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PRECIOUS
BLOOD OF JESUS AND CHURCH UNITY
We headed our June Editorial "The Sacred Heart and
Church Unity." We are now passing through the Month
of the Most Precious Blood and it too speaks eloquently
of Church Unity. We recall to mind St. Paul's sermon on
Mar's Hill, where speaking of God "Who made the world
and all things therein," he says: "It is He
who giveth to all life and health and all things and hath
made of one (blood) all mankind to dwell upon the whole
face of the earth." [Acts. 17:26]
Perhaps never since the confounding of tongues at Babel
and the consequent scattering of the human family over
the face of the earth has the civilized portion of mankind
risen to a higher conception of the universal brotherhood
existing between the various peoples and races all over
our globe than is the case today when the Gospel of Civil
Peace is preached from the courthouse steps as well as
from the church pulpit and in the halls of parliament
as well as from the altars of great cathedrals.
But Christianity teaches of a yet more intimate brotherhood,
- of a brotherhood within a brotherhood, - where the ties
of kinship are far more closely drawn than are those which
bind together Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian, American,
European, African, Asiatic and Australian, namely, that
of the Children of the New Adam, who have received the
New Birth of Water and the Spirit and in whose veins flows
the Royal Blood of the Redeemer of mankind.
Much as the Christian desires to "live peaceably
with all men" and to love every man as his brother
he cannot ignore the existence of certain divisions and
hostilities between the seed of God and the seed of the
devil, which are as age long as the human family itself.
God proclaimed this unbridgeable gulf in the Garden of
Paradise when He said to Satan: "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." (Genesis 3:15.)
As the descendants of Ismael have made war from time immemorial
on the seed of Isaac and as Esau has persecuted Jacob,
so we find in the twentieth century the seed of Satan
persecuting as of old the Children of Mary. Nor have we
reason to expect that these enmities will be eliminated
as the world grows older. Quite the contrary - for we
read in the Apocalypse
| Woe
to the earth, and to the sea, because the devil is
come down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that
he hath but a short time. And when the dragon saw
that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the
woman who brought forth the man child . . . and the
dragon was angry against the woman! and went to make
war with the rest of her seed, who keep the commandment
of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. (Apocalypse
12:12, 13, 17.) |
As
Satan's time grows shorter both reason and prophecy lead
us to anticipate that his wrath against the holy seed
of the elect will increase and not diminish and that the
persecutions that have reddened with the Blood Royal of
Jesus Christ the pathway of human history from century
to century will grow yet more bloody as the end of the
world draws near.
It has ever been the duty of Christians to love all men;
and the Sister of Charity who ministers alike to Christian
and to Jew, to Pagan and Mohammedan, to white man and
Negro is truly the personification of the Church's loving
attitude toward all the children of Adam. But this does
not destroy the Divinely established fact that there is
a more intimate fellowship between the Elect of God than
that oneness of blood which through Adam makes the whole
human race akin. "Let us do good to all men",
exhorts the Apostle, "but especially to those who
are of the household of the faith." (Galatians 6:10.)
That which sometimes is called the Eleventh Commandment
was imparted by Jesus Christ to His disciples on the night
of His betrayal; and it was a commandment to love - not
their enemies for already He had taught them in the Sermon
on the Mount, to do that, - but in that solemn hour He
said: "A new commandment I give unto you: That you
love one another." (St. John 13:34.)
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In
the thirteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel we read,
Jesus knowing his hour was come, that He should
pass out of this world to the Father, having loved
His own who were in the world, He loved them unto
the end.
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That
our Lord entertained a very different affection towards
His Elect than He did towards mankind at large is evident
in the prayer which He addressed to the Father after he
had instituted the Sacrament of His Love and which is
recorded in the seventeenth chapter of the same gospel.
| I
have manifested Thy name to the men whom Thou hast
given me out of the world: I pray for them: I pray
not for the world, but for them whom Thou hast given
me: for they are Thine. |
And
that He desired that the brotherhood between Christians
should be far more intimate and close than what is commonly
called "the universal brotherhood of man" is
again plainly indicated in this prayer, for He continues:
| Holy
Father, keep them in Thy Name whom Thou hast given
Me; that they may be one as We are . . . And not for
them only do I pray but for them also who through
their word shall believe in Me; that they all may
be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee; that
they also may be one in us. |
Alas
that through the malice of the devil and man's own fallen
nature divisions, separations, estrangements, misunderstandings,
and even age-long hatred should find their existence among
Christians! Oh the shame and the grief, that the Holy
Seed of God, surrounded by their enemies, should be at
strife among themselves! The Holy Spirit is arousing the
consciences of the whole Christian family to realize the
sadness and the pity of all this. And the paramount duty
of every Child of God in the twentieth century is to emphasize
both in thought and deed our kinship in Christ Jesus,
whether Catholic or Protestant, Roman, Greek or Anglican.
In spite of our ecclesiastical divisions we can at least
love one another and enter into a generous rivalry as
to who shall excel in charity. And when we become one
in love we shall wake up some fine day and find ourselves
one in faith and last of all, one in communion.
Who knows, - it may be the sword of persecution and the
fierce onslaught of the Seed of the Serpent which in the
end will drive the Children of Mary together and compel
us in self-defense to make an end of disunity and to fight
shoulder to shoulder under one Commander-in-Chief against
the seried [sic] hosts of darkness and the powers of hell.
In another column we are printing from Pax, the quarterly
magazine of the Caldey Benedictines, what we are pleased
to term Abbot Aelred's Apologia. It is a marvel of charity
and offers a golden illustration of that spirit-hunger
for unity which under God will prevail sooner or later
to sweep away the divisions of the sixteenth century and
bring into one the divided family of God.
There is an old saying that " blood will tell"
and this we believe to be pre-eminently true of the Most
Precious Blood, shed for the Unity of God's Elect on Mount
Calvary. (The Lamp July 1913 pp.177-178)
For
a printable version of this article click
here.
INDEPENDENCE
DAY (JULY 4)
I would speak to you this morning on the subject of divine
charity and as we are still celebrating the holiday of
our Nation's great Festival of Independence, it is in
the harmony of that thought that we would speak from the
standpoint of the Church and the State.
The purpose of Our Lord in coming into this world was
to establish the Kingdom of Heaven in the midst of the
kingdoms of this world. The human family by the seduction
of our first parents and the malice of the devil had come
under the sway of a usurper. Our Lord speaks of him in
His Gospel as the prince of this world, and St. Paul says,
"We wrestle not with flesh and blood but with principalities
and powers of darkness." [Eph.6:12]
The world, from the fall of Adam until now, in spite of
the Christian elements that have been thrown into it,
has been a world of anxiety, hatred, greed, lust and passion,
culminating in the outbreak of innumerable wars. Men have
cultivated the cultus of what they call "the enemy"
and have stirred themselves up to glorify enmity and to
think of hatred as the virtue of patriotism.
Now all this hatred, whether it be between the individual,
the members of a family, fratricidal strife within the
larger group of the nation, or of one nation warring against
another, all this, is against the teaching of our Lord
Jesus Christ and the peace of that Kingdom which He came
to establish in the world, a Kingdom which is not of this
world, but which is to be transferred from the sphere
of this world into those new heavens and new earth, which
God said he would erect in that great realm of God, ruled
over by justice and charity, a realm where there will
be perfect harmony, perfect peace and perfect love, and
where "God shall wipe away all tears from all eyes"
[Isa.25:8] in the final triumph of the Cross and the love
of God.
Now Our Lord came to establish this Kingdom in the world
and it was His will that it should be ever extending,
so that at last the prince of this world, the usurper,
should be put down from his throne, and He, the rightful
heir of the throne, reign from pole to pole and from sea
to sea. And so in the Apocalypse we have an angel proclaiming
that the kingdom of this world shall become the kingdom
of Christ and of His Anointed.
It is, also, clearly stated that there shall be a great
Millennium, a reign of peace, before the end of the world,
and as Christians and Catholics we should be recognizing
this purpose of God and we should contribute our share
towards that final evolution - if you want so to call
it - from the present sad condition of human society.
From this standpoint of the future, we may look forward
with some degree of encouragement. The great war [WW I]
that has passed has not brought "safety to Democracy"
and we are disappointed in many of the immediate after-effects,
but it was satisfactorily conducted as far as the American
people were concerned and dominated by an altruistic motive.
We sincerely thought that democracy in our land was in
peril of the German Kultur and we wanted to make the world
"safe for democracy," so we threw ourselves
into the conflict and poured out the blood of our youth
and the treasures of the land without stint. Now we must
not forget those ideals or think that they were altogether
wasted and ineffective. In spite of the outrageous contract
of Versailles made by politicians who were influenced
by sordid motives and by the hatred which rankled in their
breast against their neighbor, there is still the hope
for better things.
This is the situation. How can we overcome it? We will
not overcome it by opposing hatred to it, because that
would contradict the teaching of our Lord. St. Paul says
we are to overcome evil with good, and hatred with love.
Not to labor the point any more, we have before us the
task as Catholics, of working in a true patriotic spirit
for the evolution of everything that is good and beautiful
and praiseworthy in our people, in other words, laboring
to establish the peace of Christ. This can only mean the
triumph of the principles of love, good fellowship and
charity. We shall oppose, therefore, the spirit of carnage
with the spirit of charity. The way to triumph is not
to show ourselves more hateful than our opponents, opposing
weapon against weapon. Let them alone, because there is
something in the mind of the American people that protests
against bigotry, and if our people find Catholics full
of a forgiving spirit, not giving back abuse by abuse,
but rather turning away anger by a soft answer and displaying
otherwise the charity of Christ, all this will have its
infallible effect. Even so did the first martyrs triumph
over the bloodthirsty Romans, they subjected themselves
meekly to persecution and died in the arena, and from
their holocaust was raised Rome, the most Christian city
in the world, its Catholic Capital.
This is the spirit of St. Francis, the spirit of reconciliation,
the spirit that overcomes evil with good. In my sermon
this morning I spoke of an incident in the life of St.
Francis. How in the mountain country of Assisi there were
depredations made by desperate robbers, who waylaid the
people and lived on spoils. On one occasion St. Francis,
knowing that those desperate men had been for some time
unsuccessful in their raids and that they were hungry,
sent some good bread to them by his brethren. Now those
bandits were so impressed by this charity that the robber
band was actually broken up, and some of them went so
far as to put on the brown habit and become Friars.
Let us be practical in demonstrating that we have the
spirit of Christ, the spirit of St. Francis. We know that
if a sick Protestant is taken to a Catholic hospital,
they will receive from our Sisters just the same good
care, whether they be Protestant or Jew. In the parable
of the Prodigal Son who spent his substance, and came
home in misery and want, the fatted calf was killed and
a great feast was made, and the older brother objected
because he did not understand the spirit of charity. But
let us show that broad-minded charity and kindness, going
out of our way to do a kindness to our brethren. By such
a spirit and by such acts we can overcome the lies of
the devil. Thus we can solidify the Catholic Church and
the government of this country, and so we will overcome
the great wave of irreligion and bring the American people
back to the foot of the Cross and the Fountain Source
of Christianity.
Then as the great nations of Europe are reestablished
in the good condition of peace, love will reign instead
of present injustice, hatred and antipathy. Our American
missionaries will sweep across the Pacific into Asia and
hasten the day when there shall be fulfilled these words
of the Apocalypse, "And the kingdoms of this world
shall become the kingdoms of the Lord's Anointed."
Then peace and prosperity and love shall reign over the
earth and the glorious Stars and Stripes shall retain
their supremacy among the nations, because America shall
be supreme in the spirit of the love and devotion of Jesus
Christ. (Sermon of July 5, 1925)
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a printable version of this article click
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THE
NAME ATONEMENT (JULY 9)
About
this time I was first introduced to St. Francis of Assisi.
He had been referred to in a sermon, as the most perfect
imitator of Jesus Christ among all the saints. I wanted
to know more about him in consequence. Having no life
of St. Francis available I took down a volume of the encyclopedia,
looked up St. Francis of Assisi and read the story of
his life as therein set forth and I was particularly struck
with the incident related there, of how St. Francis came
to find the basic texts of the Friars Minor.
The richest young man of Assisi, Bernard of Quintavalle,
had invited him to be a guest for a day and a night and
then proposed in the morning that he accept him as one
of his disciples. St. Francis hesitated, on his own responsibility,
to invite this man of wealth to part with his fortune
and to become a poor beggar like himself. They accordingly
went to Mass together in a nearby church and, at the conclusion
of the Mass St. Francis asked the priest to open the missal
three times, in the name of the Blessed Trinity, and to
read out the passages which he found in doing so.
The result was that each time he read out of the Holy
Gospel, this message: "If thou wilt be perfect, go,
sell all that thou hast, make distribution to the poor,
and come take up thy cross and follow me."
When they passed out of the church, Bernard told St. Francis
that he would obey the gospel and immediately returning
to his home, he first distributed all the ready gold he
had in the house to the poor, sold his estates, and parted
with everything, until he was as pennyless as the Poverello
of Assisi, himself.
This suggested to me the question, why could I not imitate
St. Francis in this regard and thereby obtain the name
of the Society which I felt God willed me to found. Finding
the name in this way, I would have the immense satisfaction
of knowing that I did not name it, but that Almighty God
did. Accordingly on the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost,
July 9, 1893, after celebrating Holy Communion in the
early morning, when the congregation had retired from
the church and I was left alone, I took from the pulpit,
the bible used in preaching my sermons and, kneeling before
the Altar, I invoked the Holy Trinity and asked to be
guided to the Name of the institute God wished me to found.
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The
first passage I received read as follows:
On the last, that great day of the feast, Jesus
stood in the temple and cried: If any man thirst,
let him come unto me and drink, he that believeth
on Me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water. This spake He of the Holy Spirit, which they
should receive who believe on Him, for as yet the
Holy Spirit had not been given, because Jesus had
not yet been glorified.
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This
passage, I confess, was a total disappointment, there
was nothing in it about the cross or passion of our Blessed
Lord and consequently I did not find therein the name
I was seeking, but then I immediately reflected on how
St. Francis received three texts, and this is only one.
It does not contain the name it is true, but it does speak
of the Holy Spirit who inspired the prophets and, if you
are called to found a preaching order, those preachers,
to preach effectively, must preach by the power and inspiration
of the Holy Spirit.
Once again, therefore, in the name of the Holy Trinity,
I sought another text and this time the text contained
the name. It seemed to stand out boldly on the page and
no sooner did I encounter it, then, on the instant I knew
that I had found what I was seeking. The passage was found
in the Fifth Chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans,
tenth verse and read as follows:
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We
joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom
we have now received the Atonement.
"This
is it," I exclaimed, "The Society of the
Atonement."
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Then
I considered that there should be another text to correspond
to the three received by St. Francis and once again I
invoked the adorable Trinity and received, as a result,
the description of the institution of the Blessed Sacrament,
given by St. Paul, in the 11th Chapter of First Corinthians.
It is the same chapter that was selected by the Church
for the Epistle in the Mass of the Feast of Corpus Christi.
Then it became evident that there was a definite intention
behind these three passages, the first relates to the
Holy Spirit, the second to God the Father, the third to
God the Son. It was the work of the Holy Spirit to prepare
the instrument of the Incarnation and the Atonement in
creating the Blessed Virgin without original sin, as the
mother of the "Word made Flesh," and not only
the Incarnation of our Lord, but His Atonement on the
cross, is extended and made effective through the Blessed
Sacrament, which is set forth in the third text.
Returning with great happiness to the rectory on that
memorable Sunday morning, I went into my study, selected
a piece of linen writing paper and at once wrote down
the three texts, the original copy of which is still in
our archives, and as I completed the task this notable
thing happened. The same inner voice that spoke to me
twenty years before, as a child, saying: "That is
what you will do some day, found a preaching order like
the Paulists," now said to me, "You will have
to wait seven years for this to be realized." In
obedience to the inner voice, I quietly laid the paper
aside and went on with my parish duties, as though nothing
had happened.
We shall see in the after history of our institute that
the inner voice was fulfilled in the event, for just exactly
seven years afterwards, on the Mount of the Atonement,
the Father General made his first profession, and the
Society of the Atonement was on that day an actual reality.
(Radio talk Aug. 19, 1935)
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a printable version of this article click
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PROFESSION
OF FATHER PAUL (JULY 27)
The history of our Institute seems to run in cycles of
seven. It is thirty-five years ago since my profession
was made and forty-two years since we received the text.
I remember, after receiving the text, going over to my
study and putting it down on a piece of paper and then
hearing the interior voice say: "You will have to
wait seven years for this to be completed." So as
to be obedient, I made no further effort, but went on
about my work.
It was seven years later that the profession took place
here on this spot, followed two months later by that of
the Mother General.
The day we celebrated Foundation Day was originally a
day just like this, with a breeze blowing; the beauty
would intoxicate you. In place of this shrine, however,
we had a tent that had been secured at the close of the
Spanish-American War. The only thing then built on the
Mountain was the Corpus Christi Cross, which had been
erected on the feast of Corpus Christi before.
During the thirty-five years, there has never been a rainy
Foundation Day. Another thought I have, I am the only
one who was present at the first profession. The Mother
has since been called. New generations are growing up
to take the place of the first.
We sang the processional hymn of the Covenant. We have
every reason to believe that God will keep the Covenant,
"Blessing I will bless you and multiplying I will
multiply you." Covenant means two contracting parties.
We must keep our part; we must keep on to perfection and
we hope there will be no letdown in the spirit of obedience
in the community. Our Lord prayed on the night of His
betrayal that all might be one. We must exercise ourselves
in love, for it is the fulfillment of the law. The law
is love. "Keep my commandment and love one another."
(Sermon delivered on Friday of Atonement Week, 1935, at
the outdoor Shrine of Our Lady of the Atonement, atop
the Mount of the Atonement.)
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OUR
LADY OF THE ATONEMENT (JULY 9)
You will readily recall that it was while Jesus hung upon
the Cross in mortal agony that he addressed to the Blessed
Virgin and to St. John the mutual salutation: "Woman,
behold thy Son. Son, behold thy Mother," and that
then and there Mary was constituted the New Eve and Our
Lady of the Atonement, the Mother through eternity of
the Children of Calvary. (The Lamp July 1917 p.375)
She is necessarily "of the Atonement," since
it was the Will of God that she play a necessary part
in the Atonement or Redemption. That is not to say that
without her, man would have remained unredeemed, but that
God's plan gave her a large share in the redemptive work.
When we address the Blessed Mother as "of the Atonement,"
we mean, then, that there is some very close bond between
the Atonement and her, that she belongs to the Atonement
and the Atonement to her. Mary, although her part in the
Atonement is in no way similar in nature to that of her
Divine Son's, cooperated with Jesus Christ, as no other
creature did, in His work of reconciling man with God.
That is exactly why she is "of the Atonement."
(Undated sermon)
We cannot think of the Atonement without thinking of the
Precious Blood and so when we address the blessed Mother
of God as Our Lady of the Atonement, the Precious Blood
of the Atonement comes immediately into our minds.
The Slain Victim taken down from the cross is laid in
the arms of His Mother all covered with His own blood
and that blood stained the garments of the Blessed Virgin.
How impossible to disassociate either Our Lady or Our
Lady of the Atonement from the Precious Blood. (The Lamp
July 1911 p.180)
How often we see red mingled with the green of the holly
and the pine in the decorations of Christmas Day. This
should remind us of the Red Blood which Jesus derived
in the womb of His Virginal Mother from her Immaculate
Heart, the same Blood which thirty-three years later He
was destined to pour out for our redemption on Calvary's
Tree to make an Atonement for the sins of the world. (The
Lamp Dec. 1935 p.375)
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a printable version of this article click
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OUR
LADY OF MOUNT CARMEL (JULY 16)
We propose to tell our Readers more about the Mount of
the Atonement, in order to arouse a livelier interest
in the campaign to purchase the remaining seventy-five
percent of the Mountain's extent which we are holding
by a temporary lease, but as yet it is not owned by the
Society of the Atonement. We call this Carmel of America
"the Holy Mount," and we certainly believe that
God had the Society of the Atonement in mind when He created
it. But a holy thing is something that belongs to God,
and, as we have just said, only twenty- five percent of
the Mount of the Atonement has been purchased as the patrimony
of the Lord of Hosts up to the present time. It is unthinkable
that three-quarters of this holy mountain should be permanently
estranged from the Friars and other Children of the Atonement.
None of us should rest secure in our thoughts about the
Holy Mountain until every inch of its extent is held in
sacred trust for the religious uses of the Atonement.
A few lines above we called it an American Mount Carmel
and we did so advisedly. Carmel was the home of the prophets
of the Old Law, and this is the home of the preaching
Friars of the Atonement, prophets of the New Law. After
her assumption into heaven, Carmel became a center of
devotion to the Blessed Virgin, which gave rise to her
invocation as Our Lady of Mount Carmel; here upon this
Holy Mount is promoted a corresponding devotion to the
same Mother of God under the title of Our Lady of the
Atonement.
We do not doubt that as the Blessed Virgin showed a special
predilection for Mount Carmel, so she chose this mountain
long before the coming of the Friars and set her affection
upon it as a sacred eminence, where the Atonement of her
Divine Son in which she so intimately participated would
be illustrated and magnified in the last days of the world.
When the Friars first took up their abode on the mountain
we were often asked by visitors what its elevation above
sea-level was, and invariably gave it as our belief that
it was seven hundred feet. Our reason for giving this
answer was a mystical one. We had learned to associate
the number seven with the Atonement in the unfolding of
the history of our Society, and hence it seemed to us
most fitting that the height of the Mount of the Atonement
should be as we have said. Later we learned from a Government
survey of the Highlands of the Hudson that the Mount of
the Atonement was exactly seven hundred feet high.
We will leave our Readers to form their own conclusions
as to whether this was an accidental coincidence or whether
it was part of the design of the Omniscient in His foreknowledge
predestinating this elect mountain for its holy mission.
(The Lamp Jan.1918 p.52)
_____________________________________________________
Now our thought goes back to Mount Carmel in the days
of the general apostasy of the Israelites, when God punished
Abab and his wicked wife, Jezebel, because His prophet
Elijah had prayed and shut up the heaven from raining.
(1K 17) Everything dried up, fountains and rivers, and
everyone was looking famished for a little water to drink,
when God summoned Elijah (and) the king to come to the
mountain, also the 450 priests of Baal, worshipers of
false gods. There, this man stood alone facing them, challenged
the 450 priests of Baal to attest as to who is God. By
the king's command they were constrained to build an altar,
put a sacrifice upon it, go first to pray to their gods
to send fire. Although they cut themselves with knives
and lancets (1K18:28) no fire came from heaven to consume
what was on the altar, the offering of their sacrifice.
At length came Elijah. First of all he caused water to
be poured into the trenches. When they were filled with
water, he poured water all over the offering and wood.
The sacrifice lay on the altar made of stones, one for
each of the tribes of Israel. Then Elijah prayed and outstretched
his hands. God heard it. Presently, fire from heaven licked
up all the water and consumed the sacrifice, turned to
dust and ashes the very stones that made the altar, although
they were supposed to be impervious to fire. Now, that
mysterious visible fire which came from heaven, is of
itself that symbol of the Holy Spirit which 1,900 years
ago today on the first Pentecost came to the Apostles.
Here is our grand Graymoor, this holy mountain. We are
gathered upon it like the priests in the service of God.
Like holy Francis shall we not spread out our arms in
the form of Christ Crucified, and with the words of Elijah
on our lips, ask the fire of the Holy Spirit to descend
upon us, not to burn up any material altar, not to lick
up the water in the material trench, but to behold us
as victims on the altar of the cross, to come down and
burn within us as He burned with apostolic zeal the fire
of missionary enthusiasm in the minds and hearts and breasts
of the Apostles and to endow us that the prayer which
we say every day may be answered, that the Friars may
become missionaries in all lands.
Let us give ourselves as victims of Divine Love. We have
a wonderful Society, with wonderful promises that no human
being can fulfill. (Sermon of May 18, 1929 titled "Fire
on the Earth.")
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SAINTS
ANN AND JOACHIM, PARENTS OF MARY (JULY 26)
My dear brethren, we are celebrating a great feast of
the Church today, a feast in honor of the mother of the
Mother of God. It sets forth a great truth of revelation.
We come today to celebrate a very important chapter of
it, that is the chapter that is devoted to the history
of the blessed Ann. This history is largely a matter of
tradition, it is something which runs along with the Scriptures.
The Church has not only the Scriptures, but she has the
history, and so the history of Ann, the mother of the
Mother of God, is the mother of tradition, and it is a
story very beautiful in itself and very edifying. She
was married to a very holy man named Joachim. These two
choice instruments of God were of the royal seed of David,
from whom must come the One Who was to redeem mankind.
Their married life was not blessed with children, consequently
Ann suffered greatly; she was a very pious woman and there
was a kind of tradition among the Jews that if, when people
were married and they had no children, it was a kind of
visitation from God, either for their secret sins or some
other transgression of His law, and although Ann was very,
very holy, she had to endure this from her neighbors because
her married life had no off-spring.
And so this holy woman went and prayed and God visited
her, and visited her in plenty, because she gave birth
to the most wonderful human being that the world has ever
known. And the Holy Spirit interfering with the ordinary
laws of heredity so that the stain of Adam's transgression
should not touch her. Having been conceived immaculate
and never knowing the taint of original sin or any actual
sin, she was the choicest work of creation.
Now God never forgets His faithful ones and He never changes.
With God there is no variableness nor shadow of turn,
and when He gives a vocation to someone and they are faithful,
he never forgets them, His promises are to everlasting.
So through all the centuries since Ann gave birth to this
wonderful child, God has watched over her and God has
highly exalted her in His Kingdom. And so as the ages
of the Church go on, we find that certain of these holy
servants of God are being more ad more honored; St. Joseph,
the spouse of the Blessed Virgin, is now the patron of
the Universal Church. And so with the mother of the Mother
of God, Blessed Ann, God has seemed pleased to magnify
her among the people by certain miracles. There is the
pride of our own country in Canada [that is, Shrine of
St. Ann], where the pilgrimages rival only those at Lourdes
in Europe.
Now let us realize that all of us as Catholics, have our
vocation, as St. Paul wrote to the Romans, "You are
all called to be saints." Let us realize that there
is a communion between the struggles of the fellowship
of God and those perfected saints in Heaven, and that
just as our Blessed Mother sends the Angels to minister
to us, that right near to her is that beautiful mother
whom she still looks up to and honors and loves. It is
said that the grandmother in a family sometimes spoils
the children, and although we may imagine that Ann does
not spoil many children, we may be sure that she has a
grandmother's love for us and that she is ready to exercise
it with her prayers and intercession. Therefore, let us
call upon her, call upon our Blessed Mother and all the
Saints to intercede for us, so that we shall not have
to be purified for any length of time in Purgatory, but
that we shall soon go to be associated with that glorious
company of the elect who have taken the places from which
Satan and his angels fell, for, the choice in the end
is between association with the glorious family of the
beatified on the one side, and the damned in Hell on the
other. (Sermon of July 26, 1925)
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