their privations, their liberty, nay, their very life, to the service of the poor slaves who were groaning under the Saracen yoke. The Order of the Trinitarians, and the Order of Mercy, though distinct, have the same end in view, and the result of their labours, during the six hundred years of their existence, has been the restoration to liberty and preservation from apostasy...

The holy virgin who this day claims the homage of our devotion and praise, is offered to us by the Church of Alexandria. Apollonia is a martyr of Christ; her name is celebrated and honoured throughout the whole world; and she comes to us on this ninth day of February, to add her own example to that which we have so recently had from her sister saints, Agatha and Dorothy; like them, she bids us fight courageously for heaven. To her this present life was a thing of little value, and no sooner did she receive God's inspiration to sacrifice it, than she did what her would-be executioners intended doing: she threw herself into the flames prepared for her.

*"I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel."*¹ These words, addressed to the serpent in the days which the Church now seeks to bring before the minds of her children, have dominated the world's history. The woman, who was the first to fall victim to Satan's deceits, was, in Mary, the first to rise. In her Immaculate Conception, in her virginal motherhood, in her offering of the new Adam to God on the mount of expiation, the new Eve made the enemy of mankind feel the power of her victorious foot; and so the rebel angel, who by man's complicity has become the prince of this world, has never ceased to direct against the woman who has triumphed over him the united forces of his double empire,...

The sister of the patriarch St. Benedict comes to us to-day, sweetly inviting us to follow her to heaven. Apollonia the martyr is succeeded by Scholastica, the fervent daughter of the cloister.

"My bow shall appear in the clouds and I will remember My covenant with you."¹ The lessons at Matins on February 11, 1858 (Thursday in Sexagesima week) recalled these words, and the world soon learned that on this very day Mary had appeared, more fair than the sign of hope which typified her at the time of the deluge. Portents, the realization of which we see in these days, were being multiplied. Mankind had grown old, and seemed about to perish in a deluge more dreadful than the former one. 'I am the Immaculate Conception,' said the Mother of divine grace to the humble child whom she chose at such a time to bear her message to the captain of the Ark of salvation.

The Church honours, on this fourteenth day of February, the memory of the holy priest Valentine, who suffered martyrdom towards the middle of the third century. The ravages of time have deprived us of the details of his life and sufferings; so that extremely little is known of our saint. This is the reason of there being no lessons of his life in the Roman liturgy.

The two brothers whom we are to honour to-day suffered martyrdom in the beginning of the second century, and their memory has ever been celebrated in the Church. The glory of the great ones of this world passes away, and men soon forget even their very names. Historians have oftentimes a difficulty in proving that such heroes ever existed, or, if they did exist, that they flourished at such a period, or achieved anything worth notice.

How venerable our saint of to-day, with his hundred and twenty years, and his episcopal dignity, and his martyr-crown! He succeeded the apostle St. James in the see of Jerusalem; he had known Jesus, and had been His disciple; he was related to Jesus, for he was of the house of David; his father was Cleophas, and his mother that Mary, whom the tie of kindred united so closely to the blessed Mother of God that she has been called her sister.

We are called upon, a second time, to honour St. Peter's chair: first, it was his pontificate in Rome; to-day, it is his episcopate at Antioch. The seven years spent by the prince of the apostles in the second of these cities, were the grandest glory she ever had; and they are too important a portion of the life of St.

Close to the faithful virgins, who form the court of Jesus, there stand those holy women, whose repentance has merited for them a prominent place in the calendar of the Church. They are the bright trophies of God's mercy. They expiated their sins by a life of penance; the tears of their compunction wiped away their guilt; He that is purity itself has found them worthy of His love, and, when pharisees affect to be shocked at His allowing them to be near Him, He warmly defends them.

It is the feast of the austere reformer of the eleventh century, Peter Damian, the precursor of the holy pontiff Gregory VII, that we are called upon to celebrate to-day. To him is due in part that glorious regeneration, which was effected at that troubled period when judgment had to begin at the house of God.² The life he had led under the monastic rule had fitted him for the great contest. So zealously did he withstand the disorders and abuses of his times, that we may attribute to him, at least in great measure, the ardent faith of the two centuries which followed the scandals of the tenth.

All ye holy apostles and evangelists, All ye holy disciples of our Lord, All ye holy Innocents, Saint Laurence, Saints Fabian and Sebastian, Saints John and Paul, Saints Cosmas and Damian, Saints Gervasius and Protasius, All ye holy martyrs, Saint Sylvester, Saint Augustine, Saint Nicholas, All ye holy bishops and confessors, All ye holy doctors, Saint Benedict, All ye holy priests and levites, All ye holy monks and hermits, Sancta Maria Magdalena, ora. Sancta Agatha, ora. Sancta Lucia, ora.

In leap-year, the feast of St. Mathias is kept on February 25 An apostle of Jesus Christ, St. Mathias, is one of the blessed choir which the Church would have us honour during the season of Septuagesima.

It is from a court that we are to be taught to-day the most heroic virtues. Casimir is a prince; he is surrounded by all the allurements of youth and luxury; and yet he passes through the snares of the world with as much safety and prudence, as though he were an angel in human form. His example shows us what we may do.

their brethren, who are surrounded by so many and great dangers. The Church, in her liturgy, thus describes to us the virtues of our young prince: Casimirus, patre Casimiro, matre Elisabetha Austriaca, Poloniæ regibus ortus, a pueritia sub optimis magistris pietate, et bonis artibus instructus, juveniles artus aspero domabat cilicio, et assiduis extenuabat jejuniis. Regii spreta lecti mollitie, dura cubabat humo, et clam intempesta nocte, pro foribus templorum pronus in terra divinam exorabat clementiam.

Saint Bartholomew, Saint Thaddeus, All ye holy apostles and All ye holy disciples of our All ye holy Innocents,

The saint we are to honour to-day is one of the sublimest and most lucid interpreters of divine truth. He rose up in the Church many centuries after the apostolic age, nay, long after the four great Latin doctors, Ambrose, Augustine; Jerome, and Gregory. The Church, the ever young and joyful mother, is justly proud of her Thomas, and has honoured him with the splendid title of the angelical doctor, on account of the extraordinary gift of understanding wherewith God had blessed him; just as his contemporary and friend, St.

The real feast of these two illustrious heroines of the faith is to-morrow, which is the anniversary of their martyrdom and triumph; but the memory of the angel of the schools, St. Thomas of Aquin, shines so brightly on the seventh of March, that it almost eclipses the two glorious stars of Africa. In consequence of this, the Holy See orders the Church to anticipate their feast, and keep it to-day.

At the recent revision of the Breviary the office of this feast was changed, and the following lessons were appointed to be read at Matins: Perpetua and Felicitas were arrested during the persecution of the Emperor Severus, in Africa, together with Revocatus, Saturninus, and Secundulus, and were cast into a darksome dungeon, where Satyrus was added to their company. They were as yet catechumens, but a short while after they were baptized. After a few days, they, with their companions, were led forth from their prison to the court, and, after a glorious confession, were condemned by the procurator visionibus recreantur, et ad martyrii palmam accenduntur.

This day month we were keeping the feast of St. John of Matha, whose characteristic virtue was charity; our saint of to-day was like him: love for his neighbour led him to devote himself to the service of them that most needed help. Both are examples to us of what is a principal duty of this present season: they are models of fraternal charity.

who had witnessed what had happened, that the disciples of charity have a fire within their hearts more active than any which could burn the body. Among the virtues wherein he wonderfully excelled, may be mentioned his many practices of bodily mortification, profound obedience, extreme poverty, love of prayer, contemplation, and devotion to the blessed Virgin. He also possessed, in an extraordinary degree, the gift of tears.

The period intervening between the Purification of our blessed Lady and Ash Wednesday (when it occurs at its latest date), gives us thirty-six days; and these offer us feasts of every order of saint. The apostles have given us St. Mathias, and St.

POPE AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH Among all the pastors whom our Lord Jesus Christ has placed, as His vicegerents, over the universal Church, there is not one whose merits and renown have surpassed those of the holy Pope, whose feast we keep to-day. His name is Gregory, which signifies watchfulness; his surname is 'the Great,' and he was in possession of that title, when God sent the Seventh Gregory, the glorious Hildebrand, to govern In recounting the glories of this illustrious Pontiff, it is but natural we should begin with his zeal for the services of the Church. The Roman liturgy, which owes to him some of its finest hymns, may be considered as his work, at least in this sense, that it is he who collected together and classified the prayers and rites drawn up by his predecessors, and...

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR THE saint we have to honour to-day is the apostle of that faithful people, whose martyrdom has lasted three hundred years: it is the great St. Patrick, he that gave Erin the faith. There shone most brightly in this saint that gift of the apostolate, which Christ has left to His Church, and which is to remain with her to the end of time.

BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH IT was right that the Church should honour, during these days devoted to the instruction of catechumens, the Pontiff whose very name suggests the zeal and knowledge which pastors ought to show in preparing candidates for baptism. He has long had a place in the Martyrology of the Western Church, but to-day, in addition to expressing our gratitude for what he did fifteen hundred years ago, we ask him for aid, which is as necessary now as it was in the first ages of Christianity. It is true that baptism is now administered to infants.

SPOUSE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN To-day, Joseph, the spouse of Mary, the foster-father of the Son of God, comes to cheer us by his dear presence. In a few days hence, the august mystery of the Incarnation will demand our fervent adoration: who could better prepare us for the grand feast, than he that was both the confidant and the faithful guardian of the divine secret? The Son of God, when about to descend upon this earth to assume our human nature, would have a Mother; this Mother could not be other than the purest of Virgins, and her divine maternity was not to impair her incomparable virginity.

Forty days after the white dove of Cassino had mounted to heaven, Benedict, her glorious brother, ascended by a bright path to the blissful abode, where they were to be united for ever. Both of them reached the heavenly country during that portion of the year which corresponds with the holy season of Lent. It frequently happens, however, that St.

MARCH 24: St. Gabriel, the Archangel MARCH 25: THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE EVER BLESSED VIRGIN . . . 486 MARCH 27: St. John Damascene, Confessor and Doctor of the Church . . . 495 MARCH 28: St.

But whereas many daily came to him, beseeching him to take them as his disciples, he built twelve monasteries, and drew up the most admir- able rules for their govern- ment. He afterwards went = meer Cassino, pen ed estroyed an image of Apollo, which was still adored thes parts; and havi pulled down the altar and burnt the groves, he built a chapel in that same place, in honour of St. Martin, and another in honour of St.

So far in the Church's calendar, we have not met with any feast in honour of the holy angels. Amidst the ineffable joys of Christmas night, we mingled our timid but glad voices with the hymns of these heavenly spirits, who sang around the crib of our Emmanuel. The very recollection brings joy to our hearts, saddened as they now are by penitential feelings and by the near approach of the mournful anniversary of our Jesus' death.

Adducentur in letitia et exsultatione: adducentur in templum Regis. They shall be brought with gladness and rejoicing : ll be brought into the temple of the King. Sequentia sancti Evangelii secundum Lucam.

Beata coli nuntio, Feecunda sancto Spiritu, Desideratus gentibus Cujus per alvum fusus est. Jesu, tibi sit gloria, Qui natus es de Virgine ; Cum Patre et almo Spiritu, In sempiterna ssecula. The angelic m: r pro- claims EM hissed t boy Spirit makes her fruitful ; and the Desired of nations is born Glory be to thee, O Jesus, that wast born of the Virgin ! and to the Father, and to the Spirit of love, for everlasting Many of the Latin Churches, in the middle ages, used to recite, in the Mass of the Annunciation, the following sequence, which is thought to have been composed by Peter Abailard.

This is a great day, not only to man, but even to God Himself; for it is the anniversary of the most solemn event that time has ever witnessed. On this day, the divine Word, by whom the Father created the world, was made flesh in the womb of a virgin, and dwelt among us.¹ We must spend it in joy. Whilst we adore the Son of God who humbled Himself by thus becoming Man, let us give thanks to the Father, who so loved the world, as to give His only-begotten Son;² let us give thanks to the Holy Ghost, whose almighty power achieves the great mystery.

CONFESSOR AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH The faithful have not forgotten that on the first Sunday of Lent the Greeks keep one of their greatest solemnities, that of Orthodoxy. History proves that the Church of Constantinople, the new Rome, did not share the indefectibility of that of the old Rome, for it passed through a cycle of heresies on the dogma of the Incarnation. It rejected successively the consubstantiality of the Word, the unity of Person in Jesus Christ, and the integrity of His two natures.

THE nearer the Church approaches to the end of her earthly existence, the more she seems to love to enrich her cycle with feasts that recall the glorious past. Indeed, one of the objects of the sacred Liturgy is to keep before our minds all that God has done for us. 'Remember the days of old: think upon every generation,'¹ said God to His people in the alliance of Sinai. It was a law in Jacob that the fathers should hand on these traditions to their children, who were in their turn to transmit them to their descendants.² The Church has taken the place of the ancient Israel and her annals speak, even more than those of the Jewish people, of the manifestations of divine power.

like a sun, he brought the Armenians back to the Catholic Church. The same Pope, at the request of the Emperor Frederic III., sent him into Germany as nuncio of the Apostolic See, in order that he might bring back heretics to the Catholic faith, and the minds of princes to peace and union. He did a wonderful work for God's glory during the six years of his mission, and brought back to the Church by the light of his teaching and miracles almost countless numbers of Hussites, Adamites, Thaborites, and Jews.

The founder of a religious Order, whose distinguishing characteristics were humility and penance, comes before us to-day; it is Francis of Paula. Let us study his virtues and beg his intercession. His whole life was one of great innocence; and yet we find him embracing, from his earliest youth, mortifications which, nowadays, would not be expected from the very worst sinners.

APRIL 2: St. Mary of Egypt, Penitent . . . 512 APRIL 4: St. Isidore, Bishop and Doctor of the Church . . . 518

One of the most striking examples of penance ever witnessed, is this day proposed for our consideration: Mary, the sinner and penitent of Egypt, comes to animate us to persevere in our lenten exercises. Like Magdalene and Margaret of Cortona, she had sinned grievously; like them she repented, atoned for her guilt, and is now the associate of angels. Let us adore the omnipotence of our God, who thus changed a vessel of dishonour into one of honour; let us lovingly contemplate the riches of His mercy, and hope for our own participation in them.

BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH THE Church presents to us to-day, for our devout admiration, the memory of one of the holiest of her bishops—Isidore, the bishop of Seville, the most learned man of his age, and, what is a still greater praise, the most zealous patriot and friend of his noble country. Let us study his virtues and confide in his patronage: both will help us to fervour during this holy season. Among Christian lands, there is one that has gained for herself the glorious name of the Catholic kingdom.

TO-DAY, again, it is Catholic Spain that offers one of her sons to the Church, that she may present him to the Christian world as a model and a patron. Vincent Ferrer, or, as he was called, the Angel of the Judgement, comes to us proclaiming the near approach of the Judge of the living and the dead. During his lifetime, he traversed almost every country of Europe, preaching this terrible truth; and the people of those times went from his sermons striking their breasts, crying out to God to have mercy upon them—in a word, converted.

CHAPTER THE FIRST THE HISTORY OF LENT THE forty days' fast, which we call Lent,¹ is the Church's preparation for Easter, and was instituted at the very commencement of Christianity. Our blessed Lord Himself sanctioned it by fasting forty days and forty nights in the desert; and though He would not impose it on the world by an express commandment (which, in that case, could not have been open to the power of dispensation), yet He showed plainly enough, by His own example, that fasting, which God had so frequently ordered in the old Law, was to be also practised by the children of the new. The disciples of St.

POPE AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH One of the grandest Saints in the Church's Calendar is brought before us to-day. Leo, the Pontiff and Doctor, rises on the Paschal horizon, and calls for our admiration and love. As his name implies, he is the Lion of Holy Church; thus representing, in his own person, one of the most glorious of our Lord's titles.

It is through a martyr's palm-branch that we must to-day see the Paschal Mystery. Hermenegild, a young Visigoth prince, is put to death by his heretical father, because he courageously refused to receive his Easter Communion from an Arian bishop. The martyr knew that the Eucharist is the sacred symbol of Catholic unity; and that we are not allowed to approach the Holy Table in company with those who are not in the true Church.

Yesterday Spain sent one of her princes to represent her at the court of the Conqueror of Death. To-day Christ receives with equal honour the representative of learning in the service of religion. The philosopher's mantle worn by Justin is as splendid as the royal purple of Hermenegild, for both prince and philosopher have washed their robes in their own blood, mingled with that of the Lamb, and these robes have become the insignia of their eternal glory.

POPE AND MARTYR A Pope and martyr of the second century appears in the Calendar to-day. The martyrs stand in clusters near our Risen Lord; they are the Eagles of which he speaks in his Gospel, as gathering together around their longed-for object!¹ Anicetus is not the only Pope whose martyrdom has to be celebrated during Paschal Time; others will come, adding to our Easter joy. The Saint who claims our attention to-day is one of those whose holy actions are shrouded in the venerable gloom of the Church; and yet his memory will be held in veneration to the end of time, not only as being the eleventh successor of St Peter in the See of Rome, but as having imitated him also in holiness of life.

BISHOP, AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH A monk, a Bishop, a Doctor of the Church—such was the Saint whose feast comes to gladden us on this twenty-first day of April. He was a martyr, also, at least in desire, and we may add, in merit too—for he did enough to earn the glorious palm. When we think of Anselm, we picture to ourselves a man in whom are combined the humility and meekness of the cloister with the zeal and courage of the episcopal dignity; a man who was both a sage and a saint; a man whom it was impossible not to love and respect.

POPES AND MARTYRS The palms of two martyred Popes are intertwined and grace this day of the Calendar. Soter suffered for Christ in the second, and Caius in the third century; a hundred years separate them; and yet we have the same energy of faith, the same jealous fidelity to keep intact the depositum left by Christ to his Church. What human society ever existed that produced heroes for century after century?

Clad in his bright coat of mail, mounted on his war-steed, and spearing the dragon with his lance, George, the intrepid champion of our Risen Jesus, comes to gladden us to-day with his feast. From the East, where he is known as the great Martyr, devotion to St George soon spread in the Western Church, and our Christian armies have always loved and honoured him as one of their dearest patrons. His martyrdom took place in Paschal Time; and thus he stands before us as the guardian of the glorious sepulchre, just as Stephen, the Protomartyr, watches near the crib of the Infant God.

OUR Risen Lord would have around him a bright phalanx of martyrs. Its privileged members belong to the different centuries of the Church's existence. Its ranks open to-day to give welcome to a brave combatant, who won his palm, not in a contest with paganism, as those did whose feasts we have thus far kept, but in defending his mother, the Church, against her own rebellious children.

The cycle of holy Mother Church brings before us to-day the Lion, who, together with the Man, the Ox, and the Eagle, stands before the throne of God.¹ It was on this day that Mark ascended from earth to heaven, radiant with his triple aureole of Evangelist, Apostle and Martyr. As the preaching made to Israel had its four great representatives—Isaias, Jeremias, Ezechiel, and Daniel—so, likewise, would God have the New Covenant to be embodied in the four Gospels, which were to make known to the world the life and teachings of his divine Son. The holy Fathers tell us that the Gospels are like the four streams which watered the garden of pleasure,² and that this garden was a figure of the future Church.

POPES AND MARTYRS Two bright stars appear this day on the ecclesiastical cycle, proclaiming the glory of our Jesus, the Conqueror of death. Again they are two pontiffs, and martyr pontiffs. Cletus leads us to the very commencement of the Church, for he was a disciple of Peter, and his second successor in the See of Rome.

Splendidly adorned with the sacred sign of the Passion, Paul of the Cross comes to-day to pay homage to the Conqueror of Death. It behoved Christ to suffer and so enter into his glory. It behoves the Christian, the member of Christ, to follow his Head in suffering that he may share his triumph.

There are few martyrs of the West whose names are more celebrated than those of SS Gervasius and Protasius. The veneration in which they are held by the Roman Church has led her to honour the memory of their father, who also won the palm under the persecution of Nero. She has chosen for his feast the glad season of Easter.

The Dominican Order, which yesterday presented a rose to our Risen Jesus, now offers him a lily of surpassing beauty. Catharine of Siena follows Peter the Martyr: it is a coincidence willed by Providence, to give fresh beauty to this season of grandest mysteries. Our divine King deserves everything we can offer him; and our hearts are never so eager to give him every possible tribute of homage as during these last days of his sojourn among us.

Two of the favoured witnesses of our beloved Jesus' Resurrection come before us on this first day of May. Philip and James are here, bearing testimony to us that their Master is truly risen from the dead, that they have seen him, that they have touched him, that they have conversed with him, during these forty days. And, that we may have no doubt as to the truth of their testimony, they hold in their hands the instruments of the martyrdom they underwent for asserting that Jesus, after having suffered death, came to life again and rose from the grave.

BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH The court of our divine King, during this grandest of seasons, is brilliant beyond measure; and, to-day, it is gladdened by the arrival of one of the most glorious champions that ever fought for his holy cause. Among the guardians of the word of truth, confided by Jesus to the earth, is there one more faithful than Athanasius? Does not his very name remind us of dauntless courage in the defence of the sacred deposit, of heroic firmness and patience in suffering, of learning, of talent, of eloquence—in a word, of everything that goes to form a Saint, a Bishop, and a Doctor of the Church?

POPE AND MARTYR A HOLY Pope and martyr comes to-day to lay his bright crown at the foot of the triumphant Cross whereby he won his victory. It is Alexander, the fifth successor of St Peter. Let us honour this venerable witness of the faith, who is now receiving the devout homage of the Church Militant, and who, for long ages past, has been enjoying in heaven the company of our Risen Jesus.

IN the company of our Risen Lord there are two women, two mothers, of whom we have often had to speak during the last few weeks: they are Mary, mother of James the Less and Thaddeus, and Salome, mother of James the Great and John the beloved disciple. They went with Magdalen to the Sepulchre on the Resurrection morning; they carried spices to anoint the Body of Jesus; Angels spoke to them; and, as they returned to Jerusalem, our Lord appeared to them, greeted them, and allowed them to kiss his sacred feet. Since that day, he has repaid their love by frequently appearing to them; and on the day of his Ascension from Mount Olivet, they will be there, together with our blessed Lady and the Apostles, to receive his farewell blessing.

We have already met with the names of several Pontiffs on the Paschal Calendar. They form a brilliant constellation around our Risen Jesus, who, during the period between his Resurrection and Ascension, gave to Peter, their predecessor, the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Anicetus, Soter, Caius, Cletus and Marcellinus, held in their hands the palm of martyrdom: Leo was the only one who did not shed his blood in the cause of his divine Master.

The beloved Disciple John, whom we saw standing near the crib of the Babe of Bethlehem, comes before us again to-day; and this time he pays his delighted homage to the glorious Conqueror of death and hell. Like Philip and James, he is clad in the scarlet robe of martyrdom. The month of May, so rich in Saints, was to be graced with the palm of St John.

BISHOP AND MARTYR The eleventh century, the century of contest between the priests of the Church and Barbarism, gives to-day another martyr to our Risen Jesus. It is Stanislaus, beloved by noble Poland as one of her chief protectors. He was slain at the altar by a Christian prince whom he had reproved for his crimes.

BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH Side by side with Athanasius, another Doctor of the Church comes forward at this glad season to offer to the Risen Jesus the tribute of his learning and eloquence. It is Gregory of Nazianzum, the friend of Basil, the great orator, the admirable poet, whose style combines energy of thought with a remarkable richness and ease of expression; the one of all the Gregories who has merited and received the glorious name of Theologian, on account of the soundness of his teachings, the sublimity of his ideas, and the magnificence of his diction. Holy Church exults at being able to offer us so grand a Saint during Easter Time, for no one has spoken more eloquently than he on the Mystery of the Pasch.

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR The Order of St Dominic, which has already presented to our triumphant Jesus Peter the Martyr and Catharine the seraph of Siena, offers him to-day one of the many bishops trained and formed in its admirable school. It was in the fifteenth century, a period when sanctity was rare on the earth, that Antoninus realized in his own person the virtues of the greatest bishops of ancient times. His apostolic zeal, his deeds of charity, his mortified life, are the glory of the Church of Florence, which was confided to his care.

Two more martyrs ascend from our earth on this day and are admitted to share in Jesus' glory. Again it is Rome that deputes them to bear her homage to the Conqueror of Death. Gordian was one of the magistrates who were commissioned, under Julian the Apostate, to persecute the Christians.

VIRGIN AND MARTYR So far in our Paschal season, the choir of Virgin martyrs has not yet offered to Jesus its crown of roses and lilies. It does so to-day, by presenting to him the noble Flavia Domitilla, the fairest flower of Rome, that was cut down by the sword of martyrdom in the first age of the Christian faith. It was under the persecution of Domitian—during which John the Evangelist was condemned to be burned alive in the cauldron of boiling oil—that Flavia Domitilla was honoured with banishment and death for the sake of our Redeemer, whom she had chosen for her Spouse.

A fourth martyr claims our veneration on this twelfth day of May. Like the three others, he culled his palm at Rome. But whilst they died for the faith at the very commencement of the Christian era, Pancras was not called to the glorious combat till the persecution under Diocletian—the last and greatest effort of pagan Rome against the Church.

The Apostle of the Gentiles, explaining the mystery of the Pasch, tells us that baptism is the sepulchre of our sins, and that we rise from it together with our Redeemer, having our souls radiant with the life of grace. Our holy faith teaches us that he who gives his life for Christ or his Church washes away in his own blood every stain from his soul, and rises to life everlasting: it is as though he received a second baptism, which reproduces all the effects belonging to the great sacrament of regeneration. We have to-day a sinner, who being purified by martyrdom and rebaptized in his own blood, is numbered among the privileged ones who share in the glory of our Risen Jesus.

John Baptist de la Salle, the teacher of the humble, takes his place to-day beside Leo the Great, Athanasius, and Gregory of Nazianzum. He has no fear. The victor of Paschal Time is the same Jesus who said during his mortal life: 'Suffer the little children to come unto me,'¹ and 'unless you be converted and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven,'² that kingdom of heaven which, after entering into his glory, he manifests so fully upon earth.

To the martyrs who were slain because they refused to adore false gods—to the martyrs whose blood was shed by heretics—there is added to-day another brave soldier of Christ, who won his crown in a very different sort of combat. The sacrament of Penance whereby sinners regain the heaven they had lost claims John Nepomucen as its glorious defender. A holy secrecy shrouds the reconciliation made between God and the penitent.

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR In order to honour her eternal High Priest, the Church presents to him this day the merits of a pontiff who, after his mortal career, was admitted into a happy immortality. Ubaldus, here on earth, was the image of our Lord Jesus Christ. Like his divine Master, he received the holy anointing of priesthood; he was a mediator between God and man; he was the shepherd of a flock; and now he is united with our Risen Jesus, the great Anointed, the Mediator, the Shepherd.

The Seraph of Assisi was sure to depute some of his children to pay their court to his Risen Master. The one he sends to-day is the humblest and most obscure of men; another will follow, three days hence, powerful in word and work, and holding a palm in his hands, as a most devoted preacher of the Gospel. Paschal Baylon was a simple peasant.

POPE AND MARTYR The palm of martyrdom was won by this holy Pope, not in a victory over a pagan persecutor, but in battling for the Church's liberty against a Christian king. But this king was a heretic, and therefore an enemy of every Pontiff that was zealous for the triumph of the true faith. The state of Christ's Vicar here on earth is a state of combat; and it frequently happens that a Pope is veritably a martyr, without having shed his blood.

The martyr of to-day carries us back to the persecutions under the Roman Emperors. It was at Camerino, in Italy, that he bore his testimony to the true faith; and the devotion wherewith he is honoured by the people of those parts has caused his feast to be kept throughout the Church. Let us, therefore, joyfully welcome this new champion, who fought so bravely for our Emmanuel.

Our Paschal season, which has already given us the admirable Doctor St Leo, brings before us to-day the humble Peter Celestine. He was, like Leo, sovereign pontiff, but no sooner was he throned on the chair of Peter than he left it and returned to solitude. Among the long list of sainted men who compose the venerable series of Roman Pontiffs, our Lord would have one in whose person was to be represented the virtue of humility; that honour was conferred on Peter Celestine.

This same nineteenth of May has another glory attached to it; it is the day on which died the noble virgin Pudentiana. That name carries us back to the very first age of the Christian Church. She was a daughter of a wealthy Roman, called Pudens, a kinsman of the Pudens spoken of by St Paul, in his second Epistle to Timothy.² She and her sister Praxedes had the honour of being numbered among the earliest members of the Church, and both of them consecrated their virginity to Jesus Christ.

In that season of the liturgical year when we were kneeling in love and prayer around the crib of the Infant Jesus, one day was devoted to the celebration of the glory and sweetness of his Name. Holy Church was full of joy when she pronounced the dear Name chosen from all eternity by her heavenly Spouse; and mankind found consolation in the thought that the great God who might so justly have bid us call him the Just and the Avenger, willed us henceforth to call him the Saviour. The devout Bernardine of Siena, whose feast we keep to-day, stood then before us, holding in his hands this ever blessed Name, surrounded with rays.

In since our entrance upon the joys of the Paschal season, scarcely a day has passed without offering us some grand mystery or Saint to honour; and all these have been radiant with the Easter sun. But there has not been a single feast of our blessed Lady to gladden our hearts by telling us of some mystery or glory of this august Queen. The feast of her Seven Dolours is sometimes kept in April—that is, when Easter Sunday falls on or after the 10th of that month; but May and June pass without any special solemnity in honour of the Mother of God.

POPE AND CONFESSOR OUR Easter Calendar has already given us the two great Popes, Leo the Great and Pius V; it bids us, to-day, pay honour to the glorious memory of Gregory VII. These three names represent the action of the papacy, dating from the period of the persecutions. The mission divinely put upon the successors of St Peter is this: to maintain intact the truths of faith, and to defend the liberty of the Church.

POPE AND MARTYR THIS day is honoured by the triumph of two sainted Popes; and Gregory VII, when he quitted this earth, was introduced into the court of Heaven by one of his predecessors. Urban was a martyr by the shedding of his blood; Gregory was a martyr by the sufferings he had to endure during his whole pontificate. Both fought for the same glorious cause.

POPE AND MARTYR This twenty-sixth of May is also honoured by the memory of one of those early Pontiffs who, like Urban, were the foundations of the Church in the age of persecution. Eleutherius ascended the papal throne in the very midst of the storm that was raised by Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. It was he that received the embassy sent to Rome by the martyrs of Lyons; and at the head of them that were thus sent was the great St Irenæus.

As we have already said, joy is the leading feature of the Paschal season—a supernatural joy which springs from our delight at seeing the glorious triumph of our Emmanuel, and from the happiness we feel at our own being delivered from the bonds of death. This interior joy was the characteristic of the Saint whom we honour to-day. His heart was ever full of a jubilant enthusiasm for what regards God; so that we could truly apply to him those words of Scripture: A secure mind is like a continual feast.¹ One of his latest disciples, the illustrious Father Faber, tells us in his beautiful treatise, Growth in Holiness, that cheerfulness is one of the chief means for advancing in Christian perfection.

CONFESSOR AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH The blessing given by our Lord as he ascended into heaven has revealed its power in the most distant pagan lands, and during these days the liturgical cycle bears witness to a concentration of graces upon the west of Europe. The band of missionaries begged of Pope Eleutherius by the British king Lucius has been followed by the apostolate of Augustine, the envoy of Gregory the Great, and to-day, as though impatient to justify the lavish generosity of heaven, England brings forward her illustrious son, the Venerable Bede. This humble monk, whose whole life was spent in the praise of God, sought his divine Master in nature and in history, but above all in holy Scripture, which he studied with a loving attention and fidelity to tradition.

BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH To-day Augustine, the greatest and the humblest of the Doctors, is hailed above, where his conversion caused greater joy than that of any other sinner; and celebrated by the Church, who is enlightened by his writings as to the power, the value, and the gratuitousness of divine grace. Since that wonderful, heavenly conversation at Ostia,¹ God had completed His triumph in the son of Monica's tears and of Ambrose's holiness. Far away from the great cities where pleasure had seduced him, the former rhetorician now cared only to nourish his soul with the simplicity of the Scriptures, in silence and solitude.

Our Paschal Calendar gives us three illustrious virgins of beautiful Italy. We have already kept the feast of the valiant Catharine of Siena; in a few days we shall be honouring the memory of Angela dei Merici, surrounded by her school-children; to-day it is the fair lily of Florence, Magdalen de Pazzi who embalms the whole Church with the fragrance of her name and intercession. She devoted herself to the loving imitation of our crucified Jesus; was it not just that she should have some share in the joy of his Magdalen de Pazzi was one of the brightest ornaments of the Order of Carmel, by her angelic purity, and by the ardour of her love for God.

POPE AND MARTYR The holy Popes of the primitive ages of the Church abound during these last days of our Paschal season. To-day we have Felix I, a martyr of the persecution under Aurelian, in the third century. His Acts have been lost, with the exception of this one detail: that he proclaimed a dogma of the Incarnation, with admirable precision, in a letter addressed to the Church of Alexandria, a passage of which was read with much applause at the two Œcumenical Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon.

KING OF CASTILE AND CONFESSOR During the season consecrated to the mystery of our Emmanuel's Birth, we saw standing near his crib the blessed Emperor Charlemagne. Crowned with the imperial diadem, and with a sword in his fearless hand, he seemed to be watching over the Babe, whose first worshippers were shepherds. And now, near the glorious Sepulchre, which was first visited by Magdalene and her companions, we perceive a king— Ferdinand the Victorious—wearing a crown, and keeping guard with his valiant sword, the terror of the Catholic Spain is personified in her Ferdinand.

While the angelic hosts acclaim the Incarnate Word as he takes possession of his eternal throne, a virgin at the head of the armies of earth re-echoes the praises of heaven. She was a child of the countryside, pious, gentle, and utterly ignorant, especially of the art of war, but Michael the soldier of God trained her with the aid of the Virgin Martyrs Catharine and Margaret, and suddenly, like a challenge thrown to modern naturalism in the broad daylight of history, she made her appearance, at the age of seventeen, as an incomparable warrior. Her victories, her personal influence and strategical genius equal those of the most famous captains of any times.

This last day of May, which is honoured by the virginal triumph of Aurelia Petronilla, in the first age of the Church, is also fragrant with the lilies that wreathe the brow of Angela de Merici. The sixteenth century, which, a few days back, offered to our Risen Lord the seraphic Magdalen de Pazzi, now presents him with this second fruit of heroic sanctity. Angela realized the whole meaning of her beautiful name.

Though the Church makes but a simple commemoration of this illustrious virgin in the office of this day, we will not fail to offer her the homage of our devout veneration. On the twelfth of this month we kept the feast of the noble virgin and martyr, Flavia Domitilla; it is probable that Aurelia Petronilla was also of the imperial family of the Flavii. The early traditions of the Church speak of her as being the spiritual daughter of the Prince of the Apostles; and though she did not, like Domitilla, lay down her life for the faith, yet she offered to Jesus that next richest gift, her virginity.

THE glory of martyrdom illumines this day with a splendour rarely met with in the cycle; and already we seem to descry the rosy dawn of that brightest day of this month, on which Peter and Paul will consummate in their blood their own splendid confession. Italy and Gaul, Rome and Lyons concur in forming a legion of heroes in the service of heaven. For to-day Lyons, the illustrious daughter of Rome, is keeping the special festival of a whole phalanx of warriors, headed by the veteran chief, St Pothinus, disciple of St Polycarp, who, in the second century, levied the brave recruits of his battalion on the banks of the Rhone.

Martyrs ......... 57 June 3.—SAINT CLOTILDE, Queen of the Franks ............... 65a June 4.—SAINT FRANCIS CARACCIOLO, Confessor ............... 66 June 5.—SAINT BONIFACE, Apostle of Germany, Bishop and Martyr ......... 74 June 6.—SAINT NORBERT, Bishop and Confessor ............... 86 June 8.—SAINT WILLIAM, Bishop and Confessor ............... 92 June 9.—SAINTS PRIMUS AND FELICIAN, Martyrs ................ 99 June 10.—SAINT MARGARET, Queen of Scotland ............... 102 June 11.—SAINT BARNABAS, Apostle ........................ 109 June 12.—SAINT JOHN A SAN FACUNDO, OR OF SAHAGUN, Confessor ......... 115 Same Day.—Saint Leo III, Pope and Confessor ................. 121a Same Day.—SAINT BASILIDES AND COMPANIONS, Martyrs ....... 122 June 13.—SAINT ANTHONY OF PADUA, Confessor ..................

QUEEN OF THE FRANKS At this season, in which the Office of the time is leading us to consider the early developments of holy Church, eternal Wisdom so arranges, now as ever, that the feasts of the saints should complete the teachings of the movable cycle. The Paraclete, who has but just come down upon us, is to fill the whole earth;¹ the Man-God has sent Him expressly to win over the whole earth and to secure all time to His Church. Now, it is by subjecting kingdoms to the faith, that He is to form Christ's empire; it is by enabling the Church to assimilate all nations to herself, that He gives growth and continuance to the bride.

The good things brought into this world by the Holy Spirit continue to be revealed in the liturgy. Francis Caracciolo is given to us this day as another type of the sublime fecundity produced on earth by Christianity. Faith is the principle of this supernatural fecundity in the saints, just as it was in Abraham, the father of all believers; it brings forth unto the Church isolated members or entire nations alike; from it proceed the multitudinous families of religious Orders, who, in their fidelity in following the divers paths traced out for them by their founders, are the chief portion of the royal and varied adornment of the bride at the right hand of her divine Spouse.

BISHOP AND MARTYR The Son of Man, proclaimed King in the highest heavens on his triumphant Ascension day, leaves to his bride on earth the task of making his sovereign dominion recognized here below: this is her glory. Pentecost gives the signal for the Church's work of conquest; now does she awake, aroused by the breath of the Holy Ghost; replenished with this Spirit of love, she is all eagerness, as he is, to be possessed at once of the whole earth. We have already seen the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons pledging in her hands their oath of fealty to Christ, "to whom is given all power on earth and in heaven."¹ To-day we see how Winfrid realizes the fair name of Boniface, or well-doer, given him by Pope Gregory II.

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR The helpful influence of the Holy Ghost is more and more multiplied along the Church's path. It seems as though he would show us to-day how the divine power of his action is not crippled by lapse of years: for here we have, twelve centuries after his first coming among us, miracles of grace and conversion quite as brilliant as those that marked his glorious descent upon earth. Norbert, in whose veins flowed the blood of emperors and kings, was, from the very breast of his mother Hedwige, supernaturally invited to a nobility loftier still: yet did he devote to the unreserved enjoyment of pleasure three-and-thirty years of a life that was to number but fifty in all.

Roses and lilies are exquisitely alternated in the wreath woven by centuries for the bride of the Son of God. Though the world be heedless of the fact, it is none the less true that everything here below has but one object, namely to bedeck the Church with the attractive charms of heaven, to adjust her jewelled robes formed of the virtues of her saints, that she may be fitted to take her seat beside her divine Spouse, in the highest heavens, for all eternity.¹ The sacred cycle, in its yearly course, presents an image of those ceaseless labours whereby the Holy Ghost continues to form, up to the day of the eternal nuptials, that varied robe of holy Church, by diversifying the merits of God's servants, her members here below. To-day we have two martyrs becrimsoned with their own blood,...

QUEEN OF SCOTLAND Scotland had long been Christian when Margaret was given to her to establish, amidst a population so diversified, and so often at mutual enmity as was hers, that unity which makes a nation. Ancient Caledonia, defended by her lakes, mountains, and rivers, had, up to the fall of the Roman empire, kept her independence. But, whilst herself inaccessible to invading troops, she had become the refuge of the vanquished of every race and the proscribed of every epoch.

The promulgation of the new alliance invited all nations to sit down at the marriage-feast in the kingdom of God; since that day, the sanctifying Spirit is ever producing saints in every age, and at moments which correspond most mysteriously to the deep and hidden designs of eternal Wisdom over the particular history of a people. Nor must we be astonished at this: for Christian nations having their appointed part in the advancing of the kingly sway of the Man-God, this vocation imposes duties upon them, and gives them rights superior to nature's law; the supernatural order invests them with its inherent greatness; and the Holy Ghost, by means of his elect, fosters not only their birth but likewise their development. This wondrous working of divine Providence, as presented on history's...

Beside John of Sahagun, the apostle of peace, are grouped four warriors of our Lord's army. Thus peace and war go this day hand in hand, and form but one in the kingdom of the Son of God. The threefold peace preached by Christ—namely, man's peace with his God, with himself, and with his brethren and fellow-citizens in the holy city—is to be won only at the cost of combat with Satan, the flesh, and the world, which is the 'accursed city.' Together with the Church, let us blend in one united homage our praises of the glorious confessor of these later ages, and of the stern veterans of persecuting times.

The kingdom which the apostles are commissioned to establish upon earth is a reign of peace. Such was the promise pledged by heaven to earth, on that glorious night wherein Emmanuel was given to us. And on that other night which witnessed our Lord's last farewell at the Supper, did not the Man-God base the New Testament upon the double legacy which he bequeathed to his Church, of his sacred Body and Blood, and of this peace announced of yore by Bethlehem's angels?¹ A peace unknown till then here below; a peace all his own, because, as he said, it proceeds from him, but still is not himself; this gift substantial and divine is no other than the Holy Ghost in Person!

Rejoice thee, happy Padua, rich in thy priceless treasure!¹ Anthony, in bequeathing thee his body, has done more for thy glory than the heroes who founded thee on so favoured a site, or the doctors who have illustrated thy famous university! The days of Charlemagne were past and gone: yet the work of Leo III still lived on, despite a thousand difficulties. The enemy, now at large, had sown cockle in the field of the divine householder; heresy was springing up here and there, whilst vice was growing apace in every direction.

hæreticorum malleus est vocatus. did he put forth the whole force of his vigour, whence he gained the name of perpetual hammer of heretics. He was the first of his Order who, on account of his excellent gift of teaching, publicly lectured at Bologna on the interpretation of Holy Scripture, and directed the studies of his brethren. Then, having travelled through many provinces, he came, one year before his death, to Padua, where he left some remarkable monuments of the sanctity of his life.

BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH The Doctors who form the fourfold glory of the Greek Church complete their sacred number in the cycle to-day. John Chrysostom was the first to greet us with his radiant light during Christmastide; the glorious Pasch saw the rise of two resplendent luminaries, Athanasius and Gregory Nazianzen; Basil the Great, having checked his effulgent blaze till now, illumines the reign of the Holy Ghost. He well deserves so distinguished a place, by reason of his eminent doctrine and brave combats, which prepared the way for the triumph of the divine Paraclete over the blasphemies of the impious sect of Macedonius, who used against the third Person of the consubstantial Trinity the very same arguments invented by Arius against the divinity of the Word.

One of the titles of the Divine Spirit, who is reigning so specially over this portion of the cycle, is the Witness of the Word. Thus was he announced to the world, by the Man-God himself, when about to quit it in order to return to his Father, after having, on his part, rendered his own great testimony to sovereign Truth.¹ Formed by the Holy Ghost on the type of Jesus Christ, the faithful too are witnesses, whose mission is to trample upon lying error, the enemy of God, by expressing the truth, not in words only, but in deeds. There is a testimony, however, that is not given unto all to render, this is the testimony of blood; the martyrs hold this privilege, this is the special stand granted to them in the ceaseless battle ever being waged betwixt truth and falsehood, and this battle is...

All the Churches of the east, in the different tongues of their several liturgies, celebrate the glory of Julitta and of Cyr: they all extol the holy duality of the son and the mother containing in itself the perfect worship of the Trinity.¹ For the oblation of this mother and her son is itself united to the sacrifice of the Son of God: such are in very deed the rights of the holy Trinity, rights resulting in the case of every Christian from the first of our Sacraments; absolute rights over both body and soul of even the smallest baby; such were the rights confessed by St. Julitta and her little Cyr; yes, consecrated by their blood in one common oblation. The world was reminded yesterday, in St.

DEACON, CONFESSOR AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH ST EPHRAEM, monk and deacon, the contemporary of St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St.

We have already met with these noble athletes of to-day's feast; for on January 20, when celebrating St Sebastian, the brave defender of holy Church, Mark and Marcellian appeared at his side as the noblest conquest won by the sainted head of the prætorian guards. There are other heroes, likewise gained over by his zealous intrepidity, whose names gild the pages of the Martyrology; but these two, whose festival we are keeping, were the immediate occasion of Sebastian's leading to God so goodly a troop of valiant Christians. Their conversion prepared Sebastian's martyrdom, by reason of his apostolate in their regard; and their glory eternally redounds to him around whom in heaven they form a resplendent phalanx.

This day witnesses the close of the pilgrimage of one who was miraculously supplied with the divine Viaticum. Juliana presents herself at heaven's gate, showing upon her heart the impress of the sacred Host. The lily emblazoned on the city escutcheon of Florence glistens with fresh radiance to-day, for it was she who gave birth to our saint, as well as to so many others, some of whom have already beamed across our path, and some are about to follow; all of them brilliant in sublime virtues practised within the ancient walls of this 'city of flowers,' under the delighted glance and the urging influence of the Spirit of love.

The mere commemoration made to-day of these two glorious brethren, whose names were formerly so celebrated throughout the West, must not lessen their merit in our eyes. The Holy Spirit, whose function it is to maintain within the bride of Jesus that divine mark of holiness whereby she is to be, up to the day of doom, for ever recognizable both to angels and to men, ceases not in every generation to raise up new saints, who more especially attract the devout homage of that particular period to which their virtues have served as an example and of which they are the distinctive glory. In thus honouring her children whose brilliant virtues add fresh jewels to her vesture, holy Church is moved by a sentiment of gratitude to the Paraclete for present benefits; yet these later manifestations can...

POPE AND MARTYR Papal succession is one of the principal facts wherein is demonstrated the working of the Holy Ghost, from the very first day of his descent upon our earth. The legitimacy of the Popes, as successors of Peter, is indeed closely linked with the legitimacy of the Church herself, in her character of bride of the Man-God; and therefore, his mission being to lead the bride to the Spouse, the Holy Ghost cannot suffer her to wander in the footprints of intruders. The inevitable play of human passions, interfering in the election of the Vicar of Christ, may perchance for a while render uncertain the transmission of spiritual power.

'Oh! how exceeding great is the glory of Aloysius, son of Ignatius! Never could I have believed it, had not my Jesus shown it to me. Never could I have believed that such glory was to be seen in heaven!' Thus cries out St Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, whose memory we were celebrating a month ago: she is speaking in ecstasy.

PROTO-MARTYR OF ENGLAND Let the heavens rejoice, let the Island of Saints exult, and let all the universe shout with her a song of victory; for now indeed has earth been everywhere empurpled with the blood of testimony. Alban, Proto-Martyr of fruitful Britain,¹ seals to-day the conquest of the far West. Already, doubtless, even from the earliest days, Albion had yielded abundant flowers beneath the footsteps of the Spouse, whose giant stride² had reached even unto her.

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR While we were celebrating the infancy of our divine Lord, Felix of Nola rejoiced our hearts with the sight of his sanctity at once so triumphant and yet so humble, revealing under humblest aspects the potency of our Emmanuel. Illumined by the fires of Pentecost, Paulinus now comes before us from that very same town of Nola, doing honour by his glory to him whose happy conquest he was. For indeed the sublime path whereby he was to ascend to heaven was not at first opened before him; and Felix it was who, at a somewhat tardy hour, cast into his soul the first seeds of salvation.

QUEEN, VIRGIN AND ABBESS Etheldreda, or Audrey, whom the Church offers to our veneration to-day, was one of the most popular saints among our English forefathers. She was born in the middle of the seventh century, about A.D. 630, at Exning, near Newmarket, in Suffolk, and was the third daughter of Anna, the Christian king of East Anglia. In a meadow outside the village is still shown the brook in which, as village tradition tells us, the future queen and saint was baptized by St Felix, first bishop of Dunwich.

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR At the head of the holy confessors commemorated by the Church in her martyrology for to-day, is inscribed the illustrious name of William. 'At York, in England,' it says, 'the memory of St William, Archbishop and Confessor, who, amongst other miracles wrought at his tomb, raised three dead persons to life; and who was inscribed amongst the saints by Honorius III.' The divine Spirit, who adorns the Church with variety in the virtues of her sons,¹ reproduces in them the life of the divine Spouse under many forms. Thus there is no situation in life that cannot find some teaching drawn from the example given by our Lord and his saints under similar circumstances. However vast be the field of trial for the elect here below; however multiplied and unexpected be the limits...

Amidst the numerous sanctuaries which adorn the capital of the Christian universe, the church of Saints John and Paul has remained from the early date of its origin one of the chief centres of Roman piety. From the summit of the Cœlian Hill it towers over the Coliseum, the dependencies of which stretch subterraneously even as far as the cellarage of the house once inhabited by our saints. They, the last of the martyrs, completed the glorious crown offered to Christ by Rome, the chosen seat of his power.

BISHOP AND MARTYR To-day the Church of Lyons presents to the admiration of the whole world her own great doctor, the valiant Irenæus, who shines as the light of the West.¹ But whilst contemplating him confirming with his blood the doctrine he had preached, let us hearken to his words bearing testimony to holy Church, words of world-wide celebrity, confounding hell and closing the mouth of heresy. May we not say that it was in order to afford us instruction so appropriate for to-morrow's festival that eternal Wisdom made choice of this particular day for his martyr's triumph? Let us hearken to this zealous pupil of Polycarp and of the first disciples of the apostles; let us hearken to him who for this very reason is considered to be the most authentic witness to the faith in all the...

The hero deputed this day by the Church to greet our Risen Lord was so valiant in the good fight that martyrdom is part of his name. He is known as Peter the Martyr; so that we cannot speak of him without raising the echo of victory. He was put to death by heretics, and is the grand tribute paid to our Redeemer by the thirteenth century.

'Simon, son of John, lovest thou me?' Behold the hour when the answer which the Son of Man exacted of the fisher of Galilee re-echoes from the seven hills and fills the whole earth. Peter no longer dreads the triple interrogation of his Lord. Since that fatal night wherein, after the first cockcrow, the prince of the apostles had denied his Master, tears have not ceased to furrow the cheeks of the Vicar of Christ; at last the day has come when his tears shall be dried!

John the Baptist has pointed out the Lamb, Peter has firmly established his throne, Paul has prepared the bride; their joint work, admirable in its unity, at once suggests the reason for their feasts occurring almost simultaneously in the cycle. The alliance being now secured, all three fall into shade; whilst the bride herself, raised up by them to such lofty heights, appears alone before us, holding in her hands the sacred cup of the nuptial-feast. This gives the key of to-day's solemnity, revealing how its appearance in the heavens of the holy liturgy at this particular season is replete with mystery.

POPE AND CONFESSOR It were fitting that our attention should not be diverted during this Octave from the feast which the Church is keeping. But the triumph of Peter will shine out with all the more splendour in proportion as the testimony he rendered to the Son of God is shown to have been maintained with all fidelity during the long series of succeeding ages by the Pontiffs, inheritors of his Primacy. For a considerable time the twenty-eighth of June was consecrated by the memory of St Leo the Great; it was the day chosen by Sergius I for the translation of the illustrious doctor, and indeed a more magnificent usher for the solemnity could hardly be desired.

POPE AND CONFESSOR The fragrance of Christmas is suddenly wafted around us, while we are in the midst of Pentecost! Leo III, as he speeds his flight from earth, sheds upon us the perfumed memory of that day, whereon the Infant God was pleased to manifest, by his means, the plenitude of His principality over all nations. Christmas Day of the year 800 witnessed the proclamation of the Holy Empire.

Later than Cajetan of Vicenza and earlier than Ignatius of Loyola, Anthony was called to be the father of one of those religious families which arose in such numbers during the sixteenth century to repair the ruins of the house of God. Lombardy, exhausted and demoralized by the wars for the possession of the duchy of Milan, was encouraged by the sight of the heroic virtues of Zaccaria to believe, hope and love once again. She listened to his fiery exhortations calling her to repentance, to meditation on the Passion and to more fervent devotion to, and more solemn adoration of, the Blessed Sacrament.¹ Thus he was truly the precursor of St Charles Borromeo, who in his reform of the clergy, people and monasteries of Milan had as his earnest supporters Anthony's sons and daughters, the Clerks...

BISHOPS AND CONFESSORS, APOSTLES OF THE SLAVS Twin stars this day arise in the heavens of holy Church, illuminating by the radiant beams of their apostolate immense tracts of country. Seeing that they start from Byzantium, one is at first led to suppose that their evolution is going to be performed independently of the laws which Rome has the right to dictate for the movement of the heavens, whereof it is said that they shall declare the glory of God and the works of his hand.¹ But the auspicious influence of St Clement I, through his sacred relics, diverts their course, as we shall see, towards the mistress of the world; and presently they can be descried gravitating with matchless splendour in Peter's orbit, manifesting once more to the whole earth that all true light, in the order of...

QUEEN OF PORTUGAL In the footsteps of Margaret of Scotland and of Clotilde of France, a third queen comes to shed her brightness on the sacred cycle. Born at the southern extremity of Christendom, where it borders on Muslim lands, she was destined by the Holy Ghost to seal with peace the victories of Christ, and prepare the way for fresh conquests. The blessed name of Elizabeth, which for half a century had been rejoicing the world with its sweet perfume, was given to her, foretelling that this new-born child, as though attracted by the roses which fell from the mantle of her Thuringian aunt, was to cause these same heavenly flowers to blossom in Iberia.

POPE AND MARTYR A holy Pope of the second century, the first of the eleven hitherto graced with the name of Pius, rejoices us to-day with his mild and gentle light. Although Christian society was in a precarious condition under the edicts of persecution, which even the best of the pagan emperors never abrogated, our saint profited by the comparative peace enjoyed by the Church under Antoninus Pius to strengthen the foundations of the mysterious tower raised by the divine Shepherd to the honour of the Lord God.¹ He ordained by his supreme authority that, notwithstanding the contrary custom observed in certain places, the feast of Easter should be celebrated on a Sunday throughout the entire Church. The importance of this measure and its effects upon the whole Church will be brought before...

Never, from the day when Simon Magus was baptized at Samaria, had hell seemed so near to conquering the Church as at the period brought before us by to-day's feast. Rejected and anathematized by Peter, the new Simon had said to the princes, as the former had said to the apostles: 'Sell me this power, that upon whomsoever I shall lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.' And the princes, ready enough to supplant Peter and fill their coffers at the same time, had taken upon themselves to invest men of their own choice with the government of the churches; the bishops in their turn had sold to the highest bidders the various orders of the hierarchy; and sensuality, ever in the wake of covetousness, had filled the sanctuary with defilement. The tenth century had witnessed the humiliation of...

POPE AND MARTYR THE name of Anacletus sounds like a lingering echo of the solemnity of June 29. Linus, Clement, and Cletus, the immediate successors of St. Peter, received from his hands the pontifical consecration; Anacletus had a less but still inestimable glory of being ordained priest by the Vicar of the Man-God.

CARDINAL AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH FOUR months after the Angel of the Schools, the Seraphic Doctor appears in the heavens. Bound by the ties of love when on earth, the two are now united for ever before the throne of God. Bonaventure's own words will show us how great a right they both had to the heavenly titles bestowed upon them by the admiring gratitude of men.

dinis Minister electus est: susceptumque munus per duodeviginti annos admirabili prudentia gessit ac laude sanctitatis. Plura constituit regulari disciplinæ et amplificando Ordini utilia; quem una cum aliis Ordinibus mendicantibus adversus obtrectatorum calumnias feliciter propugnavit. Ad Lugdunense Concilium a beato Gregorio decimo accersitus, et Cardinalis Episcopus Albanensis creatus, arduis Concilii rebus egregiam navavit operam: qua et schismatis dissidia composita sunt, et ecclesiastica dogmata vindicata.

Henry of Germany, the second king, but the first emperor of that name, was the last crowned representative of that branch of the house of Saxony descended from Henry the Fowler, to which God, in the tenth century, entrusted the mission of restoring the work of Charlemagne and Leo III. This noble stock was rendered more glorious in the flowers of sanctity adorning its branches than in the deep and powerful roots it struck in the German soil by great and long-enduring institutions. The Holy Spirit, who divideth His gifts according as He will, was then calling to the loftiest destinies that land which, more than any other, had witnessed the energy of His divine action in the transformation of nations.

Towering over the waves on the shore of the Holy Land, Mount Carmel, together with the short range of the same name, forms a connecting link to two other chains, abounding with glorious memories, namely: the mountains of Galilee on the north, and those of Judea on the south. "In the day of My love, I brought thee out of Egypt into the land of Carmel,"¹ said the Lord to the daughter of Sion, taking the name of Carmel to represent all the blessings of the Promised Land; and when the crimes of the chosen people were about to bring Judea to ruin, the prophet cried out: "I looked, and behold Carmel was a wilderness: and all its cities were destroyed at the presence of the Lord, and at the presence of the wrath of His indignation."² But from the midst of the Gentile world a new Sion arose, more...

Although we are not commanded to follow the saints to the extremities where their heroic virtue leads them, nevertheless, from their inaccessible heights, they still guide us along the easier paths of the plain. As the eagle upon the orb of day, they fixed their unflinching gaze upon the Sun of Justice; and, irresistibly attracted by His divine splendour, they poised their flight far above the cloudy region where we are glad to screen our feeble eyes. But however varied be the degrees of brightness for them and for us, the light itself is unchangeable, provided that, like them, we draw it from the authentic source.

THE Holy Spirit, who desires to raise our souls above this earth, does not therefore despise our bodies. The whole man is His creature and His temple, and it is the whole man He must lead to eternal happiness. The Body of the Man-God was His masterpiece in material creation; the divine delight He takes in that perfect Body He extends in a measure to ours; for that same Body, framed by Him in the womb of the most pure Virgin, was from the very beginning the model on which ours are formed.

For the second time in July a constellation of seven stars shines in the heavens. More fortunate than Felicitas, Symphorosa preceded in the arena the seven sons she was offering to God. From the throne where he was already reigning crowned with the martyr's diadem, Getulius the tribune, father of this illustrious family, applauded the combat whereby his race earned a far greater nobility than that of patrician blood, and gave to Rome a grander glory than was ever dreamed of by her heroes and poets.

Vincent was a man of faith that worketh by charity.¹ At the time he came into the world—viz., at the close of the same century in which Calvin was born—the Church was mourning over many nations separated from the faith; the Turks were harassing all the coasts of the Mediterranean. France, worn out by forty years of religious strife, was shaking off the yoke of heresy from within, while by a foolish stroke of policy she gave it external liberty. The Eastern and Northern frontiers were suffering the most terrible devastations, and the West and centre were the scene of civil strife and anarchy.

Sprung from the powerful aristocracy which won for Venice twelve centuries of splendour, Jerome came into the world when that city had reached the height of its glory. At fifteen years of age he became a soldier, and was one of the heroes in that formidable struggle wherein his country withstood the united powers of almost all Europe in the League of Cambrai. The golden city, crushed for a moment, but soon restored to her former condition, offered her honours to the defender of Castelnovo, who, like herself, had fallen bravely and risen again.

On this day Pudentiana's angelic sister at length obtained from her Spouse release from bondage, and from the burden of exile that weighed so heavily on this last scion of a holy and illustrious stock. New races, unknown to her fathers when they laid the world at the feet of Rome, now governed the Eternal City. Nero and Domitian had been actuated by a tyrannical spirit; but the philosophical Caesars showed how absolutely they misconceived the destinies of the great city.

THREE saints, said our Lord to St. Bridget of Sweden,¹ 'have been more pleasing to me than all others: Mary my mother, John the Baptist, and Mary Magdalen.' The Fathers tell us that Magdalen is a type of the Gentile Church, called from the depth of sin to perfect holiness; and, indeed, better than any other, she personifies both the wanderings and the love of the human race, espoused by the Word of God. Like the most illustrious characters of the law of grace, she has her antitype in past ages.

Saint Catharine, Saint Anastasia, All ye holy virgins and widows, All ye men and women, saints of God, make intercession for us. Be merciful to us, spare us, O Lord. Be merciful to us, graciously hear us, O Lord.

BISHOP AND MARTYR Ravenna, the mother of cities, invites us to-day to honour the martyr bishop, whose labours did more for her lasting renown than did the favour of emperors and kings. From the midst of her ancient monuments, the rival of Rome, though now fallen, points proudly to her unbroken chain of Pontiffs, which she can trace back to the Vicar of the Man-God through Apollinaris. This great saint has been praised by Fathers and Doctors of the Universal Church, his sons and successors.

VIRGIN AND MARTYR Christina, whose very name fills the Church with the fragrance of the Spouse, comes as a graceful harbinger to the feast of the elder son of thunder. The ancient Vulsinium, seated by its lake with basalt shores and calm clear waters, was the scene of a triumph over Etruscan paganism, when this child of ten years despised the idols of the nations, in the very place where, according to the edicts of Constantine, the false priests of Umbria and Tuscany held a solemn annual reunion. The discovery of Christina's tomb in our days has confirmed this particular of the age of the martyr as given in her Acts, which were denied authenticity by the science of recent times: one more lesson given to a presumptuous criticism which mistrusts everything but itself.

Let us, to-day, hail the bright star which once made Compostella so resplendent with its rays that the obscure town became, like Jerusalem and Rome, a centre of attraction to the piety of the whole world. As long as the Christian empire lasted, the sepulchre of St. James the Great rivalled in glory that of St.

MOTHER OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY Uniting the blood of kings with that of pontiffs, the glory of Anne's illustrious origin is far surpassed by that of her offspring, without compare among the daughters of Eve. The noblest of all who have ever conceived by virtue of the command to 'increase and multiply,' beholds the law of human generation pause before her as having arrived at its summit, at the threshold of God; for from her fruit God Himself is to come forth, the fatherless Son of the Blessed Virgin, and the grandson of Anne and Joachim. Before being favoured with the greatest blessing ever bestowed on an earthly union, the two holy grandparents of the Word made Flesh had to pass through the purification of suffering.

The East celebrates to-day one of her great martyrs, who was both a healer of bodies and a conqueror of souls. His name, which recalls the strength of the lion, was changed by heaven at the time of his death into Panteleemon, or all-merciful—a happy presage of the gracious blessings our Lord would afterwards bestow on the earth through his means. The various translations and the diffusion of his sacred relics in our West have made his cultus widespread, together with his renown as a friend in need, which has caused him to be ranked among the saints called helpers.

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

Magdalen this time was the first to meet our Lord. Scarce a week had elapsed since her glorious passage, when she repaid her sister's former kind office, and came in her turn saying: 'The Beloved is here and calleth for thee.' And Jesus preventing her, appeared Himself and said: 'Come, my hostess; come from exile, thou shalt be crowned.' Hostess of the Lord, then, is to be Martha's title of nobility in heaven, as it was her privileged name on earth. Into whatever city or town you shall enter, said the Man-God to His disciples, inquire who in it is worthy, and there abide.¹ Now St.

The decrees of eternal Wisdom ordained that the West should be honoured before the East with the glory of martyrdom. Yet when the hour had come, Jesus was to have, beyond the Tigris, millions of witnesses by no means inferior to their forerunners, astonishing heaven and earth by new forms of heroism. Impatient of the delay, two noble Persians won their palm on this day by the command of Rome.

BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH Yesterday we admired, in Peter and the Machabees, the substructure of the palace built by Wisdom in time to endure for eternity. To-day, in conformity with the divine ways of that Wisdom, who in her playing reaches from end to end, we are suffered to contemplate the progress of the glorious building, to behold the summit of the work, the last row of stones actually laid. Now, summit and foundation, the work is all one; the materials are all priceless: witness the diamond of fine water which displays its lustre to-day.

Urged by the approach of Laurence's triumph, Stephen rises to assist at his combat; it is a meeting full of beauty and strength, revealing the work of eternal Wisdom in the arrangement of the sacred cycle. But the present feast has other teachings also to offer us. The first resurrection, of which we spoke above, continues for the saints.

Where springs the pleasant west wind to unfold The fresh leaves, with which Europe sees herself New-garmented; nor from those billows far, Beyond whose chiding, after weary course, The sun doth sometimes hide him; safe abides The happy Callaroga, under guard Of the great shield, wherein the lion lies Subjected and supreme. And there was born The loving minion of the Christian faith, The hallowed wrestler, gentle to his own, And to his enemies terrible. So replete His soul with lively virtue, that when first Created, even in the mother's womb, It prophesied.

Rome, delivered from slavery by Peter on the first of this month, offers to the world a wonderful spectacle. O Wisdom, who, since the glorious Pentecost, hast spread over the whole world, where could it be more true to sing of thee that thou hast trodden the proud heights under thy victorious feet? On seven hills had pagan Rome set up her pageantry and built temples to her false gods; seven churches now appear at the summits on which purified Rome rests her now truly eternal foundations.

POPE AND MARTYR; AND SS. FELICISSIMUS AND AGAPITUS "Xistum in cimiterio animadversum sciatis octavo iduum augustarum die. Know that Sixtus has been beheaded in the cemetery on the eighth of the Ides of August." These words of St.

Cajetan appeared in all his zeal for the sanctuary at the time when the false reform was spreading rebellion throughout the world. The great cause of the danger had been the incapacity of the guardians of the Holy City, or their connivance by complicity of heart or of mind with pagan doctrines and manners introduced by an ill-advised revival. Wasted by the wild boar of the forest, could the vineyard of the Lord recover the fertility of its better days?

To-day a precursor of Laurence appears on the cycle, the deacon Cyriacus, whose power over the demon made hell tremble, and entitles him to a place among the saints called helpers. He and his companions in martyrdom form one of the noblest groups of Christ's army in that last and decisive battle, wherein the eagerness of the faithful to show that they knew how to die won victory for the Cross. Rome, baptized in the blood she had shed, found herself Christian in spite of herself; all her honours were now to be lavished upon the very men whom in the time of her folly she had put to the sword.

*Fear not, My servant, for I am with thee, saith the Lord. If thou pass through fire, the flame shall not hurt thee, and the odour of fire shall not be in thee. I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem thee out of the hand of the mighty.* It was the hour of combat; and Wisdom, more powerful than flame, was calling upon Laurence to win the laurels of victory presaged by his very name.

DEACON AND MARTYR Once the mother of false gods, but now the bride of Christ, O Rome, it is through Laurence thou art victorious! Thou hast conquered haughty monarchs and subjected nations to thine empire; but though thou hadst overcome barbarism, thy glory was incomplete till thou hadst vanquished the unclean idols. This was Laurence's victory, a combat bloody yet not tumultuous like those of Camillus or of Cæsar; it was the contest of faith, wherein self is immolated, and death is overcome by death.

Passion is followed to-day by the son of Chromatius, prefect of Rome, Tiburtius, who also suffered upon burning coals for the confession of his faith. Though forty years intervened between the two martyrdoms, it was the same Holy Spirit that animated these witnesses of Christ and suggested to them the same answer to their executioners. Tiburtius, walking upon the fire, cried out: 'Learn that the God of the Christians is the only God, for these hot coals seem flowers to me.' Equally near to the great archdeacon stands an illustrious virgin, so bright herself as not to be eclipsed by him.

The same year in which St. Dominic, before making any project with regard to his sons, founded the first establishment of the Sisters of his Order, the companion destined for him by heaven received his mission from the Crucifix in the church of St. Damian, in these words: 'Go, Francis, repair My house, which is falling to ruin.' The new patriarch inaugurated his work, as Dominic had done, by preparing a dwelling for his future daughters, whose sacrifice might obtain every grace for the great Order he was about to found.

QUEEN OF FRANCE NEVER was such a booty won as that obtained by the sons of Clovis in their expedition against Thuringia towards the year 530. Receive this blessing from the spoils of the enemy!¹ might they well say, on presenting to the Franks the orphan brought from the court of the fratricide prince whom they had just chastised. God seemed in haste to ripen the soul of Radegonde.

"TO-DAY the Virgin Mary ascended to heaven; rejoice, for she reigns with Christ for ever." The Church will close her chants on this glorious day with this sweet antiphon, which resumes the object of the feast and the spirit in which it should be celebrated. No other solemnity breathes, like this one, at once triumph and peace; none better answers to the enthusiasm of the many and the serenity of souls consummated in love. Assuredly that was as great a triumph when our Lord, rising by His own power from the tomb, cast hell into dismay; but to our souls, so abruptly drawn from the abyss of sorrows on Golgotha, the suddenness of the victory caused a sort of stupor to mingle with the joy of that greatest of days.

CONFESSOR, FATHER OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY FROM time immemorial the Greeks have celebrated the feast of St. Joachim on the day following our Lady's birthday. The Maronites kept it on the day after the Presentation in November, and the Armenians on the Tuesday after the Octave of the Assumption of the Mother of God.

Three years of famine, three months of defeats, three days of pestilence: the choice given to the guilty David between these three measures of expiation shows them to be equivalent before the justice of God. The terrible scourge, which makes more havoc in three days than would famine or a disastrous war in months and years, showed in the fourteenth century that it kept its sad pre-eminence; the Black Death covered the world with a mantle of mourning, and robbed it of a third of its inhabitants. Doubtless the world had never so well merited the terrible warning: the graces of sanctity poured in profusion on the preceding century had but checked for a while the defection of the nations; every embankment being now broken down, entrance was given to the irresistible tide of schism, reform,...

One of the loveliest lilies from the Dominican field to-day unfurls its petals at the foot of Mary's throne. Hyacinth represents on the sacred cycle that intrepid band of missionaries who, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, faced the barbarism of the Tartars and Mussulmans which was threatening the West. From the Alps to the northern frontiers of the Chinese Empire, from the islands of the Archipelago to the Arctic regions, he propagated his Order and spread the kingdom of God.

ABBOT AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH THE valley of wormwood has lost its bitterness; having become Clairvaux, or the bright valley, its light shines over the world; from every point of the horizon vigilant bees are attracted to it by the honey from the rock which abounds in its solitude. Mary turns her glance upon its wild hills, and with her smile sheds light and grace upon them. Listen to the harmonious voice arising from the desert; it is the voice of Bernard, her chosen one. 'Learn, O man, the counsel of God; admire the intentions of Wisdom, the design of love.

Although Mary's glory is within her, beauty appears also in the garment wherewith she is clad: a mysterious robe woven of the virtues of the saints, who owe to her both their justice and their reward. As every grace comes to us through our Mother, so all the glory of heaven converges towards that of the Queen. Now among the blessed souls there are some more immediately connected with the holy Virgin.

Our Lady is now reigning in heaven. Her triumph over death cost her no labour; and yet it was through suffering that she like Jesus entered into her glory. We too cannot attain eternal happiness otherwise than did the Son and the Mother.

A witness of the Son of God, one of the princes who announced His glory to the nations, lights up this day with his apostolic flame. While his brethren of the sacred college followed the human race into all the lands whither the migration of nations had led it, Bartholomew appeared as the herald of the Lord at the very starting point, the mountains of Armenia, whence the sons of Noe spread over the earth. There had the figurative Ark rested; humanity, everywhere else a wanderer, was there seated in stillness, remembering the dove with its olive branch, and awaiting the consummation of the alliance signified by the rainbow which had there for the first time glittered in the clouds.

It was his Christian faith that made Louis IX so great a prince. "You that are the judges of the earth, think of the Lord in goodness, and seek Him in simplicity of heart."¹ Eternal Wisdom, in giving this precept to kings, rejoiced with divine foreknowledge among the lilies of France, where this great saint was to shine with so bright a lustre. Subject and prince are bound to God by a common law, for all men have one entrance into life, and the like going out. Far from being less responsible to the divine authority than his subjects, the prince is answerable for every one of them as well as for himself.

POPE AND MARTYR Zephyrinus was the first Pontiff to be buried in the celebrated crypt where the Popes of the third century came after their combat to sleep their last sleep. The catacomb which thus succeeded the Vatican cemetery in the honour of sheltering the vicars of Christ, had been opened thirty years before by the virgin martyr Cæcilia. As, when at the point of death, she had consecrated her palace into a church, so now from her tomb she caused her family burial-place to pass into the hands of the Church.

'To thee is the poor man left: thou wilt be a helper to the orphan.'¹ Proud Venice has already seen these words realized in her noble son Jerome Æmilian: to-day they indicate the sanctity of another illustrious person descended from the first princes of Navarre, but of still higher rank in the kingdom of charity. God, who waters the trees of the field as well as the cedars of Libanus, because it is He that planted them all, takes care also of the little birds that do not gather into barns: will He then forget the child, who is of much more value than the birds of the air? Or will He give him corporal nourishment, and neglect the soul hungering for the bread of the knowledge of salvation, which strengthens the heart of man?

Josephus Calasanctius a Matre Dei, Petraltæ in Aragonia nobili genere natus, a teneris annis futuræ in pueros caritatis et eorum institutionis indicia præbuit. Nam adhuc parvulus eos ad se convocatos in mysteriis fidei et sacris precibus erudiebat. Humanis divinisque litteris egregie doctus, cum studiis theologicis Valentiæ operam daret, nobilis potentisque feminæ illecebris fortiter superatis, virginitatem quam Deo voverat, inoffensam insigni victoria servavit.

THE BAPTIST, . . . 108 Commemoration of Saint Sabina, Martyr, . . . 113 August 30.—SAINT ROSE OF LIMA, Virgin, . . . 116 Commemoration of Saints Felix and Adauctus, Martyrs, . . . 122 August 31.—SAINT RAYMUND NONNATUS, Confessor, . . . 128 September 1.—SAINT GILES, Abbot, . . . 128 Commemoration of the Twelve Brothers, Martyrs, . . . 132 September 2.—SAINT STEPHEN, King of Hungary, Confessor, . . . 133 September 5.—SAINT LAURENCE JUSTINIAN, Bishop and Confessor, . . . 139 September 8.—THE NATIVITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, . . . 146 First Vespers, . . . 151 Mass, . . . 158 Second Vespers, . . . 166 Commemoration of Saint Gorgonius, Martyr, . . . 167 Sunday within the Octave of the Nativity.—FEAST OF THE MOST HOLY NAME OF MARY, . . . 171 Mass, . . . 174 Vespers, . . . 179

'A simple and upright man, and fearing God, and avoiding evil':¹ such is the description of the just man in the lessons of the night Office for the time; and it is the portrait of the holy monk whom the Church offers us to-day for our admiration, our imitation, and our devotion. Fleeing from men in order to find God, he quitted his native land, where his rank, and still more his virtues, prevented him from being unknown. He wandered from the coasts of Greece to the borders of the Rhone, and stopped at length in the forests of Septimania, where he seemed to have found his desired solitude.

"Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness."¹ The people with teeth of steel, grinding the nations, gives itself up as food to him, to whom was said: "Kill and eat;"² the mouth of the Huns, formerly vomiting foam and rage, now distils the honey of charity. Such, O Christ, are thy miracles; such are Thy works, O our God!³ Thus does Baronius, on reaching in his history the year of Christ 1000, hail the arrival of the Hungarian deputies, who came to offer to the Roman Church the suzerainty of their land, and beseech the Vicar of Christ to confer the title of king upon their duke Stephen. We are carried back in thought a century earlier, when, led by Arpadus, the son of Almutz, under the banner of the hawk, the Magyars came down from the mountains of...

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR 'Come, all ye who are drawn by the desire of unchangeable good, and who seek it in vain in this passing world; I will tell you what heaven has done for me. Like you, I once sought with feverish eagerness; and this exterior world could not satisfy my burning desire. But, by the divine grace, which fed my anguish, at length she, whose name I then knew not, appeared to me, more beautiful than the sun, sweeter than balm.

To-day the infant Mary smiles upon the lily offered her in her cradle by the representative of a great Order. The hermits of St. Augustine were being grouped and organized by the Vicar of Christ, when Nicholas was admitted into their family, of which he was soon to become the thaumaturgus.

'And the Virgin's name was Mary.'¹ Let us speak a little about this name, which signifies star of the sea, and which so well befits the Virgin Mother. Rightly is she likened to a star: for as a star emits its ray without being dimmed, so the Virgin brought forth her Son without receiving any injury; the ray takes nought from the brightness of the star, nor the Son from His Mother's integrity. This is the noble star risen out of Jacob, whose ray illumines the whole world, whose splendour shines in the heavens, penetrates the abyss, and, traversing the whole earth, gives warmth rather to souls than to bodies, cherishing virtues, withering vices.

The name of Dom Guéranger, abbot of Solesmes, needs no recommendation. He has been long known, both in his own country and in England, by his pious and edifying works. The work which is now put within the reach of those who use only our own language is truly Benedictine in its aim and spirit.

The Station, at Rome, is in the church of Saint Stephen on Monte Celio. By a sort of prophetic presentiment, this church of the first proto-martyr was chosen as the place where the faithful were to assemble on the Friday of Passion-week, which was to be, at a future time, the feast consecrated to the Queen of martyrs. Cordibus nostris, quæsumus, Domine, gratiam tuam benignus infunde; ut peccata nostra castigatione voluntaria cohibentes, temporaliter potius maceremur, quam suppliciis deputemur æternis.

"O all ye that pass by the way, attend, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow!"¹ Is this, then, the first cry of that sweet babe, whose coming brought such pure joy to our earth? Is the standard of suffering to be so soon unfurled over the cradle of such lovely innocence? Yet the heart of mother Church has not deceived her; this feast, coming at such a time, is ever the answer to that question of the expectant human race: What shall this child be?

There is a peculiar beauty in the meeting of these two saints upon the sacred cycle. Cyprian, in a famous dispute, was once opposed to the apostolic See: eternal Wisdom now offers him to the homage of the world, in company with one of the most illustrious successors of St. Cornelius was, by birth, of the highest nobility; witness his tomb, lately discovered in the family crypt, surrounded by the most honorable names in the patrician ranks.

While, in France, the rising spirit of Jansenism was driving God from the hearts of the people, a humble son of St. Francis, in southern Italy, was showing how easily love may span the distance between earth and heaven. "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself,"¹ said our Lord; and time has proved it to be the most universal of His prophecies. On the feast of the holy cross, we witnessed its truth, even in the domain of social and political claims.

Januarius is ever preaching the Gospel to every creature; for his miraculous blood perpetuates the testimony he bore to Christ. Let those who say they cannot believe unless they see, go to Naples; there they will behold the martyr's blood, when placed near his head which was cut off sixteen hundred years ago, to liquefy and boil as at the moment it escaped from his sacred veins. No; miracles are not lacking in the Church at the present day.

The twentieth of September marks one of the saddest events in history. At the height of her power, in the glorious days of Pepin and Charlemagne, the eldest daughter of the Church had crowned her mother; and the Church, in the person of her Head, reigned in reality, as well as by right, until, a thousand years later, satan took advantage of the fallen state of France to despoil Peter of the patrimony which ensured his independence. The holy cross is still shedding its rays upon us!

APOSTLE AND EVANGELIST "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the son of Abraham."¹ The Eagle and the Lion have already risen in the heavens of the holy liturgy; to-day we salute the Man; and next month the Ox will appear, to complete the number of the four living creatures, who draw the chariot of God through the world,² and surround His throne in heaven. These mysterious beings, with their six seraph-wings, are ever gazing with their innumerable eyes upon the Lamb who stands upon the throne as it were slain; and they rest not day and night, saying: 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come.' St. John beheld them giving to the elect the signal to praise their Creator and Redeemer; and when all created beings in heaven, on earth,...

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR In 1517 a cruel blow fell upon the great Augustinian family; Luther, one of its members, raised the cry of revolt which was to be echoed for centuries by every passion. But the illustrious Order, which had unwittingly nurtured this child of evil, was none the less acceptable to God; and He deigned, before long, to demonstrate this, for the consolation of institutes whose very excellence exposes unworthy subjects to more dangerous falls. It was at the First Vespers of All Saints that Luther broached, at Wittenburg, his famous theses against indulgences and the authority of the Roman Pontiff; within a month, on November 25 of the same year, Thomas of Villanova pronounced his vows at Salamanca, and filled up the place left vacant by the heresiarch.

POPE AND MARTYR The lives of the first Vicars of Christ are buried in a mysterious obscurity; just as the foundations of a monument built to defy the ravages of time are concealed from view. To be the supports of the everlasting Church is a sufficient glory: sufficient to justify our confidence in them, and to awaken our gratitude. Let us leave the learned to discuss certain points in the following short legend; as for ourselves, we will rejoice with the Church on this feast, and pay our loving veneration to the humble and gentle Pontiff, who was the first laid to rest beside St.

The Office of the time gives us, at the close of September, the Books of Judith and Esther. These heroic women were figures of Mary, whose birthday is the honour of this month, and who comes at once to bring assistance to the world. "Adonai, Lord God, great and admirable, who hast wrought salvation by the hand of a woman:"¹ the Church thus introduces the history of the heroine, who delivered Bethulia by the sword, whereas Mardochai's niece rescued her people from death by her winsomeness and her intercession. The Queen of heaven, in her peerless perfection, outshines them both, in gentleness, in valour, and in beauty.

AND SAINT JUSTINA VIRGIN AND MARTYR 'Whosoever ye be, that are seduced by the mysteries of the demons, none of you can equal the zeal I once had for these false gods, nor my researches into their secrets, nor the vain power they had communicated to me, to me Cyprian, who from my infancy was given up to the service of the dragon in the citadel of Minerva. Learn from me the deceitfulness of their illusions. A virgin has proved to me that their power is but smoke.

'Honour the physician for the need thou hast of him: for the Most High hath created him. For all healing is from God, and he shall receive gifts of the king. The skill of the physician shall lift up his head, and in the sight of great men he shall be praised.

DUKE AND MARTYR Wenceslas recalls to us the entrance into the Church of a warlike nation, the Czechs, the most indomitable of the Slavonic tribes, which had penetrated into the very midst of Germany. It is well known, with what bitterness and active energy this nation upholds its social claims, as though its struggle for existence in the early days of its history had made it proof against every trial. The faith of its apostles and martyrs, the Roman faith, will be the safeguard, as it is the bond of union, of the countries subject to the crown of St.

ARCHANGEL, . . . 277 September 30.—SAINT JEROME, Priest, Confessor, and Doctor of the Church, . . . 284 First Sunday of October.—FEAST OF THE MOST HOLY ROSARY, . . . 295 October 1.—SAINT REMIGIUS, Bishop and Confessor, Apostle of the Franks, . . . 298 October 2.—THE HOLY GUARDIAN ANGELS, . . . 316 October 4.—SAINT FRANCIS, Confessor, . . . 324

PRIEST CONFESSOR AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH 'I know not Vitalis, I reject Meletius, I pass by Paulinus;¹ he that cleaveth to the Chair of Peter, he is mine.'² Thus, about the year 376, when the whole east was disturbed by the competitions for the episcopal See of Antioch, wrote an unknown monk to Pope St. It was St. Jerome, a native of Dalmatia, who implored 'light for his soul redeemed by the Blood of our Lord.'³ Far from Stridonium, his semi-barbarous native place, whose austerity and vigour he never lost; far from Rome, where the study of literature and philosophy had not had sufficient ascendency to withhold him from the seductions of pleasure; the fear of God's judgments had led him into the desert of Chalcis.

APOSTLE OF THE FRANKS Scarcely had two centuries elapsed since the triumph of the cross over Roman idolatry, when satan began to cry victory once more. While Eutychianism was crowned at Byzantium in the person of Anastasius the silent, Arianism was rife in the west. Throughout the whole ancient territory of the empire, heresy was supreme, and almost everywhere was persecuting the Church, who had now none but the vanquished 'But fear not; rather rejoice,' says Baronius at this point of his Annals; 'it is divine Wisdom still delighting to play in the world.

WONDER-WORKER as is the saint of to-day, fulfilling her dying prophecy, "After my death I will let fall a shower of roses," she is her own greatest miracle. Her world-wide popularity, to which is united in most cases a devotion which has reorientated many a life, and in all has been a stimulus and an encouragement, is recognized to be phenomenal. It has been said with respect to doctrinal definitions that the faithful have a passive "infallibility," whereby their need answers exactly to the definition; the same would seem to be true in the case of devotions and saints; they are given to us when and as they are needed.

And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the sign of the living God; and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying: Hurt not the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees, till we sign the servants of our God in their foreheads.¹ The sixth seal of the Book of destinies had just been opened before the eyes of the prophet of Patmos. It was a time of anguish, the hour for the wicked to cry to the mountains: 'Fall upon us!' The sun was darkened: an image of the Sun of justice eclipsed by the night of iniquity; the moon, the figure of the Church, appeared red as blood, through the evils that defiled the sanctuary; the stars fell from heaven, as the fig-tree casteth its green figs when it is shaken by a great...

The protomartyr of the Benedictine Order stands before us to-day in his strength and in his beauty. The empire had fallen, and the yoke of the Arian Goths lay heavy upon Italy. Rome was no longer in the hands of the glorious races which had made her greatness; these, nevertheless, kept up their honourable traditions.

Martyrs, . . . 338 October 6.—SAINT BRUNO, Confessor, . . . 348 October 7.—SAINT MARK, Pope and Confessor, and SAINTS SERGIUS, BACCHUS, MARCELLUS AND APULEIUS, Martyrs, . . . 354 Commemoration of Saint Justina, Virgin and Martyr, . . . 356 Commemoration of Our Lady of Victory, . . . 357 October 8.—SAINT BRIDGET, Widow, . . . 360 October 9.—SAINT DIONYSIUS, Bishop and Martyr, and SAINTS RUSTICUS AND ELEUTHERIUS, Martyrs, . . . 368 October 10.—SAINT FRANCIS BORGIA, Confessor, . . . 371

Among the divers religious families, none is held in higher esteem by the Church than the Carthusian; the prescriptions of the corpus juris determine that a person may pass from any other Order into this, without deterioration.¹ And yet it is of all the least given to active works. Is not this a new, and not the least convincing, proof that outward zeal, how praiseworthy soever, is not the only, or the principal thing in God's sight? The Church, in her fidelity, values all things according to the preferences of her divine Spouse.

The messenger of the heavenly court, disclosing the hidden mysteries of the Divinity, hails as full of grace the Virgin about to become Mother of God. The Virgin visits her relative, the mother of John, who, though yet a captive in the womb, leaps with joy announcing the presence of Christ. The Word that before all ages had proceeded from the Father's Intellect, is born a mortal Babe of a Virgin Mother.

AND SAINTS SERGIUS, BACCHUS, MARCELLUS AND APULEIUS, MARTYRS Mark, successor to Sylvester the Pontiff of peace, has been honoured on this day from time immemorial. According to the testimony of St. Damasus, his virtues no less than his name recalled St.

*Who, O Lord, has treated Thee thus?' 'They that despise Me and forget My love.' This was the first revelation of the Son of God to Bridget of Sweden. Francis of Assisi, raising before the world the standard of the cross, had announced that Christ was about to recommence the dolorous way; not now in His own Person, but in the Church, who is flesh of His flesh. The truth of this declaration Bridget experienced from the very opening of that fatal fourteenth century, during which such innumerable disasters, the results of crime, fell at once upon Born in the year when Sciarra Colonna, a new Pilate's servant, dared to strike the Vicar of Christ, Bridget's childhood was contemporaneous with those sad falls, which caused the Church to be despised by her enemies.

AND SAINTS RUSTICUS AND ELEUTHERIUS, MM. Ushered in by Bridget the northern prophetess, Dionysius appears as the brightest star in that constellation of mystics, which illumines the close of the cycle with the first glimmers of eternal union. Soon we shall salute Teresa of Jesus, and her guide Peter of Alcantara; while from the shades of his Obscure Night, John of the Cross will rise in glory next month near to the great St.

Vanity of vanities and all is vanity.¹ No argument was needed to impress this truth upon the saint of to-day, when the coffin was opened which contained all that Spain had admired of youth and loveliness, and death suddenly revealed to him its awful reality. O ye beauties of all times, death alone never dies; it invites itself to your dances and pleasures, it assists at all your triumphs, it hears promises said to be eternal: and how quickly it can scatter your adorers! A few years, a few days, perhaps even less, and all your borrowed sweetness will be decaying in the tomb! 'Enough of vain phantoms; enough of serving mortal kings; awaken, O my soul!' Such was Francis Borgia's reply to the teachings of death.

KING OF ENGLAND This glorious saint was like a beautiful lily, crowning the ancient branch of the kings of Wessex. The times had progressed since that sixth century, when the pagan Cerdic and other pirate chiefs from the North scattered with ruins the island of saints. Having accomplished their mission of wrath, the Anglo-Saxons became instruments of grace to the land they had conquered.

of England, . . . 382 October 14.—SAINT CALLIXTUS I, Pope and Martyr, . . . 387 October 15.—SAINT TERESA, Virgin, . . . 394 October 17.—SAINT HEDWIG, Widow, . . . 409 October 18.—SAINT LUKE, Evangelist, . . . 414 October 19.—SAINT PETER OF ALCANTARA, Confessor, . . . 422 October 20.—SAINT JOHN CANTIUS, Confessor, . . . 428 October 21.—SAINT HILARION, Abbot, . . . 433 Commemoration of Saint Ursula and her Companions, Virgins and Martyrs, . . . 437 October 24.—SAINT RAPHAEL, Archangel, . . . 439

POPE AND MARTYR He was a sign of contradiction in Israel. In his own time, Christians were ranged either around him or against him. The trouble excited by his mere name sixteen hundred years ago, was renewed in the middle of the nineteenth century by the discovery of a famous book, which gave an occasion to the sectaries of our own days to stand with those of old against Callixtus and the Church.

"Although the Church triumphant in heaven, and the Church mourning here on earth, appear to be completely separated," says Bossuet on this feast, "they are nevertheless united by a sacred bond. This bond is charity, which is found in this land of exile as well as in our heavenly country; which rejoices the triumphant saints, and animates those still militant; which, descending from heaven to earth, and from angels to men, causes earth to become a heaven, and men to become angels. For, O holy Jerusalem, happy Church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven, although the Church thy dear sister, who lives and combats here below, ventures not to compare herself with thee, she is not the less assured that a holy love unites her to thee.

Pangamus Creatoris Atque Redemptoris gloriam. Qui bene creatos, Astutia callidi serpentis, Sua refecit gratia. Futurum ut germen Sancta proferret fœmina; Quod hostis antiqui Nociva exsuperaret capita.

AT the beginning of the thirteenth century, the plateaux of upper Asia poured down a fresh torrent of barbarians, more terrible than all their predecessors. The one fragile barrier, which the Græco-Slavonian civilization could oppose to the Mongols, had been swept away by the first wave of the invasion; not one of the States formed under the protection of the Byzantine Church had any prospect for the future. But beyond this Ruthenia, which had fallen into dissolution before being conquered, the Roman Church had had time to form a brave and generous people: when the hour arrived, Poland was ready.

Virgin, . . . 473 October (Last Sunday of).—FEAST OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST THE KING CHAPTER THE FIRST ON HEARING MASS, DURING THE TIME AFTER

Among the most striking proofs of the infinite love of our Redeemer is this, that, at a moment in which the love of the faithful was growing cold, the Divine Love proposed himself as the object of special veneration and worship, and the precious treasure of the Church was opened to enrich with indulgences the cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. . . . In that Sacred Heart we must place all our hope, from that Heart ask and expect our salvation.¹ The great devotion to the Sacred Heart, of which the Sovereign Pontiff Pius XI thus speaks, and which has been so marvellously extended in the Church since the seventeenth century, is no new devotion. Much research by Catholic scholars has established the fact that there was not one of the...

The goodness and kindness of God our Saviour hath appeared to all men.² It would seem that the third Gospel, written by a disciple of St. Paul, had purposed setting forth this word of the doctor of the Gentiles; or may we not rather say, the apostle himself characterizes in this sentence the Gospel wherein his disciple portrays the Saviour prepared before the face of all peoples; a light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of Israel?³ St. Luke's Gospel, and the words quoted from St.

'O happy penance, which has won me such glory!' said the saint of to-day at the threshold of heaven. And on earth, Teresa of Jesus wrote of him: 'Oh! what a perfect imitator of Jesus Christ God has just taken from us, by calling to his glory that blessed religious, Brother Peter of Alcantara! The world, they say, is no longer capable of such high perfection; constitutions are weaker, and we are not now in the olden times.

Kenty, the humble village of Silesia which witnessed the birth of St. John, owes its celebrity entirely to him. The canonization of this holy priest, who in the fifteenth century had illustrated the university of Cracow by his virtues and science, was the last hope of expiring Poland.

'Monks were unknown in Syria before St. Hilarion,' says his historian St. Jerome. 'He instituted the monastic life in that country, and was the master of those who embraced it.

The approach of the great solemnity, which will soon be shedding upon us all the splendours of heaven, seems to inspire the Church with a profound recollection. Except for the homage she must needs pay, on their own date, to the glorious apostles Simon and Jude, only a few feasts of simple rite break the silence of these last days of October. Our souls must be in conformity with the dispositions of our common mother.

Chrysanthus was united, in his confession of our Lord, with her whom he had won to Christianity and to the love of the angelic virtue. Our forefathers had a great veneration for these two martyrs, who having lived together in holy virginity, were together buried alive in a sand-pit at Rome for refusing to honour the false gods. Dying like the seed in the earth, they yielded the fruit of martyrdom.

Martyrs, . . . 442 October 26.—SAINT EVARISTUS, Pope and Martyr, . . . 445 October 28.—SAINTS SIMON AND JUDE, Apostles, . . . 447 October 31.—VIGIL OF ALL SAINTS, . . . 451

POPE AND MARTYR The beloved disciple had just received the long-promised visit of our Lord inviting him to heaven, when the Church, under Evaristus, completed the drawing up of the itinerary for her long pilgrimage to the end of time. The blessed period of the apostolic times was definitively closed; but the eternal city continued to augment her treasure of glory. Under this pontificate the virgin Domitilla, by her martyrdom, cemented the foundations of the new Jerusalem with the blood of the Flavii, who had destroyed the old.

Sancte Mathia, ora. Sancte Barnaba, ora. Sancte Luca, ora.

Instead of thy fathers, sons are born to thee.¹ Thus does the Church, disowned by Israel, extol in her chants the apostolic fruitfulness which resides in her till the end of time. Yesterday she was already filled with that loving hope, which is never deceived, that the holy apostles Simon and Jude would anticipate their solemnity by shedding blessings upon her. Such is the condition of her existence on earth, that she can remain here only as long as she continues to give children to our Lord; and therefore, in the Mass of October 27 she makes us read the passage of the Gospel where it is said: 'I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.

Second Vespers . . . Vespers of the Dead . . . November 2.—ALL SOULS' DAY . . .

Second Vespers . . . Vespers of the Dead . . .

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR Rome, wishing to admit as few interruptions as possible into the present great octave, gives but a brief notice of St. Hubert in the martyrology. It is fitting that we should imitate her reserve.

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR HUMILITAS. This word already stood, crowned with gold, upon his family escutcheon,¹ when Charles was born at the castle of Arona. It had been said of the Borromeos that they knew nothing of humility, except to bear it on their coat of arms: but the time had now come when the mysterious device was to be justified by the most illustrious scion of that noble family, and when, at the zenith of his greatness, a Borromeo would learn to void his heart of self, in order that God might fill it.

In the sixteenth century, in reply to the reproach of exhaustion hurled against the Church, the Holy Ghost raised from her soil an abundant harvest of sanctity. Andrew was one of His most worthy co-operators in the work of holy reformation and supernatural renaissance which then took place. Eternal Wisdom had as usual suffered Satan to go before, for his own greater shame, cloaking his evil works under the grand names of renaissance and reform.

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR Three thousand six hundred and sixty churches dedicated to St. Martin in France alone,¹ and well-nigh as many in the rest of the world, bear witness to the immense popularity of the great thaumaturgus. In the country, on the mountains, and in the depth of forests; trees, rocks, and fountains, objects of superstitious worship to our pagan ancestors, received, and in many places still retain, the name of him who snatched them from the dominion of the powers of darkness to restore them to the true God.

POPE AND MARTYR While the concourse of pilgrims to the sepulchre of the bishop of Tours induced his third successor, Perpetuus, to raise over his precious remains the basilica in which so many prodigies were to be wrought all through the Middle Ages, Rome herself was dedicating to St. Martin one of her noblest churches, uniting with him as joint titular her own illustrious pontiff and confessor Sylvester. Adorned with this twofold glory, St.

HUMBLE lay-brother, Didacus of St. Nicholas, is welcomed to-day by his father St. Francis into the company of Bernardine of Siena and John Capistran, who preceded him by a few years to heaven.

BISHOP AND MARTYR JOSAPHAT KUNCEWICZ, contemporary with St. Francis de Sales and St. Vincent de Paul, might have been taken for a Greek monk of the eleventh century or an ascetic of the Thebaid.

The school which is founded upon the rule of the great patriarch of the monks of the West began with St. Gregory the Great. Such was the independent action of the Holy Spirit who guided it that in it women have prophesied as well as men.

BISHOP AND CONFESSOR Moses, 'instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, mighty in his words and in his deeds,'² retired into the desert: Gregory, adorned with the best gifts of birth and nature, brilliant in rhetoric, rich in every science, hid himself from men in the flower of his youth, and hastened to offer to God in solitude the holocaust best pleasing to the Lord. Each was the hope of his race; yet each turned away to lose himself in the contemplation of heavenly mysteries. Meanwhile the yoke of Pharaoh lay heavy upon Israel; meanwhile souls were perishing, whom one of Gregory's burning words might have snatched from the empire of idolatry: was not such flight, then, desertion?

DUCHESS OF THURINGIA Although the blessed in heaven shine each with his own peculiar glory, God is pleased to group them in families, as He groups the stars in the material firmament. It is grace that presides over the arrangement of these constellations in the heaven of the saints; but sometimes it seems as if God wished to remind us that He is the sole Author of both grace and nature; and inviting them, in spite of the fall, to honour Him unitedly in His elect, He causes sanctity to become a glorious heirloom, handed down from generation to generation in the same family on earth. Among these races none can compare with that royal line which, beginning in ancient Pannonia, spread its branches over the world in the most flourishing days of Christendom: 'Rich in virtue and studying...

Felix was called in his youth to dwell in the desert; and he thought to die there, forgotten by the world he had despised. But our Lord had decreed that his old age should yield fruit before men. It was one of those epochs which may be called turning-points in history.

The Presentation is one of the minor solemnities of our Lady, and was inscribed at a comparatively late date on the sacred Cycle; it seems to court the homage of our silent contemplation. The world, unknown to itself, is ruled by the secret prayers of the just; and the Queen of saints, in her hidden mysteries, wrought far more powerfully than the so-called great men whose noisy achievements fill the annals of the human race. The East had been celebrating for seven centuries at least¹ the entrance of the Mother of God into the temple of Jerusalem,² when in 1372 Gregory XI permitted it to be kept for the first time³ by the Roman court at Avignon.

VIRGIN AND MARTYR CECILIA united in her veins the blood of kings with that of Rome's greatest heroes. At the time of the first preaching of the Gospel, more than one ancient patrician family had seen its direct line become extinct. But the adoptions and alliances, which under the Republic had knit more closely the great families by linking them all to the most illustrious among them, formed as it were a common fund of glory, which, even in the days of decline, was passed on intact to the survivors of the aristocracy.

byteros decem, diaconos duos, episcopos per diversa loca island where the miraculous fountain had sprung up. He held the pontificate nine years, six months, and six days. In two ordinations in the month of December, he made ten priests, two deacons, and fifteen bishops for divers places.

POPE AND MARTYR¹ The memory of St. Clement has been surrounded with a peculiar glory from the very beginning of the Roman Church. After the death of the apostles, he seems to eclipse Linus and Cletus, although these preceded him in the pontificate.

Let us go with the Church to Mount Carmel, and offer our grateful homage to John of the Cross, who, following in the footsteps of Teresa of Jesus, opened a safe way to souls seeking God. The growing disinclination of the people for social Rome honours to-day one of her own illustrious sons, Chrysogonus, who gave his life for Christ at Aquileia in the reign of Diocletian. His splendid church in the Trastevere, which possesses his venerable head, was first built at the very time of the triumph of the Faith over idolatry.

VIRGIN AND MARTYR Gertrude the Great, from her very infancy, felt a special attraction towards the glorious virgin Catharine. As she was desirous of knowing how great were her merits, our Lord showed her St. Catharine seated on a throne so lofty and so magnificent, that it seemed her glory was sufficient to have filled the courts of heaven had she been its sole queen; while from her crown a marvellous brightness was reflected on her devout clients.¹ It is well known how the Maid of Orleans, entrusted by St.

POPE AND CONFESSOR So far, the only ones we have seen standing round the Crib of our Jesus have been Martyrs: Stephen, overwhelmed with the shower of stones; John, the Martyr in heart, who survived his fiery torture; the Holy Innocents, massacred by the sword; Thomas, murdered in his cathedral; these are the champions of Christ, who keep guard in the palace of Bethlehem. Yet all Christians are not called to be Martyrs. Besides this countless battalion of the King's favourite soldiers, there are other troops of sainted heroes which form the heavenly army; and amongst these there are the Confessors, who conquered the world without shedding their blood in the combat.

Christmas begins to glimmer on the horizon. The last Sunday after Pentecost has given us the closing instructions of the movable Cycle. Beginning with the twenty-seventh of this month, the present days belong in some years to the new Cycle, in others to the one which is ending.

This feast is destined each year to terminate with solemnity the Cycle which is at its close, or to add lustre to the new one which has just begun. It seems, indeed, fitting that the Christian year should begin and end with the cross, which has merited for us each of those years which it has pleased the divine goodness to grant us, and which is to appear on the last day in the clouds of heaven as the seal put on time. We should remember that St.

We open our Proper of Saints for Advent with St. Andrew, because, although his feast frequently occurs before this holy season has begun, it sometimes happens that we have entered Advent when the memory of this great apostle has to be celebrated by the Church. This feast is therefore destined to terminate with solemnity the cycle which is at its close, or to add lustre to the new one which has just begun.

Andreas apostolus Bethsaidæ natus, qui est Galilææ vicus, frater Petri, discipulus Joannis Baptistæ, quum eum de Christo dicentem audisset, Ecce Agnus Dei, secutus Jesum, fratrem quoque suum ad eumdem perduxit. Quum postea una cum fratre piscaretur in mari Galilææ, ambo a prætereunte Christo Domino ante alios apostolos vocati illis verbis: Venite post me, faciam vos fieri piscatores hominum: nullam interponentes moram, et relictis retibus secuti sunt eum. Post cujus Passionem et Resurrectionem Andreas cum in Scythiam Europæ, quæ ei provincia ad Christi fidem disseminandam obtigerat, venisset, deinde Epirum ac Thraciam peragrasset, doctrina et miraculis innumerabiles homines ad Christum convertit.

Of the saints whose feasts are kept during Advent, five are virgins. The first, St. Bibiana, whom we honour to-day, is a daughter of Rome; the second, St.

APOSTLE OF THE INDIES THE apostles being the heralds of the coming of the Messias, it was fitting that Advent should have in its calendar the name of some one among them. Divine Providence has provided for this; for, to say nothing of St. Andrew, whose feast is oftentimes past before the season of Advent has commenced, St.

ALTHOUGH, in the Roman liturgy, St. Barbara is merely commemorated in the Office of St. Peter Chrysologus, yet the Church has approved an entire Office for the use of those Churches which honour the memory of this illustrious virgin in a special manner.

BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH THE same divine Providence, which would not that the Church should be deprived of the consolation of keeping, during Advent, the feast of some of the apostles, who announced to the Gentiles the coming of the Messias, has also willed that the holy doctors, who defended the true faith against heretics, should be represented in this important season of the Catholic year. Two of them, Saint Ambrose and Saint Peter Chrysologus, shine as two brilliant stars in the firmament of the Church during Advent. It is worthy of note, that both of them were the zealous avengers of that Son of God whom we are preparing to receive.

All ye holy bishops and confessors, All ye holy doctors,

Divine Wisdom has willed that on the way which leads to the Messias, our great High Priest, there should be many pontiffs to pay Him the honour due to Him. Two Popes, St. Melchiades and St.

BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH This illustrious pontiff was deservedly placed in the calendar of the Church side by side with the glorious bishop of Myra. Nicholas confessed, at Nicæa, the divinity of the Redeemer; Ambrose, in his city of Milan, was the object of the hatred of the Arians, and, by his invincible courage, triumphed over the enemies of Christ. Let Ambrose, then, unite his voice, as doctor of the Church, with that of St.

At length, on the distant horizon, rises, with a soft and radiant light, the aurora of the Sun which has been so long desired. The happy Mother of the Messias was to be born before the Messias Himself; and this is the day of the Conception of Mary. The earth already possesses a first pledge of the divine mercy; the Son of Man is near at hand.

The Church of Spain, the fair pearl of Christendom, brings before us on this same tenth of December her illustrious martyr Eulalia, the glory of Merida, the ornament of Iberia, the joy of the universal Church. She is the third of those wise virgins, whose names are most prominent in the Church's liturgy during the season of Advent. She is the worthy companion of Bibiana and Barbara, and that heroic Lucy whose feast we shall keep on the thirteenth.

The Church makes a commemoration, on this same day within the octave, of the holy Pope Melchiades. This illustrious Pontiff, whom St. Augustine calls 'the true child of the peace of Jesus Christ, the worthy father of the Christian people,' ascended the papal throne in the year 311, that is, during the very fiercest storm of persecution.

This great Pontiff comes before us in the liturgical year, not to bring us tidings of peace as St. Melchiades did, but as one of the most illustrious defenders of the great mystery of the Incarnation. He defends the faith of the universal Church in the divinity of the Word, by condemning, as his predecessor Liberius had done, the acts and the authors of the celebrated Council of Rimini.

There comes to us, to-day, the fourth of our wise virgins, the valiant martyr, Lucy. Her glorious name shines on the sacred diptych of the Canon of the Mass, together with those of Agatha, Agnes, and Cecily; and as often as we hear it pronounced during these days of Advent, it reminds us (for Lucy signifies light) that He who consoles the Church, by enlightening her children, is soon to be with us. Lucy is one of the three glories of the Church of Sicily; as Catania is immortalized by Agatha, and Palermo by Rosalie, so is Syracuse by Lucy.

On this same day, we have also the fifth of the wise virgins, whose bright lamps light us, during Advent, to the crib of Jesus their Spouse. Odilia did not shed her blood for Him, as did Bibiana, Barbara, Eulalia, and Lucy; her offering was her tears and her love. Her wreath of lilies blends sweetly with the roses, which form the crowns of her four companions.

Thus wounded, Lucy foretold the peace of the Church, which would come after the death of Diocletian and Maximian, and then died. It was the Ides of December (Dec. 13). Her body was buried at Syracuse, but was translated thence first to Constantinople, and afterwards to Venice.

When asked to tell the names of the saints who were foremost in defending the dogma of the Incarnation, we think at once of the intrepid Eusebius of Vercelli, as one of the glorious number. The Catholic faith, which was so violently attacked in the fourth century by the Arian heresy, was maintained at that time by the labours and zeal of four sovereign Pontiffs: Sylvester, who confirmed the decrees of the Council of Nicæa: Julius, the supporter of St. Athanasius; Liberius, whose faith failed not, and who, when restored to his liberty, confounded the Arians; and lastly, Damasus, who destroyed the last hopes of the heretics.

This feast, which is now kept not only throughout the whole of Spain but in many other parts of the Catholic world, owes its origin to the bishops of the tenth Council of Toledo, in 656. These prelates thought that there was an incongruity in the ancient practice of celebrating the feast of the Annunciation on the twenty-fifth of March, inasmuch as this joyful solemnity frequently occurs at the time when the Church is intent upon the Passion of our Lord, so that it is sometimes obliged to be transferred into Easter time, with which it is out of harmony for another reason; they therefore decreed that, henceforth, in the Church of Spain there should be kept, eight days before Christmas, a solemn feast with an octave, in honour of the Annunciation, and as a preparation for the great...

This is the last feast the Church keeps before the great one of the Nativity of her Lord and Spouse. She interrupts the greater ferias in order to pay her tribute of honour to Thomas, the apostle of Christ, whose glorious martyrdom has consecrated this twenty-first day of December, and has procured for the Christian people a powerful patron, who will introduce them to the divine Babe of Bethlehem. To none of the apostles could this day have been so fittingly assigned as to St.

All ye holy virgins and All ye saints of God, make intercession for us. Be merciful to us, spare us, O Be merciful to us, graciously hear us, O Lord. From all evil, deliver us, O From all sin, deliver us, O From thy wrath, From all dangers that threaten From the scourge of earthquakes, From plague, famine, and war, From sudden and unprovided From the snares of the devil, From anger, hatred, and all From the spirit of fornication, From lightning and tempest, From everlasting death, Through the mystery of thy holy Incarnation, Through thy coming, Through thy nativity, Per baptismum et sanctum jejunium tuum, libera.

THE FIRST MARTYR St Peter Damian thus begins his Sermon for this Feast: 'We are holding in our arms the Son of the Virgin, and are honouring with our caresses this our Infant God. The holy Virgin has led us to the dear Crib. The most beautiful of the Daughters of men has brought us to the most beautiful among the Sons of men,¹ and the Blessed among women to him that is Blessed above all.

APOSTLE AND EVANGELIST Dearest to Jesus' Crib, after Stephen, stands John, the Apostle and Evangelist. It was only right that the first place should be assigned to him, who so loved his God that he shed his blood in his service; for, as this God himself declares, greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friends,¹ and Martyrdom has ever been counted by the Church as the greatest act of love, and as having, consequently, the power of remitting sins, like a second Baptism. But next to the sacrifice of Blood, the noblest, the bravest sacrifice, and that which most wins the heart of him who is the Spouse of souls, is the sacrifice of Virginity.

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY AND MARTYR Another Martyr comes to-day to take his place round the Crib of our Jesus. He does not belong to the first ages of the Church: his name is not written in the Books of the New Testament, like those of Stephen, John and the Innocents of Bethlehem. Yet does he stand most prominent in the ranks of that Martyr Host which has been receiving fresh recruits in every age, and is one of those visible abiding proofs of the vitality of the Church, and of the undecaying energy infused into her by her divine Founder.

Saint Augustine,

The Kingdom of Heaven—Holy Church—is seen bringing forth out of her treasure "things new and old." Although she can never add new dogmas to the deposit of Faith entrusted to her, as the ages go by she is seen understanding more perfectly and explaining more fully those treasures in her keeping. She is a living body, not a statue, and she can develop, though she can never change her nature. Hence, guided by the Holy Spirit of him who has promised to be with her not merely for a few centuries but unto the end of the world, she defines or emphasizes certain points of doctrine as she sees fit, considering the needs of the times.

This Sunday has been chosen by the Church for the celebration of the Feast of the Holy Family; the liturgy of the day, as expressed in the Gospel, harmonizes well with the mystery of the new Feast, for it already carries us forward to the childhood of our Emmanuel and gives us those wonderful words which, after the example of his Blessed Mother, we must ever ponder within our hearts: 'And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject to them.' The Feast of the Holy Family is of recent origin. In 1663 Barbara d'Hillehoust founded at Montreal the Association of the Holy Family; this devotion soon spread and in 1893 Leo XIII expressed his approval of a feast under this title and himself composed part of the Office. The Feast was welcomed by succeeding Pontiffs as an efficacious...

This Friday of Passion-week is consecrated in a special manner, to the sufferings which the holy Mother of God endured at the foot of the cross. The whole of next week is fully taken up with the celebration of the mysteries of Jesus' Passion; and although the remembrance of Mary's share in those sufferings is often brought before the faithful during Holy Week, yet, the thought of what her Son, our divine Redeemer, goes through for our salvation, so absorbs our attention and love, that it is not then possible to honour, as it deserves, the sublime mystery of the Mother's com-passion. It was but fitting, therefore, that one day in the year should be set apart for this sacred duty: and what day could be more appropriate than the Friday of this week, which, though sacred to the Passion,...