Pius, the first of that name, the son of Rufinus, was from Aquilia, and was a priest of the holy Roman Church when he was made Supreme Pontiff. He lived under the Emperors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He held five ordinations in the month of December, wherein he ordained twelve bishops and eighteen priests. There remain several eminent ordinances of his, notably that which ruleth that the Resurrection of the Lord be not observed upon any day of the week save Sunday. He turned the house of Pudens into a church, and on account of its eminence above the other churches, as being that where the Bishop of Rome dwelt, he dedicated it under the name of the Shepherd. Here he often celebrated, and baptized and numbered among the faithful many converts to the faith. While he strove to do the work of a good shepherd he shed his blood for his sheep, and for the chief Shepherd Christ. He was crowned with martyrdom upon the 11th day of July, and buried upon the Vatican Hill.
Elisabeth, of the royal race of Aragon, was born in the year of Christ 1271, and it was an omen of her saintly life, that her father and mother, contrary to the usual custom, caused her to be baptized, not by the name of her mother or grandmother, but by that of her mother's aunt, the holy Lady Elisabeth of Thuringia. As soon as ever she was born, her destiny of being a peacemaker between kings and kingdoms began to appear, for the joy of her birth put an end to the ruinous quarrels of her father and grandfather. As she grew up, her father, delighted with her disposition, was used to foretell that his Elisabeth would in herself excel all the daughters of the kingly house of Aragon, and that the happiness of his own home and kingdom was all owing to this one damsel, whose heavenly life he venerated for her indifference to bodily finery, her abstinence from pleasures, her many fasts, her instancy in prayer to God, and her activity in doing works of charity. This illustrious maiden was sought in marriage by many princes, and was wedded with Christian rites to Denis, King of Portugal. As a wife, she gave herself up as much to the education of her children, as to her own improvement, striving in all ways, next to God, to please her husband. For nearly half the year, she was used to live on bread and water, and once, when she was ill, God changed the water into wine, which the physicians had ordered her to drink, but which she was unwilling to take. Once when she kissed a disgusting ulcer in a poor woman, it was immediately healed. One winter-time when she was giving some money to the poor, and was fain her husband should not see her alms, the coins changed into roses. She gave sight to a maiden who had been born blind, and healed many other persons of grievous sicknesses by the Sign of the Cross. The miracles of this kind, which she worked, were many. She not only built, but richly endowed convents, schools, and churches. She had a wonderful skill in making peace between kings, and toiled unweariedly to lighten all suffering, whether public or private. King Denis died and Elisabeth, who in her maidenhood had been a pattern to virgins, and in her married life to wives, now, in her loneliness, was an ensample to widows. Clad in the raiment of the nuns of St. Clare, she faithfully attended at the King's funeral, and soon after went to Compostella, where she offered many precious gifts, of silk and gold, and silver, and precious stones, for the benefit of his soul. Thence she returned home, and spent in holy and godly uses everything that remained to her that was dear and costly, eager to relieve every kind of suffering. She lived, not for herself, but for God, and to be useful to mankind. She finished the convent for nuns, right worthy of a Queen, which she had founded at Coïmbra. She fed the poor, defended widows, protected orphans. A war being lighted up, between her son Alphonsus IV, King of Portugal, and her grandson Alphonsus XI, King of Castile, she resolved to set out to reconcile them, and went to the famous city of Estremoz. On the journey she caught a violent fever, of which, after a vision of the Virgin Mother of God, she died a saintly death on the 4th day of July, in the year 1336. She became illustrious for miracles after her death, especially for the sweetness of the savour of her body, which hath now remained uncorrupt for well-nigh three hundred years, and she hath always been spoken of as the Holy Queen. At length, in the year of our salvation 1625, which was that of the Jubilee, Urban VIII, all Christendom gathered together and approving, formally enrolled her name among those of the Saints. The brethren Cyril and Methodius were born in an honourable position at Thessalonica. As they advanced in years they went to Constantinople to study letters in the capital of the Eastern world. Both made quick progress, but most chiefly Cyril, who gained such learning that he was called for excellency The Philosopher. Methodius became a monk, but the Empress Theodora, on the recommendation of the Patriarch Ignatius, deemed Cyril worthy of receiving the task of teaching Christianity to the Khazar who dwelt beyond the Crimea. By the grace of God he so taught them that they laid aside their many superstitions and were joined to Jesus Christ. After properly establishing the new community of Christians Cyril hastened back to Constantinople, where he entered the monastery of Polychron, whither Methodius had already withdrawn himself. Rastilaus, Prince of Moravia, having heard tell of the good deeds beyond the Crimea, sent to Constantinople to the Emperor Michael III to obtain some Gospel labourers. Cyril and Methodius were sent to him, and gladly received in Moravia, and applied themselves with such power and industry to the work of Christianising souls that it was not long before that nation also joyfully submitted to Jesus Christ. To this end Cyril found of great use the knowledge of the Slavonic language, which he had already acquired, and much effect was produced by the translation of holy Scripture which he made into the language of the people. Cyril and Methodius were the inventors of the alphabet in which the language of the Slavs is characteristically expressed, and for this reason they have been not unjustly termed the fathers of Slavonic literature. When the happy tidings of what they had done reached Rome, the Supreme Pontiff the holy Nicholas I, commanded these excellent brethren to come to Rome. When they started for Rome they brought with them the relics of the supreme Pontiff the holy Clement I which Cyril had discovered at Cherson. On hearing of their approach Adrian II, who had succeeded to the Papacy upon the death of Nicholas, went forth to meet them accompanied by the clergy and people with every sign of honour. Then Cyril and Methodius gave to the Supreme Pontiff in the presence of the clergy an account of the Apostolic office which they had discharged in so holy and toilsome a manner. When it was made blame to them by some enviers that they had used the Slavonic language for the purposes of public worship, they stated their reasons with such clearness and force that the Pontiff and clergy praised and approved them. When they had both taken an oath that they would remain in the faith of blessed Peter and of the Roman Pontiffs, they were consecrated bishops by Adrian, but it was the Will of God that Cyril, old in grace rather than in years, should close his life at Rome. His dead body received a public funeral, and was laid in the tomb which Adrian had built for himself, but it was afterwards brought to St. Clement's and buried hard by the ashes of that martyr. As it was carried through the city with joyful psalm-singing, it seemed as though the procession were rather that of a triumph than that of a funeral, and that the Roman people were offering heavenly honour to some eminent saint. Methodius went back to Moravia, and there became from his whole soul a pattern to his flock, and from day to day more zealous in the service of Catholicism. He confirmed the Pannonians, the Bulgarians, and the Dalmatians in the Christian religion, and laboured much to bring the Corinthians to the worship of the one true God. Methodius was again accused before John VIII, the successor of Adrian, of unsoundness in faith, and transgression of the traditions of the elders; he was summoned to Rome, and there easily proved, in the presence of John and of some Bishops and clergy of the city, that he had himself always firmly held the Catholic faith, and had carefully taught it to others, and that as regarded the use of the Slavonic language for public worship, he had acted lawfully from certain reasons, and the permission of Pope Adrian, and in nowise contrary to holy writ. The Pontiff therefore in this matter concurred with Methodius, and confirmed even in writing his archiepiscopal authority and his mission among the Slavs. Methodius therefore went back to Moravia and resumed more earnestly than before the task committed to him, for the which also he cheerfully suffered exile. He converted the Prince of the Bohemians and his wife, and spread the Christian name far and wide among that people. He carried the light of the Gospel into Poland, and according to some writers, after establishing the see of Lemberg, went into Muscovy properly so called and established the see of Kiev. At the last he returned into Moravia, and when he felt that he was about to go the way of all flesh he named his own successor, exhorted the clergy and people for the last time to good living, and then calmly departed that life which had been to him a path to heaven. As Rome had honoured Cyril in his death, so did Moravia honour Methodius. The festival of these Saints, which had long been observed among the Slav nations, the Supreme Pontiff Leo XIII observed to be kept throughout the Universal Church with a special office and Mass. At that time: As the people pressed upon Jesus, to hear the Word of God, he stood by the lake of Gennesaret. Sermon by St. Ambrose the Bishop When the Lord wrought so many works of healing, neither time nor place could restrain the people from seeking health. Evening came, and they still followed him; he went down to the lake, and they still pressed upon him; for which reason he entered into Peter's ship. This is that ship, which spiritually up to this very hour, according to the expression of Matthew, is buffeted by tempests; but still, according to Luke, is filled with fishes. By all this is signified that for a while things are troublous for the Church, but afterwards fruitful. And the fishes are those Christians which are as yet in the troublous waters of human life. In this ship also spiritually doth Christ, for the sake of his disciples, still sleep, and still command, for he sleepeth for the lukewarm, and watcheth for the perfect. No fear, then, for the ship where wisdom steereth, where false teaching is not known, where faith swelleth the sails. How shall she be troubled, whose Lord is himself the Church's sure Foundation? It is where faith is weak that there is fear; where love is perfect, there is safety. To many it is commanded to loose their nets, but to Peter also is said: Launch out into the deep: which may be interpreted as the depths of doctrine. What indeed is there so deep, as to gaze upon the depth of all riches, to recognize the Son of God, and to take up the confession of his divine generation? This is a thing which the mind is not able to grasp by the searchings of man's reason, but which is embraced by a hearty faith. For, albeit, it is not given unto me to know how the Son of God was born, yet of the fact that he was begotten, I may not be ignorant. What the order of his generation was, I know not, but the Source of his generation, I do acknowledge. None hath beheld the Begetting of the Son of God by the Father, but the Church hath stood by to hear the Father testify that this is his beloved Son. If we believe not God, whom shall we believe? For whatsoever we believe cometh either by sight or hearing; sight is oftentimes deceived, but faith cometh by hearing. Cardinal Pie – II The quote last week from Cardinal Pie (cf. EC 362) continued directly as follows:-- “In such an extremity, in such a desperate state of affairs, where evil has taken over a world soon to be consumed in flames, what are all the true Christians to do, all good men, all Saints, all men with any faith and courage? Grappling with a situation more clearly impossible than ever, with a redoubled energy by their ardent prayer, by their active works and by their fearless struggles they will say, O God, O Father in Heaven, hallowed be thy name on earth as it is in Heaven, thy kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. On earth as it is in Heaven!And they will still be murmuring these words while the very earth is giving way beneath their feet. “And just as once upon a time, following upon an appalling military disaster the whole Roman Senate and State officials of all ranks could be seen going out to me et the defeated consul and to congratulate him on not having despaired of the Roman Republic; so likewise the senate of Heaven, all the Choirs of angels, all ranks of the Blessed will come out to meet the generous athletes of the Faith who will have fought to the bitter end, hoping against hope itself. “And then that impossible ideal that the elect of all ages had obstinately pursued will become a reality. In his Second and final Coming the Son will hand over the Kingdom of this world to God his Father, the power of evil will have been cast out for ever into the depths of the abyss; whatever has refused to be assimilated and incorporated into God through Jesus Christ by faith, love and observance of the law will be flung into the sewer of everlasting filth. And God will live and reign for ever and ever, not only in the oneness of his nature and in the society of the three divine Persons, but also in the fullness of the Mystical Body of his Incarnate Son and in the fulfilment of the Communion of Saints!” Dear readers, it should be obvious by now that Cardinal Pie, for all the darkness of his vision of the future, was no defeatist. Even while seeing with an absolute clarity the humanly hopeless situation into which mankind was getting itself, with an equal clarity he distinguished the human from the divine point of view: a mass of men might in the 19thcentury have been defying Almighty God and turning themselves into pawns of Satan and fodder for his horrible Hell, nevertheless God’s sublime purpose for the souls of the elect who would choose to love and serve him was at the same time being achieved for God’s Heaven. Truly, “to them that love God, all things work together unto good” (Rom. VIII, 28). In 2014 we can easily lose sight of God’s purpose by thinking in too human a way of the evil advancing all around us. But God’s purpose is not to save civilisation if men wish to destroy i t. His purpose is to bring souls to Heaven through his Son Jesus Christ, and for this purpose the collapse of civilisation and of all earthly ambitions and hopes may well serve to force men’s minds and hearts to rise above worldly considerations. God did not create us only for this short life, nor for this corrupt world. “We have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come” (Heb. XIII, 14). Kyrie eleison. © 2011-2014 BRN Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
A non-exclusive license to print out, forward by email, and/or post this article to the Internet is granted to users who wish to do so provided that no changes are made to the content so reproduced or distributed, to include the retention of this notice with any and all reproductions of content as authorized hereby. Aside from this limited, non-exclusive license, no portion of this article may be reproduced in any other form or by any other electronic or mechanical means without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review, or except in cases where rights to content reproduced herein are retained by its original author(s) or other rights holder(s), and further reproduction is subject to permission otherwise granted thereby. Permissions inquiries should be directed to [email protected]. Anthony Mary Zacharias was born of a noble family, at Cremona, on the Pau. Even in his childhood marks of his future holiness became manifest. There shone brightly in him, signs of excellent graces of childlike love toward God and the blessed Virgin, and more especially of tenderness toward the poor, for the relief of whose needs he was ready more than once to strip off his own costly dress. He studied arts at his own home, philosophy at Ticino, and medicine at Padua, and as he excelled all others in goodness, so did he surpass all his companions in intellectual power. After taking his degree he returned home, and there understood from God that his call was to the healing of souls rather than to that of bodies. He therefore began earnestly to study theology while he continued in the meantime to visit the sick, to teach Christian doctrine to children, to excite godliness among the young, and oftentimes even to exhort the aged, to amend their ways. It is said that when he first said Mass after his ordination a light broke from heaven, and he seemed to the astonished bystanders to be surrounded by a circle of angels: from that time forth he laboured more earnestly for the salvation of souls, and the struggle against evil living. His fatherly love for strangers, for the needy, and for the afflicted, and the godly exhortations and alms wherewith he entertained them, made his house to become a refuge for the wretched, and earned for himself from his fellow-citizens the title of father of the fatherland of angels. While he was at Milan he bethought him that greater Christian good might be done if he gathered round him some fellow-labourers in the Lord's vineyard, and when he had conferred thereon with those noble and holy men Bartholomew Ferrári and James Morigia, he founded the brotherhood of Clerks Regulars, to whom on account of his own great love for the Apostle of the Gentiles he gave the name of Clerks of St. Paul. Under the approbation of the Supreme Pontiff Clement VII and the confirmation of Paul III this brotherhood was in a short time widely spread abroad. The Congregation of nuns who are called Angelicals also regard Anthony Mary as their Father and Founder. His own thought of himself was so lowly that he never would be at the head of his own Order. In great long-suffering he bore with patience the violent storms which were raised against his Institute. In the greatness of his charity he never ceased to enkindle the members of religious orders to love toward God, to exhort priests to live Apostolic lives, and to found guilds of married men, to the bringing forth of much fruit. Somewhiles he and his disciples would walk through the streets and squares with a Cross carried before them, and there by burning and vehement harangues call to salvation the wandering and the wicked. It is to be remembered that in his burning love for Jesus Crucified he reminded all men of the Mystery of the Cross by the sound of a bell every Friday evening, and himself as a true disciple of Paul always bore about in his body the dying of the Lord Jesus. The holy Name of Christ is found everywhere in his writings and was ever in his mouth. He was moved by a singular love toward the Holy Eucharist. He established a custom of receiving it often, and is said to have brought in the practice of exposing the same upon a lofty throne for three days' adoration. Of his earnest modesty the appearance of life which was seen even in his dead body seemed a witness. Together with all these things he possessed the gifts of trance, of tears, of knowledge of things to come, of reading the thoughts of the heart, and of power against the enemy of mankind. He was worn out with toil when he was seized with his last illness at Guastalla, whither he had been called as a peacemaker. He was carried to Cremona amid the tears of his brethren and the embrace of his devoted mother, whose imminent death he foretold. He was comforted by a vision of the Apostles above, and predicted the increase of his Brotherhood. On the 5th day of July, in the year 1539, he died a holy death at the age of thirty-six. Christians forthwith began to honour him for his eminent sanctity and the number of his signs and wonders, which honour the Supreme Pontiff Leo XIII approved and confirmed, and on the Feast of the Lord's Ascension in the year 1897 solemnly enrolled his name among those of the Saints. For Books on Lives of the Saints Leo II, Supreme Pontiff, a Sicilian, was learned in sacred and profane letters in Greek and Latin, and was moreover an excellent musician; for he reduced to better harmony the sacred hymns and psalms used in the Church. He approved the acts of the sixth council, which was held at Constantinople, under the presidency of the legates of the Apostolic See, the Emperor Constantine also being present, and the two Patriarchs of Constantinople and of Antioch, and one hundred and seventy bishops. Leo translated the decrees into Latin. It was at this council that Cyrus, Sergius, and Pyrrhus were condemned, for teaching that there is in Christ only one will and one operation. Leo broke the pride of the archbishops of Ravenna, who, relying upon the power of the exarchs, would not obey the Apostolic See. Wherefore he decreed an election by the clergy of Ravenna should not be effective, unless confirmed by the authority of the Roman Pontiff. He was indeed a father to the poor; for not by money alone, but by his deeds, his labours, and his advice, he relieved the poverty and loneliness of needy widows and orphans. While he was exhorting everyone to pious and holy living, not by mere preaching but by his own life, he fell asleep in the Lord on the 3rd day of July in the year 683, in the eleventh month of his pontificate, and was buried in the Basilica of St. Peter. In the month of June he held one ordination, at which he ordained nine priests, three deacons, and twenty-three bishops for var The Lesson is taken from a Sermon by St. John Chrysostom As soon as our Redeemer was come among us, he went with haste, while as yet he was in his mother's womb, to visit his friend John. And John, in the one womb, as if conscious of the presence of Jesus in the other womb, dashed himself impatiently against the narrow walls of his natural prison, as though crying out: I perceive the very Lord that gave nature her bounds! Why therefore should I wait for the due season of my birth? What need is there for me to linger here till nine months are ended, now that the Timeless One is with me! I would break out of my dark cell! I would proclaim my manifold knowledge of marvellous things! I am meant to be a sign, and so even now I would shew that the Christ is here! I am the trumpet-voice, and I desire to peal forth the news that the Son of God is come in the flesh. Let me sound as a trumpet, and bless and loose my father's tongue, and make it speak again! Let me sound as a trumpet and quicken my mother's womb! Thou seest, O brethren beloved, how new and how strange a mystery is here! John is not yet born, but by leaping he speaketh. He is as yet unseen, but he giveth warning. He is not yet able to cry, but by his acts he beareth witness. He draweth not yet the breath of life, but he preacheth God. He seeth not yet the light, but he maketh known the Sun. He is not yet come out of the womb, but he hasteth to play the Forerunner. In the presence of the Lord he cannot restrain himself, but rebelleth against the bounds set by nature, and struggleth to break out of the prisoning womb, eager to herald the coming Saviour. He saith, as it were: Behold, the Deliverer cometh, and why am I yet in bonds, and made to abide here? The Word cometh, that he may set right all things, and am I still to tarry in prison? I would go forth! I would run before him, and proclaim to all mankind: Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. But do thou tell us, O John, how it came to pass that while thou wast still in the darkness of thy mother's womb, thou didst see and hear? How didst thou behold the things of God? How didst thou leap and bound for joy? If we could hear him answer, he would say: Great is the mystery of that which here taketh place. Beyond the understanding of men are these doings! It is meet that I should shew forth a new thing in nature for the sake of him who is making new things which are beyond nature. Even though I be yet in the womb, I perceive, for forth upon me from another womb the Sun of Righteousness shineth. As it were, with mine ears I understand, for I was created to be the Voice of the Great Word. I would cry aloud, for I contemplate the only-begotten Son of the Father clothed in flesh. I tremble for joy, for I perceive that he, by whom all things were made, hath taken upon him the form of a servant. I leap as I think of the Redeemer of the world being made flesh, for I would run before his coming. Nonetheless, I herald his approach unto you as best I can, and make on this wise my confession of him whose Forerunner I am. The Lesson is taken from a Sermon by St. John Chrysostom Wouldst thou learn the power of the Blood of Christ? Then let us look at the figure thereof, by calling to mind the ancient type written in the ancient Scriptures. In Egypt, at midnight, God threatened the Egyptians with the tenth plague, by which their first-born should perish, because they kept in captivity his first-born people. But, lest the beloved Jews should share their danger, because they were all in the same place, he found, in his wisdom, a remedy. Behold then a wonderful figure, that thou mayest learn his power in truth. The anger of the divine indignation was expected, and the Angel of Death circled over every home. What, therefore, did Moses do? Kill, saith he, a yearling lamb, and sprinkle the doors with its blood. What sayest thou, O Moses? Is the blood of a sheep likely to deliver a reasoning man? Yea, in good sooth, saith he; not by what that blood is in itself, but because by it, there is displayed a figure of the Blood of the Lord. For as the statues of monarchs, mindless and speechless images though they be, have sometimes been an helpful refuge to men endowed with soul and reason, not because they are made of bronze, but because the likeness they bear is a King's. And just so did this unconscious blood deliver the lives of men, not because it was blood, but because it foreshadowed the shedding of the Blood of Jesus. On that night in Egypt, when the destroying Angel saw the blood upon the lintel and on the two side-posts, he passed over the door, and dared not to enter in unto the house. Even so now much more will the destroyer of souls flee away when he seeth, not the lintel and the two side-posts sprinkled with the blood of a lamb, but the mouth of the faithful Christian, the living dwelling of the Holy Ghost, shining with the Blood of the True Messiah. For if the Angel stopped before the type, how much more shall the enemy tremble if he should perceive the reality itself? Wouldest thou hear more of the power of that Blood? I am willing. Consider from what source it welleth, from what fountain it springeth. Its fountain is the Cross itself, its source is the Side of the Lord. The soldier opened his Side, and laid open the wall of that holy temple; and I have found that most noble treasure, and I rejoice to discover the glittering riches. And so was it done concerning that Lamb: the Jews killed a sheep, and I have learned the value of the sacrament. From the Side flowed forth Blood and Water. I would not, O my hearer, that thou shouldest pass by the depths of such a mystery as this without pausing; for I have yet a mystic and mysterious discourse to deliver. I have said that the Water and Blood shewed forth symbolically baptism and the sacraments. For from these, holy Church was founded by the laver of regeneration, and the renovation of the Holy Ghost. Through baptism, I say, and through the sacraments, which seem to have issued from his Side. It was therefore out of the Side of Christ that the Church was created, just as it was out of the side of Adam that Eve was raised up to be his bride. This is the reason why Paul saith, no doubt in allusion to his Side: We are members of his Body, and of his bones. For even as God made the woman Eve out of the rib which he had taken out of the side of Adam, so hath Christ made the Church out of the Blood and Water which he made to flow for us out of his own Side. - On the occasion of the nineteenth centenary of the accomplishment of the redemption of mankind, as a fitting celebration of this ineffable blessing, Pope Pius XI decreed an extraordinary Jubilee. During that year the Supreme Pontiff, wishing that the fruits of the Precious Blood of Christ, the Lamb without spot, might redound more abundantly upon mankind and that the minds of the faithful be impressed with more vivid recollections of this same Blood as the price of their redemption, elevated the Feast of the Most Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ to the rank of a double of the first class, to be celebrated as such every year by the universal Church. |
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