The True Faith and the Priesthood

Sermon of Archbishop Lefebvre on the occasion of a new Priest’s first Mass
at Poitiers, France September 3, 1977:

Dear Father, you have the joy today of celebrating Holy Mass in the midst of your dear ones, surrounded by your family, by your friends and it is with great satisfaction that I find myself near you today to tell you also of my joy and prayers for your future apostolate, for the good which you will do for souls.

We will pray especially to St. Pius X, our patron, whose feast it is today and who has been present during all your studies and your formation. We will ask him to give you the heart of an apostle, the heart of a saintly priest like him. And since we are right here in the city of St. Hilary, of St. Radegonde and the great Cardinal Pie, well, we shall ask of all those protectors of the city of Poitiers to come and aid you so that you may follow their example, so that you may defend as they did in difficult times, the Catholic Faith.

You could have coveted an easy and comfortable life in the world. You had already begun the study of medicine. You could have gone in that direction. But no, you had the courage, even in times like these, to come and ask to be made a priest at Ecône. And why Ecône? Because there you found Tradition, you found that which corresponded to your faith. It was an act of courage which does you honor.

And that is why I would like, in a few words, to answer the accusations which have appeared in the local papers following the publication of the letter of Msgr. Rozier, Bishop of Poitiers. Oh, not in order to polemicize. I carefully avoid doing that. Generally, I do not answer these letters and I prefer to keep silent. However, since you as well as me are called into question it seems to me well to justify you here. We are not called into question because of our persons but because of the choice we have made. We are incriminated be-we have chosen the so-called way of disobedience. But we must understand clearly what this way of disobedience consists of. I think we may truthfully say that, if we have chosen the way of apparent disobedience, we have chosen the way of true obedience.

Then I think that those who accuse us have perhaps chosen the way of apparent obedience which, in reality, is disobedience. Because those who follow the new way, who follow the novelties, who attach themselves to new principles contrary to those taught us by Tradition, by all the Popes, by all the Councils, they are the ones who have chosen the way of disobedience.

Because one cannot say that one obeys authority today while disobeying the entire Tradition. Following Tradition is precisely the sign of our obedience. Jesus Christus heri, hodie et in saecula, “Jesus Christ yesterday, today and forever.”

One cannot separate Our Lord Jesus Christ. One cannot say that one obeys the Christ of today but not the Christ of yesterday, because then one does not obey the Christ of tomorrow. This is of vital importance. This is why we cannot say that we disobey the Pope of today and that, for that reason we disobey the Pope of yesterday. We obey the Pope of yesterday, consequently, we obey the one of today, consequently, we obey the one of tomorrow. For it is not possible that the Popes teach different things; it is not possible that the Popes gainsay each other, that they contradict each other.

And this is why we are convinced that in being faithful to all the Popes of yesterday, to all the Councils of yesterday, we are faithful to the Pope of today, to the Council of today and to the Council of tomorrow and the Pope of tomorrow. Again: Jesus Christus heri, hodie et in saecula.- And if today, by a mystery of Providence, a mystery which for us is unfathomable, incomprehensible, we are in apparent disobedience, in reality we are not disobedient but obedient.

How are we obedient? In believing in our catechism and because we always keep the same Credo, the same Ten Commandments, the same Mass, the same Sacraments, the same prayer—the Pater Noster of yesterday, today and tomorrow. This is why we are obedient and not disobedient.

On the other hand, if we study what is taught nowadays in the new religion we realize that it is not the same Faith, the same Creed, the same Ten Commandments, the same Sacraments, the same Our Father. It is sufficient to open the catechisms of today to realize that. It is sufficient to read the speeches which are made in our times to realize that those who accuse us of disobedience are those who do not follow the Popes, who do not follow the Councils, who, in reality, disobey. Because they do not have the right to change our Creed, to say today that the angels do not exist, to change the notion of original sin, to say that the Holy Virgin was not always a virgin, and so on.

They do not have the right to replace the Ten Commandments with the Rights of Man. Nowadays one speaks of nothing but the rights of man and no one speaks of his duties which are in the Ten Commandments. We don’t see that it is necessary to replace the Ten Commandments in our catechisms with the Rights of Man. And this is very grave. The commandments of God are attacked and thus those laws defending the family disappear.

The most Holy Mass, for example, which is the synthesis of our Faith, which is precisely our living catechism, the Holy Mass has been deprived of its nature, it has become confused and ambiguous. Protestants can say it, Catholics can say it. Concerning this I have never said, and I have never followed those who say that all the new Masses are invalid. I have never said anything of the sort but I believe that it is in fact very dangerous to make a habit of attending the New Mass because it no longer is representative of our Faith, because Protestant notions have been incorporated into the New Mass.

All the Sacraments have, to some “extent, been deprived of their nature and have become similar to an invitation to a religious assembly. These are not Sacraments. The Sacraments give us grace and take away our sins. They give us divine life, supernatural life. We are not simply part of a purely natural, purely human, religious collectivity.

This is why we keep to the Holy Mass. We keep to it also because it is the living catechism. It is not only a catechism written and printed on pages which can disappear, on lifeless pages. Rather it is our living catechism, our living Credo. This Credo is essentially the history, as it were, the “song” of the redemption of our souls by Our Lord Jesus Christ. We sing the praises of God, Our Lord, Our Redeemer, Our Saviour who became man to shed His blood for us and thus to give birth to His Church and the priesthood so that the Redemption might continue, so that our souls might be bathed in the blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ through Baptism, through all the Sacraments, in order that we might participate in the nature of Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, in His divine nature by means of His human nature and so that we might be admitted eternally into the family of the Most Holy Trinity.

This is our Christian life. This is our Faith. If the Mass is not the continuation of the Cross of Our Lord, the sign of His Redemption, is no longer the reality of His Redemption, then it is not our Credo. If the Mass is nothing but a meal, a eucharist, a “sharing” if one can sit around a table and simply pronounce the words of the Consecration in the midst of a meal, it is no longer our Sacrifice of the Mass. And if it is no longer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Redemption of Our Lord Jesus Christ is no longer accomplished.

We need the Redemption of Our Lord. We need the Blood of Our Lord. We cannot live without the Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He came on earth to give us His Blood, to communicate to us His life. We have been created for this and it is the Holy Mass that gives His Blood to us. This sacrifice continues in all reality. Our Lord is really present in His Body, in His Soul, and in His Divinity.

That is why He created the priesthood and this is why there must be new priests. This is why we wish to make priests who can continue the Redemption of Our Lord Jesus Christ. All the greatness, the sublimity of the priesthood, the beauty of the priesthood, is in the celebration of the Holy Mass, in the saving words of the Consecration. It is in the making Our Lord Jesus Christ descend onto the altar, continuing the Sacrifice of the Cross, shedding His Blood on souls through Baptism, the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Penance. Oh, the beauty, the greatness of the priesthood! A greatness of which we are not worthy, of which no man is worthy. Our Lord Jesus Christ wanted it. What greatness, what sublimity!

And our young priests have understood this. You can be certain they have understood. Throughout their seminary days they loved the Holy Mass. They will never penetrate the mystery perfectly even if God gives them a long life on earth. But they love their Mass and I think they have understood and will understand even better that the Mass is the sun of their life, the raison d’etre of their priestly life so that they may give Our Lord Jesus Christ to the souls of the people and not simply so that they may break bread in friendship while Our Lord is absent. Because grace is absent from these new Masses which are purely a eucharist, a mere symbol of a sign and symbol of a sort of charity among human beings.

This is why we are attached to the Holy Mass. And the Holy Mass is the expression of the Ten Commandments. And what are the Ten Commandments if not the love of God and of our neighbor? How better is this love fulfilled than in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass? God receives all the glory through Our Lord Jesus Christ and His sacrifice. There can be no greater act of charity for man than this sacrifice. And, is there any act of charity greater than that of giving one’s life for those whom one loves? Our Lord Himself asked that.

Consequently, the Ten Commandments are fulfilled in the Mass, the greatest act of love which God could have from man, the greatest act of love that we could have from God. Here are the Ten Commandments. Here is our living catechism. All the Sacraments take their radiance from the Eucharist. All the Sacraments, in a certain sense, are like satellites of the Sacrament of the Eucharist. From Baptism right through to Extreme Unction, the Sacraments are only reflections of the Eucharist since all grace comes from Jesus Christ, present in the Holy Eucharist.

Now sacrament and sacrifice are intimately united in the Mass. One cannot separate sacrifice from sacrament. The Catechism of the Council of Trent explains this magnificently. There are two great realities in the Sacrifice of the Mass: the sacrifice and the sacrament deriving from the sacrifice, the fruit of the sacrifice. This is our holy religion and this is why we hold to the Mass. You will understand now, perhaps better than you understood before, why we defend this Mass and the reality of the Sacrifice. It is the life of the Church and the reason for the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And it is the reason for our existence, our union with Our Lord in the Mass. Therefore, we cry out if they try to take away the nature of the Mass, to deprive us in any way of this Sacrifice! We are wounded. We will not have them separate us from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

This why we hold firmly to the Sacrifice of the Mass. And we are convinced that our Holy Father, the Pope, has not forbidden it and that no one can ever forbid the celebration of the Mass of all time. Moreover, Pope St. Pius V proclaimed in a solemn and definitive manner that, whatever might happen in the future, no one might ever prevent a priest from celebrating the Sacrifice of the Mass; and that all excommunications, all suspensions, all the punishments which a priest might undergo because he celebrated this Holy Sacrifice would be utterly null and void, in futuro, in perpetuum.

Consequently, we have a clear conscience whatever may happen to us. If we are apparently disobedient, we are really obedient. This is our situation. And it is right for us to tell this, to explain it, because it is we who continue the Church. Really disobedient are those who corrupt the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Sacraments and our prayers, those who put the Rights of Man in the place of the Ten Commandments, those who transform the Credo. Because that is what the new catechisms do.

We feel deep pain at not being in perfect communion with the authors of those reforms. Indeed, we regret it infinitely. I would like to go at this very minute to Msgr. Rozier and tell him that I am in perfect communion with him. But it is impossible for me. If Msgr. Rozier condemns this Mass which we say, it is impossible. Those who refuse this Mass are no longer in communion with the Church of all time.

It is inconceivable that bishops and priests, ordained for this Mass and by this Mass, men who have celebrated it for perhaps twenty or thirty years of their priestly lives, persecute it with an implacable hatred—that they hound us from the churches, that they oblige us to say Mass here, in the open air, when the Mass is meant to be said in the churches constructed for that purpose. And was it not Msgr. Rozier himself who told one of you that if we were heretics and schismatics he would give us churches in which to celebrate our Masses? This is something beyond belief. If we were no longer in communion with the Church but heretics or schismatics we could have the churches. It is quite evident that we are still in communion with the Church. There is a contradiction in their attitude which condemns them. They know perfectly well that we are in the right because we cannot be outside of truth when we simply continue to do what has been done for two thousand years, believing what has been believed for two thousand years. This is not possible.

Once again, we must repeat this sentence and continue to repeat it: Jesus Christus heri, hodie et in saecula. If I am with the Jesus Christ of yesterday I am with the Jesus Christ of today and of tomorrow. I cannot be with the Jesus Christ of yesterday without being with the Jesus Christ of tomorrow. And that is because our Faith is that of the past and that of the future. If we are not with the Faith of the past we are not with the Faith of the present, nor yet of the future. This is what we must always believe. This is what we must hold to at any price— our salvation depends upon it. Let us ask this today of the guardian saints of Poitiers, ask it especially for these dear priests, for this new priest. Let us ask it of St. Hilary, of St. Radegunda who so loved the Cross—it was she who brought to this land of France the first relic of the True Cross and so loved the Sacrifice of the Mass; and finally, of Cardinal Pie who was an admirable defender of the Catholic Faith during the last century. Let us ask these protectors of Poitiers to give us the grace of fighting without hatred, without rancor.

Let us never be among those who try to polemicize, to disrupt, to be unjust to their neighbors. Let us love them with all our hearts but let us hold to the Faith. At all costs let us keep our Faith in the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us ask this of the most Holy Virgin Mary. She can only have had a perfect faith in the divinity of her Divine Son. She loved Him with all her heart. She was present at the Holy Sacrifice of the Cross. Let us ask of Him the faith that she had.

Vatican approves the dedication of a Roman Square to Martin Luther

http://www.religionnews.com/2015/08/26/vatican-backs-plan-name-rome-square-martin-luther/

This is just unbelievable and scandalous.  Really, one can’t be surprised when the Church is as protestantized as it is.

As reports have have revealed, Rome is preparing to celebrate the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Revolution (it is not a Reformation. I absolutely despise hearing “Protestant Reformation”).  If this is so, then why not have a Square dedicated to the honor of the man who started it all, who revolted against God and the Church?  Are they going to canonize Martin Luther next?

Protestantism is nothing but apostasy from God and the Church, rejection of His Church, Her Laws, Her Sacraments, our very means of salvation.  By approving of Martin Luther, the Vatican ultimatly approves of rebellion against the Church, all in the name of dialogue and niceness, of course.

One of my favorite Catholic priest writers, Fr. Michael Muller, had this to say on Catholicism and Protestantism:

“Jesus Christ says: ‘Hear the Church’ (Cf. Mt. 18:17). ‘No,’ says Protestantism, ‘do not hear the Church; protest against her with all your might.’ Jesus Christ says: ‘If any one will not hear the Church, look up him as a heathen and a publican’ (Mt. 18:17). ‘No,’ says Protestantism, ‘if any one does not hear the Church, look upon him as an Apostle, as an ambassador of God.’ Jesus Christ says: ‘The gates of hell shall not prevail against my Church’ (Mt. 16:18). ‘No,’ says Protestantism, ‘it is false; the gates of hell have prevailed against the Church for a thousand years and more.’ Jesus Christ has declared St. Peter, and every successor to St. Peter – the Pope – to be his Vicar on earth (Mt. 16:18, Jn. 21:15-17). ‘No,’ says Protestantism, ‘the pope is the Antichrist.’ Jesus Christ says: ‘My yoke is sweet, and my burden is light’ (Mt. 11:30). ‘No,’ said Luther and Calvin; ‘it is impossible to keep the commandments.’ Jesus Christ says: ‘If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.’ (Mt. 19:17) ‘No,’ said Luther and Calvin, ‘faith alone, without good works, is sufficient to enter life everlasting.’ Jesus Christ says: ‘Unless you do penance, you shall all likewise perish’ (Lk. 13:3). ‘No,’ says Protestantism, ‘fasting and other works of penance are not necessary in satisfaction for sin.’

Jesus Christ says: ‘This is my body’ (Mt. 26:26, Mk. 14:22, Lk. 22:19, Jn. 6:55). ‘No,’ said Calvin, ‘this is only the figure of Christ’s body; it will become his body as soon as you receive it.’ Jesus Christ says: ‘I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, and shall marry another, committeth adultery, and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery’ (Mt. 19:9). ‘No,’ says Protestantism to a married man, ‘you may put away your wife, get a divorce, and marry another.’ Jesus Christ says to every man: ‘Thou shalt not steal’ (Mt. 19:18). ‘No,’ said Luther to secular princes, ‘I give you the right to appropriate to yourselves the property of the Roman Catholic Church.’ The Holy Ghost says in Holy Scripture: ‘Man knoweth not whether he be worthy of love or hatred’ (Eccl. 9:1). ‘Who can say, My heart is clean, I am pure from sin?’ (Prov. 20:9); and, ‘Work out your salvation with fear and trembling’ (Philip. 2:12). ‘No,’ said Luther and Calvin, ‘but whosoever believes in Jesus Christ is in the state of grace.’ St. Paul says: ‘If I should have faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing’ (1 Cor. 13:2).

‘No,’ said Luther and Calvin, ‘faith alone is sufficient to save us.’ St. Peter says that in the Epistles of St. Paul there are many things ‘hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as also the other Scriptures, to their own perdition’ (2 Pt. 3:16). ‘No,’ says Protestantism, ‘the Scriptures are very plain and easy to understand.’ St. James says: ‘Is any man sick among you? Let him bring in the priests of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil, in the name of the Lord’ (Jms. 5:14). ‘No,’ says Protestantism, ‘that is a vain and useless ceremony.’ Being thus impious enough to make liars of Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, and the Apostles, need we wonder if they continually slander Catholics, telling and believing worse absurdities about them than the heathens did?”   ~Fr. Michael Muller

Archbishop Lefebvre on the Assumption

With the passing of the Feast of the Assumption, I had completely forgotten about this great sermon from Archbishop Lefebvre. What beautiful words from a saintly man.  Without further ado, I re-produce it here:

Twenty fifth Anniversary of the Promulgation of the Dogma of
the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

August 15, 1975 Ecône, Switzerland

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

My dear brethren,

We celebrate today the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Proclamation of the Dogma of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary by our Holy Father Pope Pius XII. It was November 1, 1950. I had the joy and pleasure of being present at Rome in St. Peter’s Square on this holy day and I still hear the words of our Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, proclaiming the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary as dogma of our Faith.

Did the Holy Church of God hear about the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary for the first time on November 1, 1950? Certainly not! One needs just to read the text by which Our Holy Father Pope Pius XII proclaimed the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary to see that since the most ancient times of the Church, the faithful already professed faith in the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. Whether in ikons, whether in stained glass windows, whether in the writings of the Fathers, already everywhere, faith in the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary was professed, but it was not yet solemnly defined by Holy Church.

These dogmas, indeed, we must remember, cannot be new truths. The Revelation was wholly completed at the death of the last Apostle. One must therefore look before the death of the last Apostle in the Deposit of Tradition, of Revelation, bequeathed to us, given to us by the Apostles, to find there the truths which we must still believe today. No Pope can invent a new truth which he would like to submit to our Faith. He can only find this truth in the course of centuries, signifying that this truth was already implicitly contained in that Revelation and Faith which the Apostles have given us. This is the teaching of the Church.

Thus when we believe in the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, that is, when we believe that the Good Lord granted that the body of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary be already glorified now, we do nothing else than unite ourselves to the faith of the whole Church, to the Church of all the centuries. And this must be for us a great joy, a great consolation, to think that our Faith today, stronger than ever, more solid than ever, is in union with that of the Catholics of all the centuries.

There is in this dogma of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary a very precious truth, very useful for our times, for our days. In these days, some want to deny miracles; in our days, some want to deny all supernatural realities. This word “supernatural” contains something somehow mysterious; the supernatural state may be difficult to understand for some faithful, it may be difficult to grasp. Yet it is present in the whole teaching of the Church.

In our catechisms we have learned that we became the sons of God, that the Good Lord has deigned not only to give us a human nature, a human soul, but that He wanted to make of us His privileged sons, sharing His Divine Nature, and thus being able to know God, to love God and to love our neighbor infinitely more than if we had only our natural state. We must always remember that: the Good Lord has called us to be His children, though we should have been merely His servants. If we had only had our nature, we would have never been able to know God directly, we would have known God only indirectly through creatures, through the effects of His almighty power, ascending from them to the Almighty Cause which made all these things that surround us, and even ourselves. We climb from the effect to the cause and naturally we think there is a Being extraordinarily powerful, a Being that can only be God for He made all these things by His almighty power. And our knowledge of Him would have remained there, without going further.

But the Good Lord did not want that. He wanted us to enter into His intimacy, He wanted us to enter somehow in Him, to know Him better, to love Him better. And this is a grace, a gift – the word “grace” signifies precisely this – an extraordinary, unbelievable gift to which we could not pretend ourselves.

We might be tempted to say, “But why did the Good Lord love us so much, why did He not leave us with our poor human nature? Did we need to enter into the very nature of God, to be so close to God? This gives us greater responsibilities!”

Yes, indeed, indeed! It gives us greater responsibilities. It changes completely our spirituality. It changes our interior life. It must change our whole interior life. And it does!

Our spiritual life is changed right from the beginning, as soon as we receive Baptism. As soon as we receive this grace of divine filiation in Baptism, and original sin is washed away from our soul, we become God’s privileged adopted children.

And today, this Feast of the Assumption shows us the very crowning of the work of God, of the supernatural work of God. God wants it for us too, as He did for the Most Blessed Virgin. He wants to “assume” our body, to spiritualize our body in a certain way and to give us all the joys of the spirit and all the joys of our divine filiation.

And how does that change our daily life? How must this supernatural life, this divine adoption, change our daily life?

Because we must not see things as we would have seen them if we had merely had our human nature! To know that we are called to live for God, to live in God, to know Him directly, Him Who has created all things, must arouse in our hearts, in our intelligences, a desire of God, a longing to love God, through this divine nature, which is in us by grace, by sanctifying grace, a longing as those aroused throughout all the centuries of the Church from the very beginning of the Christian era.

It has raised up countless acts of heroism, souls so much drawn by God, so much drawn by the desire to know God, to live with God, that they secluded themselves in deserts, in monasteries, in the religious life. And even in lay life they gave themselves completely: all these families were so Catholic that they lived in God. They prayed from morning to evening, they recited their daily family prayer, they had devotion to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, they lived a Christian life! And thus they had a certain contempt, they esteemed in a lesser way, the things of nature, created things, material things.

But now we are reproached for this, the Church is reproached for this! And now, within the Church itself, those who, in the Church, should continue to teach us these things, reproach the Church for them. They should use as models those who were detached from the things of this world, so that they might already here below give themselves completely to God. They should exalt Christian families who are detached, Christian homes where the family prays, where the idea of a religious vocation, of a priestly vocation in the family is held in esteem, is desired so that in a certain way the whole family is consecrated to God, out of love for God.

This is grace! This is supernatural grace. It is the divine filiation which is in your heart which must make you ask for this, which must make you desire this, long for this, so that your family might be totally consecrated to God, that nothing in your family might become a scandal leading souls away from God. This ought to be your main concern.

How much more this ought to be the main concern of those who give themselves to God, of future priests, of those who want to be united to God in the bonds of religious profession.

And see today how they have under-esteemed religious life, how they have under-esteemed Christian life in Catholic families, to such a point that they ceaselessly repeat the esteem that they have for the values of this world, for human values, the values of our reason, for the values of science. All this is false. All this is rooted in the contempt for the supernatural order, in the negation of the grace of the Good Lord, in the negation of all that Our Lord Jesus Christ came to bring us. This amounts to a denial of Our Lord Jesus. Continually insisting upon the human values, the values of this world, the values of science, one ends up denying Our Lord Jesus Christ!

Indeed, for what did Our Lord Jesus Christ come? For what purpose did He die on the cross? Why did He become incarnate? “Propter nos et nostram salutem – For us and for our salvation!” To give us His grace, to restore this Divine filiation. Our Lord is God, He is the True Son of God, the only Son of God, First-born of all creatures; He came to give us His Blood, His life, and to communicate to us His Divine Life already here below. Thus, by participation in Our Lord Jesus Christ, we truly participate in the Divine Nature.

Therefore, if we are truly conscious of this, we must despise the things of this world, despise the goods of the body, despise the good of our senses, as centuries of Christendom have done in the past. But today they desire to satisfy all their natural desires. Our Lord Jesus Christ never taught us this! Our Lord Jesus Christ taught us precisely to despise the things of this world because we are called to a life infinitely greater, infinitely higher.

This has been the whole spirituality of Christian life for all the centuries before us. The example of all those faithful who withdrew from the world and enclosed themselves for their whole life in a monastery was admirable, it was an encouragement for all Catholics.

But now see these deserted monasteries, these broken grilles in the convents of Franciscan nuns, of Carmelites. These nuns had a very strict enclosure, to be with God, to become more aware of their Divine filiation, to live already with heaven before being in heaven. Knowing that the few years they had to live on earth had to prepare them for heavenly life, they took refuge far from the world, far from the pleasures of this world, in order to live this life they received at Baptism, that was confirmed by the Sacrament of Confirmation and vivified by the Holy Eucharist and Penance. Those elite souls wanted to be enclosed! But what happened? The [Modernists] have broken the enclosures, they have broken the grilles, they have asked the nuns to leave; Our Lord Jesus Christ too left the convent!

And this is why there are no more vocations, this is why there is no more contemplative life. What shall draw souls to this contemplative life if one does not speak of the life of God which we have in us? What shall draw Christian families to live in a more Christian way, if they are not taught that through marriage they receive the special grace where the Most Blessed Virgin Mary is honored, where the crucifix is in a place of honor, where the Blessed Virgin Mary reigns, a family which is the beloved kingdom of Jesus and Mary. If this is no longer taught, there shall be no more Catholic families, there shall be no more vocations, and souls will be lost!

This is what the mystery of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary teaches us today. And there shall be a similar crowning for us too. We must expect this, we must hope for this. This is the great virtue of Hope. Now, this virtue of Hope is disappearing today precisely because all hope is here below. Now social progress, social justice, material progress, the equal distribution of goods of this world: these are the great themes of today’s sermons!

But we were not made for this. We are made, first of all, to be the children of God, to live with God. It does not matter whether we have lived in poverty or at ease, all that matters is the love that we have had for God, how we have spent these years which the Good Lord has given us to live here below with Him. How did we spend them in regard to this hope of heaven? How did we hand on this hope of heaven to our children, these heavenly realities? This is what the Good Lord shall ask of us.

Thus, my very dear friends, who in a few moments are going to pronounce your Profession of Faith and to repeat the Anti-Modernist Oath, you shall notice that this Anti-Modernist Oath is precisely almost in each one of its points a profession of the supernatural realities, against those who want to destroy the grace of the Good Lord, to destroy the Divine reality of the grace of God and of Our Divine filiation. Doing this they reduce to naught their very own intelligence. They pretend that their intelligence is incapable to know God, this is the first part [of the oath].

These people despise the Divine intelligence, the Divine life in which we somehow partake; despising the grace which the Good Lord has given us, the light which the Good Lord has put in our hearts and in our minds, they lose at the same time their own reason. They themselves say that they are no longer capable of knowing God. Thus according to them man is radically, definitively cut off from God, incapable of knowing Him. As a consequence they despise all the goods that Our Lord Jesus Christ has given us – Divine grace, the Sacraments, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass – all this is reduced to a natural state.

But you, on the contrary, you shall profess your faith in the grace of the Good Lord, in the supernatural life which the Good Lord has given us and in which He enables us to participate. And this on the Feast of the Assumption; you could not do this on a better day, all these blessings which the Good Lord has given us, this great charity which the Good Lord has had for us.

Indeed, it is a blasphemy to say what the Modernists say. It is to blaspheme against Our Lord Jesus Christ because they deny all that Our Lord Jesus Christ came to do here below: they deny His Church, they deny His Sacrifice, they deny His Sacraments, they deny everything and nothing is left. And this is what the modern catechisms teach today. For this reason these catechisms are very harmful because they reduce to nought the entire life of grace, the entire Divine Life, which is what is most precious to us.

Let us ask the Most Blessed Virgin Mary on this day of her Assumption to help us truly understand what our supernatural life is, a participation in the Divine Life. God knows that She knows it, this participation in the Divine Life, She who has given natural life to Our Lord Jesus Christ, through the grace of the Holy Ghost. How much did the Good Lord flood her with spiritual graces! And how much is She capable of making us understand how beautiful, how good, how sweet it is to be united with Our Lord, to know the Good Lord and to live with God!

Let us ask the Most Blessed Virgin Mary to put in our souls, in our hearts, this immense desire, this unquenchable desire, of all the moments of our life, of our whole life, of each week, month and year, to be with God for all eternity.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

A different religion

From The Remnant: http://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/1951-the-way-it-used-to-be

“What Have You Done To Our Catholic Church!”

Editor’s Note: Back in 1982, in Today Magazine’s April issue, Anne Roche penned an article called “The Way It Used to Be”. We recently discovered this article as it was reproduced in one of the late, great Hamish Fraser’sApproaches magazines from the early 1980s. Presumably this sobering article reflects the sort of thinking that eventually prompted Anne Roche Muggeridge’s masterwork, The Desolate City: Revolution in the Catholic Church. With prayers for the repose of her soul, let us read Anne’s beautiful description of the way things used to be and the way they surely will be again, in God’s good time. MJM

I must sometimes have gone to Mass in the day-light when I was young, but umy strongest memory is of coming thankfully into it out of the cold dark. At first, to keep my father company. He was a millwright and had to work every Sunday. I used to hurry through the chill Newfoundland mornings with him, shivering, fasting, to the poor little basement church, down into the warm, candlelit, holy silence. The church was always surprisingly full. Men from the mill with their lunch baskets, going on or coming off shift, sometimes black-faced from unloading coal boats all night, kneeling on the floor at the back, too filthy to venture into a pew. Nurses, and our doctor in his vast raccoon coat, with his bag, after a night call. A Mountie in full uniform. Young people still in evening dress after a party.

That is perhaps the central Catholic memory of every Catholic who grew up before the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65: early morning low Mass, said or sung, the rapid murmur of Latin and the high, passionless voices of nuns. The touchstone of the Catholic existence, the glowing mystery at its heart. Ancient, beautiful, austere, intense, objective, holy, Introibo ad altare Dei … We went in unto the altar of God, to God Who gave joy to our youth.

If you were enough of a Catholic to go to Mass on Sunday, then you belonged to a strong contemporary culture that remained through the ’50s vital, unself-conscious and growing, in spite of the pressures of Modernism, secularism, affluence, war and technology. If you were a Catholic, you were different, you stood out, and you didn’t mind. Sometimes you looked different…you refused meat, you had ashes on your brow, you had lots of children. Even when you did the same things as non-Catholics, you thought about them differently. Sooner or later there would come a moment when, as in the British army’s church parade, you would have to obey the command: “Roman Catholics, fall out!”

Now that Catholics aren’t different anymore, now that the Catholic world view and the culture it informed have perished, it is almost impossible to make that way of life, so clear cut and satisfying at the time, seem credible, not only to my children, who never knew it, but even to my contemporaries, who once lived it themselves.

Catholicism pervaded every aspect of life. Even our play was Catholic. My cousin Teresa and I used to hear each other’s confessions through the stair rail and play at being nuns. And we used to fantasize, in those reverent days when only priests were allowed to touch the Blessed Sacrament, that the Church was burning down, or the Vikings were attacking, in which wonderful crises we would be permitted to carry It to safety at our lives’ glad risk. When Paul Comtois, lieutenant-governor of Quebec, died during a fire while trying to rescue the Blessed Sacrament from his private chapel, I remembered those days, and felt a strange certainty that that man, raised in the same Catholic culture, had rushed to realize a similar childhood dream, and I congratulated him on his death cradling his Lord.

We were not at all unusual; we were working-class children in a new factory town less than half Catholic, the same sort of children, we had been taught, to whom the Blessed Virgin Mary had appeared in the famous apparitions at Lourdes, Fatima and LaSalette. We thought it not entirely impossible that she might appear to us if we said the rosary on the way to school. And we believed in our guardian angels as comfortably as we believed in our grandmothers.

The secular and the sacral did not occupy separate compartments in our lives. They were completely, operationally integrated. I remember a conversation with my closest school friend. Sitting on a hill near home, overlooking the sea, in the exquisite light of a Newfoundland spring evening, waiting for the mill whistle and the Angelus Bell to announce suppertime, we discussed with equal matter-of-factness what my grandmother would have made for supper (she was a notable cook) and whether we could follow the example of St. Felicity, with whose dramatic history we had been regaled in that day in school. St. Felicity (whose name was recalled at every Mass until she was discarded without feminist protest at the change) was beheaded in the second century for refusing to sacrifice to idols and for encouraging her seven sons to do likewise. “Take pity on your children, Felicity, they are in the bloom of youth,” urged her Roman prosecutor. “Your pity is impiety,” she told the Roman, and to her sons, before they went to their various cruel deaths, she said, “Look up to heaven, where Jesus Christ with His saints expects you. Be faithful in His love and fight courageously for your souls.” They gave up a life in which they had to die and began life eternal. Terrific stuff, very stirring to the feminine imagination. We thought we might have managed to die bravely ourselves, but could we have watched our children suffer? I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now.

That story did for us what it was intended to do. It impressed on us indelibly the operational principle of Catholicism: that here we have no lasting city, therefore human acts have eternal consequences, and the soul’s honor must be valued above the body’s. Contrary to present propaganda, that view was the opposite of tragic. In this light, the Catholic life was heroic and dramatic, romantic without being sentimental, at once hierarchical and egalitarian. The stupidest, scruffiest Catholic was presented with the possibility of moral grandeur. Not surprisingly, Catholic education to this world view was long on martyrs, crusades and missions, all the splendid Catholic derring-do. But the real genius of Catholicism was that it managed to invest the private conduct of the humblest Catholic life with all the excitement and danger of the early centuries of the Church. Its greatest achievement was to make being good look as glamorous as being evil. It convinced us all that the person who bridled a passion, accepted suffering and injustice patiently, endured the abridgement of worldly possibilities for the sake of Christian principles was as grand and glorious as St. Thomas More or St. Felicity, and as eternally rewarded.

It pushed us to bring a moral imagination to bear on personal conduct, to accept the consequences of free will freely exercise. “Take what you want,” says God, “and pay for it.”

I remember my cousin breaking her engagement because there would be no possibility of her children being brought up Catholic. My aunt told me, in distress, of hearing her cry night after night. We all felt so sorry, but so sure she was right. I remember a friend who fell deeply in love with a married man at her job, and he with her; she removed herself out of temptation to another city and fled again when he followed her. And I also remember kneeling at the wedding of a beloved friend who had confided to some of us that he and his future wife did not intend to obey the Church in the matter of birth control. It was the custom in our parish to honor the bride and groom by allowing them to kneel inside the sanctuary rails, at the very foot of the altar. They knelt on white satin covered prie dieux on the scarlet altar dais as on a stage. We waited while the priest approached them with the Blessed Sacrament and watched un-comprehendingly as they shook their heads and as he hovered, obviously unprepared for their refusal. Then we understood. After a stricken little gasp from the older members of the congregation, we hastily went forward around them to receive Holy Communion ourselves. Her head drooped, and his came stubbornly up. The back of his neck got very red. As we went back to our pews, many of us exchanged looks of sympathy, though none of us ever spoke about it afterward. Regret for their decision was mixed with admiration for their sense of honor, their refusal to pretend to God.

How attractive that Catholic honor was and how gallantly rendered at every level of Catholic society. I remember an illiterate Indian woman who lived common-law with a married man in our town. Very pious herself, she brought up her children to be pious. Several of them were altar boys, their grave dark faces beautiful above their white surplices; I am godmother to one of them. She was always at Mass, lost in devotion, but she never went to Holy Communion. “Surely God wouldn’t mind if she went?” I used to ask myself. I know now that that was condescending, and that the answer was: “Perhaps not, but she would.”

I thought of this woman and of my friends lately, when a Catholic teacher from Waterloo, Ontario, who married a divorced man in a Protestant service appealed the separate school board’s decision to dismiss her from her job. I think of them whenever I hear the increasing demand, some of it from priests, that Catholics who disobey the Church’s laws on marriage should nevertheless be admitted to Holy Communion. It is a mark of the great change in the Catholic world view that this is not considered any longer to be, at the very least, extremely shabby behavior. Pity has become impiety.

There is not the tiniest part of this Catholic fabric of twenty years ago that has not changed beyond recognition. Catholicism is like a city destroyed by war. Most of its inhabitants have fled, and those who remain are picking through the ruins trying to salvage things not too battered to be useful. John Kenneth Galbraith remarked that the collapse of Catholicism was the most surprising thing that had happened in his lifetime. For anyone who loved the Catholic world, this collapse was traumatic.

I was never so shocked in my life as when my father told me, several years before he died, that he was no longer going to Mass. “I don’t believe you!” I said. “It can’t be true! Blessed God! Why?”

“Well, girl,” he replied haltingly, “it’s the changes. I just don’t feel there’s anything happening there anymore. I try, but I can’t.”

My father, whose faith through the poor times, and through my mother’s agonizing death, had remained so innocent, cheerful and trusting, who until then would rather have died than miss Mass intentionally, who took Holy Communion so seriously that he wouldn’t receive It if he had so much as laughed at a blasphemous joke in the mill…now, for him, the miracle had departed. They had taken away his Lord, and he didn’t know where they had laid Him.

Since the Mass was, in Aquinas’ words, “the central pillar of the Church,” it was the first target of the revolution that accompanied the Second Vatican Council. It was the first matter to be discussed at the Council, and radical changes were introduced into it even before the Council ended. The liturgical changes devised by idealogues and enforced by dupes, at one stroke altered the face and mood of Catholicism unrecognizably. The cult was kicked down, and the culture fell with it. There was no point in insisting, as one did endlessly, that the Council had not changed Catholic doctrine.

Everything Catholic seemed at once archaic, discredited. Revolutionary change became the one absolute. Overnight, people reversed themselves dramatically. The nuns who had taught us that chastity was fire, not ice, fidelity to a Beloved Person, Christ, rather than repression, became at once Sex-Ed Sisters. Impossible to believe that the girl with whom I once discussed St. Felicity is now an ardent feminist, working very hard for abortion on demand. Impossible to credit that a Cardinal and a Bishop are dancing hand in hand at a charismatic revel; that a Catholic University is participating in Gay Awareness Week. Appalling to see, in the St. Catharine’s Church where I began my married life, ecstatic Catholic women “slain in the Spirit,” falling to the floor of the sanctuary in the course of a charismatic service, and lying there in a trance.

It has been the most disconcerting experience, like stepping through the looking-glass to find everyone horribly reversed. People only a short time ago utterly committed to Catholic orthodoxy and tradition have, without change of pace, taken up diametrically opposite positions. Since these people are also firmly in power, the Catholic who hasn’t reversed is made to look subversive or mad. Five minutes into a Catholic gathering I begin to feel like a displaced person.

One doesn’t feel virtuous, just stupid and lonely. With the disintegration of the Catholic matrix, it has become impossible to live the Catholic life unselfconsciously. Apart from the unpleasantness of holding positions against a hostile majority, the joylessness of a society, many of whose leaders have put aside their belief in eternity, affects one with despair.

Now that the heart is broken, Catholicism is an act of the will performed out of honor, and out of love, but it is love among the ruins. One keeps on going to the gutted Masses with their antic priests, manufactured excitement and cafeteria casualness at Holy Communion, and one closes one’s eyes and prays the desperate prayer of the agnostic believer: “Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief!”

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Catholics used to be… well… Catholic! This article (written in 1982. How much more relevant it is today) demonstrates that the Counciliar Church does not practice the Catholic Religion. Both cannot be right.  Only the evil one could have been behind this destruction of the Catholic Faith and practice.

What do you choose? A 50 year old experiment or the Religion practiced by Saints and holy people for generations, for millenia? I choose the latter. If they were wrong, the Church is a lie.

~Damsel of the Faith

Immaculate Heart of Mary

On this the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer a meditation from Fr. Arthur Ryan, 1877. Remember to pray and offer sacrifices in reparation for the sacrileges and outrages committed against the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin, as She most urgently asked of us at Fatima:

“The Church, dear brethren, places before us to-day, as the object of our devotion on this feast, the Heart of Mary in what may be called its characteristic virtue–its purity. Purity has been called “Mary’s virtue,” not because she had it in fuller measure or in greater brightness than the other virtues contained in the absolute fulness of her grace, but because it best suits our view of the Virgin Mother, and because it has been ever held the special grace and charm of womanhood. But this is not the feast of Mary’s Purity (that is kept on another day), but of Mary’s most pure heart: that is, it is the feast of that wondrous union and interdependence, in the character of our Holy and Immaculate Mother, of purity and love. It will instruct us to-day, and also help us to honour our Lady in the spirit of her feast, if we reflect for a few moments on this union. We shall find that Mary’s purity of heart came from the love of her heart, and the sorrow perfecting that love; and we shall learn that in love and in sorrow are to be found the surest foundation and the lasting protection of our own purity of heart.

We say anything is pure or clean when there is nothing of a lower or coarser nature mixed with it or resting on it. In this way we speak of a pure spirit as one not made for union with a material body; pure water, again, that is not mixed with any foreign matter that will dull its brightness. Remark that purity does not mean coldness or stiffness. If snow is the emblem of purity, it is because of its heaven-born whiteness and stainlessness–not because of its coldness. Once let the clay and soilure of earth be mixed with the drift, and though it has not ceased to be cold it has ceased to be pure. The icicle which the poet has made the emblem of chastity is no fitting emblem either in its coldness or sharpness–but (if it be a fit emblem at all) in its transparent clearness. To-day, however, we see the true emblem of purity, better than snow or ice, however spotless; for we see a human heart, warm with the warmest human love, throbbing and yearning as with the love of all hearts in one, and yet, nay by very reason of its vehement love, the home and emblem of purity–the most loving of the loving, and the purest of the pure.

For think, brethren, how could it be otherwise. Loving Jesus as Mary did, how could her love know that mixture of other love which alone could make her love impure? What drop of tainted earthly love could find room in the crystal vessel of her heart, full to the very brim of the heavenly love of Jesus? Her warm, womanly heart, so gentle and tender, so fitted and attuned to the finest pulsations of love–made by the Eternal God to be, next to the Heart of Jesus, the most perfect instrument of love, that heart had found complete and perfect rest in the love of God–in the love of its Jesus, and what more could it hold? Love filled that inner house, occupied every chamber and stood at the door, so that no other love could enter. Thus was Mary’s love the cause and the guard of Mary’s purity–enough of itself to be the full account of Mary’s stainlessness.

But yet another cause we seem to see. I say “seem,” brethren, for in a perfect work, such as Mary’s heart is, we find that the virtues are not separable in themselves or in their causes, as they are in works less perfect. In fact, the unity of God’s holiness, in Whom all perfections are as one, seems thus reflected in His most perfect creatures. It is, then, only as of another phase of Mary’s love that I would speak of Mary’s sorrow. She sorrowed because she loved, and for her love; and the purity that was founded in that love takes, in our eyes, its lustre and refinement from that sorrow. The Holy Scriptures speak, as men have in every land and literature spoken, of sorrow typified by fire. Prophet and poet are one in telling of the fire of affliction, the furnace of pain; and when the passing woes of earth shall find their awful and eternal home in Hell, they shall dwell there as in a pool of fire. But it is in the purifying qualities of sorrow that has been found the fitness of its comparison with fire. Not to mention many passages in the Old Testament, St. Peter speaks of the soul made sorrowful in divers temptations like the precious gold which is tried by the fire: and St. John commends gold fire-tried, and in the next verse explains this by the words: “Such as I love I rebuke and chastise.” You know that gold, though so precious, is seldom (if ever) found pure. It has to be made pure by the process of fire: the dross is thus taken from it, and nothing but the bright ore remains.

So is it with the human heart. Precious as is that heart and dear to God, it is yet mixed up with much that is of earth–with sin and the effects of sin. Jesus Christ Himself has told us of the defilements of the heart of man. “From the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies. These are the things that defile a man.” Such an admixture of what is impure makes the purifying of the heart a necessity: and the fire that loosens this dross, and makes the heart an offering acceptable to God, is the fire of sorrow–sorrow as it is sent us by our loving Father in the chastisement of His love–sorrow as it meets us at the hands of our fellow-men–sorrow as we embrace it ourselves and choose it freely as our lot in the generosity of Penance. The example of this sorrow, if not the example of its work, we behold in the pure and sorrowing heart of Mary. She needed not that fire for herself. No smallest atom of earthly defilement was on that pure heart for the furnace of pain to burn away. Love had done all, and left sorrow nothing to do. But, brethren, for your sakes and mine Mary plunged her heart down into that fire, deeper than any heart has ever gone, save only the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Man of Sorrows.

And shall we refuse to enter our fiery furnace? Shall we refuse to purchase our purity at the price of our pain? Ah no! Our love will make that pain bearable, and will make its work less.

To love and to suffer–be this our lot with the loving, suffering hearts of Jesus and Mary–if only by that love and by that sorrow we may come to something of that purity!

“Who, then, shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or persecution, or the sword? For in all these things we overcome because of Him that hath loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The Church and the World – the Statesmanship of Christ the King

http://www.catholicapologetics.info/modernproblems/ecumenism/reign.htm

The following is from Fideliter March-April, 1995 by Bishop Tissier de Mallerias:

If we do not love Christ’s social reign, we will fall under the social reign of the devil.

We are convinced that the rejection of the Social Reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ by the nations is the cause of their ruin, or of the most serious disorders and of inextricable problems of the moral, political, social and economic order that no one can master today. We are conscious of the fact that the triumphant revolution is establishing a new world order on the ruins of the apostate nations, and this new order is essentially anti-christian. We observe that the conciliar Church co-operates in this work, while substituting for the religion of God-made-man, the cult of man making himself God. We should all be resolved as much as lies in us, to fight this satanic plan, which God may deign to dissipate with the breath of His mouth. Sons of the Catholic Church, adhering to the indefectible voice of the Spouse of Christ, we proclaim the absolute Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ over the human affairs, over societies and over nations.

1. Claims of Our Lord Jesus Christ to Universal Kingship
Our Lord Jesus Christ is necessarily King. By nature He possesses, inasmuch as He is man, the primacy of excellence and of perfection over every creature (Quas Primas [Q.P.] 533, Col. 1:15-17) and particularly the knowledge and power to rule and direct all human temporal affairs of His and His Father’s glory. (Q.P. 540). So as not to empty the humiliation of the Cross, He is abstaining from practising His temporal Kingship Himself. In fact, Our Lord is also in possession of a spiritual and priestly, of a universal and victorious Kingship over all men so as to take them back through Him, the sole Head in the unity of the Mystical Body, the Catholic Church (Col. 1,18). This spiritual Kingship is spread out over temporal affairs to the degree that these serve Him to triumph over His enemies and to extend the Reign of Grace.

The Blessed Virgin Mary, His Mother and co-adjutrix in the work of Redemption, partakes in the Kingship of Christ (Pius XII, Ad Coeli Reginam) and disposes over hearts for it. “Regnum Christi per Regnam Mariae – The Reign of Christ, through the Reign of Mary.”

2. Christ, foundation and restorer of the natural order
Man fallen from his native dignity by original sin (Roman Missal, Collect for Thursday of Passion Week) is only reinstated in that natural dignity by the spiritual Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ Who takes care of man’s wounded nature only by lifting it to the supernatural dignity of the child of God (Summa I-II q. 109a2). Likewise, the natural order of human affairs (Pius XII, Summa Pontificatus 740) only receives its full solidity (Col. 1,17) and integrity on the unique foundation on which it behooves to be restored, i.e. on Christ in which it is ceaselessly to be done. It is only found in Christian civilisation, in the Catholic City.

3. Christ the supreme legislator
Christ the Man with the twofold claim of His birth and conquest through the Cross, in Whom are enclosed all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2,3) to Whom God has made over all power in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18) is given to men as sovereign legislator Whom they ought to obey (Q.P. 536) and as supreme judge from Whom they receive rewards and chastisements in this as well as in the next life. (Q.P. 537)

4. Universality of Christ’s Reign
Christ’s empire “does not extend exclusively over Catholic nations nor only over baptised Christians… it embraces equally and without exceptions all men, even strangers to the Catholic Faith (Q.P. 542). Our Lord however, only reigns effectively over nations whose leaders He baptised and whose constitutions He christianised (St Pius X, Allocution December 13, 1908).

The Reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ embraces all times, it embraces those who have need of Him, those that battled for Him, those who lived for Him and those who separated from Him. He proves that Christ is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end of history (Q.P. 562). His Kingship will be fulfilled on the last day when He will take spectacular vengeance on His enemies (Q.P. 569). The final and triumphant state will be found in the plenitude of glory of His saints and elect (Eph. 4:13).

5. About Our Lord’s Social Reign
God has so constituted man that he cannot exist nor attain his temporal perfection without the cooperation of his fellow men (St Thomas, De Regno, Bk. 1 Ch. 1). This social nature of man thus has God for its author, so that societies no less than individuals are God’s creatures (Philippe, Christ, King of Nations).

Our Lord Jesus Christ, by His natural primacy is thus as man, King of Societies, particularly King of families and of nations, and by His Kingship of Grace He governs them towards their supernatural end. (Q.P. 543)

6. The Primacy of the Common Good
Man being by nature part of all that goes with a well regulated multitude (St Thomas, 1. Ethics lec. 1 n4), he must necessarily align himself with society as to his end (II-II al q.64 a2), i.e. adapt and dispose his person to act in common with others, thus making up society and in which the person finds his temporal perfection (II-IIa1 q26 a3 and a2). Likewise, he must submit his particular interest to the common good, to wit, sacrifice his life fot it (I-IIae q96 a4). Society being in effect but a unity of order and not a substantial unity (St Thomas 1 Ethics, lect 1 n. 5), the common temporal good is not separated from individuals, but it is their good, and it principally consists in a good and virtuous life (Rerum Novarum 303), to which everyone contributes his part (.ibid). Moreover, the ultimate end of man is not a virtuous life but through this to arrive at eternal beatitude (St Thomas De Regno, Bk. 1, ch. 14 n.3). Thus the common temporal good is ordered indirectly to the Triune God (II-IIae q.83 a6), the common good of the city of the blessed, Liberalism and totalitarianism are anti-Christian (Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, no. 3). The individual as king dissolves the common good by the rights of man without God (Pius XI, Aliquantulum 1).

The deified State in turn confiscates the common good in the interest of the faction that is in power and this is slavery. Only the primacy of Christ the King, tearing away from State and individual their usurped crown can give to the common good its primacy and assure its authenticity (Pope Pius XII Allocution June 16, 1939).

7. King of Kings and Lord of Lords
All authority comes from God (Romans 13:1). Political authority does not come from the people but from God. Perhaps an election determines the person of the leader, but it does not confer authority. One decides by whom power must be exercised. Supreme temporal sovereignty belongs to Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords (1 Tim. 6:15), but since He abstains from exercising it Himself, He delegates temporal power to His human office holders, whether they be hereditary monarchs or elected presidents, who do command less in their own name than in the name and in place of the divine King (Q.P. 547). There is no choice between a modern democracy and Christ the King – long live Christ the King.

8. Sovereign Legislator
The law is “an ordinance of reason for the common good promulgated by him who has the care of the community (St Thomas I-IIae q. 90 a1). It is not the work of the human will, even if it is general (cf. Declaration of the Rights of Man) but a work of reason and the wisdom of the legislator. Civil law is destined to apply and make natural law more precise, i.e. human reason partakes in law (I-IIae q.91a2). It is a precious help for human freedom (Leo XIII Libertas 179-180). Our Lord Jesus Christ “by Whom kings reign and legislators decree what is just” (Pr 8,15) has confirmed natural law and promulgated the law of the Gospel (Matt. 5:17) so that human laws find their norm there. The Sovereign Legislator, Christ the King, is the only one to give peace to the nations, i.e. tranquility and order, the peace of Christ in the reign of Christ (Pius XI, Ubi Arcano).

9. King of Families
Both the Catholic City as well as the Church depend for their preservation and prosperity on fertile marriages (Pius XII Allocution to young spouses). Jesus Christ, King of Nations, is thus King of the family, the mother-cell of society (Pius XI Casti Connubi). He recalls that the State must not absorb but supplement what the family cannot do (Pius XI Allocution to the pupils of Mondragone). The Sovereign Legislator, Our Lord Jesus Christ, takes marriage back to its original sanctity and elevates it to the dignity of a sacrament (Casti Connubi 282). Through the voice of the Church, His Mystical Body, He recalls to souls the natural law, and through the instrument of civil legislation He imposes the law on the public life of the Catholic Community, the ‘City’, in what concerns procreation, reserved to marriage, the preservation of life, conjugal chastity (Pius XII Allocution to midwives), the unity and indissolubility of marriage; He condemns the contrary crimes, He promotes large families with all the virtues (Pius XII Allocution to young spouses), the glory of the Catholic Church where holy religious and priestly vocations flourish.

10. Master of Educators
Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Divine Master, is King of parents and educators, Master of teachers. He reminds the State that education of the child naturally belongs to those who have begotten it, i.e. to the parents (Pius XI Divini Illius Magistri 257). The family is therefore the prime educator and the State cannot arrange the education of children against the will of the parents (op. cit. 258). The family and the school however, must, in instructing and educating, respect the natural and divine law and only teach things that are true (Leo XIII Libertas 209).

Our Lord Jesus Christ confides to the Catholic Church the entire moral and supernatural truth (Pius XI Divini Illius Magistri 24) with the mission to teach all nations (Matt. 28:18). He endows it for that with an infallible magisterium (Pius IX Denz. 1683), with a sovereign authority and with an independence from all earthly power in the original source and exercise of its educative mission (Pius XI Divini Illius Magistri 247).

11. Church and State
What Christ the King is to the Catholic City, the Church, His Mystical Spouse, is in relation to the State. The Catholic Church being spiritual and supernatural, is the supreme society. She is a perfect spouse endowed by her divine Spouse with all the spiritual and temporal means to ‘lead men to salvation’ (Leo XIII Immortale Dei 134)

The Church and the State are independent and sovereign, each in its own domain (op. cit. 136), but by reason of the subordination of the State’s end (the temporal common good) to the Church’s end (eternal salvation), the State is indirectly subordinate to the Church which can intervene in the temporal order in the name of supernatural interests (op. cit. 137), and to require from the State protection (op. cit. 131) against the disturbers of the Catholic religion (Pius IX Quanta Cura 39).

Likewise, it behooves the State to protect the unanimity of the citizens in the true religion, an important element of the temporal common good (Card. Ottavianni – Proposition of the Schema on Church and State).

The public duty or office renders to Jesus, our King, public homage according to the cult of the Catholic religion (Q.P. 543, 569).

Finally, the State, according to the circumstances and the judgement of the Church, can tolerate the public exercise of dissident cults and legally guarantee that tolerance (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei 154). However, in principle, it cannot grant liberty to all cults without distinction (Pius VII, Pius IX, Leo XIII), nor admit the false principle of religious liberty. This would be an offence towards the divinity of the Church and towards the spiritual Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

12. The Christian political, social and economic order
The wisdom of the Angelic Doctor, the interventions of the popes, and the reflections of thinkers against the (French) Revolution release the general principles of the natural and Christian order.

Following are some aphorisms expressing these:

“Only the devil has need of universal suffrage.” (Leo XIII Diuturum 105)

“Democracy presupposes civic virtue in all, the monarchy, prudence in one person only.” (St Thomas I-II ae q 105 a1 and a3)

“The arrival of universal democracy is of no importance to the Church’s actions in the world.” (St Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate 31, Instauratio Press edition)

“If the moment has not come for Jesus Christ to reign, the moment has not come for governments to endure.” (Card. Pie, conversation with Napoleon III)

“The principle of subsidiarity [Pius XI Quadrigesimo Anno 38] (i.e. to favour private initiatives, the State only intervening to supply what private persons cannot do) prevents effective socialist control.” (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum 296)

“The principle of the common good does away with effective liberal control.” (Quadrigesimo Anno 532, 534)

“Justice is the first of the charities.” (Quadrigesimo Anno 523)

“Christian charity tempers the injustice of the unjust. The charity of the unjust is the height of injustice.” and “The justice of the common good is the first justice.” (St Thomas II IIae q58a5)

God says : “So as to be rich, multiply and subdue the earth.”

The Devil says: “To be rich, be sterile and the earth as well.”

There is no middle way. Either the social reign of the devil, or the Social Reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ the King is the unique hope of the nations. (Gen. 19:10) It is Him that they wait for in darkness, amidst the accumulated ruins of “two centuries of liberal culture.” (The Ratzinger Report)

With our Holy Mother the Church, we proclaim that today as always, Our Lord Jesus Christ is the unique source of salvation, both of societies and of individuals (Q.P. 543), since for the material or spiritual, for the temporal as for the eternal, “there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

Modernism threatens the world

Take note of what Pope St. Pius X warned us of, particularly the danger that Modernism would post to the family and nations. Think of the upcoming Synod with the Modernists’ attacks on Church doctrine.  We can’t say we haven’t been warned about the current crisis engulfing the Church.

“These moderns, forever prattling about culture and civilization, are undermining the Church’s doctrine, laws, and practices. They are not concerned very much about culture and civilization. By using such high-sounding words they think they can conceal the wickedness of their schemes. All of you know their purpose, subterfuges, and methods. On Our part We have denounced and condemned their scheming. They are proposing a universal apostasy even worse than the one that threatened the age of [St. Charles Borromeo]. It is worse, We say, because it stealthily creeps into the very veins of the Church, hides there, and cunningly pushes erroneous principles to their ultimate conclusions. Both these heresies are fathered by the ‘enemy’ who ‘sowed weeds among the wheat’ in order to bring about the downfall of mankind. Both revolts go about in the hidden ways of darkness, develop along the same line, and come to an end in the same fatal way. In the past the first apostasy turned where fortune seemed to smile. It set rulers against people or people against rulers only to lead both classes to destruction. Today this modern apostasy stirs up hatred between the poor and the rich until, dissatisfied with their station, they gradually fall into such wretched ways that they must pay the fine imposed on those who, absorbed in worldly, temporal things, forget ‘the kingdom of God and His justice.’ As a matter of fact, this present conflict is even more serious than the others. Although the wild innovators of former times generally preserved some fragments of the treasury of revealed doctrine, these moderns act as if they will not rest until they completely destroy it. When the foundations of religion are overthrown, the restraints of civil society are also necessarily shattered. Behold the sad spectacle of our times! Behold the impending danger of the future! However, it is no danger to the Church, for the divine promise leaves no room for doubt. Rather, this revolution threatens the family and nations, especially those who actively stir up or indifferently tolerate this unhealthy atmosphere of irreligion. This impious and foolish war is waged and sometimes supported by those who should be the first to come to Our aid. The errors appear in many forms and the enticements of vice wear different dresses. Both cause many even among our own ranks to be ensnared, seducing them by the appearance of novelty and doctrine, or the illusion that the Church will accept the maxims of the age. Venerable Brethren, you are well aware that we must vigorously resist and repel the enemy’s attacks with the very weapons Borromeo used in his day. Since they attack the very root of faith either by openly denying, hypocritically undermining, or misrepresenting revealed doctrine, we should above all recall the truth Charles often taught. ‘The primary and most important duty of pastors is to guard everything pertaining to the integral and inviolate maintenance of the Catholic Faith, the faith which the Holy Roman Church professes and teaches, without which it is impossible to please God’. Again: ‘In this matter no diligence can be too great to fulfill the certain demands of our office’. We must therefore use sound doctrine to withstand ‘the leaven of heretical depravity,’ which if not repressed, will corrupt the whole. That is to say, we must oppose these erroneous opinions now deceitfully being scattered abroad, which, when taken all together, are called Modernism.”   ~Pope St. Pius X, “Editae Saepe”, 1910 A.D

St. Alphonsus Liguori on Our Lady’s Assumption

Another meditation on the Assumption of Our Lady, by St. Alphonsus Liguori:

Death being the punishment of sin, it would seem that the Divine Mother —- all holy, and exempt as she was from its slightest stain —- should also have been exempt from death, and from encountering the misfortunes to which the the children of Adam, infected by the poison of sin, are subject. But God was pleased that Mary should in all things resemble Jesus; and as the Son died, it was becoming that the Mother should also die; because, moreover, He wished to give the just an example of the precious death prepared for them, He willed that even the most Blessed Virgin should die, but by a sweet and happy death. Let us, therefore, now consider how precious was Mary’s death: first, on account of the special favors by which it was accompanied; secondly, on account of the manner in which it took place.

1.

There are three things that render death bitter: attachment to the world, remorse for sins, and the uncertainty of salvation. The death of Mary was entirely free from these causes of bitterness, and was accompanied by three special graces, which rendered it precious and joyful. She dies as she had lived, entirely detached from the things of the world; she died in the most perfect peace; she died in the certainty of eternal glory.

1. And in the first place, there can be no doubt that attachment to earthly things, renders the death of the worldly bitter and miserable, as the Holy Ghost says: O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man who hath peace in his possessions! [1] But because the Saints die detached from the things of the world, their death is not bitter, but sweet, lovely, and precious; that is to say, as St. Bernard remarks, worth purchasing at any price, however great. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. [2] Who are they who, being already dead, die? They are those happy souls who pass into eternity already detached, and so to say, dead to all affection for terrestrial things; and who, like St. Francis of Assisi, found in God alone all their happiness, and with him could say, “My God and my all.” But what soul was ever more detached from earthly goods, and more united to God, than the beautiful soul of Mary? She was detached from her parents; for at the age of three years, when children are most attached to them, and stand in the greatest need of their assistance, Mary with the greatest intrepidity, left them, and went to shut herself up in the Temple to attend to God alone. She was detached from riches, contenting herself to always live poor, and supporting herself with the labor of her own hands. She was detached from honors, loving a humble and abject life, though the honors due to a queen were hers, as she was descended from the kings of Israel. The Blessed Virgin herself revealed to St. Elizabeth of Hungary, that when her parents left her in the Temple. she resolved in her heart to have no father, and to love no other good than God.

St. John saw Mary represented in that woman, clothed with the sun, who held the moon under her feet. And a great sign appeared in Heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet. [3] Interpreters explain the moon to signify the goods of this world, which like her, are uncertain and unchangeable. Mary never had these goods in her heart, but always despised them and trampled them under her feet; living in this world as a solitary turtle in a desert, never allowing her affection to center itself in any earthly thing; so that of her it was aid: The voice of the turtle is heard in our land. [4] And elsewhere: Who is she that goeth up by the desert? [5] When the Abbot Rupert says, “Thus didst thou go by the desert; that is, having a solitary soul.” Mary, then, having lived always and in all things detached from the earth, and united to God alone, death was not bitter, but on the contrary, very sweet and dear to her; since it united her more closely to God in Heaven, by an eternal bond.

1. Peace of mind renders the death of the just precious. Sins committed during life are the worms that so cruelly torment and gnaw the hearts of poor dying sinners, who, about to appear before the Divine tribunal, see themselves at that moment surrounded by their sins, which terrify them, and cry out according to St. Bernard, “we are thy works; we will not abandon thee.” Mary certainly could not be tormented at death by any remorse of conscience, for she was always pure, and always free from the least shade of actual or Original Sin; so much so, that of her it was aid, Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee. [6] from the moment that she had the use of reason, that is, from the first moment  of her Immaculate Conception in the womb of St. Anne, she began to love God with all her strength, and. continue do so, always advancing more and more throughout her whole life in love and perfection. And all her thoughts, desires, and affections were of and for God alone; she never uttered a word, made a movement, cast a glance or breathed, but for God and His glory ; and never departed a step or detached herself for a single moment from the Divine love. Ah, how did all the lovely virtue that she had practiced during life surround her blessed bed in the happy hour of her death! That faith so constant; that loving confidence in God; that unconquerable patience in the midst of so many sufferings; that humility in the midst of so many privileges; that modesty; that meekness; that tender compassion for souls; that insatiable zeal for the glory of God; and, above all, that most perfect love towards Him, with that entire conformity to the Divine will: all, in a word, surrounded her and consoling her, said: “We are thy works; we will not abandon thee.” Our Lady and Mother, we are all daughters of thy beautiful heart; now that thou a leaving this miserable life, we will not leave thee; we also will go, and be thy eternal accompaniment and honor in Paradise, where, by our means thou wilt reign as Queen of all men and of all Angels.

III. Finally, the certainty of eternal salvation renders death sweet. Death is called a passage; for by death we pass from a short to an eternal life. And as the dread of those is indeed great who die in doubt of their salvation, and who approach the solemn moment with welI-grounded fear of passing into eternal death; thus on the other hand, the joy of the Saints is indeed great at the close of life, hoping with some security to go and possess God in Heaven. A nun of the Order of St. Teresa, when the doctor announced to her her approaching death, was so filled with joy that she exclaimed, ” O how is it, sir, that you announce to me such welcome news, and demand no fee?” St. Laurence Justinian, being at the point of death, and perceiving his servants weeping round him, said: “Away, away with your tears; this is no time to mourn.” Go elsewhere to weep; if you would remain with me, rejoice, as I rejoice, in seeing the gates of Heaven open to me, that I may be united to my God. Thus also a St. Peter of Alcantara, a St. Aloysius Gonzaga, and so many other Saints, on hearing their death was at hand, burst forth into exclamations of joy and gladness. And yet they were not certain of being in possession of Divine grace, nor were they secure of their own sanctity, as Mary was.

But what joy must the Divine Mother have felt in receiving the news of her approaching death! She who had the fullest certainty of the possession of Divine grace especially after the Angel Gabriel had assured her that she was full of it, and that she already possessed God.  Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . . thou hast found grace. [7] And well did she herself know that her heart was continually burning with Divine love; so that as Bernardine de Bustis says, ” Mary, by a singular privilege granted to no other Saint, loved, and was always actually loving God, in every moment of her life with such ardor, that St. Bernard declares, it required a continued miracle to preserve her life in the midst of such flames.”

Of Mary it had already been asked in the sacred canticles, Who is she that goeth up by the desert, as a pillar smoke, of aromatical spices, of myrrh, and frankincense, allthe powders of the perfumer? [8] Her entire mortification typified by the myrrh, her fervent prayers signified by the incense, and all her holy virtues united to her perfect love for God, kindled in her a flame so great that her beautiful soul, wholly devoted to and consumed, by Divine love, arose continually to God as a pillar of smoke, breathing forth on every side a most sweet odor. “Such smoke, nay even such a pillar of smoke,” says the Abbot Rupert, “Hast thou, O Blessed Mary, breathed forth a sweet odor to the Most High.” Eustachius expresses it in still stronger terms: “A pillar of smoke, because burning interiorly as a holocaust with the flame of Divine love, she sent forth a most sweet odor.”  As the loving Virgin lived, so did she died. As Divine love gave her life, so did it cause her death; for the Doctors and holy Fathers of the Church generally say she died of no other infirmity than pure love; St. Ildephonsus says that Mary either ought not to die, or only die of love.

1. But now let us see how her blessed death took place. After the ascension of Jesus Christ, Mary remained on earth to attend to the propagation of the faith. Hence the disciples of our Lord had recourse to her, and she solved their doubts, comforted them in their persecutions, and encouraged them to labor for the Divine glory and the salvation of redeemed souls. She willingly remained on earth, knowing that such was the will of God, for the good of the Church; but she could not but. feel the pain of being far from the presence and sight of her beloved Son, who had ascended to Heaven. Where your treasure is, there Will your heart be also, said the Redeemer. Where anyone believes his treasure and his happiness to be, here he always holds the love and desires of his heart fixed. If Mary, then, loved no other good than Jesus, He being in Heaven, all her desires were in Heaven.

Tauler says, that “Heaven was the cell of the Heavenly and most Blessed Virgin Mary; for, being there with all her desires and affections, she she made it her continual abode. Her school was eternity; for she was always detached and free from temporal possessions. Her teacher was Divine truth; for her whole life was guided by this alone. Her book was the purity of her own conscience, in which she always found occasion to rejoice in the Lord. Her mirror was the Divinity; for she never admitted any representations into her soul but such as were transformed into and clothed with God, that so she might always conform herself to His will. Her ornament was devotion; for she attended solely to her interior sanctification, and was always ready to fulfill the. Divine commands. Her repose was union with God; for He alone was her treasure and the resting-place of her heart.”

The most holy Virgin consoled her loving heart during this painful separation by visiting, as it is related, the holy places of Palestine, where her Son had been during His life. She frequently visited —- at one time the stable at Bethlehem, where her Son was born; at another, the workshop of Nazareth, where her Son had lived so many years poor and despised; now the Garden of Gethsemani, where her Son began His Passion; then the Prætorium of Pilate, where He was scourged,  and the spot on which He was crowned with thorns; but visited most frequently the Mount of Calvary, where her Son expired; and the Holy Sepulchre in which she had finally left Him: thus did the most loving Mother soothe the pains of her cruel exile. But this could not be enough to satisfy her heart, which was unable to find perfect repose in this world. Hence she was continually sending up sighs to her Lord, exclaiming with David: Who will giveth me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest? [9] Who will give me wings like a dove, that I may fly to my God, and there find my repose? As the heart panteth after the fountains of water, so my soul panteth after Thee, my God. [10] As the wounded stag pants for the fountain, so does my soul, wounded by Thy love, O my God, desire and sigh after Thee.

Yes, indeed, the sighs of this holy turtle-dove could not but deeply penetrate the heart of her God, Who indeed so tenderly loved her. The voice of the turtle heard in our land. [11] Wherefore being unwilling to de any longer the so-much-desired consolation of His beloved, behold, He graciously hears her desire, and calls her to His Kingdom.

Cedrenus, Nicephorus, and Metaphrastes, relate some days before her death. our Lord sent her the Archangel Gabriel, the same that announced to her that she was that blessed woman chosen to be the Mother of God: ” My Lady and Queen,” said the Angel, ” God has already graciously heard thy holy desires, and has sent me to tell thee to prepare thyself to leave the earth: for He wills thee in Heaven. Come, then, to take possession of thy kingdom; for it and all its holy inhabitants await and desire thee.,” On this happy annunciation, what else could our most humble and most holy Virgin do, but, with the most profound humility, answer in the same words in which she had answered St. Gabriel when he announced to her that she was to become the Mother of God: Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Behold, she answered again, the slave of the Lord, He in His pure goodness chose me and made me His Mother; He now calls me to Paradise. I did not deserve that honor, nor do I deserve this, but since He is pleased to show in my person His infinite liberality, behold, I am ready to go where He pleases. Behold the handmaid of the Lord. May the will of my God and Lord be ever accomplished in me!

After receiving this welcome intelligence she imparted it to St. John. We may well imagine with what grief and tender feelings he heard the news; he who for so many years had attended upon her as a son, and had enjoyed the Heavenly conversation of this most holy Mother. She then once more visited the holy places of Jerusalem, tenderly taking leave of them, and especially of Mount Calvary, where her beloved Son had died. She then retired into her poor cottage, there to prepare for death.

During this time the Angels did not cease their visits to their beloved Queen, consoling themselves with the thought that they would soon see her crowned in Heaven. Many authors, such as Andrew of Crete, St. John Damascene, Euthymius, assert that, before her death, the Apostles, and also many disciples who were scattered in different parts of the world, were miraculously assembled in Mary’s room, and that when she saw all these her dear children in her presence, she thus addressed them: ” My beloved children, through love for you and to help you my Son left me on this earth. The holy faith is now spread throughout the world, already the fruit of the Divine seed is grown up; hence my Lord, seeing that my assistance on earth is no longer necessary, and compassionating my grief in being separated from Him, has graciously listened to my desire to quit this life and to go and see Him in Heaven. Do you remain, then, to labor for His glory. If I leave you, my heart remains with you; the great love I bear you shall carry with me and always preserve. I go to Paradise to pray for you.”

Who can form an idea of the tears and lamentation of the holy disciples at this sad announcement, and the thought that soon they were to be separated from their Mother? All then, weeping, exclaimed, Then, O Mary, thou art already about to leave us. It is true that this world is not a place worthy of or fit for thee; and as for us, we are unworthy to enjoy the society of the  Mother of God; but, remember, thou art our Mother, hitherto thou hast enlightened us in our doubts; thou hast consoled us in our afflictions; thou hast been our strength in persecutions; and now, how canst thou abandon us, leaving us alone in the midst of so many enemies and so many conflicts, deprived of thy consolation? We have already lost on earth Jesus, our Master and Father, Who has ascended into Heaven; until now we have found consolation in thee, our Mother; and now, how canst thou also leave us orphans without father or mother? Our own sweet Lady, either remain with us, or take us with thee.” Thus St. John Damascene writes:

“No, my children” [thus sweetly the loving Queen began to speak], “this is not according to the will of God; be satisfied to do that which He has decreed for me and for you. To you it yet remains to labor on earth for the glory of your Redeemer, and to make up your eternal crown. I do not leave you to abandon you, but to help you still more in Heaven by my intercession with God. Be satisfied. I commend the holy Church to you; I commend redeemed souls to you; let this be my last farewell, and the only remembrance I leave you: execute it if you love me, labor for the good of souls and for the glory of my Son; for one day we shall meet again in Paradise, never more for all eternity to be separated.”

She then begged them to give burial to her body after death; blessed them, and desired St. John, as St. John Damascene relates, to give after her death two of her gowns to two virgins who had served her for some time. She then decently composed herself on her poor little bed, where she laid herself to await death, and with it the meeting with the Divine Spouse, who shortly was to come and take her with Him to the Kingdom of the blessed. Behold, she already feels in her heart a great joy, the forerunner of the coming of the Bridegroom, which inundates her with an unaccustomed and novel sweetness. The holy Apostles, seeing that Mary was , already on the point of leaving this world, renewing their tears, all threw themselves on their knees around her bed; some kissed her holy feet, some sought a special blessing from her, some recommended a particular want, and all wept bitterly; for their hearts were pierced with grief at being obliged to separate themselves for the rest of their lives from their beloved Lady. And she, the most loving Mother, compassionated all, and consoled each one; to some promising her patronage, blessing others with particular affection, and encouraging others to the work of the conversion of the world; especially, she called St. Peter to her, and as head of the Church and Vicar of her Son, recommended to him in a particular manner the propagation of the faith, promising him at the same time her especial protection in Heaven. But more particularly did she call St. John to her, who more than any other was grieved at this moment when he had to part with his holy Mother; and most gracious Lady, remembering the affection and attention with which this holy disciple had served her during all the years she had remained on earth since the death of her Son, said: ” My own John” [speaking with the greatest tenderness] —- ” my own John, I thank thee for all the assistance that thou hast afforded my Son, be assured of it, I shall not be ungrateful. If I now leave thee, I go to pray for thee. Remain in peace in this life until we meet again in Heaven, where I await thee. Never forget me. In all thy wants call me to aid; for I will never forget thee, my beloved son. So bless thee, I leave thee my blessing. Remain in peace. Farewell!”

But already the death of Mary is at hand; Divine love, with its vehement and blessed flames, had already almost entirely consumed the vital spirits; the Heavenly phoenix is already Iosing her life in the midst of this fire. Then the host of Angels come in choirs to meet her, as if to be ready for the great triumph with which they were to accompany her to Paradise. Mary was indeed consoled at the sight of these holy spirits, but was not fully consoled; for she did not yet see her beloved Jesus, Who was the whole love of her heart. Hence she often repeated to the Angels who descended to salute her: I adjure you, O daughters of  Jerusalem, if you find my Beloved, that you tell Him that I languish with love. [12] Holy Angels, O fair citizens of the Heavenly Jerusalem, you come in choirs kindly to console me; and you all console me with your sweet presence. I thank you; but you do not fully satisfy me, for as yet I do not see my Son coming to console me; go, if you love me, return to Paradise, and on my part tell my Beloved that I anguish with love. Tell Him to come, and to come quickly, for I am dying with the vehemence of my desire to see Him.

But, behold, Jesus is now come to take his Mother to the kingdom of the blessed. It was revealed to St. Elizabeth that her Son appeared to Mary before she expired with His Cross in His hands, to show the special glory He had obtained by the Redemption; having, by His death, made acquisition of that great creature, who for all eternity was to honor Him more than all men and Angels. St. John Damascene relates that our Lord himself gave her the Viaticum, saying with tender love, ” Receive, O My Mother, from My hands that same Body that thou gavest to Me.” And the Mother, having received with the greatest love that last Communion, with her last breath said, ” My Son, into Thy hands do I commend my spirit. I commend to Thee this soul, which from the beginning Thou didst create rich in so many graces, and by a singular privilege didst preserve from the stain of Original Sin. I commend to Thee my body, from which Thou didst deign to take Thy flesh and blood. I also commend to Thee these my beloved children [speaking of the holy disciples, who surrounded her]; they are grieved at my departure. Do Thou, Who lovest them more than I do, console them; bless them, and give them strength to do great things for Thy glory.”

The life of Mary being now at its close, the most delicious music, as St. Jerome relates, was heard in the apartment where she lay; and, according to a revelation of St. Bridget, the room was also filled with a brilliant light. The sweet music, and the unaccustomed splendor, warned the holy Apostles that Mary was departing. This caused them again to burst forth in tears and prayers; and raising their hands, with voice they exclaimed, O, Mother, thou already goest to Heaven; thou leavest us; give us thy last blessing and never forget us miserable creatures.” Mary, turning her eyes around upon all, as if to bid the last farewell, said, ” Adieu, my children; I bless you, fear not, I will never forget you.” And now death came; not indeed clothed in mourning and grief, as it does to others, but adorned with light and gladness. But what do we say? Why speak of death? Let us rather say that Divine love came, and cut the thread of that noble life. And as a light, before going out, gives a last and brighter flash than ever, so did this beautiful creature, on hearing her Son’s invitation to follow him, wrapped in the flames of love, and in the midst of her amorous sighs, give a last sigh of still more ardent love, and breathing forth her soul, expired. Thus was that great soul, that beautiful dove of the Lord, loosened from the bands of this life; thus did she enter into glory of the blessed, where she is now seated, and will be seated, Queen of Paradise, for all eternity.

Mary, then, has left this world; she is now in Heaven. Thence does this compassionate Mother look down upon us who are still in this valley of tears. She pities us, and, if we wish it, promises to help us. Let us always beseech her by the merits of her blessed death to obtain us a happy death; and should such be the good pleasure of God, let us beg her to obtain us grace to die on a Saturday, which is a day dedicated in her honor, or on a day of a novena, or within the octave of one of her feasts; for this she has obtained for so many of her clients, and especially for St. Stanislaus Kostka, for whom she obtained that he should die on the feast of her Assumption, as Father Bartoli relates in his life of the Saint.

EXAMPLE

During his lifetime this holy youth, who was wholly dedicated to the love of Mary, happened, on the first of August, to hear a sermon preached by Father Peter Canisius, in which, exhorting the novices of the Society, he urged them all, with the greatest fervor, to live each day, as if it were the last of their lives, and the one on which they were to be presented before God’s tribunal. After the sermon St. Stanislaus told his companions that that advice had been for him. in an especial manner, the voice of God; for that he was to die in the course of that very month. It is evident, from what followed, that he said this either because God had expressly revealed it to him, or at least because He gave him a certain internal presentiment of it. Four days afterwards the blessed youth went with Father Emanuel to St. Mary Major’s. The conversation fell on the approaching feast of the Assumption, and the saint said, “Father, I believe that on that day a new Paradise is seen in Paradise, as the glory of the Motiler of God, crowned Queen of Heavens and seated so near to our Lord, above all the choirs of Angels, is seen. And if —- as I firmly believe it to be —- this festival is renewed every year, I hope to see the next.” The glorious Martyr St. Lawrence had fallen by lot to St. Stanislaus as his patron for that month, it being customary in the Society thus to draw lots for the monthly patrons. It is said that he wrote a letter to his Mother Mary, in which he begged her to obtain him the favor to be present at her next festival in Heaven. On the feast of St. Lawrence he received the holy Communion, afterwards entreated the Saint to present his letter to the Divine Mother, and to support his petition with intercession, that the most Blessed Virgin might graciously accept and grant it. Towards the close of that very day he was seized with fever; and though the attack was slight, he considered that certainly he had obtained the favor asked for. This indeed he joyfully expressed, and with a smiling countenance, on going to bed, said, “From this bed I shall never rise again.” And speaking to Father Claudius Aquaviva, he added, “Father, I believe that St. Lawrence has already obtained for me the favor from Mary to be in Heaven on the feast of her Assumption.” No one, however, took much notice of his words. On the vigil of the feast his illness still seemed of little consequence, but the Saint assured a brother that he should die that night. “O brother, ” the other answered, “it would be a greater miracle die of so slight an illness than to be cured.” Nevertheless in the afternoon he fell into a deathlike swoon; cold sweat came over him; and he lost all his strength. The Superior hastened to him, and Stanislaus entreated him to have him laid on the bare floor, that he might die as a penitent. To satisfy him, this was granted: he was laid on a thin mattress on the ground. He then made his confession, and in the midst of the tears of all present received the Viaticum: I say, of the tears of all present, for when the Divine Sacrament was brought into the room his eyes brightened up with celestial joy, his whole countenance was inflamed with holy love that he seemed like a seraph. He also received Extreme Unction, and in the meanwhile did nothing but constantly raise his eyes to Heaven and lovingly press to his heart an image of Mary. A Father asked him to what purpose he kept a rosary in his hand, since he could not use it? He replied, ” It is a consolation to me, for it is something belonging to my Mother.” ” O, how much greater will your consolation be,” added the Father, ” when in a short time you will see her and kiss her hands in Heaven!” On hearing this, the Saint, with his  countenance all on fire, raised his hands to express his desire soon to be in her presence. His dear Mother then appeared to him, as he himself told those who surrounded him; and shortly afterwards, at the dawn of day on the fifteenth of August, with his eyes fixed on Heaven, he expired like a Saint, without the slightest struggle; so much so, that it was only on presenting him the image of the Blessed Virgin, and seeing that he made no movement towards it, that it was perceived that he was already gone to kiss the feet of his beloved Queen in Paradise.

Prayer

 O most sweet Lady and our Mother, thou hast already left the earth and reached thy Kingdom, where, as Queen, thou art enthroned above all the choirs of Angels, as the Church sings : Sheis exalted above the choirs of Angels in the celestIal Kingdom, We well know that we sinners are not worthy to possess thee in this valley of darkness; but we also know that thou, in thy greatness, hast never forgotten, us miserable creatures, and that by being exalted to so great glory thou hast lever lost compassion for us poor children of Adam; nay, even that it is increased in thee. From the high throne, then, to which thou art exalted, turn, O Mary, thy compassionate eyes upon us, and pity us. Remember, also, that in leaving this world thou didst promise not to forget us. Look at us and succor us. See in the midst of what tempests and dangers we constantly are, and shall be until the end of our lives, By the merits of thy happy death obtain for us holy perseverance in the Divine friendship, that we may finally quit this life in God’s grace; and thus we also shall one day come to kiss thy feet in Paradise, and unite with the blessed spirits in praising thee and singing thy glories as thou deservest. Amen.

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin

Excerpted from “The City of God” by Ven. Mary of Agreda:

In order that the Apostles, the Disciples, and many others of the faithful might not be too deeply oppressed by sorrow, and in order that some of them might not die of grief caused by the passing away of the Most Blessed Mary, it was necessary that the Divine Power, by an especial providence, furnish them with consolation and dilate their heart for new influences in their incomparable affliction. For the feeling, that their loss was irretrievable in the present life, could not be repressed; the privation of such a Treasure could never find a recompense; and as most sweet, loving and amiable intercourse and conversation of their Great Queen had ravished the heart of each one, the ceasing of Her protection and company left them as it were without the breath of life. But the Lord, Who well knew how to estimate the just cause of their sorrow, secretly upheld them by His encouragements and so they set about the fitting burial of the sacred body and whatever the occasion demanded.

Accordingly the Holy Apostles, on whom this duty specially devolved, held a conference concerning the burial of the most sacred body of their Queen and Lady. They selected for that purpose a new sepulchre, which had been prepared mysteriously by the providence of Her Divine Son. As they remembered, that, according to the custom of the Jews at burial, the Deified Body of Their Master had been anointed with precious ointments and spices and wrapped in the sacred burial cloths; they thought not of doing otherwise with the Virginal body of His Most Holy Mother. Accordingly they called the two maidens, who had assisted the Queen during Her life and who had been designated as the heiresses of Her tunics, and instructed them to anoint the Body of the Mother of God with highest reverence and modesty and wrap it in the winding-sheets before it should be placed in the casket. With great reverence and fear the two maidens entered the room, where the Body of the Blessed Lady lay upon its couch; but the refulgence issuing from it barred and blinded them in such a manner that they could neither see nor touch the Body, nor even ascertain in what particular place it rested.

In fear and reverence still greater than on their entrance, the maidens left the room; and in great excitement and wonder they told the Apostles what had happened. They, not without Divine Inspiration, came to the conclusion, that this Sacred Ark of the Covenant was not to be touched or handled in the common way. Then Saint Peter and Saint John entered the oratory and perceived the effulgence, and at the same time they heard the celestial music of the Angels, who were singing: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee.” Others responded: “A Virgin before childbirth, in childbirth and after childbirth.” From that time on many of the faithful expressed their devotion toward the Most Blessed Mary in these words of praise; and from them they were handed down to be repeated by us with the approbation of the Holy Church. The two Holy Apostles, Saint Peter and Saint John, were for a time lost in admiration at what they saw and heard of their Queen; and in order to decide what to do, they sank on their knees, beseeching the Lord to make it known. Then they heard a voice saying: “Let not the sacred body be either uncovered or touched.”

Having thus been informed of the Will of God, they brought a bier, and, the effulgence having diminished somewhat, they approached the couch and with their own hands reverently took hold of the tunic at the two ends. Thus, without changing its posture, they raised the sacred and Virginal Treasure and placed it on the bier in the same position as it had occupied on the couch. They could easily do this, because they felt no more weight than that of the tunic. On this bier the former effulgence of the body moderated still more, and all of them, by disposition of the Lord and for the consolation of all those present, could now perceive and study the beauty of that Virginal Countenance and of Her hands. As for the rest, the Omnipotence of God protected this His Heavenly Dwelling, so that neither in life nor in death anyone should behold any other part except what is common in ordinary conversation, namely, Her most inspiring countenance, by which She had been known, and Her hands, by which She had labored.

So great was the care and solicitude for His Most Blessed Mother, that in this particular He used not so much precaution in regard to His Own Body, as that of the Most Pure Virgin. In Her Immaculate Conception He made Her like to Himself; likewise at Her birth, in as far as it did not take place in the common and natural manner of other men. He preserved Her also from impure temptations and thoughts. But, as He was man and the Redeemer of the world through His Passion and Death, He permitted with His Own Body, what He would not allow with Hers, as that of a woman, and therefore He kept her Virginal body entirely concealed; in fact the Most Pure Lady during Her life had Herself asked that no one should be permitted to look upon it in death; which petition He fulfilled. Then the Apostles consulted further about Her burial. Their decision becoming known among the multitudes of the faithful in Jerusalem, they brought many candles to be lighted at the bier, and it happened that all the lights burned through that day and the two following days without any of the candles being consumed or wasted in any shape or manner.

In order that this and many other miracles wrought by the Power of God on this occasion might become better known to the world, the Lord Himself inspired all the inhabitants of Jerusalem to be present at the burial of His Most Blessed Mother, so that there was scarcely any person in Jerusalem, even of the Jews or the gentiles, who were not attracted by the novelty of this spectacle. The Apostles took upon their shoulders the sacred body and the Tabernacle of God and, as Priests of the Evangelical Law, bore the Propitiatory of the Divine Oracles and Blessings in orderly procession from the Cenacle in the city to the valley of Josaphat. This was the visible accompaniment of the dwellers of Jerusalem.

In the midst of this celestial and earthly accompaniment, visible and invisible, the Apostles bore along the sacred body, and on the way happened great miracles, which would take much time to relate. In particular all the sick, of which there were many of the different kinds, were entirely cured. Many of the possessed were freed from the demons; for the evil spirits did not dare to wait until the sacred body came near the persons thus afflicted. Greater still were the miracles of conversions wrought among many Jews and gentiles, for on this occasion were opened up the Treasures of Divine Mercy, so that many souls came to the knowledge of Christ Our Savior and loudly confessed Him as the True God and Redeemer, demanding Baptism. Many days thereafter the Apostles and Disciples labored hard in catechizing and Baptizing those, who on that day had been converted to the Holy Faith. The Apostles in carrying the sacred body felt wonderful effects of Divine Light and Consolation, in which the Disciples shared according to their measure. All the multitudes of the people were seized with astonishment at the fragrance diffused about the sweet music and the other prodigies. They proclaimed God great and powerful in this Creature and in testimony of their acknowledgment, they struck their breasts in sorrow and compunction.

When the procession came to the Holy Sepulchre in the valley of Josaphat, the same two Apostles, Saint Peter and Saint John, who had laid the Celestial Treasure from the couch onto the bier, with joyful reverence placed it in the Sepulchre and covered it with a linen cloth, the hands of the Angels performing more of these last rites than the hands of the Apostles. They closed up the Sepulchre with a large stone, according to custom at other burials. The Celestial Courtiers returned to Heaven, while the Thousand Angels of the Queen continued their watch, guarding the sacred body and keeping up the music as at Her burial. The concourse of the people lessened and the Holy Apostles and Disciples, dissolved in tender tears, returned to the Cenacle. During a whole year the exquisite fragrance exhaled by the Body of the Queen was noticeable throughout the Cenacle, and in Her oratory, for many years. This sanctuary remained a place of refuge for all those that were burdened with labor and difficulties; all found miraculous assistance, as well in sickness as in hardships and necessities of other kind. After these miracles had continued for some years in Jerusalem, the sins of Jerusalem and of its inhabitants drew upon this city, among other punishments, that of being deprived of this inestimable blessing.

Having again gathered in the Cenacle, the Apostles came to the conclusion that some of them and of the Disciples should watch at the Sepulchre of their Queen as long as they should hear the celestial music, for all of them were wondering when the end of that miracle should be. Accordingly some of them attended to the affairs of the Church in catechizing and baptizing the new converts; and others immediately returned to the Sepulchre, while all of them paid frequent visits to it during the next three days. Saint Peter and Saint John, however, were more zealous in their attendance, coming only a few times to the Cenacle and immediately returning to where was laid the Treasure of their heart.

Of the glory and felicity of the saints in the beatific vision Saint Paul says with Isaias [1 Cor. 2, 9; Is. 64, 4], that neither have mortal eyes seen, nor ears heard, nor can it enter into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him and who hope in Him. In accordance with this Catholic Truth, we should not wonder at what is related of Saint Augustine, the Great Light of the Church, that, in setting out to write a book on the Glory of the Blessed, he was visited by his friend, Saint Jerome, who had just died and entered into the Glory of the Lord, and was admonished by his visitor, that he would not be able to compass His design; since no tongue or pen of man could describe the least part of the blessings enjoyed by the saints in the beatific vision.

If on this account the glory even of the least of the Saints is ineffable, what shall we say of the Glory of the Most Blessed Mary, since among the Saints She is the Most Holy and She by Herself is more like to Her Son than all the Saints together, and since Her grace and glory exceed those of all the rest. as those of an empress or sovereign over Her vassals? This truth can and should be believed; but in mortal life it cannot be understood, or the least part of it be explained; for the inadequacy and deficiency of our words and expressions rather tend to obscure than to set forth its greatness. Let us in this life apply our labor, not in seeking to comprehend it, but in seeking to merit its manifestation in glory, where we shall experience more or less of this happiness according to our works.

Our Redeemer Jesus entered heaven conducting the Purest Soul of His Mother at His right hand. She alone of all the mortals deserved exemption from particular judgment; hence for Her there was none; no account was asked or demanded of Her for what She had received; for such was the promise that had been given to Her, when She was exempted from the common guilt and chosen as the Queen privileged above the laws of the children of Adam. For the same reason, instead of being judged with the rest, She shall be seated at the right hand of the Judge to judge with Him all the creatures. If in the first instant of Her Conception She was the brightest Aurora, effulgent with the rays of the sun of the Divinity beyond all the brightness of the Most Exalted Seraphim, and if afterwards She was still further illumined by the contact of the Hypostatic Word, who derived His Humanity from Her Purest Substance, it necessarily follows that She should be His Companion for all eternity, possessing such a likeness to Him, that none greater can be possible between a God-man and a creature. In this light the Redeemer Himself presented Her before the Throne of the Divinity; and speaking to the Eternal Father in the presence of all the Blessed, who were ravished at this wonder, the most Sacred Humanity uttered these words: “Eternal Father, My Most Beloved Mother, Thy Beloved Daughter and the Cherished Spouse of the Holy Ghost, now comes to take possession of the Crown and Glory, which We have prepared as a reward for Her merit. She is the One Who was born as the Rose among thorns, untouched, pure and beautiful, worthy of being embraced by Us and of being placed upon a Throne to which none of our creatures can ever attain, and to which those conceived in sin cannot aspire. This is Our chosen and Our only One, distinguished above all else, to Whom We communicated Our Grace and Our Perfections beyond the measure accorded to other creatures; in Whom We have deposited the Treasure of our Incomprehensible Divinity and Its gifts; Who most faithfully preserved and made fruitful the talents, which We gave Her; who never swerved from Our Will, and who found grace and pleasure in Our eyes. My Father, Most Equitous is the Tribunal of Our Justice and Mercy, and in it the services of Our Friends are repaid in the most superabundant manner. It is right that to My Mother be given the reward of a Mother; and if during Her whole life and in all Her work She was as like to Me as is possible for a creature to be, let Her also be as like to Me in glory and on the Throne of Our Majesty, so that where Holiness is in essence, there it may also be found in its highest participation.”

This Decree of the Incarnate Word was approved by the Father and the Holy Ghost. The Most Holy Soul of Mary was immediately raised to the Right Hand of Her Son and True God, and placed on the Royal Throne of the Most Holy Trinity, which neither men, nor Angels nor the Seraphim themselves attain, and will not attain for all eternity. This is the most exalted and super-eminent privilege of our Queen and Lady, that She is seated on the Throne with the Three Divine Persons and holds Her place as Empress, while all the rest are set as servants and ministers to the Highest King. To the eminence and majesty of that position, inaccessible to all other creatures, correspond Her gifts of glory, comprehension, vision and fruition; because She enjoys, above all and more than all, that Infinite Object, which the other Blessed enjoy in an endless variety of degrees. She knows, penetrates and understands much deeper the Eternal Being and its infinite attributes; She lovingly delights in its mysteries and most hidden secrets, more than all the rest of the Blessed.

Just as little can be explained the extra joy, which the Blessed experienced on that day in singing the new songs of praise to the Omnipotent and in celebrating the glory of His Daughter, Mother and Spouse; for in Her He had exalted all the works of His Right Hand. Although to the Lord Himself could come no new or essential Glory, because He possessed and possesses it immutably infinite through all eternity; yet the exterior manifestations of His pleasure and satisfaction at the fulfillment of His eternal decrees were greater on that day.

On the third day after the most pure soul of Mary had taken possession of this Glory never to leave it, the Lord manifested to the Saints His Divine Will, that She should return to the World, resuscitate Her sacred body and unite Herself with it, so that She might in body and soul be again raised to the right hand of Her Divine Son without waiting for the general resurrection of the dead. The appropriateness of this favor, its accordance with the others received by the Most Blessed Queen and with Her super-eminent dignity, the Saints could not but see; since even to mortals it is so credible, that even if the Church had not certified it, we would judge those impious and foolish, who would dare deny it. But the blessed saw it with greater clearness, together with the determined time and hour as manifested to them in God himself. When the time: for this wonder had arrived, Christ Our Savior Himself descended from heaven bringing with Him at His right hand the soul of His Most Blessed Mother and accompanied by many legions of the Angels, the Patriarchs and ancient Prophets. They came to the sepulchre in the valley of Josaphat, and all being gathered in sight of the virginal temple, The Lord spoke the following words to the Saints.

“My Mother was conceived without stain of sin, in order that from Her virginal substance I might stainlessly clothe Myself in the humanity in which I came to the world and redeemed it from sin. My flesh is Her flesh; She co-operated with Me in the works of the Redemption; hence I must raise Her, just as I rose from the dead, and this shall be at the same time and hour. For I wish to make Her like Me in all things.” All the ancient Saints of the human race then gave thanks for this new favor in songs of praise and glory to the Lord. Those that especially distinguished themselves in their thanksgiving were our first parents Adam and Eve, Saint Anne, Saint Joachim and Saint Joseph, as being the more close partakers in this miracle of His Omnipotence. Then the Purest Soul of the Queen, at the command of the Lord, entered the Virginal Body, reanimated it and raised it up, giving it a new life of immortality and glory and communicating to it the four gifts of Clearness, Impassability, Agility and Subtlety, corresponding to those of the soul and overflowing from it into the body.

Endowed with these gifts the Most Blessed Mary issued from the tomb in body and soul, without raising the stone cover and without disturbing the position of the tunic and the mantle that had enveloped Her Sacred Body. Since it is impossible to describe Her beauty and refulgent glory, I will not make the attempt. It is sufficient to say, that just as the Heavenly Mother had given to Her Divine Son in Her womb the form of man, pure, unstained and sinless, for the Redemption of the World, so in return The Lord, in this Resurrection and new regeneration, gave to Her a glory and beauty similar to His Own. In this mysterious and Divine interchange each One did what was possible: Most Holy Mary engendered Christ, assimilating Him as much as possible to Herself, and Christ resuscitated Her, communicating to Her of His Glory as far as She was capable as a creature.

Then from the sepulchre was started a most solemn procession, moving with celestial music through the regions of the air and toward the Empyrean Heaven. This happened in the hour immediately after midnight, in which also the Lord had risen from the grave; and therefore not all of the Apostles were witness of this prodigy, but only some of them, who were present and watching at the sepulchre. The Saints and Angels entered Heaven in the order in which they had started; and in the last place came Christ Our Savior and at His right hand the Queen, clothed in the gold of variety [as David says Ps. 44, 10], and so beautiful that She was the admiration of the Heavenly Court. All of them turned toward Her to look upon Her and bless Her with new jubilee and songs of praise. Thus were heard those mysterious eulogies recorded by Solomon: Come, daughters of Sion, to see your Queen, who is praised by the morning stars and celebrated by the sons of the Most High. Who is She that comes from the desert, like a column of all the aromatic perfumes? Who is She, that rises like the aurora, more beautiful than the moon, elect as the sun, terrible as many serried armies? Who is She that comes up from the desert resting upon Her Beloved and spreading forth abundant delights? [Cant. 3, 6-9; 8, 5]. Who is She in whom the Deity itself finds so much pleasure and delight above all other creatures and whom He exalts above them all in the heavens! O novelty worthy of the Infinite Wisdom! O prodigy of His Omnipotence, which so magnifies and exalts Her!

Amid this glory the Most Blessed Mary arrived body and soul at the throne of the Most Blessed Trinity. And the three Divine Persons received Her on it with an embrace eternally indissoluble. The Eternal Father said to Her: “Ascend higher, My Daughter and My Dove.” The Incarnate Word spoke: “My Mother, of whom I have received human being and full return of My work in Thy perfect imitation, receive now from My hand the reward Thou hast merited.” The Holy Ghost said: “My Most Beloved Spouse, enter into the eternal joy, which corresponds to the most faithful love; do Thou now enjoy Thy love without solicitude; for past is the winter of suffering for Thou hast arrived at our Eternal embraces.” There the Most Blessed Mary was absorbed in the contemplation of the three Divine Persons and as it were overwhelmed in the boundless ocean and abyss of the Divinity, while the Saints were filled with wonder and new accidental delight. Since, at the occasion of this work of the Omnipotent happened other wonders, I shall speak of them as far as possible in the following chapter.

My Daughter, lamentable and inexcusable is the ignorance of men in so knowingly forgetting the Eternal Glory, which God has prepared for those who dispose themselves to merit it. I wish that Thou bitterly bewail and deplore this pernicious forgetfulness; for there is no doubt, that whoever willfully forgets the Eternal Glory and happiness is in evident danger of losing it. No one is free from this guilt, not only because men do not apply much labor or effort in seeking and retaining the remembrance of this happiness; but they labor with all their powers in things that make them forget the end for which they were created. Undoubtedly this forgetfulness arises from their entangling themselves in the pride of life, the covetousness of the eyes, and the desires of the flesh [John 2, 16]; for employing therein all the forces and faculties of their soul during the whole time of their life, they have no leisure, care or attention for the thoughts of Eternal Felicity. Let men acknowledge and confess, whether this recollection costs them more labor than to follow their blind passions, seeking after honors, possessions or the transitory pleasures, all of which have an end with this life, and which, after much striving and labor, many men do not, and can never attain.

This is a sorrow beyond all sorrows, and a misfortune without equal and without remedy. Afflict Thyself, lament and grieve without consolation over this ruin of so many souls bought by the Blood of My Divine Son. I assure Thee, My dearest, that, if men would not make themselves so unworthy of it, my charity would urge me, in the Celestial Glory where Thou knowest Me to be, to send forth a voice through the whole world exclaiming: “Mortal and deceived men, what are you doing? For what purpose are you living? Do you realize what it is to see God face to face, and to participate in His Eternal Glory and share His company? Of what are you thinking? Who has thus disturbed and fascinated your judgment? What will you seek, if once you have lost this true blessing and happiness, since there is no other? The labor is short, the reward is Infinite Glory, and the punishment is Eternal.”

A Blessed and Holy Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin to all! May she intercede for the Church and bring Her swiftly to Her liberty and exaltation.

~Damsel of the Faith

True and False Virtue

The great St. John Vianney on true and false virtue:

“By their fruits you shall know them.” —Matt. vii, 16.

SYNOPSIS.—Good and bad Christians known by their works. A false and superficial virtue will manifest its true nature.

I. A Christian should not be contented with the performance of good works; he should be careful how to perform them.
II. It is not enough to be virtuous in the eyes of the world; we must be so in our hearts.

I. Good works must proceed from the heart. St. Gregory. Our actions should be only the medium to express our intention. Our works must be perfect, unselfish. Hypocrisy. Jeroboam. The poor widow’s mite. Perseverance.

II. Have you the true virtue? Conclusion.

Jesus Christ could not have given us a plainer or surer mark whereby we might know the difference between good and bad Christians than by telling us we should know them, not by their words, but by their works. “A good tree,” He says, “can not bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.” Yes, dear brethren, those who possess only a false piety, a hypocritical or only a superficial virtue, will, in spite of all the precautions they may take, be unable to prevent the true condition of their heart from sometimes manifesting itself outwardly, either in words or deeds. Nothing, my dear brethren, is so prevalent as this pretended virtue, or, in other words, this hypocrisy.

So as to give you the right idea of the unhappy state of those poor souls who will, perhaps, be damned, although doing good, just because they do not good the right way, I will show you:

I. A good Christian should not be contented to perform good works; he should know how to perform them properly.
II. It is not enough to be virtuous in the eyes of the world; we must be so in our hearts.

I. Now, if you ask me, dear brethren, how can we know whether a virtue is real, and whether it will lead us to heaven, the answer is: that in order to make an action pleasing to God, the following conditions must be fulfilled: First, the action should be sincere and perfect; second, it should be humble and without selfishness; third, it should be steadfast and enduring: If these conditions are found in everything you do, then you may be sure that you are working for heaven.

(1) We have said that an action must be sincere; it is not sufficient that it shows itself only outwardly. It must come from our hearts, and love of God must be its prime cause and its beginning, for St. Gregory tells us that everything which God requires of us should be founded on the love which we owe Him. The action, therefore, should be nothing more than a sort of medium to express our intention. Words and actions that do not come from the sincerity of the heart are no more than hypocrisy in the eyes of God.

We say, further, our virtue should be perfect. That means, it is not sufficient for us to practice only those certain virtues to which we may be naturally inclined, but we should embrace them all; that is to say, all virtues the practice of which is possible for our state. St. Paul says that we should prepare a superabundant provision of all kinds of good works for our salvation.

(2) We said, also, that our virtue should be humble and free from selfishness. Jesus Christ tells us that we should never perform our actions in order that we may be praised by men. If we desire a heavenly reward, then we must hide the good which God works in us as much as possible, for fear that the devil of pride may rob us of the merit of those good works. But, perhaps, you will say, the good that we do, we do really for God, and the world has no benefit of it. My friend, I am not so sure about it. There are many who deceive themselves on this point. It might be easy to prove to you that your religion is largely on the outside only, and not founded in the soul. Tell me, would you not, rather than not, have people know that you observe all fast days? If you give money to the poor, or to the Church, would you not like to have this known by your neighbor? Does not that feeling make hypocrites of us?

The saints did exactly the contrary. And why did they? They knew their religion, and they sought to humble themselves to obtain the mercy of God. What poor Christians are those, whose religion is one of mood, of habit, and nothing else! You will, perhaps, think that these are rather strong words. Yes, without doubt, they are rather strong, but they are the strict truth. It must be my endeavor to produce in you a horror of the sin of hypocrisy. How many people, alas, although they do good works, will be lost because they do not know their religion thoroughly! Many people say a great many prayers, and even go frequently to the Sacraments; but they still keep their bad habits, and die in them, because they strive, at one and the same time, to be friends of God and friends of sin. Look at that man, who appears to be a good Christian. Just give him to understand, even if you have the right to do so, that he has wronged some one; point out his faults to him, or any wrong which he has been guilty of in his heart, and he will fly into a rage at once, and hate the sight of you. Hatred and ill-will spring up in his head. Look at another one. You can not have much of an opinion of his piety, for he answers you haughtily, and will not make up with those that have offended him.

The following example will show us how severely God punishes false virtue, which is so great a sin: We read in Holy Scripture that King Jeroboam sent his wife to meet the prophet Ahias, in order to ask advice about the sickness of his son, and he made her to disguise herself in the garb of a poor and pious person. He had recourse to this artifice because he feared that, if his people knew that he asked advice of the prophets of the true God, they would come to the conclusion that he had very little confidence in their idols. But he could not deceive God. When this woman entered the abode of the prophet, the latter cried out, before even having seen her: “Wife of Jeroboam, why dost thou seek to appear other than thou art? Approach, hypocrite. I have bad news to give you from the Lord our God. Bad news, indeed. Listen: The Lord hath commanded me to tell thee that he will send down all kinds of misfortune upon the house of Jeroboam; he will annihilate it, even unto the animals; those of his house that die in the fields will be devoured by dogs. Depart now, wife of Jeroboam. Go and acquaint thy husband with this. And at the moment when thou settest thy foot within the city, thy son shall die.” Everything occurred just as the prophet had foretold; not one of Jeroboam’s house escaped the vengeance of the Lord. You see, then, dear brethren, how God punishes this cursed sin of hypocrisy.

Moreover, I must tell you that it is not the size and greatness of deeds which give them merit, but the pure intention with which they are undertaken. The Gospel gives us a beautiful example of this. The Evangelist St. Mark relates that Jesus Christ, on entering the temple one day, beheld how the people cast money into the receptacle for offering, and He saw that many that were rich cast in much. Then He saw how a poor widow approached the receptacle humbly, and cast in two mites. Thereupon, Jesus Christ, calling His disciples, said to them: “Behold, many persons have cast considerable alms into the almsbox and see there also a poor widow who has only cast in two mites. What do you think of this difference? To judge by appearances, you think, perhaps, that the gifts of the rich have more merit; but I tell you that this widow has cast in more than all of them; for the rich cast in of their abundance, but she of her want hath cast in all she had. Most of the rich sought glory before men, and to be thought better than they were, while this widow hath given to please God alone.” A beautiful example, dear brethren, which teaches us with what pure intentions and with what humility we should perform all our actions, if we desire to be rewarded for them. Certainly, God does not forbid us to perform our works before men, but He desires that they should be done for His sake alone, and not for the sake of the glory of the world.

(3) We have said, the third necessary condition for true virtue is perseverance. We must not be satisfied to do good for a certain length of time, such as to pray for a while, to mortify ourselves at times, to renounce our self-will, to bear with the weaknesses of others, to combat the temptations of the devil, to bear patiently contempt and calumnies, to watch over the movements of our hearts. No, dear brethren, we must persevere until death if we wish to be saved. St. Paul says that we must be firm and steadfast in the service of God, and that we should work at the salvation of our souls every day of our lives, knowing well that our labor will not be rewarded unless we persevere until the end. He says: “Neither riches nor poverty, neither health nor sickness, should induce us to neglect the salvation of our soul, and to separate ourselves from God: for we know that God will only crown that virtue which perseveres until death.”

We see this in a remarkable manner in the Apocalypse in the person of a Bishop, who led such a holy life that God Himself lavished praises upon him: “I know thy works, and thy labor, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear evil men; and thou hast tried them who say they are apostles and are not, and hast found them liars; and thou hast patience, and hast borne for my name, and hast not failed. But this I have against thee: that thou hast become negligent in the practise of these virtues. Be mindful, therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and do penance as thou didst before, or else I shall reject thee, and punish thee.” Tell me, dear brethren, should not we be seized with fear when we hear how God menaced even a Bishop who had been negligent? Alas, what has become of us ever since our conversion! Instead of making progress daily, what tepidity, what indifference, is ours! No, God can not bear this perpetual inconstancy with which we turn from virtue to vice, and from vice to virtue again. Tell me, dear brethren, is this not your manner of living, too? Is your life anything else but an intermingling of sins and virtues? Do you not confess your sins, and the following day commit the same faults again? Or, maybe, even on the same day? How many there are who, for a certain length of time, seem to love God with all their strength, and then again forsake Him! What is it that you find so hard and difficult in the service of God that you are so soon discouraged, and return again to the world? And yet, at the moment when God allowed you to know your condition, you sighed, and you perceived how much you had deceived yourself! The reason of this misfortune is because Satan is angry at having lost you, and he works till he gets you back again, and hopes to hold you forever. How many faithless persons are there who have forsaken their religion, and yet they bear the name of Christians!

II.  Now, you will ask, how can we know if we have virtue in our hearts, that virtue which remains ever true to itself? Now, listen, dear brethren, and you will perceive whether you have that virtue on account of which God will receive you into heaven. A person who is truly virtuous does not waver in the least; he is like a rock beaten by the storm in the midst of the sea. Whether you are blamed, or calumniated, or mocked at, or regarded as a hypocrite, or treated as a prude, none of these things should be capable of robbing you of your peace of soul. You should be just as well disposed toward your enemies as if they had spoken well of you. You should not fail to show them kindness, although they have spoken badly of you. You should say your prayers, go to Confession and Holy Communion, and attend Holy Mass, with disregard of anything the world may say. Our virtue, also, to be true should be steadfast. That is to say, we must be just as resigned to the will of God and zealous under crosses and ill-fortune, as at the time when nothing disagreeable comes in our way. This is how the saints acted. Look at the great multitude of the martyrs who endured everything that the frenzy of a tyrant could think of, and who, far from neglecting God, were, on the contrary, drawn closer to Him. Neither torments nor persecutions inflicted upon them caused them to waver.

Let us, then, conclude, dear brethren, by remembering that our virtue must have its source in the heart, in order to be fruitful and pleasing to God. We must hide our good works. We should also be well on our guard so as to neglect nothing in the service of God; on the contrary, we should grow and increase in the knowledge and love of God. In this way the saints assured themselves of eternal bliss, the blessing which I wish you all. Amen.