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In the Words of Father Paul
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Fr. Paul Wattson, the founder with Mother Lurana White, of the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement,
gave hundreds of sermons, conducted numerous retreats, delivered many radio addresses and wrote extensively in four magazines: The Pulpit of the Cross, The Lamp, The Candle and The Antidote.

From time to time we will be putting on our website some of his words.

The selections from the words of Father Paul for the month of July 2008 are:

July the month of the Precious Blood of Jesus

Independence Day (Friday, July 4)

The Name Atonement (Wednesday, July 9)

Fr. Paul Wattson's Profession of Vows
(Sunday, July 27)

Our Lady of Atonement (Wednesday, July 9)

Our Lady of Mount Carmel (Wednesday, July 16)

Saints Ann and Joachim, parents of Mary (Saturday, July26)




Other Words ...

August

September

October

 





 

 

 

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.)

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.

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)

For a printable version of this article click here.

 

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.

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.

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:

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."

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)

For a printable version of this article click here.

 

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.)

For a printable version of this article click here.

 

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)

For a printable version of this article click here.

 

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.")

For a printable version of this article click here.

 

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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Contact The Franciscan Friars of the Atonement with your questions or comments at:

 

The Franciscan Friars of the Atonement
P.O. Box 300
Garrison, NY 10524-0301

(800) 338-2620
info@atonementfriars.org

 

The Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, P.O. Box 300, Garrison, NY 10524-0301, Tel. 800/338-2620

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