Here's a very good video from The Muppets. Enjoy!
Saturday, December 12, 2009
December 12th: Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
From Message Marial, by the Brothers of the Christian Schools (FEC Press: Montreal, 1947).
One of the most beautiful series of apparitions of the Queen of Heaven occurred on the American continent on a December day of 1531, only ten years after the Spanish conquest. A fervent Christian Indian in his fifties, Juan Diego, a widower, was on his way to Mass in Mexico City from his home eight miles distant, a practice he and his wife had followed since their conversion, in honor of Our Lady on Her day, Saturday. He had to pass near the hill of Tepeyac, and was struck there by the joyous song of birds, rising up in the most melodious of concerts; he stopped to listen. Looking up to the hilltop, he perceived a brilliant cloud, surrounded by a light brighter than a fiery sun, and a gentle voice called him by name, saying, “Juan, come.” His first fear was transformed into a sweet happiness by this voice, and he mounted the slope. There he beheld the One he had intended to honor by hearing Her Mass. She was surrounded by a radiance so brilliant it sent out rays that seemed to transform the very rocks into scintillating jewels.
“Where are you going, My child?” She asked him. “To Saint James to hear the Mass sung by the minister of the Most High in honor of the Mother of the Saviour.” “That is good, My son; your devotion is agreeable to Me, as is also the humility of your heart. Know then that I am that Virgin Mother of God, Author of Life and Protector of the weak. I desire that a temple be built here, where I will show Myself to be your tender Mother, the Mother of your fellow citizens and of all who invoke My name with confidence. Go to the bishop and tell him faithfully all you have seen and heard.”
Juan continued on his way, and the bishop, Monsignor Juan de Zumarraga, a Franciscan of great piety and enlightened prudence, heard him kindly and asked questions, but sent him home without any promises. Juan was disappointed, but on his way past the hill, he once again found the Lady, who seemed to be waiting for him as though to console him. He excused himself for the failure of his mission, but She only repeated Her desire to have a temple built at this site, and told him to return again to the bishop. This he did on the following day, begging the bishop to accomplish the desires of the Virgin. Monsignor said to him: “If it is the Most Holy Virgin who sends you, She must prove it; if She wants a church, She must give me a sign of Her will.” On his way home, Juan Diego found Her again, waiting, and She said to him, “Come back tomorrow and I will give you a certain mark of the truthfulness of your words.”
The next day Juan was desolate to find his uncle, with whom he lived, fallen grievously sick; the old gentleman was clearly on the brink of death. Juan had to go and find a priest in the city. As he was passing the hill, Our Lady again appeared to him, saying, “Do not be anxious, Diego, because of your uncle’s illness. Don’t you know that I am your Mother and that you are under My protection? At this moment your uncle is cured.” “Then please give me the sign you told me of,” replied Juan. Mary told him to come up to the hilltop and cut the flowers he would find there, place them under his cloak, and bring them to Her. “I will tell you then what to do next.” Juan found the most beautiful of roses and lilies, and chose the most fragrant ones for Mary. She made a bouquet of them and placed it in a fold of his cloak or tilma — a large square of coarse cloth resembling burlap. “Take these lilies and roses on My behalf to the bishop,” She said. “This is the certain sign of My will. Let there be no delay in raising here a temple in My honor.” With joy Juan continued on to the city and the bishop’s residence, where he had to wait nearly all day in the antechamber. Other visitors noted the fragrance of his flowers, and went so far as to open his mantle to see what he was carefully holding in it, but found only flowers pictured on the cloth. When finally he was admitted to the presence of the prelate, he opened his cloak and the fresh flowers fell on the floor. That was not the only sign; on his cloak there was imprinted a beautiful image of the Virgin. It remains today still visible in the Cathedral of Mexico City, conserved under glass and in its original state, having undergone no degeneration in 470 years.
Juan found his uncle entirely cured that evening; he heard him relate that Our Lady had cured him, and had said to him also: “May a sanctuary be raised for Me under the name of Our Lady of Guadalupe.” The bishop lost no time in having a small church built at the hill of Tepeyac, and Juan Diego himself dwelt near there to answer the inquiries of the pilgrims who came in great numbers. In effect, nearly all of the land became Catholic in a few years’ time, having learned to love the gentle Lady who like God their Father showed Herself to be the ever-watchful friend of the poor. In 1737 the pestilence ceased immediately in Mexico city after the inhabitants made a vow to proclaim Our Lady of Guadalupe the principal Patroness of New Spain. In 1910 She was proclaimed by Saint Pius X “Celestial Patroness of all Latin America.” Recent studies of the image of Our Lady on the tilma have discovered in one of Her eyes the portrait of Juan Diego, the son She chose to favor by this triduum of heavenly apparitions and conversations.
One of the most beautiful series of apparitions of the Queen of Heaven occurred on the American continent on a December day of 1531, only ten years after the Spanish conquest. A fervent Christian Indian in his fifties, Juan Diego, a widower, was on his way to Mass in Mexico City from his home eight miles distant, a practice he and his wife had followed since their conversion, in honor of Our Lady on Her day, Saturday. He had to pass near the hill of Tepeyac, and was struck there by the joyous song of birds, rising up in the most melodious of concerts; he stopped to listen. Looking up to the hilltop, he perceived a brilliant cloud, surrounded by a light brighter than a fiery sun, and a gentle voice called him by name, saying, “Juan, come.” His first fear was transformed into a sweet happiness by this voice, and he mounted the slope. There he beheld the One he had intended to honor by hearing Her Mass. She was surrounded by a radiance so brilliant it sent out rays that seemed to transform the very rocks into scintillating jewels.
“Where are you going, My child?” She asked him. “To Saint James to hear the Mass sung by the minister of the Most High in honor of the Mother of the Saviour.” “That is good, My son; your devotion is agreeable to Me, as is also the humility of your heart. Know then that I am that Virgin Mother of God, Author of Life and Protector of the weak. I desire that a temple be built here, where I will show Myself to be your tender Mother, the Mother of your fellow citizens and of all who invoke My name with confidence. Go to the bishop and tell him faithfully all you have seen and heard.”
Juan continued on his way, and the bishop, Monsignor Juan de Zumarraga, a Franciscan of great piety and enlightened prudence, heard him kindly and asked questions, but sent him home without any promises. Juan was disappointed, but on his way past the hill, he once again found the Lady, who seemed to be waiting for him as though to console him. He excused himself for the failure of his mission, but She only repeated Her desire to have a temple built at this site, and told him to return again to the bishop. This he did on the following day, begging the bishop to accomplish the desires of the Virgin. Monsignor said to him: “If it is the Most Holy Virgin who sends you, She must prove it; if She wants a church, She must give me a sign of Her will.” On his way home, Juan Diego found Her again, waiting, and She said to him, “Come back tomorrow and I will give you a certain mark of the truthfulness of your words.”
The next day Juan was desolate to find his uncle, with whom he lived, fallen grievously sick; the old gentleman was clearly on the brink of death. Juan had to go and find a priest in the city. As he was passing the hill, Our Lady again appeared to him, saying, “Do not be anxious, Diego, because of your uncle’s illness. Don’t you know that I am your Mother and that you are under My protection? At this moment your uncle is cured.” “Then please give me the sign you told me of,” replied Juan. Mary told him to come up to the hilltop and cut the flowers he would find there, place them under his cloak, and bring them to Her. “I will tell you then what to do next.” Juan found the most beautiful of roses and lilies, and chose the most fragrant ones for Mary. She made a bouquet of them and placed it in a fold of his cloak or tilma — a large square of coarse cloth resembling burlap. “Take these lilies and roses on My behalf to the bishop,” She said. “This is the certain sign of My will. Let there be no delay in raising here a temple in My honor.” With joy Juan continued on to the city and the bishop’s residence, where he had to wait nearly all day in the antechamber. Other visitors noted the fragrance of his flowers, and went so far as to open his mantle to see what he was carefully holding in it, but found only flowers pictured on the cloth. When finally he was admitted to the presence of the prelate, he opened his cloak and the fresh flowers fell on the floor. That was not the only sign; on his cloak there was imprinted a beautiful image of the Virgin. It remains today still visible in the Cathedral of Mexico City, conserved under glass and in its original state, having undergone no degeneration in 470 years.
Juan found his uncle entirely cured that evening; he heard him relate that Our Lady had cured him, and had said to him also: “May a sanctuary be raised for Me under the name of Our Lady of Guadalupe.” The bishop lost no time in having a small church built at the hill of Tepeyac, and Juan Diego himself dwelt near there to answer the inquiries of the pilgrims who came in great numbers. In effect, nearly all of the land became Catholic in a few years’ time, having learned to love the gentle Lady who like God their Father showed Herself to be the ever-watchful friend of the poor. In 1737 the pestilence ceased immediately in Mexico city after the inhabitants made a vow to proclaim Our Lady of Guadalupe the principal Patroness of New Spain. In 1910 She was proclaimed by Saint Pius X “Celestial Patroness of all Latin America.” Recent studies of the image of Our Lady on the tilma have discovered in one of Her eyes the portrait of Juan Diego, the son She chose to favor by this triduum of heavenly apparitions and conversations.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Chastisement during the Middle Ages Contd
From http://www.spiritdaily.com/blackdeath2.htm
We left off, last week, in our lengthy article on the Black Death, recounting the absolute devastation in Italy by plague [see previous article].
Most people have no idea how incredible this chastisement was. Could it recur? Are we in an age of pandemics?
Many worry about vaccines -- and even health effects from them.
In the Middle Ages, there were no vaccines, just a strange sickness that had come (as a number of negative things had come) from Asia, and specifically, the "Land of the Dragon," China -- with hordes of migrating horsemen who may have transported rats and fleas.
Let's see what else occurred:
It decimated Florence, where 100,000 died. It hit Venice -- where shortly before a tremor had set church bells tolling.
From Italy the plague made its way to the western Mediterranean with the same deadly results. In Avignon, France, where the papal palace had relocated -- in lust-ridden Avignon -- 11,000 were buried in a six-week stretch and soon a third of the cardinals died with half of the lay population.
Indeed, along with Florence, Avignon was most severely affected. Mortality among priests was particularly high and hundreds who worked at the luxurious papal palace were counted among the deceased. In a short time Pope Clement VI had to flee the city. No one could be sure exactly how the Black Death was spreading but at least one of its three forms was fantastically contagious.
Astrologers tried to find an explanation in the stars but there was precious little to go on as the disease spread northward along the river valleys and arrived in Paris by 1348, with more than five hundred corpses carted each day out of the main hospital in that city, the sick tended to be courageous nuns who in all humility, in all selflessness, gave no thought to their own imminent expiration. That horrid year 28 percent of Europe's cardinals and 207 bishops succumbed to illness.
In Spain it had reached Saragossa and other parts in this nation where the same image said to have been used by Gregory the Great during the scourge in Rome -- the same Madonna and Child! -- had resurfaced from that cavern at Guadalupe to help men against this new and more awesome plague. Throughout the continent, towns were special targets. The sick were ruthlessly deserted and turned quickly into cadavers that were simply left in the front of homes or piled like cordwood.
Eventually the bodies were disposed in huge communal pits while the neglected crops withered and livestock roamed untended. Jeremiah indeed! As if repulsed, wolves shied from scavenging the dead animals and at one hospital in Montpellier nearly every doctor died while in Marseilles all of the 150 Franciscans -- every one -- were counted as fatalities.
In some locales the plague was believed to descend like a ball of fire. "One such ball was fortunately spotted while hovering above Vienna and exorcised by a passing bishop," wrote the historian Ziegler. "It fell harmlessly to the ground and a stone effigy of the Madonna was raised to commemorate this unique victory..."
But such triumphs were temporary. Many more were the defeats. Vienna suffered as badly as Avignon and the whole of Europe was the picture of emptiness: cattle without herdsmen, widows without children. In England the plague made its way along the coast to Bristol killing with the same vengeance as on the mainland -- especially the poor clergy who bravely ministered to the dying. Sickness hit County Dorset in 1348 and 44 to fifty percent died at manors in Suffolk and Worcestershire. Bath and Wells seemed to suffer their most devastating period between November 1348 and May 13, 1349, and so bad was the shortage of priests, so few were clergy, that Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury issued a letter declaring that a dying person could make his or her last Confession to another layman if a priest was not available. (The same was true of the Eucharist, which could now be administered by a deacon if the vicinity was priestless.)
The fact that Confession was open to laymen meant it was an unprecedented emergency. Clement decided it was necessary to grant absolution to all who had succumbed because so many had no minister. Before the plague there had been 17,500 monks, nuns, and friars in English monasteries but within two years there were about -- half -- that number. Many believed it was the end of humankind and in Kilkenny, Ireland, a friar named John Clyn -- alone among dead men -- sensed "the whole world, as it were, placed within the grasp of the Evil One."
That precarious position had been earned by lust and greed, by irreverence among knights, by lack of respect for life and God, by the astrology and crystal⌐gazing which of late had become so startlingly popular in Europe. The people had tapped into dark powers and were now reaping the result. "God for the sins of men has struck the world with this great punishment of sudden death," bemoaned King Magnus II of Sweden. "By it, most of the people in the land to the west of our country are dead. It is now ravaging Norway and Holland and is approaching our kingdom of Sweden."
While Germany was not hit as hard as southern Europe the devastation affected places as far off as Greenland. There was no escape, no respite. Venturing to Rome in 1349 as the plague still raged, Saint Bridget advised everyone to "abolish earthly vanity in the way of extravagant clothes, give free alms to the needy, and order all parish priests to celebrate Mass once a month in honor," she advised, "of the Holy Trinity."
If few in Rome were willing to heed such words no one could deny Bridget's impressive presence. Nor could they deny her miracles. One woman watching her dying son said, "If only the Lady Bridget were here!" and at that moment the saint walked in, laid her hands on the man's forehead, and a few hours later the man was healed.
In other cases relief was sought at shrines like Willesden.
There a statue of the Blessed Mother was carried in procession and there were reported healings. The king of Sweden called for fasting on bread and a special holy year was declared by the pope for 1350. Obviously it was ridiculous to blame the Church for all this woe (especially a plague that began in pagan land), but guilt was still felt by a hierarchy that had counted piles of money at the papal palace in Avignon and had turned the Church into a granite bureaucracy.
There was evil in that. There was evil in the legalism and pretension. There was evil that filtered down to the local level and the pope, traumatized by the disaster, criticized many of his clergy as "the proudest of the world, arrogant and given to pomp... grasping... covetous," wasting their money, he charged, "on pimps and swindlers."
The Pope's tirade was no doubt magnified by stress and there was ample reason. His agents calculated that the plague -- this chastisement allowed by God -- had killed 23,840,000 in Christian Europe (as well as up to a third of those living in the Middle East and much of Asia).
[Adapted from The Last Secret]
We left off, last week, in our lengthy article on the Black Death, recounting the absolute devastation in Italy by plague [see previous article].
Most people have no idea how incredible this chastisement was. Could it recur? Are we in an age of pandemics?
Many worry about vaccines -- and even health effects from them.
In the Middle Ages, there were no vaccines, just a strange sickness that had come (as a number of negative things had come) from Asia, and specifically, the "Land of the Dragon," China -- with hordes of migrating horsemen who may have transported rats and fleas.
Let's see what else occurred:
It decimated Florence, where 100,000 died. It hit Venice -- where shortly before a tremor had set church bells tolling.
From Italy the plague made its way to the western Mediterranean with the same deadly results. In Avignon, France, where the papal palace had relocated -- in lust-ridden Avignon -- 11,000 were buried in a six-week stretch and soon a third of the cardinals died with half of the lay population.
Indeed, along with Florence, Avignon was most severely affected. Mortality among priests was particularly high and hundreds who worked at the luxurious papal palace were counted among the deceased. In a short time Pope Clement VI had to flee the city. No one could be sure exactly how the Black Death was spreading but at least one of its three forms was fantastically contagious.
Astrologers tried to find an explanation in the stars but there was precious little to go on as the disease spread northward along the river valleys and arrived in Paris by 1348, with more than five hundred corpses carted each day out of the main hospital in that city, the sick tended to be courageous nuns who in all humility, in all selflessness, gave no thought to their own imminent expiration. That horrid year 28 percent of Europe's cardinals and 207 bishops succumbed to illness.
In Spain it had reached Saragossa and other parts in this nation where the same image said to have been used by Gregory the Great during the scourge in Rome -- the same Madonna and Child! -- had resurfaced from that cavern at Guadalupe to help men against this new and more awesome plague. Throughout the continent, towns were special targets. The sick were ruthlessly deserted and turned quickly into cadavers that were simply left in the front of homes or piled like cordwood.
Eventually the bodies were disposed in huge communal pits while the neglected crops withered and livestock roamed untended. Jeremiah indeed! As if repulsed, wolves shied from scavenging the dead animals and at one hospital in Montpellier nearly every doctor died while in Marseilles all of the 150 Franciscans -- every one -- were counted as fatalities.
In some locales the plague was believed to descend like a ball of fire. "One such ball was fortunately spotted while hovering above Vienna and exorcised by a passing bishop," wrote the historian Ziegler. "It fell harmlessly to the ground and a stone effigy of the Madonna was raised to commemorate this unique victory..."
But such triumphs were temporary. Many more were the defeats. Vienna suffered as badly as Avignon and the whole of Europe was the picture of emptiness: cattle without herdsmen, widows without children. In England the plague made its way along the coast to Bristol killing with the same vengeance as on the mainland -- especially the poor clergy who bravely ministered to the dying. Sickness hit County Dorset in 1348 and 44 to fifty percent died at manors in Suffolk and Worcestershire. Bath and Wells seemed to suffer their most devastating period between November 1348 and May 13, 1349, and so bad was the shortage of priests, so few were clergy, that Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury issued a letter declaring that a dying person could make his or her last Confession to another layman if a priest was not available. (The same was true of the Eucharist, which could now be administered by a deacon if the vicinity was priestless.)
The fact that Confession was open to laymen meant it was an unprecedented emergency. Clement decided it was necessary to grant absolution to all who had succumbed because so many had no minister. Before the plague there had been 17,500 monks, nuns, and friars in English monasteries but within two years there were about -- half -- that number. Many believed it was the end of humankind and in Kilkenny, Ireland, a friar named John Clyn -- alone among dead men -- sensed "the whole world, as it were, placed within the grasp of the Evil One."
That precarious position had been earned by lust and greed, by irreverence among knights, by lack of respect for life and God, by the astrology and crystal⌐gazing which of late had become so startlingly popular in Europe. The people had tapped into dark powers and were now reaping the result. "God for the sins of men has struck the world with this great punishment of sudden death," bemoaned King Magnus II of Sweden. "By it, most of the people in the land to the west of our country are dead. It is now ravaging Norway and Holland and is approaching our kingdom of Sweden."
While Germany was not hit as hard as southern Europe the devastation affected places as far off as Greenland. There was no escape, no respite. Venturing to Rome in 1349 as the plague still raged, Saint Bridget advised everyone to "abolish earthly vanity in the way of extravagant clothes, give free alms to the needy, and order all parish priests to celebrate Mass once a month in honor," she advised, "of the Holy Trinity."
If few in Rome were willing to heed such words no one could deny Bridget's impressive presence. Nor could they deny her miracles. One woman watching her dying son said, "If only the Lady Bridget were here!" and at that moment the saint walked in, laid her hands on the man's forehead, and a few hours later the man was healed.
In other cases relief was sought at shrines like Willesden.
There a statue of the Blessed Mother was carried in procession and there were reported healings. The king of Sweden called for fasting on bread and a special holy year was declared by the pope for 1350. Obviously it was ridiculous to blame the Church for all this woe (especially a plague that began in pagan land), but guilt was still felt by a hierarchy that had counted piles of money at the papal palace in Avignon and had turned the Church into a granite bureaucracy.
There was evil in that. There was evil in the legalism and pretension. There was evil that filtered down to the local level and the pope, traumatized by the disaster, criticized many of his clergy as "the proudest of the world, arrogant and given to pomp... grasping... covetous," wasting their money, he charged, "on pimps and swindlers."
The Pope's tirade was no doubt magnified by stress and there was ample reason. His agents calculated that the plague -- this chastisement allowed by God -- had killed 23,840,000 in Christian Europe (as well as up to a third of those living in the Middle East and much of Asia).
[Adapted from The Last Secret]
Vatican 'dismayed' at Murphy Report findings
From www.rte.ie/news
Tuesday, 8 December 2009 16:47
The Papal Nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, has said the findings of the Murphy Commission have shocked and dismayed the Vatican.
The Nuncio made his comments following a 45-minute meeting with the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Dublin this morning.
Micheál Martin requested the meeting with Archbishop Leanza in the wake of the latest report into the Catholic Church's handling of clerical child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.
AdvertisementThe Papal Nuncio admitted during the meeting that he should have responded to a letter from the commission formally.
Mr Martin said he informed the Papal Nuncio that the Government expected the church to respond fully to the questions asked by the Murphy Commission.
He said the Vatican needs to respond substantially and comprehensively to the questions posed by the commission and he said it should do so as soon as possible.
The Minister also said that the Vatican should prepare whatever documents are necessary to forward them to the commission in order to address the questions posed.
The Papal Nuncio described the meeting as 'serious' and 'meaningful'.
Afterwards he told the media he felt at the time that he did not need to respond to the commission's letter, which he felt was forwarded to him for information purposes.
When asked about the silence of the Vatican following the publication of the Murphy and Ryan reports, he said time is needed to study their contents.
He said the Murphy Report is now under study at the Vatican and he said he hoped there would be a response to its contents following a meeting on Friday.
The Papal Nuncio said he expected a response from the Vatican following the meeting between Cardinal Seán Brady and Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin with the Pope in the Vatican this week.
He said clear mistakes had been made but the church had condemned clerical child abuse and the Vatican had already apologised for hurt caused.
Minister Martin said he had sought a commitment from the Archbishop that the church would co-operate fully with upcoming the Cloyne inquiry.
Meanwhile, Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray, who was criticised in the Murphy Report because of his handling of abuse complaints, is expected to tender his resignation in Rome this week.
Another of Dublin's auxiliary bishops, Dr Eamonn Walsh, has said that the report speaks for itself concerning his responses to allegations of clerical child sexual abuse.
Bishop Walsh was responding to a newspaper report quoting Vatican sources as saying he will have to resign.
He also said that he would be responding to last week's letter from Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin requesting bishops mentioned in the report to account for their child protection record in the Archdiocese.
Meanwhile, Bishop Willie Walsh of Killaloe has acknowledged that tomorrow's planned meeting of the country's bishops will be a very difficult one.
Speaking after a dedication ceremony at a new chapel at Skycourt Shopping Centre in Shannon this afternoon, Bishop Walsh said he and his fellow bishops were going to that meeting in a' very humble and repentant spirit'.
He said he hopes and prays that they can in some way touch the hearts of those who have been hurt and in some way begin the journey of healing.
'That really is ultimately our only hope for the future' he said.
He said they had to be brave enough to bring the real spirit of Christ back- the virtues of truth, justice compassion and love--if our Church is not about those things, it is not worth anything, he added.
'Certainly all of us going into that meeting, whatever our failings in the past, all of use are going into that meeting in that spirit where we must get back to the values and teachings and example of Jesus Christ, and whatever we have to lose or shed or change in our church, then thats our only possible answer at this time of crisis.
In making the comments Bishop Walsh specifically said he would not comment on any of his colleagues because he did not want to hurt anyone or cause any more pain.
He again made a sincere apology to victims of clerical sexual abuse who may have been hurt by a media interview he did last week.
He said he was very conscious at this time of deep crisis in the Church, that ill-chosen words he made during a radio interview last week caused deep hurt and he had no hesitation in apologising.
He said the last thing he wanted to do was to add to the deep hurt that has been caused to survivors of abuse over the years.
Tuesday, 8 December 2009 16:47
The Papal Nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, has said the findings of the Murphy Commission have shocked and dismayed the Vatican.
The Nuncio made his comments following a 45-minute meeting with the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Dublin this morning.
Micheál Martin requested the meeting with Archbishop Leanza in the wake of the latest report into the Catholic Church's handling of clerical child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.
AdvertisementThe Papal Nuncio admitted during the meeting that he should have responded to a letter from the commission formally.
Mr Martin said he informed the Papal Nuncio that the Government expected the church to respond fully to the questions asked by the Murphy Commission.
He said the Vatican needs to respond substantially and comprehensively to the questions posed by the commission and he said it should do so as soon as possible.
The Minister also said that the Vatican should prepare whatever documents are necessary to forward them to the commission in order to address the questions posed.
The Papal Nuncio described the meeting as 'serious' and 'meaningful'.
Afterwards he told the media he felt at the time that he did not need to respond to the commission's letter, which he felt was forwarded to him for information purposes.
When asked about the silence of the Vatican following the publication of the Murphy and Ryan reports, he said time is needed to study their contents.
He said the Murphy Report is now under study at the Vatican and he said he hoped there would be a response to its contents following a meeting on Friday.
The Papal Nuncio said he expected a response from the Vatican following the meeting between Cardinal Seán Brady and Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin with the Pope in the Vatican this week.
He said clear mistakes had been made but the church had condemned clerical child abuse and the Vatican had already apologised for hurt caused.
Minister Martin said he had sought a commitment from the Archbishop that the church would co-operate fully with upcoming the Cloyne inquiry.
Meanwhile, Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray, who was criticised in the Murphy Report because of his handling of abuse complaints, is expected to tender his resignation in Rome this week.
Another of Dublin's auxiliary bishops, Dr Eamonn Walsh, has said that the report speaks for itself concerning his responses to allegations of clerical child sexual abuse.
Bishop Walsh was responding to a newspaper report quoting Vatican sources as saying he will have to resign.
He also said that he would be responding to last week's letter from Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin requesting bishops mentioned in the report to account for their child protection record in the Archdiocese.
Meanwhile, Bishop Willie Walsh of Killaloe has acknowledged that tomorrow's planned meeting of the country's bishops will be a very difficult one.
Speaking after a dedication ceremony at a new chapel at Skycourt Shopping Centre in Shannon this afternoon, Bishop Walsh said he and his fellow bishops were going to that meeting in a' very humble and repentant spirit'.
He said he hopes and prays that they can in some way touch the hearts of those who have been hurt and in some way begin the journey of healing.
'That really is ultimately our only hope for the future' he said.
He said they had to be brave enough to bring the real spirit of Christ back- the virtues of truth, justice compassion and love--if our Church is not about those things, it is not worth anything, he added.
'Certainly all of us going into that meeting, whatever our failings in the past, all of use are going into that meeting in that spirit where we must get back to the values and teachings and example of Jesus Christ, and whatever we have to lose or shed or change in our church, then thats our only possible answer at this time of crisis.
In making the comments Bishop Walsh specifically said he would not comment on any of his colleagues because he did not want to hurt anyone or cause any more pain.
He again made a sincere apology to victims of clerical sexual abuse who may have been hurt by a media interview he did last week.
He said he was very conscious at this time of deep crisis in the Church, that ill-chosen words he made during a radio interview last week caused deep hurt and he had no hesitation in apologising.
He said the last thing he wanted to do was to add to the deep hurt that has been caused to survivors of abuse over the years.
Monday, December 7, 2009
December 8th: The Immaculate Conception of the Most Blessed Virgin
Taken from Dom Gueranger's The Liturgical Year:
At length, on the distant horizon, rises, with a soft and radiant light, the aurora of the Sun which has been so long desired. The happy Mother of the Messias was to be born before the Messias Himself; and this is the day of the Conception of Mary. The earth already possesses a first pledge of the Divine mercy; the Son of Man is near at hand. Two true Israelites, Joachim and Anne, noble branches of the family of David, find their union, after a long barrenness, made fruitful by the Divine omnipotence. Glory be to God, Who has been mindful of His promises, and Who deigns to announce, from the high heavens, the end of the deluge of iniquity, by sending upon the earth the sweet white dove that bears the tidings of peace!
The feast of the Blessed Virgin's Immaculate Conception is the most solemn of all those which the Church celebrates during the holy time of Advent; and if the first part of the cycle had to offer us the commemoration of some one of the mysteries of Mary, there was none whose object could better harmonize with the spirit of the Church in this mystic season of expectation. Let us, then, celebrate this solemnity with joy; for the Conception of Mary tells us that the Birth of Jesus is not far oft.
The intention of the Church, in this feast, is not only to celebrate the anniversary of the happy moment in which began, in the womb of the pious Anne, the life of the ever-glorious Virgin Mary; but also to honor the sublime privilege, by which Mary was preserved from the original stain, which, by a sovereign and universal decree, is contracted by all the children of Adam the very moment they are conceived in their mother's womb.
The faith of the Catholic Church on the subject of the Conception of Mary is this: that at the very instant when God united the soul of Mary, which He had created, to the body which it was to animate, this ever-blessed soul did not only not contract the stain, which at that same instant defiles every human soul, but was filled with an immeasurable grace which rendered her, from that moment, the mirror of the sanctity of God Himself, as far as this is possible to a creature. The Church with her infallible authority, declared, by the lips of Pius IX, that this article of her faith had been revealed by God Himself. The Definition was received with enthusiasm by the whole of Christendom, and the eighth of December of the year 1854 was thus made one of the most memorable days of the Church's history.
It was due to His own infinite sanctity that God should suspend, in this instance, the law which His Divine justice had passed upon all the children of Adam. The relations which Mary was to bear to the Divinity, could not be reconciled with her undergoing the humiliation of this punishment. She was not only daughter of the eternal Father; she was destined also to become the very Mother of the Son, and the veritable bride of the Holy Ghost. Nothing defiled could be permitted to enter, even for an instant of time, into the creature that was thus predestined to contract such close relations with the adorable Trinity; not a speck could be permitted to tarnish in Mary that perfect purity which the infinitely holy God requires even in those who are one day to be admitted to enjoy the sight of His Divine majesty in Heaven; in a word, as the great Doctor St. Anselm says, "it was just that this holy Virgin should be adorned with the greatest purity which can be conceived after that of God Himself, since God the Father was to give to her, as her Child, that only-begotten Son, whom He loved as Himself, as being begotten to Him from His own bosom; and this in such a manner, that the selfsame Son of God was, by nature, the Son of both God the Father and this blessed Virgin. This same Son chose her to be substantially His Mother; and the Holy Ghost willed that in her womb He would operate the conception and birth of Him from whom He Himself proceeded."
Moreover, the close ties which were to unite the Son of God with Mary, and which would elicit from Him the tenderest love and the most filial reverence for her, had been present to the Divine thought from all eternity: and the conclusion forces itself upon us that therefore the Divine Word had for this His future Mother a love infinitely greater than that which He bore to all His other creatures. Mary's honor was infinitely dear to Him, because she was to be His Mother, chosen to be so by His eternal and merciful decrees. The Son's love protected the Mother. She, indeed, in her sublime humility, willingly submitted to whatever the rest of God's creatures had brought on themselves, and obeyed every tittle of those laws which were never meant for her: but that humiliating barrier, which confronts every child of Adam at the first moment of his existence, and keeps him from light and grace until he shall have been regenerated by a new birth—oh! this could not be permitted to stand in Mary's way, her Son forbade it.
The eternal Father would not do less for the second Eve than He had done for the first, who was created, as was also the first Adam, in the state of original justice, which she afterwards forfeited by Sin. The Son of God would not permit that the woman, from whom He was to take the nature of Man, should be deprived of that gift which He had given even to her who was the mother of sin. The Holy Ghost, who was to overshadow Mary and produce Jesus within her by His Divine operation, would not permit that foul stain, in which we alone are aIl conceived, to rest, even for an instant, on this His Bride. All men were to contract the sin of Adam; the sentence was universal; but God's Own Mother is not included. God who is the author of that law, God who was free to make it as He willed, had power to exclude from it her whom He had predestined to be His own in so many ways; He could exempt her, and it was just that He should exempt her; therefore, He did it.
Was it not this grand exemption which God Himself foretold, when the guilty pair, whose children we all are, appeared before Him in the garden of Eden. In the anathema which fell upon the serpent, there was included a promise of mercy to us. 'I will put enmities,' said the Lord, ' between thee and the Woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head.'
Thus was salvation promised the human race under the form of a victory over Satan; and this victory is to be gained by the Woman, and she will gain it for us also. Even granting, as some read this text, that it is the Son of the Woman that is alone to gain this victory, the enmity between the Woman and the serpent is clearly expressed, and she, the Woman, with her own foot, is to crush the head of the hated serpent. The second Eve is to be worthy of the second Adam, conquering and not to be conquered. The human race is one day to be avenged not only by God, made Man, but also by the Woman miraculously exempted from every stain of sin, in whom the primeval creation, which was in justice and holiness, will thus reappear, just as though the Original Sin had never been committed.
Raise up your heads, then, ye children of Adam, and shake off your chains! This day the humiliation which weighed you down is annihilated. Behold! Mary, who is of the same flesh and blood as yourselves, has seen the torrent of sin, which swept along all the generations of mankind, flow back at her presence and not touch her: the infernal dragon has turned away his head, not daring to breathe his venom upon her; the dignity of your origin is given to her in all its primitive grandeur. This happy day, then, on which the original purity of your race is renewed, must be a feast to you. The second Eve is created; and from her own blood [which, with the exception of the element of sin, is the same as that which makes you to be the children of Adam], she is shortly to give you the God-Man, who proceeds from her according to the flesh, as He proceeds from the Father according to the eternal generation.
And how can we do less than admire and love the incomparable purity of Mary in her Immaculate Conception, when we hear even God, Who thus prepared her to become His Mother, saying to her, in the Divine Canticle, these words of complacent love: 'Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee!' It is the God of all holiness that here speaks; that eye, which sees all things, finds not a vestige, not a shadow of sin; therefore does He delight in her, and admire in her that gift of His own condescending munificence. We cannot be surprised after this, that Gabriel, when he came down from Heaven to announce the Incarnation to her, should be full of admiration at the sight of that purity, whose beginning was so glorious and whose progress was immeasurable; and that this blessed spirit should bow down profoundly before this young Maid of Nazareth, and salute her with 'Hail, O full of grace!' And who is this Gabriel? An Archangel, that lives amidst the grandest magnificences of God's creation, amidst all the gorgeous riches of Heaven; who is brother to the Cherubim and Seraphim, to the Thrones and Dominations; whose eye is accustomed to gaze on those nine angelic choirs with their dazzling brightness of countless degrees of light and grace; he has found on earth, in a creature of a nature below that of Angels, the fulness of grace, of that grace which had been given to the Angels measuredly. This fulness of grace was in Mary from the very first instant of her existence. She is the future Mother of God, and she was ever holy, ever pure, ever Immaculate.
This truth of Mary's Immaculate Conception—which was revealed to the Apostles by the Divine Son of Mary, inherited by the Church, taught by the holy fathers, believed by each generation of the Christian people with an ever increasing explicitness—was implied in the very notion of a Mother of God. To believe that Mary was Mother of God, was implicitly to believe that she, on whom this sublime dignity was conferred, had never been defiled with the slightest stain of sin, and that God had bestowed upon her an absolute exemption from sin. But now the Immaculate Conception of Mary rests on an explicit definition dictated by the Holy Ghost. Peter has spoken by the mouth of Pius; and when Peter has spoken, every Christian should believe; for the Son of God has said: 'I have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy faith fail not.' And again: 'The Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you.'
The Symbol of our faith has therefore received not a new truth, but a new light on a truth which was previously the object of the universal belief. On that great day of the definition, the infernal serpent was again crushed beneath the victorious foot of the Virgin-Mother, and the Lord graciously gave us the strongest pledge of His mercy. He still loves this guilty earth, since He has deigned to enlighten it with one of the brightest rays of His Mother's glory. How this earth of ours exulted! The present generation will never forget the enthusiasm with which the entire universe received the tidings of the definition. It was an event of mysterious importance which thus marked this second half of our century ; and we shall look forward to the future with renewed confidence; for if the Holy Ghost bids us tremble for the days when truths are diminished among the children of men, He would, consequently, have us look on those times as blessed by God in which we receive an increase of truth; an increase both in light and authority.
The Church, even before the solemn proclamation of the grand dogma, kept the feast of this eighth day of December; which was, in reality, a profession of her faith. It is true that the feast was not called the Immaculate Conception, but simply the Conception of Mary. But the fact of such a feast being instituted and kept, was an unmistakable expression of the faith of Christendom in that truth.
St. Bernard and the angelical doctor, St. Thomas, both teach that the Church cannot celebrate the feast of what is not holy; the Conception of Mary, therefore, was holy and immaculate, since the Church has, for ages past, honored it with a special feast. The Nativity of the same holy Virgin is kept as a solemnity in the Church, because Mary was born full of grace; therefore, had the first moment of Mary's existence been one of sin, as is that of all the other children of Adam, it never could have been made the subject of the reverence of the Church. Now, there are few feasts so generally and so firmly established in the Church as this which we are keeping today.
The Greek Church, which, more easily than the Latin, could learn what were the pious traditions of the east, kept this feast even in the sixth century, as is evident from the ceremonial or, as it is called, the Type, of St. Sabas. In the west, we find it established in the Gothic Church of Spain as far back as the eighth century. A celebrated calendar which was engraved on marble, in the ninth century, for the use of the Church of Naples, attests that it had already been introduced there. Paul the deacon, secretary to the emperor Charlemagne, and afterwards monk at Monte-Cassino, composed a celebrated hymn on the mystery of the Immaculate Conception; we will insert this piece later on, as it is given in the manuscript copies of Monte-Cassino and Benevento. In 1066, the feast was first established in England, in consequence of the pious Abbot Helsyn's (Some writers call him Elsym, and others Elpyn. See Baronius in his notes on the Roman Martyrology, Dec. 8. [Tr.]) being miraculously preserved from shipwreck; and shortly after that, was made general through the whole island by the zeal of the great St. Anselm, monk of the Order of St. Benedict, and archbishop of Canterbury. From England it passed into Normandy, and took root in France. We find it sanctioned in Germany, in a council held in 1049, at which St. Leo IX. was present; in Navarre, 1090, at the abbey of Irach; in Belgium, at Liege, in 1142. Thus did the Churches of the west testify their faith in this mystery, by accepting its feast, which is the expression of faith.
Lastly, it was adopted by Rome herself, and her doing so rendered the united testimony of her children, the other Churches, more imposing than ever. It was Pope Sixtus IV who, in the year 1476, published the decree of the feast of our Lady's Conception for the city of St. Peter. In the next century. 1568, St. Pius V published the universal edition of the Roman breviary, and in its calendar was inserted this feast as one of those Christian solemnities which the faithful are every year bound to observe. It was not from Rome that the devotion of the Catholic world to this mystery received its first impulse; she sanctioned it by her liturgical authority, just as she has confirmed it by her doctrinal authority in these our own days.
The three great Catholic nations of Europe, Germany, France, and Spain, vied with each other in their devotion to this mystery of Mary's Immaculate Conception. France, by her king Louis XIV, obtained from Clement IX that this feast should be kept with an octave throughout the kingdom; which favour was afterwards extended to the universal Church by Innocent XII. For centuries previous to this, the theological faculty of Paris had always exacted from its professors the oath that they would defend this privilege of Mary; a pious practice which continued as long as the university itself.
As regards Germany, the emperor Ferdinand III, in 1647, ordered a splendid monument to be erected in the great square of Vienna. It is covered with emblems and figures symbolical of Mary's victory over sin, and on the top is the statue of the Immaculate Queen, with this solemn and truly Catholic inscription:
TO GOD, INFINITE IN GOODNESS AND POWER,
KING OF HEAVEN AND EARTH,
BY WHOM KINGS REIGN;
TO THE VIRGIN MOTHER OF GOD
CONCEIVED WITHOUT SIN,
BY WHOM PRINCES COMMAND,
WHOM AUSTRIA, DEVOUTLY LOVING, HOLDS AS HER QUEEN AND PATRON;
FERDINAND III, EMPEROR,
CONFIDES, GIVES, CONSECRATES HIMSELF, CHILDREN, PEOPLE, ARMIES, PROVINCES,
AND ALL THAT IS HIS,
AND ERECTS IN ACCOMPLISHMENT OF A VOW
THIS STATUE,
AS A PERPETUAL MEMORIAL. (D. O. M. supremo cœli terræquæ imperatori, per quem reges regnant; Virgini Deiparæ Immaeulatæ Conceptræ, per quam principes imperant, in peculiarem Dominam, Austriæ Patronam, singulari pietate susceptæ, se, liberos, populos, exercitus, provincias, omnia denique confidit, donat, consecrat, et in perpetuam rei memoriam statuam hanc ex voto ponit Ferdinandus III Augustus.)
But the zeal of Spain for the privilege of the holy Mother of God surpassed that of all other nations. In the year 1398, John I, king of Arragon, issued a chart in which he solemnly places his person and kingdom under the protection of Mary Immaculate. Later on, kings Philip III and Philip IV sent ambassadors to Rome, soliciting, in their names, the solemn definition, which heaven reserved, in its mercy, for our days. King Charles III, in the eighteenth century, obtained permission from Clement XIII, that the Immaculate Conception should be the patronal feast of Spain. The people of Spain, which is so justly called the Catholic kingdom, put over the door, or on the front of their houses, a tablet with the words of Mary's privilege written on it; and when they meet, they greet each other with an expression in honour of the same dear mystery. It was a Spanish nun, Mary of Jesus, abbess of the convent of the Immaculate Conception of Agreda, who wrote God's Mystic City, which inspired Murillo with his Immaculate Conception, the masterpiece of the Spanish school.
But, whilst thus mentioning the different nations which have been foremost in their zeal for this article of our holy faith, the Immaculate Conception, it were unjust to pass over the immense share which the seraphic Order, the Order of St. Francis of Assisi, has had in the earthly triumph of our blessed Mother, the Queen of heaven and earth. As often as this feast comes round, is it not just that we should think with reverence and gratitude on him, who was the first theologian that showed how closely connected with the divine mystery of the Incarnation is this dogma of the Immaculate Conception? First, then, all honour to the name of the pious and learned John Duns Scotus! And when at length the great day of the definition of the Immaculate Conception came, how justly merited was that grand audience, which the Vicar of Christ granted to the Franciscan Order, and with which closed the pageant of the glorious solemnity! Plus IX received from the hands of the children of St. Francis a tribute of homage and thankfulness, which the Scotist school, after having fought four hundred years in defence of Mary's Immaculate Conception, now presented to the Pontiff.
In the presence of the fifty-four Cardinals, forty-two archbishops, and ninety-two bishops; before an immense concourse of people that filled St. Peter's, and had united in prayer, begging the assistance of the Spirit of truth; the Vicar of Christ had just pronounced the decision which so many ages had hoped to hear. The Pontiff had offered the holy Sacrifice on the Confession of St. Peter. He had crowned the statue of the Immaculate Queen with a splendid diadem. Carried on his lofty throne, and wearing his triple crown, he had reached the portico of the basilica; there he is met by the two representatives of St. Francis: they prostrate before the throne: the triumphal procession halts: and first, the General of the Friars Minor Observantines advances, and presents to the holy Father a branch of silver lilies: he is followed by the General of the Conventual Friars, holding in his hand a branch of silver roses. The Pope graciously accepted both. The lilies and the roses were symbolical of Mary's purity and love; the whiteness of the silver was the emblem of the lovely brightness of that orb, on which is reflected the light of the Sun; for, as the Canticle says of Mary, `she is beautiful as the moon.' (Cant. vi. 9.) The Pontiff was overcome with emotion at these gifts of the family of the seraphic patriarch, to which we might justly apply what was said of the banner of the Maid of Orleans: `It had stood the brunt of the battle; it deserved to share in the glory of the victory.' And thus ended the glories of that grand morning of the eighth of December, eighteen hundred and fifty-four.
It is thus, O thou the humblest of creatures, that thy Immaculate Conception has been glorified on earth! And how could it be other than a great joy to men, that thou art honoured by them, thou the aurora of the Sun of justice? Dost thou not bring them the tidings of their salvation? Art not thou, O Mary, that bright ray of hope, which suddenly bursts forth in the deep abyss of the world's misery? What should we have been without Jesus? And thou art His dearest Mother, the holiest of God's creatures, the purest of virgins, and our own most loving Mother!
How thy gentle light gladdens our wearied eyes, sweet Mother! Generation had followed generation on this earth of ours. Men looked up to heaven through their tears, hoping to see appear on the horizon the star which they had been told should disperse the gloomy horrors of the world's darkness; but death came, and they sank into the tomb, without seeing even the dawn of the light, for which alone they cared to live. It is for us that God had reserved the blessing of seeing thy lovely rising, O thou fair morning star! which sheddest thy blessed rays on the sea, and bringest calm after the long stormy night! Oh! prepare our eyes that they may behold the divine Sun which will soon follow in thy path, and give to the world His reign of light and day. Prepare our hearts, for it is to our hearts that this Jesus of thine wishes to show Himself. To see Him, our hearts must be pure: purify them, O thou Immaculate Mother! The divine wisdom has willed that of the feasts which the Church dedicates to thee, this of thy Immaculate Conception should be celebrated during Advent; that thus the children of the Church, reflecting on the jealous care wherewith God preserved thee from every stain of sin because thou wast to be the Mother of His divine Son, might prepare to receive this same Jesus by the most perfect renunciation of every sin and of every attachment to sin. This great change must be made; and thy prayers, O Mary! will help us to make it. Pray—we ask it of thee by the grace God gave thee in thy Immaculate Conception—that our covetousness may be destroyed, our concupiscence extinguished, and our pride turned into humility. Despise not our prayers, dear Mother of that Jesus who chose thee for His dwelling-place, that He might afterwards find one in each of us.
O Mary! Ark of the covenant, built of an incorruptible wood, and covered over with the purest gold! help us to correspond with those wonderful designs of our God, who, after having found His glory in thine incomparable purity, wills now to seek His glory in our unworthiness, by making us, from being slaves of the devil, His temples and His abode, where He may find His delight. Help us to this, O thou that by the mercy of thy Son hast never known sin! and receive this day our devoutest praise. Thou art the ark of salvation; the one creature unwrecked in the universal deluge; the white fleece filled with the dew of heaven, whilst the earth around is parched; the flame which the many waters could not quench; the lily blooming amidst thorns; the garden shut against the infernal serpent; the fountain sealed, whose limpid water was never ruffled; the house of the Lord, whereon His eyes were ever fixed, and into which nothing defiled could ever enter; the mystic city, of which such glorious things are said. (Ps. lxxxvi. 3.) We delight in telling all thy glorious titles, O Mary! for thou art our Mother, and we love thee, and the Mother's glory is the glory of her children. Cease not to bless and protect all those that honour thy immense privilege, O thou who wert conceived on this day! May this feast fit us for that mystery, for which thy Conception, thy Birth, and thy Annunciation, are all preparations—the Birth of thy Jesus in Bethlehem: yea, dear Mother, we desire thy Jesus, give Him to us and satisfy the longings of our love.
At length, on the distant horizon, rises, with a soft and radiant light, the aurora of the Sun which has been so long desired. The happy Mother of the Messias was to be born before the Messias Himself; and this is the day of the Conception of Mary. The earth already possesses a first pledge of the Divine mercy; the Son of Man is near at hand. Two true Israelites, Joachim and Anne, noble branches of the family of David, find their union, after a long barrenness, made fruitful by the Divine omnipotence. Glory be to God, Who has been mindful of His promises, and Who deigns to announce, from the high heavens, the end of the deluge of iniquity, by sending upon the earth the sweet white dove that bears the tidings of peace!
The feast of the Blessed Virgin's Immaculate Conception is the most solemn of all those which the Church celebrates during the holy time of Advent; and if the first part of the cycle had to offer us the commemoration of some one of the mysteries of Mary, there was none whose object could better harmonize with the spirit of the Church in this mystic season of expectation. Let us, then, celebrate this solemnity with joy; for the Conception of Mary tells us that the Birth of Jesus is not far oft.
The intention of the Church, in this feast, is not only to celebrate the anniversary of the happy moment in which began, in the womb of the pious Anne, the life of the ever-glorious Virgin Mary; but also to honor the sublime privilege, by which Mary was preserved from the original stain, which, by a sovereign and universal decree, is contracted by all the children of Adam the very moment they are conceived in their mother's womb.
The faith of the Catholic Church on the subject of the Conception of Mary is this: that at the very instant when God united the soul of Mary, which He had created, to the body which it was to animate, this ever-blessed soul did not only not contract the stain, which at that same instant defiles every human soul, but was filled with an immeasurable grace which rendered her, from that moment, the mirror of the sanctity of God Himself, as far as this is possible to a creature. The Church with her infallible authority, declared, by the lips of Pius IX, that this article of her faith had been revealed by God Himself. The Definition was received with enthusiasm by the whole of Christendom, and the eighth of December of the year 1854 was thus made one of the most memorable days of the Church's history.
It was due to His own infinite sanctity that God should suspend, in this instance, the law which His Divine justice had passed upon all the children of Adam. The relations which Mary was to bear to the Divinity, could not be reconciled with her undergoing the humiliation of this punishment. She was not only daughter of the eternal Father; she was destined also to become the very Mother of the Son, and the veritable bride of the Holy Ghost. Nothing defiled could be permitted to enter, even for an instant of time, into the creature that was thus predestined to contract such close relations with the adorable Trinity; not a speck could be permitted to tarnish in Mary that perfect purity which the infinitely holy God requires even in those who are one day to be admitted to enjoy the sight of His Divine majesty in Heaven; in a word, as the great Doctor St. Anselm says, "it was just that this holy Virgin should be adorned with the greatest purity which can be conceived after that of God Himself, since God the Father was to give to her, as her Child, that only-begotten Son, whom He loved as Himself, as being begotten to Him from His own bosom; and this in such a manner, that the selfsame Son of God was, by nature, the Son of both God the Father and this blessed Virgin. This same Son chose her to be substantially His Mother; and the Holy Ghost willed that in her womb He would operate the conception and birth of Him from whom He Himself proceeded."
Moreover, the close ties which were to unite the Son of God with Mary, and which would elicit from Him the tenderest love and the most filial reverence for her, had been present to the Divine thought from all eternity: and the conclusion forces itself upon us that therefore the Divine Word had for this His future Mother a love infinitely greater than that which He bore to all His other creatures. Mary's honor was infinitely dear to Him, because she was to be His Mother, chosen to be so by His eternal and merciful decrees. The Son's love protected the Mother. She, indeed, in her sublime humility, willingly submitted to whatever the rest of God's creatures had brought on themselves, and obeyed every tittle of those laws which were never meant for her: but that humiliating barrier, which confronts every child of Adam at the first moment of his existence, and keeps him from light and grace until he shall have been regenerated by a new birth—oh! this could not be permitted to stand in Mary's way, her Son forbade it.
The eternal Father would not do less for the second Eve than He had done for the first, who was created, as was also the first Adam, in the state of original justice, which she afterwards forfeited by Sin. The Son of God would not permit that the woman, from whom He was to take the nature of Man, should be deprived of that gift which He had given even to her who was the mother of sin. The Holy Ghost, who was to overshadow Mary and produce Jesus within her by His Divine operation, would not permit that foul stain, in which we alone are aIl conceived, to rest, even for an instant, on this His Bride. All men were to contract the sin of Adam; the sentence was universal; but God's Own Mother is not included. God who is the author of that law, God who was free to make it as He willed, had power to exclude from it her whom He had predestined to be His own in so many ways; He could exempt her, and it was just that He should exempt her; therefore, He did it.
Was it not this grand exemption which God Himself foretold, when the guilty pair, whose children we all are, appeared before Him in the garden of Eden. In the anathema which fell upon the serpent, there was included a promise of mercy to us. 'I will put enmities,' said the Lord, ' between thee and the Woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head.'
Thus was salvation promised the human race under the form of a victory over Satan; and this victory is to be gained by the Woman, and she will gain it for us also. Even granting, as some read this text, that it is the Son of the Woman that is alone to gain this victory, the enmity between the Woman and the serpent is clearly expressed, and she, the Woman, with her own foot, is to crush the head of the hated serpent. The second Eve is to be worthy of the second Adam, conquering and not to be conquered. The human race is one day to be avenged not only by God, made Man, but also by the Woman miraculously exempted from every stain of sin, in whom the primeval creation, which was in justice and holiness, will thus reappear, just as though the Original Sin had never been committed.
Raise up your heads, then, ye children of Adam, and shake off your chains! This day the humiliation which weighed you down is annihilated. Behold! Mary, who is of the same flesh and blood as yourselves, has seen the torrent of sin, which swept along all the generations of mankind, flow back at her presence and not touch her: the infernal dragon has turned away his head, not daring to breathe his venom upon her; the dignity of your origin is given to her in all its primitive grandeur. This happy day, then, on which the original purity of your race is renewed, must be a feast to you. The second Eve is created; and from her own blood [which, with the exception of the element of sin, is the same as that which makes you to be the children of Adam], she is shortly to give you the God-Man, who proceeds from her according to the flesh, as He proceeds from the Father according to the eternal generation.
And how can we do less than admire and love the incomparable purity of Mary in her Immaculate Conception, when we hear even God, Who thus prepared her to become His Mother, saying to her, in the Divine Canticle, these words of complacent love: 'Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee!' It is the God of all holiness that here speaks; that eye, which sees all things, finds not a vestige, not a shadow of sin; therefore does He delight in her, and admire in her that gift of His own condescending munificence. We cannot be surprised after this, that Gabriel, when he came down from Heaven to announce the Incarnation to her, should be full of admiration at the sight of that purity, whose beginning was so glorious and whose progress was immeasurable; and that this blessed spirit should bow down profoundly before this young Maid of Nazareth, and salute her with 'Hail, O full of grace!' And who is this Gabriel? An Archangel, that lives amidst the grandest magnificences of God's creation, amidst all the gorgeous riches of Heaven; who is brother to the Cherubim and Seraphim, to the Thrones and Dominations; whose eye is accustomed to gaze on those nine angelic choirs with their dazzling brightness of countless degrees of light and grace; he has found on earth, in a creature of a nature below that of Angels, the fulness of grace, of that grace which had been given to the Angels measuredly. This fulness of grace was in Mary from the very first instant of her existence. She is the future Mother of God, and she was ever holy, ever pure, ever Immaculate.
This truth of Mary's Immaculate Conception—which was revealed to the Apostles by the Divine Son of Mary, inherited by the Church, taught by the holy fathers, believed by each generation of the Christian people with an ever increasing explicitness—was implied in the very notion of a Mother of God. To believe that Mary was Mother of God, was implicitly to believe that she, on whom this sublime dignity was conferred, had never been defiled with the slightest stain of sin, and that God had bestowed upon her an absolute exemption from sin. But now the Immaculate Conception of Mary rests on an explicit definition dictated by the Holy Ghost. Peter has spoken by the mouth of Pius; and when Peter has spoken, every Christian should believe; for the Son of God has said: 'I have prayed for thee, Peter, that thy faith fail not.' And again: 'The Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you.'
The Symbol of our faith has therefore received not a new truth, but a new light on a truth which was previously the object of the universal belief. On that great day of the definition, the infernal serpent was again crushed beneath the victorious foot of the Virgin-Mother, and the Lord graciously gave us the strongest pledge of His mercy. He still loves this guilty earth, since He has deigned to enlighten it with one of the brightest rays of His Mother's glory. How this earth of ours exulted! The present generation will never forget the enthusiasm with which the entire universe received the tidings of the definition. It was an event of mysterious importance which thus marked this second half of our century ; and we shall look forward to the future with renewed confidence; for if the Holy Ghost bids us tremble for the days when truths are diminished among the children of men, He would, consequently, have us look on those times as blessed by God in which we receive an increase of truth; an increase both in light and authority.
The Church, even before the solemn proclamation of the grand dogma, kept the feast of this eighth day of December; which was, in reality, a profession of her faith. It is true that the feast was not called the Immaculate Conception, but simply the Conception of Mary. But the fact of such a feast being instituted and kept, was an unmistakable expression of the faith of Christendom in that truth.
St. Bernard and the angelical doctor, St. Thomas, both teach that the Church cannot celebrate the feast of what is not holy; the Conception of Mary, therefore, was holy and immaculate, since the Church has, for ages past, honored it with a special feast. The Nativity of the same holy Virgin is kept as a solemnity in the Church, because Mary was born full of grace; therefore, had the first moment of Mary's existence been one of sin, as is that of all the other children of Adam, it never could have been made the subject of the reverence of the Church. Now, there are few feasts so generally and so firmly established in the Church as this which we are keeping today.
The Greek Church, which, more easily than the Latin, could learn what were the pious traditions of the east, kept this feast even in the sixth century, as is evident from the ceremonial or, as it is called, the Type, of St. Sabas. In the west, we find it established in the Gothic Church of Spain as far back as the eighth century. A celebrated calendar which was engraved on marble, in the ninth century, for the use of the Church of Naples, attests that it had already been introduced there. Paul the deacon, secretary to the emperor Charlemagne, and afterwards monk at Monte-Cassino, composed a celebrated hymn on the mystery of the Immaculate Conception; we will insert this piece later on, as it is given in the manuscript copies of Monte-Cassino and Benevento. In 1066, the feast was first established in England, in consequence of the pious Abbot Helsyn's (Some writers call him Elsym, and others Elpyn. See Baronius in his notes on the Roman Martyrology, Dec. 8. [Tr.]) being miraculously preserved from shipwreck; and shortly after that, was made general through the whole island by the zeal of the great St. Anselm, monk of the Order of St. Benedict, and archbishop of Canterbury. From England it passed into Normandy, and took root in France. We find it sanctioned in Germany, in a council held in 1049, at which St. Leo IX. was present; in Navarre, 1090, at the abbey of Irach; in Belgium, at Liege, in 1142. Thus did the Churches of the west testify their faith in this mystery, by accepting its feast, which is the expression of faith.
Lastly, it was adopted by Rome herself, and her doing so rendered the united testimony of her children, the other Churches, more imposing than ever. It was Pope Sixtus IV who, in the year 1476, published the decree of the feast of our Lady's Conception for the city of St. Peter. In the next century. 1568, St. Pius V published the universal edition of the Roman breviary, and in its calendar was inserted this feast as one of those Christian solemnities which the faithful are every year bound to observe. It was not from Rome that the devotion of the Catholic world to this mystery received its first impulse; she sanctioned it by her liturgical authority, just as she has confirmed it by her doctrinal authority in these our own days.
The three great Catholic nations of Europe, Germany, France, and Spain, vied with each other in their devotion to this mystery of Mary's Immaculate Conception. France, by her king Louis XIV, obtained from Clement IX that this feast should be kept with an octave throughout the kingdom; which favour was afterwards extended to the universal Church by Innocent XII. For centuries previous to this, the theological faculty of Paris had always exacted from its professors the oath that they would defend this privilege of Mary; a pious practice which continued as long as the university itself.
As regards Germany, the emperor Ferdinand III, in 1647, ordered a splendid monument to be erected in the great square of Vienna. It is covered with emblems and figures symbolical of Mary's victory over sin, and on the top is the statue of the Immaculate Queen, with this solemn and truly Catholic inscription:
TO GOD, INFINITE IN GOODNESS AND POWER,
KING OF HEAVEN AND EARTH,
BY WHOM KINGS REIGN;
TO THE VIRGIN MOTHER OF GOD
CONCEIVED WITHOUT SIN,
BY WHOM PRINCES COMMAND,
WHOM AUSTRIA, DEVOUTLY LOVING, HOLDS AS HER QUEEN AND PATRON;
FERDINAND III, EMPEROR,
CONFIDES, GIVES, CONSECRATES HIMSELF, CHILDREN, PEOPLE, ARMIES, PROVINCES,
AND ALL THAT IS HIS,
AND ERECTS IN ACCOMPLISHMENT OF A VOW
THIS STATUE,
AS A PERPETUAL MEMORIAL. (D. O. M. supremo cœli terræquæ imperatori, per quem reges regnant; Virgini Deiparæ Immaeulatæ Conceptræ, per quam principes imperant, in peculiarem Dominam, Austriæ Patronam, singulari pietate susceptæ, se, liberos, populos, exercitus, provincias, omnia denique confidit, donat, consecrat, et in perpetuam rei memoriam statuam hanc ex voto ponit Ferdinandus III Augustus.)
But the zeal of Spain for the privilege of the holy Mother of God surpassed that of all other nations. In the year 1398, John I, king of Arragon, issued a chart in which he solemnly places his person and kingdom under the protection of Mary Immaculate. Later on, kings Philip III and Philip IV sent ambassadors to Rome, soliciting, in their names, the solemn definition, which heaven reserved, in its mercy, for our days. King Charles III, in the eighteenth century, obtained permission from Clement XIII, that the Immaculate Conception should be the patronal feast of Spain. The people of Spain, which is so justly called the Catholic kingdom, put over the door, or on the front of their houses, a tablet with the words of Mary's privilege written on it; and when they meet, they greet each other with an expression in honour of the same dear mystery. It was a Spanish nun, Mary of Jesus, abbess of the convent of the Immaculate Conception of Agreda, who wrote God's Mystic City, which inspired Murillo with his Immaculate Conception, the masterpiece of the Spanish school.
But, whilst thus mentioning the different nations which have been foremost in their zeal for this article of our holy faith, the Immaculate Conception, it were unjust to pass over the immense share which the seraphic Order, the Order of St. Francis of Assisi, has had in the earthly triumph of our blessed Mother, the Queen of heaven and earth. As often as this feast comes round, is it not just that we should think with reverence and gratitude on him, who was the first theologian that showed how closely connected with the divine mystery of the Incarnation is this dogma of the Immaculate Conception? First, then, all honour to the name of the pious and learned John Duns Scotus! And when at length the great day of the definition of the Immaculate Conception came, how justly merited was that grand audience, which the Vicar of Christ granted to the Franciscan Order, and with which closed the pageant of the glorious solemnity! Plus IX received from the hands of the children of St. Francis a tribute of homage and thankfulness, which the Scotist school, after having fought four hundred years in defence of Mary's Immaculate Conception, now presented to the Pontiff.
In the presence of the fifty-four Cardinals, forty-two archbishops, and ninety-two bishops; before an immense concourse of people that filled St. Peter's, and had united in prayer, begging the assistance of the Spirit of truth; the Vicar of Christ had just pronounced the decision which so many ages had hoped to hear. The Pontiff had offered the holy Sacrifice on the Confession of St. Peter. He had crowned the statue of the Immaculate Queen with a splendid diadem. Carried on his lofty throne, and wearing his triple crown, he had reached the portico of the basilica; there he is met by the two representatives of St. Francis: they prostrate before the throne: the triumphal procession halts: and first, the General of the Friars Minor Observantines advances, and presents to the holy Father a branch of silver lilies: he is followed by the General of the Conventual Friars, holding in his hand a branch of silver roses. The Pope graciously accepted both. The lilies and the roses were symbolical of Mary's purity and love; the whiteness of the silver was the emblem of the lovely brightness of that orb, on which is reflected the light of the Sun; for, as the Canticle says of Mary, `she is beautiful as the moon.' (Cant. vi. 9.) The Pontiff was overcome with emotion at these gifts of the family of the seraphic patriarch, to which we might justly apply what was said of the banner of the Maid of Orleans: `It had stood the brunt of the battle; it deserved to share in the glory of the victory.' And thus ended the glories of that grand morning of the eighth of December, eighteen hundred and fifty-four.
It is thus, O thou the humblest of creatures, that thy Immaculate Conception has been glorified on earth! And how could it be other than a great joy to men, that thou art honoured by them, thou the aurora of the Sun of justice? Dost thou not bring them the tidings of their salvation? Art not thou, O Mary, that bright ray of hope, which suddenly bursts forth in the deep abyss of the world's misery? What should we have been without Jesus? And thou art His dearest Mother, the holiest of God's creatures, the purest of virgins, and our own most loving Mother!
How thy gentle light gladdens our wearied eyes, sweet Mother! Generation had followed generation on this earth of ours. Men looked up to heaven through their tears, hoping to see appear on the horizon the star which they had been told should disperse the gloomy horrors of the world's darkness; but death came, and they sank into the tomb, without seeing even the dawn of the light, for which alone they cared to live. It is for us that God had reserved the blessing of seeing thy lovely rising, O thou fair morning star! which sheddest thy blessed rays on the sea, and bringest calm after the long stormy night! Oh! prepare our eyes that they may behold the divine Sun which will soon follow in thy path, and give to the world His reign of light and day. Prepare our hearts, for it is to our hearts that this Jesus of thine wishes to show Himself. To see Him, our hearts must be pure: purify them, O thou Immaculate Mother! The divine wisdom has willed that of the feasts which the Church dedicates to thee, this of thy Immaculate Conception should be celebrated during Advent; that thus the children of the Church, reflecting on the jealous care wherewith God preserved thee from every stain of sin because thou wast to be the Mother of His divine Son, might prepare to receive this same Jesus by the most perfect renunciation of every sin and of every attachment to sin. This great change must be made; and thy prayers, O Mary! will help us to make it. Pray—we ask it of thee by the grace God gave thee in thy Immaculate Conception—that our covetousness may be destroyed, our concupiscence extinguished, and our pride turned into humility. Despise not our prayers, dear Mother of that Jesus who chose thee for His dwelling-place, that He might afterwards find one in each of us.
O Mary! Ark of the covenant, built of an incorruptible wood, and covered over with the purest gold! help us to correspond with those wonderful designs of our God, who, after having found His glory in thine incomparable purity, wills now to seek His glory in our unworthiness, by making us, from being slaves of the devil, His temples and His abode, where He may find His delight. Help us to this, O thou that by the mercy of thy Son hast never known sin! and receive this day our devoutest praise. Thou art the ark of salvation; the one creature unwrecked in the universal deluge; the white fleece filled with the dew of heaven, whilst the earth around is parched; the flame which the many waters could not quench; the lily blooming amidst thorns; the garden shut against the infernal serpent; the fountain sealed, whose limpid water was never ruffled; the house of the Lord, whereon His eyes were ever fixed, and into which nothing defiled could ever enter; the mystic city, of which such glorious things are said. (Ps. lxxxvi. 3.) We delight in telling all thy glorious titles, O Mary! for thou art our Mother, and we love thee, and the Mother's glory is the glory of her children. Cease not to bless and protect all those that honour thy immense privilege, O thou who wert conceived on this day! May this feast fit us for that mystery, for which thy Conception, thy Birth, and thy Annunciation, are all preparations—the Birth of thy Jesus in Bethlehem: yea, dear Mother, we desire thy Jesus, give Him to us and satisfy the longings of our love.
The Impeccability of the Blessed Virgin Mary
An excerpt from Our Lady: Queen of the Religious Life, by Fr. Louis Colin C.SS.R.
The impeccability of the Virgin finds its explanation and its origin, first of all, in the Divine goodness, and then in the very plenitude of her interior life. It is the common work of God and Mary.
Our Lady owed the privilege of her moral incorruptibility in the first place to the wisdom, to the power and to the love of the Lord. Does not every perfect gift come from the Father of lights? The Trinity, who had presided at her creation and had kept all stain from her, must thereafter and for the same reasons watch over that first innocence and preserve it from every sin and imperfection. The future Mother of the Word, from the moment of her Immaculate Conception, and by the very merits of her Son, was forever confirmed in grace and in total purity.
"Logically Our Lady's Immaculate Conception brought with it her confirmation in grace; for the reasons that required that she be kept from the shadow of sin and from even the most ephemeral domination of the devil over her at the first moment of her existence, had efficacy and value for every moment of her life" (D. Gaston Desmaret).
Immunity from evil in Mary is explained also by reasons of the psychological order: exemption from all concupiscence, the depth of her faith, the perfection of her virtues and gifts, and especially the plenitude and ardor of her charity. In addition to a very special protection by Providence, Our Lady found in Providence an impregnable rampart and an invincible armor against all which could threaten her moral integrity and tarnish the splendor of her soul. Illumined as she was in her sublime contemplation, on the holiness of God, His sacred and imprescriptible rights, "seeing, as she did, in all sin a monstrosity, an injury against the Most High, a destruction of the order that the love of God has conceived for men" [William, La Vie de Marie, Mère de Jésus, I, 20, 21); free as she was from all passionate impulses and from all enslavement of the senses, with no possible collusion with the world, its spirit and its maxims, bountifully supplied with an incomparable sanctifying grace, rich with heroic virtues, always under the power of the Holy Ghost--how easy it was for the immaculate, "Beati immaculati in via--Blessed are the undefiled in the way" (Ps. 118: 1).
But what, perhaps more than anything else, enlightens and confirms this mystery of the innocence of Mary is the immensity of her love. "Mary ... had no other thought, no other desire, no other joy than God; ... her soul being as it were ... in a continual contemplation of God, the acts of love she made were innumerable.... She passed her life in contemplation ... frequently repeating an act of love" (Saint Alphonsus, The Glories of Mary). It is impossible actually to love God with all one's heart, with all one's strength and at the same time to depart even a little from His will and from His good pleasure. "Divine love inflamed her so that not the slightest imperfection could ever penetrate her life" (Richard of Saint Victor, De Emmanuele, II, XXIX).
The heart of Mary was a "brazier of candor," without smoke or cinder so that the flame which mounted from it was clear and consuming. "Mary is fair, from the root of her conception to the achievement of her glory" (Sertilanges, "Mois de Marie," in Les Cahiers de la Vierge). Conceived as she was in immaculate purity, it is in the same purity that her sanctity must be consummated.
To spot or mar a canvas of Raphael or of Rubens would be an act of vandalism. Our Lady is the purest masterpiece of God; shall we imagine, can we imagine, the Virgin herself defiling and staining that masterpiece?
And not only did Mary keep the brilliance of her original virginity intact, unbesmirched, pure, but that virginity of soul became every instant more and more radiant. She was constantly rising spiritually; the more the Virgin approached the Sun of Justice, the more she was clothed with the sun" (Apoc. 12:1); the more she was united and imbued with God, through faith and love, the more she participated in His infinite purity.
In fine, Our Lady was never more pure, more virginal, more immaculate than at the hour of her death. Her assumption into glory was only the crowning and the triumph of her royal purity.
The impeccability of the Virgin finds its explanation and its origin, first of all, in the Divine goodness, and then in the very plenitude of her interior life. It is the common work of God and Mary.
Our Lady owed the privilege of her moral incorruptibility in the first place to the wisdom, to the power and to the love of the Lord. Does not every perfect gift come from the Father of lights? The Trinity, who had presided at her creation and had kept all stain from her, must thereafter and for the same reasons watch over that first innocence and preserve it from every sin and imperfection. The future Mother of the Word, from the moment of her Immaculate Conception, and by the very merits of her Son, was forever confirmed in grace and in total purity.
"Logically Our Lady's Immaculate Conception brought with it her confirmation in grace; for the reasons that required that she be kept from the shadow of sin and from even the most ephemeral domination of the devil over her at the first moment of her existence, had efficacy and value for every moment of her life" (D. Gaston Desmaret).
Immunity from evil in Mary is explained also by reasons of the psychological order: exemption from all concupiscence, the depth of her faith, the perfection of her virtues and gifts, and especially the plenitude and ardor of her charity. In addition to a very special protection by Providence, Our Lady found in Providence an impregnable rampart and an invincible armor against all which could threaten her moral integrity and tarnish the splendor of her soul. Illumined as she was in her sublime contemplation, on the holiness of God, His sacred and imprescriptible rights, "seeing, as she did, in all sin a monstrosity, an injury against the Most High, a destruction of the order that the love of God has conceived for men" [William, La Vie de Marie, Mère de Jésus, I, 20, 21); free as she was from all passionate impulses and from all enslavement of the senses, with no possible collusion with the world, its spirit and its maxims, bountifully supplied with an incomparable sanctifying grace, rich with heroic virtues, always under the power of the Holy Ghost--how easy it was for the immaculate, "Beati immaculati in via--Blessed are the undefiled in the way" (Ps. 118: 1).
But what, perhaps more than anything else, enlightens and confirms this mystery of the innocence of Mary is the immensity of her love. "Mary ... had no other thought, no other desire, no other joy than God; ... her soul being as it were ... in a continual contemplation of God, the acts of love she made were innumerable.... She passed her life in contemplation ... frequently repeating an act of love" (Saint Alphonsus, The Glories of Mary). It is impossible actually to love God with all one's heart, with all one's strength and at the same time to depart even a little from His will and from His good pleasure. "Divine love inflamed her so that not the slightest imperfection could ever penetrate her life" (Richard of Saint Victor, De Emmanuele, II, XXIX).
The heart of Mary was a "brazier of candor," without smoke or cinder so that the flame which mounted from it was clear and consuming. "Mary is fair, from the root of her conception to the achievement of her glory" (Sertilanges, "Mois de Marie," in Les Cahiers de la Vierge). Conceived as she was in immaculate purity, it is in the same purity that her sanctity must be consummated.
To spot or mar a canvas of Raphael or of Rubens would be an act of vandalism. Our Lady is the purest masterpiece of God; shall we imagine, can we imagine, the Virgin herself defiling and staining that masterpiece?
And not only did Mary keep the brilliance of her original virginity intact, unbesmirched, pure, but that virginity of soul became every instant more and more radiant. She was constantly rising spiritually; the more the Virgin approached the Sun of Justice, the more she was clothed with the sun" (Apoc. 12:1); the more she was united and imbued with God, through faith and love, the more she participated in His infinite purity.
In fine, Our Lady was never more pure, more virginal, more immaculate than at the hour of her death. Her assumption into glory was only the crowning and the triumph of her royal purity.
Our Lady, The All-Pure
An excerpt from Our Lady: Queen of the Religious Life, by Fr. Louis Colin C.SS.R.
In regard to Mary, the liturgy shows itself lavish with titles reminding us of her candor, her innocence: she is all-beautiful, all-fair, all-immaculate; the virginal creature, inviolate, without stain, without spot, sinless; the sealed source, the enclosed garden, the closed door—in short, Purity itself.
This word, whose richness everyone senses, remains nevertheless in the minds of many, something vague, light and soft, imprecise. Let us try to analyze it and to grasp all that it contains.
The purity of a being consists in the absolute simplicity and the exclusive integrity of its nature. A substance is pure when it is all that it should be and nothing more, when nothing else is found in it, mixed with its essential bases, no dissimilar element, nothing which is contrary or foreign to its intrinsic structure or to its own particular qualities.
Purity, then, excludes all amalgam, all mixture, all alloy. Thus is it said that water is pure when it does not contain a single trace of detritus or miasma which can muddy or contaminate it. God is pure when it includes no trace of foreign mineral: tin, zinc, copper.
Likewise, thanks to certain chemical manipulations, one can analyze a compound, disassociate its different elements and reduce them to a simple state, a pure state.
A race remains pure as long as it resists all mixture of blood, all alliance foreign to its group, and keeps intact its distinctive features and its primitive virtues. Purity, then—as might be believed—is not something altogether negative, an absence of spot or blemish. On the contrary, it is a reality, a perfection of being: an immunity, an independence, a power of resistance against anything that might invade, disintegrate or corrupt it.
On this score, purity, like light, admits of infinite degrees. The more a substance maintains itself in its original integrity, safe from all destructive or harmful influence, the more pure it is.
And now, it will be easy for us to have an understanding, on a superior plane, in the more and supernatural domain, of purity of soul, particularly of the virginal and incorruptible purity of Our Lady.
Spiritual purity, which Saint Thomas holds to be the very foundation of sanctity (Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 81, a. 8c), would, then, consist in the absolute and permanent integrity of the supernatural life without any admixture of evil or foreign elements.
Baptism confers on the newborn, together with sanctifying grace, the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, a divine nature and marvelous powers of operation, which he must use in order to know God, to love Him, to serve Him, and by this means to merit eternal life.
It is this moral organism which it is of the utmost importance to keep intact in all its strength and splendor, dispelling all that might falsify, degrade, or debase our moral personality. Our first consideration is to remove anything that might destroy grace within us, that might soil our conscience, darken our faith, weaken our trust, cause charity to languish, sterilize our virtues—in short, anything that might form an obstacle to the fullness of our divine life an our perfect union with God.
Purity of soul in a Christian will spring from the soul’s fidelity in keeping the baptismal vows. Has this being not pledged himself to renounce Satan and the world, with its spirit, its maxims, its works; to live by faith as a child of God, as a living member of Jesus Christ in all things, in all places, and at all times bearing and glorifying the Most High in the holy temple of his body? (Cf. 1 Cor. 6:20.) This robe of innocence with which he was clothed at the baptismal font he will keep from every tear or spot so as to wear it immaculate before the tribunal of God.
To this fundamental purity of the Christian, the religious adds another which is deeper and more universal: a more complete and more definite separation from the corrupted and corrupting world, an irreducible opposition to everything that might fraudulently diminish his complete belonging and total subjection to the Lord, to all that might contaminate his spirit of poverty, chastity, obedience, all that might impoverish his interior life, prevent him from dying to self and being buried in Christ, from living henceforth only for God.
In brief, for a consecrated soul, purity would find its expression in this motto: “To be a religious, to be a religious completely, exclusively, and to be nothing but a religious.” Like Saint Benedict, he desired to be “alone with The Alone.”
Is it necessary to add that nobody here below possesses that spiritual candor in its fullness? How many distortions do we find in all men, even the most saintly, what weaknesses, what falls, what sins, what imperfections, what deficiencies! Who has ever been all that he should have been? Under the influence of multiple motives, every moral being becomes degraded and every life is contaminated.
A single creature is the exception: Our Lady. Alone, she was always, to the fullest extent of the term, integra et casta, she in whom all is pure. She was a virgin in body and in soul, a virgin in all her faculties and in all her senses, a virgin in all her thoughts, desires, affections, wishes, imaginings, memories; she was a virgin in all her activities, and in all her works. Having come forth immaculate from the Hand of the Creator, she was to remain so all her life.
The Immaculate Conception is a mystery of grace and, pre-eminently, of integrity. From the very first moment Mary possessed in the natural order and in the supernatural order, and in a becoming measure, all the perfections, virtues and gifts requisite for her future divine and human maternity and for her twofold role of co-redemptrix and universal mediatrix. She lacked nothing, absolutely nothing of what she should have, and she would continue to lack nothing throughout her life.
To this integrity was then added a grace of immunity: preservation from original sin. “We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine according to which, by a special grace and privilege of Almighty God and in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, the Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved from all stain of original sin from the very first instant of her conception, has been revealed by God and must therefore be firmly and constantly believed by all the faithful.” (Denziger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, n. 1641)
Because Our Lady was exempt from original corruption, she escaped by that very privilege the lamentable consequences of the sin of Adam. In her intelligence, her will, her heart, there was not the slightest trace of slime from the first fall or of the millenary atavism. Her whole being is one of absolute rectitude with no moral deformation or evil tendency. There was no discord in her harmonious soul. “The brightness of eternal light—candor … lucis eternae” (Wisdom 7:26); mirror without spot—“speculum justitiae”; royal beauty without the appearance of a wrinkle—she is “the Immaculate.”
Was Mary able during the whole of her earthly existence to keep intact that original purity which was superior to that of the angels and which God alone surpasses? Did she live always rich in her moral integrity and clad in her primal innocence?
The entire body of tradition teaches and Christian understanding has always affirmed that all through her life Mary avoided every serious fault. No theologian has ever disputed or refused to ascribe to the Mother of God this confirmation in grace, this privilege of sinlessness, even of impeccability.
“If Mary, by committing only one venial offense, which does not really deprive the soul of divine grace, might be said not to have been a worthy mother of God, how much more so if she had been stained with original sin, which would have made her an enemy of God, and a slave of the devil! Saint Augustine says, therefore, in a celebrated passage of his writings (De Natura et gratia, cap. XXVI) that, speaking of Mary, he would make no mention of sins, for the honor of that Lord whom she merited for her Son, and through whom she had the grace to conquer sin in every way” (Saint Alphonsus).
There is the same unanimity in regard to venial sin, deliberate or indeliberate, and for the same reason. In the judgment of the Council of Trent, “Man once justified cannot continue throughout his life to avoid all venial sin, without a special privilege like that which the Church recognizes as having been given to the Blessed Virgin.” (Session VI, canon 23, in Denziger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, n. 833)
“All pure was the Blessed Virgin, and without a stain; for, since she was exempt from original sin she did not afterwards commit any actual fault, mortal or venial” (Garrigou-Lagrange).
And Bossuet says: “Is there any just man who can escape those sins of weakness which we call venial? Although this supposition is so general and so true, the admirable Saint Augustine does not fear to exempt the most innocent Mary from it.”
Our Lady was able to avoid even those semi-deliberate, half-venial sins, of surprise, of weakness, of circumstance, from which even the greatest saints were not exempt. There was no surprise in that woman, always so vigilant and always mistress of herself; there was no compromise in that valiant Virgin, stronger than an army in battle array; there was no occasion to fall in that soul which always lived a stranger to the world and was completely lost in God.
If we are to believe the voice of sanctity, of theology, and of the heart, the moral virginity of Mary excluded even the tiniest voluntary imperfection. “Mary never committed a sin, not even the least” (Saint Alphonsus). “It was sovereignly becoming that the Blessed Virgin Mary, who had been destined to reinstate us, should triumph over the devil to the point of never yielding an inch nor a line to him, ad modicum” (Saint Thomas).
“In truth, Thou Thyself and Thy mother art alone, in every respect, of perfect beauty, ‘for in neither Thee nor Thy mother is found the slightest stain’” (Saint Ephraem). This doctrine Pius XII made his own, affirming in one of his encyclicals on the Blessed Virgin: “The perfect innocence of her souls [was] exempt from every fault!”
“The Fathers of the Church and theologians, by the very way in which they treat of Mary, exclude even the slightest voluntary imperfection,” observes Father Garrigou-Lagrange.
As she was free from all concupiscence and was absolute mistress of her interior faculties, spiritual and sensitive, she never experienced a spontaneous urge of selfishness, she never needed to fight or to repress the first movement of passion. We always observe some alloy even in the purest of souls, “a slight warping, an attachment. Mary is
Rectitude pure and simple. She is all-Virgin. There is not a disturbance, not a shadow.” (“Notre-Dame de la Route,” Les Cahiers de la Vierge, Nov. 1935, p. 89)
We would seek in vain for any manifestation in her of those faults of character or of temperament which are sequels of original sin or offshoots of heredity.
In that long, marvelously well-filled life, no time was lost, not a minute was squandered and barren. At every moment Mary was performing the work of sanctity and of divine glorification. “Mary did not cease to have her eyes fixed on the ultimate end of her journey, on God Himself, and she did not lose a minute of the time which was given to her. Every instant of her earthly life, through her accumulated and increasingly perfect merits, entered thus into the one instant of motionless eternity.” (Garrigou-Lagrange).
None of those half-acts of virtue (actus remissi) can be attributed to Mary which are so frequent with us, acts performed without eagerness or generosity, merely through routine or habit, without any great spirit of faith and love. With the Immaculate, the virtues bore only fruits that had reached their full maturity, and were juicy and savory. Everywhere and always Mary acted with the totality of the grace she had received, with the plenitude of her will and of her love, thus accomplishing all day long “the best possible,” “the most perfect.”
Thanks to her intimate and unbroken union with God, to her disengagement from all things created, her soul vibrated to every breath of the Holy Spirit with exquisite sensitivity and perfect docility. There was not a single call, a single invitation or desire of the Spouse which did not find a joyous echo and loving response in her heart.
Had she been questioned as to what she would have done if she could begin her life again, Our Lady would, without hesitation, have answered: “What I have done.” She had nothing to regret, nothing to repair. Like Jesus, she had done all things well: “Omnia bene fecit” (Mark 7:37).
A passage from the Bull Ineffabilis Deus of Pius IX seems to sum up very clearly the Catholic doctrine on the purity of the Virgin: “That is why, drawing from the treasure of His divinity, God lavished upon her more than upon all the angelic spirits, more than upon all the saints, an abundance of all celestial graces and enriched her with a marvelous profusion, in order that she might always be without stain, entirely exempt from the slavery of sin, all-beautiful, all-perfect, and have such a plentitude of innocence and of holiness that none could be conceived greater under God, and no mind but that of God could measure her greatness.”
In regard to Mary, the liturgy shows itself lavish with titles reminding us of her candor, her innocence: she is all-beautiful, all-fair, all-immaculate; the virginal creature, inviolate, without stain, without spot, sinless; the sealed source, the enclosed garden, the closed door—in short, Purity itself.
This word, whose richness everyone senses, remains nevertheless in the minds of many, something vague, light and soft, imprecise. Let us try to analyze it and to grasp all that it contains.
The purity of a being consists in the absolute simplicity and the exclusive integrity of its nature. A substance is pure when it is all that it should be and nothing more, when nothing else is found in it, mixed with its essential bases, no dissimilar element, nothing which is contrary or foreign to its intrinsic structure or to its own particular qualities.
Purity, then, excludes all amalgam, all mixture, all alloy. Thus is it said that water is pure when it does not contain a single trace of detritus or miasma which can muddy or contaminate it. God is pure when it includes no trace of foreign mineral: tin, zinc, copper.
Likewise, thanks to certain chemical manipulations, one can analyze a compound, disassociate its different elements and reduce them to a simple state, a pure state.
A race remains pure as long as it resists all mixture of blood, all alliance foreign to its group, and keeps intact its distinctive features and its primitive virtues. Purity, then—as might be believed—is not something altogether negative, an absence of spot or blemish. On the contrary, it is a reality, a perfection of being: an immunity, an independence, a power of resistance against anything that might invade, disintegrate or corrupt it.
On this score, purity, like light, admits of infinite degrees. The more a substance maintains itself in its original integrity, safe from all destructive or harmful influence, the more pure it is.
And now, it will be easy for us to have an understanding, on a superior plane, in the more and supernatural domain, of purity of soul, particularly of the virginal and incorruptible purity of Our Lady.
Spiritual purity, which Saint Thomas holds to be the very foundation of sanctity (Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 81, a. 8c), would, then, consist in the absolute and permanent integrity of the supernatural life without any admixture of evil or foreign elements.
Baptism confers on the newborn, together with sanctifying grace, the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, a divine nature and marvelous powers of operation, which he must use in order to know God, to love Him, to serve Him, and by this means to merit eternal life.
It is this moral organism which it is of the utmost importance to keep intact in all its strength and splendor, dispelling all that might falsify, degrade, or debase our moral personality. Our first consideration is to remove anything that might destroy grace within us, that might soil our conscience, darken our faith, weaken our trust, cause charity to languish, sterilize our virtues—in short, anything that might form an obstacle to the fullness of our divine life an our perfect union with God.
Purity of soul in a Christian will spring from the soul’s fidelity in keeping the baptismal vows. Has this being not pledged himself to renounce Satan and the world, with its spirit, its maxims, its works; to live by faith as a child of God, as a living member of Jesus Christ in all things, in all places, and at all times bearing and glorifying the Most High in the holy temple of his body? (Cf. 1 Cor. 6:20.) This robe of innocence with which he was clothed at the baptismal font he will keep from every tear or spot so as to wear it immaculate before the tribunal of God.
To this fundamental purity of the Christian, the religious adds another which is deeper and more universal: a more complete and more definite separation from the corrupted and corrupting world, an irreducible opposition to everything that might fraudulently diminish his complete belonging and total subjection to the Lord, to all that might contaminate his spirit of poverty, chastity, obedience, all that might impoverish his interior life, prevent him from dying to self and being buried in Christ, from living henceforth only for God.
In brief, for a consecrated soul, purity would find its expression in this motto: “To be a religious, to be a religious completely, exclusively, and to be nothing but a religious.” Like Saint Benedict, he desired to be “alone with The Alone.”
Is it necessary to add that nobody here below possesses that spiritual candor in its fullness? How many distortions do we find in all men, even the most saintly, what weaknesses, what falls, what sins, what imperfections, what deficiencies! Who has ever been all that he should have been? Under the influence of multiple motives, every moral being becomes degraded and every life is contaminated.
A single creature is the exception: Our Lady. Alone, she was always, to the fullest extent of the term, integra et casta, she in whom all is pure. She was a virgin in body and in soul, a virgin in all her faculties and in all her senses, a virgin in all her thoughts, desires, affections, wishes, imaginings, memories; she was a virgin in all her activities, and in all her works. Having come forth immaculate from the Hand of the Creator, she was to remain so all her life.
The Immaculate Conception is a mystery of grace and, pre-eminently, of integrity. From the very first moment Mary possessed in the natural order and in the supernatural order, and in a becoming measure, all the perfections, virtues and gifts requisite for her future divine and human maternity and for her twofold role of co-redemptrix and universal mediatrix. She lacked nothing, absolutely nothing of what she should have, and she would continue to lack nothing throughout her life.
To this integrity was then added a grace of immunity: preservation from original sin. “We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine according to which, by a special grace and privilege of Almighty God and in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, the Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved from all stain of original sin from the very first instant of her conception, has been revealed by God and must therefore be firmly and constantly believed by all the faithful.” (Denziger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, n. 1641)
Because Our Lady was exempt from original corruption, she escaped by that very privilege the lamentable consequences of the sin of Adam. In her intelligence, her will, her heart, there was not the slightest trace of slime from the first fall or of the millenary atavism. Her whole being is one of absolute rectitude with no moral deformation or evil tendency. There was no discord in her harmonious soul. “The brightness of eternal light—candor … lucis eternae” (Wisdom 7:26); mirror without spot—“speculum justitiae”; royal beauty without the appearance of a wrinkle—she is “the Immaculate.”
Was Mary able during the whole of her earthly existence to keep intact that original purity which was superior to that of the angels and which God alone surpasses? Did she live always rich in her moral integrity and clad in her primal innocence?
The entire body of tradition teaches and Christian understanding has always affirmed that all through her life Mary avoided every serious fault. No theologian has ever disputed or refused to ascribe to the Mother of God this confirmation in grace, this privilege of sinlessness, even of impeccability.
“If Mary, by committing only one venial offense, which does not really deprive the soul of divine grace, might be said not to have been a worthy mother of God, how much more so if she had been stained with original sin, which would have made her an enemy of God, and a slave of the devil! Saint Augustine says, therefore, in a celebrated passage of his writings (De Natura et gratia, cap. XXVI) that, speaking of Mary, he would make no mention of sins, for the honor of that Lord whom she merited for her Son, and through whom she had the grace to conquer sin in every way” (Saint Alphonsus).
There is the same unanimity in regard to venial sin, deliberate or indeliberate, and for the same reason. In the judgment of the Council of Trent, “Man once justified cannot continue throughout his life to avoid all venial sin, without a special privilege like that which the Church recognizes as having been given to the Blessed Virgin.” (Session VI, canon 23, in Denziger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, n. 833)
“All pure was the Blessed Virgin, and without a stain; for, since she was exempt from original sin she did not afterwards commit any actual fault, mortal or venial” (Garrigou-Lagrange).
And Bossuet says: “Is there any just man who can escape those sins of weakness which we call venial? Although this supposition is so general and so true, the admirable Saint Augustine does not fear to exempt the most innocent Mary from it.”
Our Lady was able to avoid even those semi-deliberate, half-venial sins, of surprise, of weakness, of circumstance, from which even the greatest saints were not exempt. There was no surprise in that woman, always so vigilant and always mistress of herself; there was no compromise in that valiant Virgin, stronger than an army in battle array; there was no occasion to fall in that soul which always lived a stranger to the world and was completely lost in God.
If we are to believe the voice of sanctity, of theology, and of the heart, the moral virginity of Mary excluded even the tiniest voluntary imperfection. “Mary never committed a sin, not even the least” (Saint Alphonsus). “It was sovereignly becoming that the Blessed Virgin Mary, who had been destined to reinstate us, should triumph over the devil to the point of never yielding an inch nor a line to him, ad modicum” (Saint Thomas).
“In truth, Thou Thyself and Thy mother art alone, in every respect, of perfect beauty, ‘for in neither Thee nor Thy mother is found the slightest stain’” (Saint Ephraem). This doctrine Pius XII made his own, affirming in one of his encyclicals on the Blessed Virgin: “The perfect innocence of her souls [was] exempt from every fault!”
“The Fathers of the Church and theologians, by the very way in which they treat of Mary, exclude even the slightest voluntary imperfection,” observes Father Garrigou-Lagrange.
As she was free from all concupiscence and was absolute mistress of her interior faculties, spiritual and sensitive, she never experienced a spontaneous urge of selfishness, she never needed to fight or to repress the first movement of passion. We always observe some alloy even in the purest of souls, “a slight warping, an attachment. Mary is
Rectitude pure and simple. She is all-Virgin. There is not a disturbance, not a shadow.” (“Notre-Dame de la Route,” Les Cahiers de la Vierge, Nov. 1935, p. 89)
We would seek in vain for any manifestation in her of those faults of character or of temperament which are sequels of original sin or offshoots of heredity.
In that long, marvelously well-filled life, no time was lost, not a minute was squandered and barren. At every moment Mary was performing the work of sanctity and of divine glorification. “Mary did not cease to have her eyes fixed on the ultimate end of her journey, on God Himself, and she did not lose a minute of the time which was given to her. Every instant of her earthly life, through her accumulated and increasingly perfect merits, entered thus into the one instant of motionless eternity.” (Garrigou-Lagrange).
None of those half-acts of virtue (actus remissi) can be attributed to Mary which are so frequent with us, acts performed without eagerness or generosity, merely through routine or habit, without any great spirit of faith and love. With the Immaculate, the virtues bore only fruits that had reached their full maturity, and were juicy and savory. Everywhere and always Mary acted with the totality of the grace she had received, with the plenitude of her will and of her love, thus accomplishing all day long “the best possible,” “the most perfect.”
Thanks to her intimate and unbroken union with God, to her disengagement from all things created, her soul vibrated to every breath of the Holy Spirit with exquisite sensitivity and perfect docility. There was not a single call, a single invitation or desire of the Spouse which did not find a joyous echo and loving response in her heart.
Had she been questioned as to what she would have done if she could begin her life again, Our Lady would, without hesitation, have answered: “What I have done.” She had nothing to regret, nothing to repair. Like Jesus, she had done all things well: “Omnia bene fecit” (Mark 7:37).
A passage from the Bull Ineffabilis Deus of Pius IX seems to sum up very clearly the Catholic doctrine on the purity of the Virgin: “That is why, drawing from the treasure of His divinity, God lavished upon her more than upon all the angelic spirits, more than upon all the saints, an abundance of all celestial graces and enriched her with a marvelous profusion, in order that she might always be without stain, entirely exempt from the slavery of sin, all-beautiful, all-perfect, and have such a plentitude of innocence and of holiness that none could be conceived greater under God, and no mind but that of God could measure her greatness.”
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Chastisement during the Middle Ages
From http://www.spiritdaily.com/blackplague1.htm
[Adapted from The Last Secret by Michael H. Brown]
Are our times like the Middle Ages? And if so, might we one day face plague?
Let's take a look, today, and in a second installment next week, at the "black death," which occurred in the 14th century.
That great disaster -- one of the greatest on record -- took place at a time of immorality, irreligion (the Mass was celebrated in some places like a circus), and materialism.
It followed on the heels of a climate swerve -- decades of strangely warm weather (corn was grown as far north as Norway) and ferocious storms, followed by a sudden cooling.
In England a monk named Gervase of Canterbury reported that in 1178 "on the Sunday before the Feast of St. John the Baptist after sunset when the moon had first become visible a marvelous phenomenon was witnessed by some five or more men who were sitting there facing the moon. Now there was a bright new moon, and as usual in that phase its horns were tilted toward the east; and suddenly the upper horn split in two. From the midpoint of the division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out, over a considerable distance, fire, hot coals, and sparks. Meanwhile the body of the moon which was below writhed, as it were, in anxiety, and, to put it in the words of those who reported it to me and saw in with their own eyes, the moon throbbed like a wounded snake."
It sounded like they had seen asteroids hitting the lunar surface, while on earth there were wholesale migrations.
Whether from heightened El Niño activity, tidal waves that may have resulted from meteors, or some mysterious shift, Indians in South America seemed to be avoiding the coasts and islanders were moving all over the Pacific.
A pale had descended on the planet.
Crops crashed and starving peasants roamed the countryside. As the weather continued to change, prophets rose with hysterical prophecies (the antichrist, the end of the world).
From China came word of bizarre events.
"The mountain Tsincheou disappeared and enormous clefts appeared in the earth," recounted writer George Deaux. "Near King-sai, it was said, the mountains of Ki-ming-chan utterly fell in and in their place appeared suddenly a lake more than a hundred leagues in circumference."
There was "subterranean thunder" in Canton and a flood along the Yellow River that a climatologist named H. H. Lamb described as "one of the greatest weather disasters ever known, alleged to have taken seven million lives in the great river valleys of China.
In a province "hard by Greater India" were "horrors and unheard of tempests" for a span of three days, according to a Flemish missionary who reported to Church authorities that "sheets of fire fell upon the earth, mingled with hailstones of marvelous size; which slew almost all, from the greatest to the least."
In Europe, earthquakes shook Greece, washed it with tidal waves, collapsed highland in Cyprus, and did the same in Naples, Pisa, Padua, Bologna, and Venice.
Tremors rumbled all the way into Germany.
At St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, tremors had cause the bells to sound.
The Middle Ages were not overrun by abortion (it was forbidden in the Latin text of the Hippocratic Oath), but there was plenty of other sin, sin attracts demons, and evil brings accidents and illness.
When man is in sin, there is tribulation.
If modern Americans studied this time period, they would find it sobering (to say the least).
People forgot devotion in the High Middle Ages, they forgot the truths of the Savior, they had fallen deeply into materialism, there was crime, there was corruption in the Church, there was suddenly high fashion, and vanity (it was even when they invented the vanity mirror), and so something began to arrive, something so grave as to defy prophecy, something that, as it turned out, was like Pompeii and the destruction, thirteen centuries before, of Jerusalem.
Something that was called the Black Death or bubonic plague.
Born in the Asian hinterlands and carried by Mongol horsemen, the disease was marked byfever and huge swellings the size of eggs, a combination of several bacterial agents that thrive in rats and their fleas. Most prominent was a lethal bacteria that caused pneumonic and septicaemic illness -- attacking the lungs and causing dark blotches on the skin -- the pneumonic aspect similar to what has been reported in certain mutant strains of the current H1N1 virus.
Perhaps the skin discoloration or the fact black rats were carriers was why they called it the "black death," but more likely it was simply its lethality, the utter darkness of its effect -- the fact that once introduced into an area it could spread by human contact and kill in days.
It preyed especially on populations like China's (where ironically the zodiac included a "Year of the Rat" and where the droughts, locusts, and floods had weakened the population in the 1330s), and although we don't know exactly how many died from it there, the Chinese population would be reduced from 123 million in 1200 to a mere 65 million by the end of the 14th century.
It does us well to revisit what plague can do -- and why we need God's protection.
When it comes to pandemics, one can run but not hide.
In 1339 the first record of the plague's westward movement showed in mortalities near Lake Issyk in the Tien region. From central Asia it moved on overland routes or through merchant shipping to the Middle East and then Europe (for by now Asia was a source of silk, spices, and other luxuries). In 1345 the plague was at Sarai, a major trading center on the lower Volga in what is today Russia, and within a year it was in the Caucasus and Azerbaijan.
Dead bodies littered territories from Armenia to India, the infirm no doubt fleeing to Vedic gods as this mysterious and awful ailment, this horrid coughing of blood, which could be spread by merely breathing near or touching someone -- simple contact with contaminated clothing -- depopulated much of the subcontinent and found its way around Yemen to the Red Sea.
Kurds fled in vain to the mountains and hardly anyone survived in places like Caesarea (the current⌐day Iran⌐Iraq region). Syria and Egypt were hit, and so was Mecca -- despite Mohammed's preaching that disease would never reach the Holy City.
Within two years the entire Islamic world would be engulfed -- losing from a third to fifty percent of its population. Strange phenomena were noted, including lights at tombs and aerial phenomena.
As the disease made way over commercial routes, the Christian parts of the eastern Mediterranean were likewise devastated.
After ravaging Constantinople, the Black Death was carried on Italian ships to Cyprus in 1347 -- the same year that this region (as if in pre-warning) suffered an earthquake and several tidal waves.
The water had swept over large parts of the island, destroying olive groves and fishing fleets.
Islanders murdered many of their Arab slaves for fear they would take advantage of the chaos, and then fled inland but couldn't avoid what one chronicler called "a pestiferous wind" that spread "so poisonous an odor that many, being overpowered by it, fell down suddenly and expired in dreadful agony."
Earthquakes also did severe damage in Rome, Naples, Pisa, and Venice just before the plague arrived in those places. The entrance into Western Europe came at least in part through the Sicilian port of Messina, where residents insisted there were demonic entities transfigured into the shape of dogs and that these dogs wreaked the harm on human beings.
So aghast was the populace that few ventured from their homes until by common consent and at the wish of the archbishop they gathered their courage and marched around the city reciting litanies.
According to a scribe named Michael of Piazza, "while the whole population was thus processing around the streets, a black dog... appeared among them, gnashing with his teeth and rushing upon them and breaking all the silver vessels and lamps and candlesticks..."
It was a terrifying and prodigious vision and such was also captured by artists who portrayed the plague as spread by demons.
Pope Clement VI declared it a "pestilence with which God is afflicting Christian people" and it seemed indeed like the stench of hell, a plague so disgusting that it inspired less pity than detestation.
Many theorized that poisonous fumes were rising from cracks in the earth. Sulfur from the netherworld?
Meteors were seen (known as "black comets"), and there were reports of strange columns of fire. These were witnessed in Florence and Avignon -- above the papal palace (which was now in France)! A ball of flame was also seen over Paris, and there were phantoms -- demons that in places like Messina were said to transform into frightening "dogs."
More horrid, however, was the disease itself, which rapidly moved west and north, striking Avignon. The death rate there was fifty percent. Hundreds who worked at the papal palace were turned into corpses; Pope Clement VI fled, and such was the shortage of priests that laymen had to give Last Rites. In Vienna the evil came as a hovering light that was exorcised by a bishop.
Spain fell under assault. Five million died in France. Throughout Europe cadavers were left in the front of homes like refuse and even scavenging animals wouldn't touch them. In England in one field 5,000 lay dead and within two years half of the 17,500 monks, nuns, and friars in that nation's monasteries were no longer counted among the living.
An astonishing 66 percent of clergy in Buckinghamshire were killed, and by 1350 the death toll was at least 35 percent in London. It was relentless. It was sinister. At sea, ghost ships wandered. It was as if the whole world had been placed "within the grasp of the Evil One," noted a friar in Kilkenny, Ireland, who wondered just before his own death if "any child of Adam may escape this pestilence."
It was a good question; never before (at least not since Noah) had there been a trauma like this; on three continents the very existence of homo sapiens was threatened. Men and women, driven to despair, wandered as if mad across the breadth of Europe.
According to the Neuburg Chronicle "cattle were left to stray unattended in the fields for no one had any inclination to concern themselves about the future.
The wolves, which came down from the mountains to attack the sheep, acted in a way which had never been heard before. As if alarmed by some invisible warning they turned and fled back into the wilderness."
In desperation the residents of Messina, Italy, fled by foot and horse six miles outside of town to get an image of the Madonna said to have special power, but as the horse carrying it approached Messina the animal suddenly stood motionless and fixed like a rock.
That was interpreted as a sign that what was occurring was God's requital of an unrighteous, blood⌐stained people and that Mary was not to intervene.
In the words of Michael of Piazza, the Blessed Mother judged the city to be "so hateful and so profoundly stained with blood and sin that she turned her back on it, being not only unwilling to enter therein, but even abhorring the very sight thereof."
Really Mary never turned her back on her children but the protection of Heaven did seem absent and there was a lapse in the Virgin's apparitions, which had been ongoing for many decades -- a relative silence during the 1340s, except at a Ukrainian monastery called Pochaiv -- as the scourge continued to cause wreckage.
It was the same casualty count -- one⌐third -- as prophesied in Revelation 9:15.
Aimless ships were spotted with dead crews and by December of 1347 the disease had spread to much of southern Europe, making its entry through various ports and fishing villages.
There it coursed into the central and northern parts of Europe through other harbors like Genoa, where three galleys which had put to port after being driven by fierce winds from the East were found to be laden not just with the sought-after spices but also with Pasteurella pestis. Terrified residents had attacked the ships with flaming arrows "and diverse engines of war" in hopes of keeping it out, but it was already too late:
The plague had found its way ashore and also entered Venice and Pisa.
In hard-hit Florence an estimated 100,000 died, the stately homes, the grand palaces, all evacuated. Brothers abandoned brothers, uncles their nephews, parents their children.
As the classicist Giovanni Boccaccio phrased it, "there came the death⌐dealing pestilence, which, through the operation of the heavenly bodies or of our own iniquitous dealings, being sent down upon mankind for our correction by the just wrath of God, had some years before appeared in the parts of the East, and after having bereft these latter of an innumerable number of inhabitants, extending without cease from one place to another, had now unhappily spread towards the West."
It was devastating. It was eerie. As the plague arrived church bells were silenced and black flags flapped in the quiet breeze.
While conservative estimates say 33 percent of Italians succumbed, many scholars would put the mortality for that particular nation -- lined as it was with ports -- at forty or even fifty percent.
The same would hold true for the rest of Europe.
[Adapted from The Last Secret by Michael H. Brown]
Are our times like the Middle Ages? And if so, might we one day face plague?
Let's take a look, today, and in a second installment next week, at the "black death," which occurred in the 14th century.
That great disaster -- one of the greatest on record -- took place at a time of immorality, irreligion (the Mass was celebrated in some places like a circus), and materialism.
It followed on the heels of a climate swerve -- decades of strangely warm weather (corn was grown as far north as Norway) and ferocious storms, followed by a sudden cooling.
In England a monk named Gervase of Canterbury reported that in 1178 "on the Sunday before the Feast of St. John the Baptist after sunset when the moon had first become visible a marvelous phenomenon was witnessed by some five or more men who were sitting there facing the moon. Now there was a bright new moon, and as usual in that phase its horns were tilted toward the east; and suddenly the upper horn split in two. From the midpoint of the division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out, over a considerable distance, fire, hot coals, and sparks. Meanwhile the body of the moon which was below writhed, as it were, in anxiety, and, to put it in the words of those who reported it to me and saw in with their own eyes, the moon throbbed like a wounded snake."
It sounded like they had seen asteroids hitting the lunar surface, while on earth there were wholesale migrations.
Whether from heightened El Niño activity, tidal waves that may have resulted from meteors, or some mysterious shift, Indians in South America seemed to be avoiding the coasts and islanders were moving all over the Pacific.
A pale had descended on the planet.
Crops crashed and starving peasants roamed the countryside. As the weather continued to change, prophets rose with hysterical prophecies (the antichrist, the end of the world).
From China came word of bizarre events.
"The mountain Tsincheou disappeared and enormous clefts appeared in the earth," recounted writer George Deaux. "Near King-sai, it was said, the mountains of Ki-ming-chan utterly fell in and in their place appeared suddenly a lake more than a hundred leagues in circumference."
There was "subterranean thunder" in Canton and a flood along the Yellow River that a climatologist named H. H. Lamb described as "one of the greatest weather disasters ever known, alleged to have taken seven million lives in the great river valleys of China.
In a province "hard by Greater India" were "horrors and unheard of tempests" for a span of three days, according to a Flemish missionary who reported to Church authorities that "sheets of fire fell upon the earth, mingled with hailstones of marvelous size; which slew almost all, from the greatest to the least."
In Europe, earthquakes shook Greece, washed it with tidal waves, collapsed highland in Cyprus, and did the same in Naples, Pisa, Padua, Bologna, and Venice.
Tremors rumbled all the way into Germany.
At St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, tremors had cause the bells to sound.
The Middle Ages were not overrun by abortion (it was forbidden in the Latin text of the Hippocratic Oath), but there was plenty of other sin, sin attracts demons, and evil brings accidents and illness.
When man is in sin, there is tribulation.
If modern Americans studied this time period, they would find it sobering (to say the least).
People forgot devotion in the High Middle Ages, they forgot the truths of the Savior, they had fallen deeply into materialism, there was crime, there was corruption in the Church, there was suddenly high fashion, and vanity (it was even when they invented the vanity mirror), and so something began to arrive, something so grave as to defy prophecy, something that, as it turned out, was like Pompeii and the destruction, thirteen centuries before, of Jerusalem.
Something that was called the Black Death or bubonic plague.
Born in the Asian hinterlands and carried by Mongol horsemen, the disease was marked byfever and huge swellings the size of eggs, a combination of several bacterial agents that thrive in rats and their fleas. Most prominent was a lethal bacteria that caused pneumonic and septicaemic illness -- attacking the lungs and causing dark blotches on the skin -- the pneumonic aspect similar to what has been reported in certain mutant strains of the current H1N1 virus.
Perhaps the skin discoloration or the fact black rats were carriers was why they called it the "black death," but more likely it was simply its lethality, the utter darkness of its effect -- the fact that once introduced into an area it could spread by human contact and kill in days.
It preyed especially on populations like China's (where ironically the zodiac included a "Year of the Rat" and where the droughts, locusts, and floods had weakened the population in the 1330s), and although we don't know exactly how many died from it there, the Chinese population would be reduced from 123 million in 1200 to a mere 65 million by the end of the 14th century.
It does us well to revisit what plague can do -- and why we need God's protection.
When it comes to pandemics, one can run but not hide.
In 1339 the first record of the plague's westward movement showed in mortalities near Lake Issyk in the Tien region. From central Asia it moved on overland routes or through merchant shipping to the Middle East and then Europe (for by now Asia was a source of silk, spices, and other luxuries). In 1345 the plague was at Sarai, a major trading center on the lower Volga in what is today Russia, and within a year it was in the Caucasus and Azerbaijan.
Dead bodies littered territories from Armenia to India, the infirm no doubt fleeing to Vedic gods as this mysterious and awful ailment, this horrid coughing of blood, which could be spread by merely breathing near or touching someone -- simple contact with contaminated clothing -- depopulated much of the subcontinent and found its way around Yemen to the Red Sea.
Kurds fled in vain to the mountains and hardly anyone survived in places like Caesarea (the current⌐day Iran⌐Iraq region). Syria and Egypt were hit, and so was Mecca -- despite Mohammed's preaching that disease would never reach the Holy City.
Within two years the entire Islamic world would be engulfed -- losing from a third to fifty percent of its population. Strange phenomena were noted, including lights at tombs and aerial phenomena.
As the disease made way over commercial routes, the Christian parts of the eastern Mediterranean were likewise devastated.
After ravaging Constantinople, the Black Death was carried on Italian ships to Cyprus in 1347 -- the same year that this region (as if in pre-warning) suffered an earthquake and several tidal waves.
The water had swept over large parts of the island, destroying olive groves and fishing fleets.
Islanders murdered many of their Arab slaves for fear they would take advantage of the chaos, and then fled inland but couldn't avoid what one chronicler called "a pestiferous wind" that spread "so poisonous an odor that many, being overpowered by it, fell down suddenly and expired in dreadful agony."
Earthquakes also did severe damage in Rome, Naples, Pisa, and Venice just before the plague arrived in those places. The entrance into Western Europe came at least in part through the Sicilian port of Messina, where residents insisted there were demonic entities transfigured into the shape of dogs and that these dogs wreaked the harm on human beings.
So aghast was the populace that few ventured from their homes until by common consent and at the wish of the archbishop they gathered their courage and marched around the city reciting litanies.
According to a scribe named Michael of Piazza, "while the whole population was thus processing around the streets, a black dog... appeared among them, gnashing with his teeth and rushing upon them and breaking all the silver vessels and lamps and candlesticks..."
It was a terrifying and prodigious vision and such was also captured by artists who portrayed the plague as spread by demons.
Pope Clement VI declared it a "pestilence with which God is afflicting Christian people" and it seemed indeed like the stench of hell, a plague so disgusting that it inspired less pity than detestation.
Many theorized that poisonous fumes were rising from cracks in the earth. Sulfur from the netherworld?
Meteors were seen (known as "black comets"), and there were reports of strange columns of fire. These were witnessed in Florence and Avignon -- above the papal palace (which was now in France)! A ball of flame was also seen over Paris, and there were phantoms -- demons that in places like Messina were said to transform into frightening "dogs."
More horrid, however, was the disease itself, which rapidly moved west and north, striking Avignon. The death rate there was fifty percent. Hundreds who worked at the papal palace were turned into corpses; Pope Clement VI fled, and such was the shortage of priests that laymen had to give Last Rites. In Vienna the evil came as a hovering light that was exorcised by a bishop.
Spain fell under assault. Five million died in France. Throughout Europe cadavers were left in the front of homes like refuse and even scavenging animals wouldn't touch them. In England in one field 5,000 lay dead and within two years half of the 17,500 monks, nuns, and friars in that nation's monasteries were no longer counted among the living.
An astonishing 66 percent of clergy in Buckinghamshire were killed, and by 1350 the death toll was at least 35 percent in London. It was relentless. It was sinister. At sea, ghost ships wandered. It was as if the whole world had been placed "within the grasp of the Evil One," noted a friar in Kilkenny, Ireland, who wondered just before his own death if "any child of Adam may escape this pestilence."
It was a good question; never before (at least not since Noah) had there been a trauma like this; on three continents the very existence of homo sapiens was threatened. Men and women, driven to despair, wandered as if mad across the breadth of Europe.
According to the Neuburg Chronicle "cattle were left to stray unattended in the fields for no one had any inclination to concern themselves about the future.
The wolves, which came down from the mountains to attack the sheep, acted in a way which had never been heard before. As if alarmed by some invisible warning they turned and fled back into the wilderness."
In desperation the residents of Messina, Italy, fled by foot and horse six miles outside of town to get an image of the Madonna said to have special power, but as the horse carrying it approached Messina the animal suddenly stood motionless and fixed like a rock.
That was interpreted as a sign that what was occurring was God's requital of an unrighteous, blood⌐stained people and that Mary was not to intervene.
In the words of Michael of Piazza, the Blessed Mother judged the city to be "so hateful and so profoundly stained with blood and sin that she turned her back on it, being not only unwilling to enter therein, but even abhorring the very sight thereof."
Really Mary never turned her back on her children but the protection of Heaven did seem absent and there was a lapse in the Virgin's apparitions, which had been ongoing for many decades -- a relative silence during the 1340s, except at a Ukrainian monastery called Pochaiv -- as the scourge continued to cause wreckage.
It was the same casualty count -- one⌐third -- as prophesied in Revelation 9:15.
Aimless ships were spotted with dead crews and by December of 1347 the disease had spread to much of southern Europe, making its entry through various ports and fishing villages.
There it coursed into the central and northern parts of Europe through other harbors like Genoa, where three galleys which had put to port after being driven by fierce winds from the East were found to be laden not just with the sought-after spices but also with Pasteurella pestis. Terrified residents had attacked the ships with flaming arrows "and diverse engines of war" in hopes of keeping it out, but it was already too late:
The plague had found its way ashore and also entered Venice and Pisa.
In hard-hit Florence an estimated 100,000 died, the stately homes, the grand palaces, all evacuated. Brothers abandoned brothers, uncles their nephews, parents their children.
As the classicist Giovanni Boccaccio phrased it, "there came the death⌐dealing pestilence, which, through the operation of the heavenly bodies or of our own iniquitous dealings, being sent down upon mankind for our correction by the just wrath of God, had some years before appeared in the parts of the East, and after having bereft these latter of an innumerable number of inhabitants, extending without cease from one place to another, had now unhappily spread towards the West."
It was devastating. It was eerie. As the plague arrived church bells were silenced and black flags flapped in the quiet breeze.
While conservative estimates say 33 percent of Italians succumbed, many scholars would put the mortality for that particular nation -- lined as it was with ports -- at forty or even fifty percent.
The same would hold true for the rest of Europe.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Hospital sees increase in eye condition after Knock 'visions'
From www.irishtimes.com
The Irish Times - Wednesday, December 2, 2009
PAMELA DUNCAN
A Galway eye surgeon has described as “unprecedented” the rise in the number of cases of an eye condition which he says can be directly attributed to people staring at the sun during recent events at the Knock shrine.
Dr Eamonn O’Donoghue, a consultant ophthalmologist surgeon in University Hospital Galway, says the hospital would usually see one case of solar retinopathy “at most” per year.
However, this year there have been five such cases, all of which have been linked to events at Knock.
Dr O’Donoghue said people needed to be warned of the condition as it was “potentially very, very dangerous” and could cause long-term damage to the most vulnerable part of the eye.
“These people came in because they have had a significant reduction in their vision and they could very well be a smaller representative sample,” Dr O’Donoghue said, adding that two of those who had presented to the hospital had also reported that other members of their families had suffered visual damage.
“It can potentially lead to blindness with prolonged exposure,” Dr O’Donoghue said. While he was unaware how the events were organised, he said, it would be “profoundly irresponsible” for anyone to encourage people to stare at the sun.
About 10,000 people attended a supposed apparition of the Virgin Mary at the Knock shrine in Co Mayo on October 31st. At this, and at a similar event on October 11th, people claimed to see the sun shimmering, changing colour and “dancing in the sky”.
Another apparition has been forecast by visionary Joe Coleman for this Saturday at 3pm. Attempts to contact Mr Coleman last night were unsuccessful.
Solar retinopathy, or eclipse retinopathy as it is also known, affects the macula and can cause a significant reduction in vision.
It can also lead to altered images, altered colour perception and blind spots.
While most people will recover their vision within six months, solar retinopathy has the potential to have a long-term degenerative effect on the retina.
He said that reports of people seeing colours dancing in front of the sun could also be explained by the condition, describing it as “sort of a cheap trick”.
“If you stare at the sun for long enough you’re going to get some visual disturbances. Not only will you get reduced vision but also a condition called metamorphopsia,” he said, adding that this could explain such visual alterations.
“Since the time of Galileo people have known that looking directly at the sun can do damage to your eyes,” Dr O’Donoghue added.
The Irish Times - Wednesday, December 2, 2009
PAMELA DUNCAN
A Galway eye surgeon has described as “unprecedented” the rise in the number of cases of an eye condition which he says can be directly attributed to people staring at the sun during recent events at the Knock shrine.
Dr Eamonn O’Donoghue, a consultant ophthalmologist surgeon in University Hospital Galway, says the hospital would usually see one case of solar retinopathy “at most” per year.
However, this year there have been five such cases, all of which have been linked to events at Knock.
Dr O’Donoghue said people needed to be warned of the condition as it was “potentially very, very dangerous” and could cause long-term damage to the most vulnerable part of the eye.
“These people came in because they have had a significant reduction in their vision and they could very well be a smaller representative sample,” Dr O’Donoghue said, adding that two of those who had presented to the hospital had also reported that other members of their families had suffered visual damage.
“It can potentially lead to blindness with prolonged exposure,” Dr O’Donoghue said. While he was unaware how the events were organised, he said, it would be “profoundly irresponsible” for anyone to encourage people to stare at the sun.
About 10,000 people attended a supposed apparition of the Virgin Mary at the Knock shrine in Co Mayo on October 31st. At this, and at a similar event on October 11th, people claimed to see the sun shimmering, changing colour and “dancing in the sky”.
Another apparition has been forecast by visionary Joe Coleman for this Saturday at 3pm. Attempts to contact Mr Coleman last night were unsuccessful.
Solar retinopathy, or eclipse retinopathy as it is also known, affects the macula and can cause a significant reduction in vision.
It can also lead to altered images, altered colour perception and blind spots.
While most people will recover their vision within six months, solar retinopathy has the potential to have a long-term degenerative effect on the retina.
He said that reports of people seeing colours dancing in front of the sun could also be explained by the condition, describing it as “sort of a cheap trick”.
“If you stare at the sun for long enough you’re going to get some visual disturbances. Not only will you get reduced vision but also a condition called metamorphopsia,” he said, adding that this could explain such visual alterations.
“Since the time of Galileo people have known that looking directly at the sun can do damage to your eyes,” Dr O’Donoghue added.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
"The Mystery of Advent" from Dom Gueranger's "Liturgical Year"
Taken from http://www.communityofhopeinc.org/Liturgical%20Year.html#Advent
If, having described the characteristic features of Advent which distinguish it from the rest of the year, we would penetrate into the profound Mystery which occupies the mind of the Church during this season, we find that the Mystery of this Coming, or Advent, of Jesus is at once simple and threefold. It is simple for it is the one same Son of God that is coming; it is threefold because He comes at three different times and in three different ways.
'In the first coming,' says St. Bernard, 'He comes in the flesh and in weakness; in the second, He comes in spirit and power; in the third, He comes in glory and majesty; and the second coming is the means whereby we pass from the first to the third.'
This, then, is the mystery of Advent. Let us now listen to an explanation of this threefold visit of Christ, given to us by Peter of Blois, in his third sermon de Adventu: 'There are three comings of Our Lord; the first in the flesh; the second in the soul; the third at judgment. The first was at midnight according to the words of the Gospel: At Midnight there was a cry made, Lo, the Bridegroom cometh! But this first coming is long since past for Christ has been seen on the earth and has conversed among men. We are now in the second coming, provided only we are such as that He may thus come to us; for He has said that if we love Him, He will come to us and take up His abode with us. So that this second coming is full of uncertainty for us; for who, save the spirit of God, knows them that are of God? They that are raised out of themselves by the desire of heavenly things, know indeed when He comes, but whence He cometh or whither He goeth they know not. As for the third coming, it is most certain that it will be, most uncertain when it will be; for nothing is more sure than death, and nothing less sure than the hour of death. When they shall say, peace and security, says the apostle, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as the pains upon her that is with child, and they shall not escape. So that the first coming was humble and hidden, the second is mysterious and full of love, the third will be majestic and terrible. In His first coming, Christ was judged by men unjustly; in His second, He renders us just by His grace; in His first, a lamb; in His last, a lion; in the one between the two, the tenderest of friends.'
The holy Church, therefore, during Advent, awaits in tears and with ardour the arrival of her Jesus in His first coming. For this, she borrows the fervid expressions of the prophets, to which she joins her own supplications. These longings for the Messias expressed by the Church, are not a mere commemoration of the desires of the ancient Jewish people; they have a reality and efficacy of their own, an influence in the great act of God's munificence, whereby He gave us His own Son. From all eternity, the prayers of the ancient Jewish people and the prayers of the Christian Church ascended together to the prescient hearing of God; and it was after the receiving and granting them, that He sent, in the appointed time, that blessed Dew upon the earth, which made it bud forth the Savior.
The Church aspires also to the second coming, the consequence of the first, which consists, as we have just seen, in the visit of the Bridegroom to the bride. This coming takes place, each year, at the feast of Christmas, when the new birth of the Son of God delivers the faithful from that yoke of bondage, under which the enemy would oppress them. The Church, therefore, during Advent, prays that she may be visited by Him who is her Head and her Spouse; visited in her hierarchy; visited in her members, of whom some are living, and some are dead, but may come to life again; visited, lastly, in those who are not in communion with her, and even in the very infidels, that so they may be converted to the true light, which shines even for them. The expressions of the liturgy which the Church makes use of to ask for this loving and invisible coming, are those which she employs when begging for the coming of Jesus in the flesh; for the two visits are for the same object. In vain would the Son of God have come, nineteen hundred years ago, to visit and save mankind, unless He came again for each one of us and at every moment of our lives, bringing to us and cherishing within us that supernatural life, of which He and His holy Spirit are the sole principle.
But this annual visit of the Spouse does not content the Church; she aspires after a third coming which will complete all things by opening the gates of eternity. She has caught up the last words of her Spouse, 'Surely I am coming quickly,' and she cries out to Him, 'Ah! Lord Jesus Come!' She is impatient to be loosed from her present temporal state; she longs for the number of the elect to be filled up, and to see appear, in the clouds of heaven, the sign of her Deliverer and her Spouse. Her desires, expressed by her Advent liturgy, go even as far as this: and here we have the explanation of these words of the beloved disciple in his prophecy: 'The nuptials of the Lamb are come, and His wife hath prepared herself.'
But the day of His last coming to her will be a day of terror. The Church frequently trembles at the very thought of that awful judgment, in which all mankind is to be tried. She calls it 'a day of wrath, on which, as David and the Sibyl have foretold, the world will be reduced to ashes; a day of weeping and of fear.' Not that she fears for herself, since she knows that this day will for ever secure for her the crown, as being the bride of Jesus; but her maternal heart is troubled at the thought that, on the same day, so many of her children will be on the left hand of that Judge, and havng no share with the elect, will be bound hand and foot, and cast into the darkness, where there shall be everlasting weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is the reason why the Church, in the liturgy of Advent, so frequently speaks of the coming of Christ as a terrible coming, and selects from the Scriptures those passages which are most calculated to awaken a salutary fear in the mind of such of her children as may be sleeping the sleep of sin.
This, then, is the threefold mystery of Advent. The liturgical forms in which it is embodied, are of two kinds: the one consists of prayers, passages from the Bible, and similar formulae, in all of which, words themselves are employed to convey the sentiments which we have been explaining; the other consists of extermal rites peculiar to this holy time, which by speaking to the outward senses, complete the expressiveness of the chants and words.
First of all, there is the number of the days of Advent. Forty was the number originally adopted by the Church, and it is still maintained in the Ambrosian liturgy, and in the eastern Church. If, at a later period, the Church of Rome, and those which follow her liturgy, have changed the number of days, the same idea is still expressed in the four weeks which have been substituted for the forty days. The new birth of our Redeemer takes place after four weeks, as the first nativity happened after four thousand years, according to the Hebrew and Vulgate chronology.
As in Lent, so likewise during Advent, marriage is not solemnized, lest worldly joy should distract Christians from those serious thoughts wherewith the expected coming of the sovereign Judge ought to inspire them or from that dearly cherished hope which the friends of the Bridegroom have of being soon called to the eternal nuptial-feast.
The people are forcibly reminded of the sadness which fills the heart of the Church, by the somber color of the vestments. Excepting on the feasts of the saints, purple is the color she uses; the deacon does not wear the dalmatic, nor the sub-deacon the tunic. Formerly it was the custom, in some places, to wear black vestments. This mourning of the Church shows how fully she unites herself with those true Israelites of old who, clothed in sack-cloth and ashes, waited for the Messias, and bewailed Sion that she had not her beauty, and Juda, that the sceptre had been taken from him, till He should come who was to be sent, the expectation of nations. It also signifies the works of penance, whereby she prepares for the second coming, full as it is of sweetness and mystery, which is realized in the souls of men, in proportion as they appreciate the tender love of that divine Guest, who has said: 'My delights are to be with the children of men.' It expresses, thirdly, the desolation of this bride who yearns after her Beloved, who is long a-coming. Like the turtle dove, she moans her loneliness, longing for the voice which will say to her: 'Come from Libanus, my bride! come and thou shalt be crowned. Thou has responded to my heart.'
The Church also, during Advent, excepting on the feasts of saints, suppresses the angelic canticle, Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis; for this glorious song was sung at Bethlehem over the crib of the divine Babe; the tongues of the angels are not loosened yet; the Virgin has not yet brought forth her divine Treasure; it is not yet time to sin, it is not even true to say, 'Glory be to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of good will.'
Again, at the end of Mass, the deacon does not dismiss the assembly of the faithful by the words: Ite missa est. He substitutes the ordinary greeting: Benedicamus Domino! as though the Church feared to interrupt the prayers of the people, which could scarce be too long during these days of expectation.
In the night Office, the holy Church also suspends, on those same days, the hymn of jubilation, Te Deum laudamus. It is in deep humility that she awaits the supreme blessing which is to come to her; and, in the interval, she presumes only to ask, and entreat, and hope. But let the glorious hour come, when in the midst of darkest night the Sun of justice will suddenly rise upon the world: then indeed she will resume her hymn of thanksgiving, and all over the face of the earth the silence of midnight will be broken by this shout of enthusiasm: 'We praise Thee, O God! we acknowledge Thee to be our Lord! Thou, O Christ, art the King of glory, the everlasting Son of the Father! Thou being to deliver man didst not disdain the Virgin's womb!'
On the ferial days, the rubrics of Advent prescribe that certain prayers should be said kneeling, at the end of each canonical Hour, and that the choir should also kneel during a considerable portion of the Mass. In this respect, the usages of Advent are precisely the same as those of Lent.
But there is one feature which distinguishes Advent most markedy from Lent: the word of gladness, the joyful Alleluia, is not interrupted during Advent, except once or twice during the ferial Office. It is sung in the Masses of the four Sundays, and vividly contrasts with the somber color of the vestments. On one of these Sundays, the third, the prohibition of using the organ is removed, and we are gladdened by the grand notes, and rose-colored vestments may be used instead of the purple. These vestiges of joy, thus blended with the holy mournfulness of the Church, tell us, in a most expressive way, that though she unites with the ancient people of God (thus paying the debt which the entire human race owes to the justice and mercy of God), she does not forget that the Emmanuel is already come to her, that He is in her, and that even before she has opened her lips to ask Him to save her, she has already been redeemed and pre-destined to an eternal union with Him. This is the reason why the Alleluia accompanies even her sighs, and why she seems to be at once joyous and sad, waiting for the coming of that holy night which will be brighter to her than the most sunny of days, and on which her joy will expel all her sorrow.
Text courtesy of Apologia
If, having described the characteristic features of Advent which distinguish it from the rest of the year, we would penetrate into the profound Mystery which occupies the mind of the Church during this season, we find that the Mystery of this Coming, or Advent, of Jesus is at once simple and threefold. It is simple for it is the one same Son of God that is coming; it is threefold because He comes at three different times and in three different ways.
'In the first coming,' says St. Bernard, 'He comes in the flesh and in weakness; in the second, He comes in spirit and power; in the third, He comes in glory and majesty; and the second coming is the means whereby we pass from the first to the third.'
This, then, is the mystery of Advent. Let us now listen to an explanation of this threefold visit of Christ, given to us by Peter of Blois, in his third sermon de Adventu: 'There are three comings of Our Lord; the first in the flesh; the second in the soul; the third at judgment. The first was at midnight according to the words of the Gospel: At Midnight there was a cry made, Lo, the Bridegroom cometh! But this first coming is long since past for Christ has been seen on the earth and has conversed among men. We are now in the second coming, provided only we are such as that He may thus come to us; for He has said that if we love Him, He will come to us and take up His abode with us. So that this second coming is full of uncertainty for us; for who, save the spirit of God, knows them that are of God? They that are raised out of themselves by the desire of heavenly things, know indeed when He comes, but whence He cometh or whither He goeth they know not. As for the third coming, it is most certain that it will be, most uncertain when it will be; for nothing is more sure than death, and nothing less sure than the hour of death. When they shall say, peace and security, says the apostle, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as the pains upon her that is with child, and they shall not escape. So that the first coming was humble and hidden, the second is mysterious and full of love, the third will be majestic and terrible. In His first coming, Christ was judged by men unjustly; in His second, He renders us just by His grace; in His first, a lamb; in His last, a lion; in the one between the two, the tenderest of friends.'
The holy Church, therefore, during Advent, awaits in tears and with ardour the arrival of her Jesus in His first coming. For this, she borrows the fervid expressions of the prophets, to which she joins her own supplications. These longings for the Messias expressed by the Church, are not a mere commemoration of the desires of the ancient Jewish people; they have a reality and efficacy of their own, an influence in the great act of God's munificence, whereby He gave us His own Son. From all eternity, the prayers of the ancient Jewish people and the prayers of the Christian Church ascended together to the prescient hearing of God; and it was after the receiving and granting them, that He sent, in the appointed time, that blessed Dew upon the earth, which made it bud forth the Savior.
The Church aspires also to the second coming, the consequence of the first, which consists, as we have just seen, in the visit of the Bridegroom to the bride. This coming takes place, each year, at the feast of Christmas, when the new birth of the Son of God delivers the faithful from that yoke of bondage, under which the enemy would oppress them. The Church, therefore, during Advent, prays that she may be visited by Him who is her Head and her Spouse; visited in her hierarchy; visited in her members, of whom some are living, and some are dead, but may come to life again; visited, lastly, in those who are not in communion with her, and even in the very infidels, that so they may be converted to the true light, which shines even for them. The expressions of the liturgy which the Church makes use of to ask for this loving and invisible coming, are those which she employs when begging for the coming of Jesus in the flesh; for the two visits are for the same object. In vain would the Son of God have come, nineteen hundred years ago, to visit and save mankind, unless He came again for each one of us and at every moment of our lives, bringing to us and cherishing within us that supernatural life, of which He and His holy Spirit are the sole principle.
But this annual visit of the Spouse does not content the Church; she aspires after a third coming which will complete all things by opening the gates of eternity. She has caught up the last words of her Spouse, 'Surely I am coming quickly,' and she cries out to Him, 'Ah! Lord Jesus Come!' She is impatient to be loosed from her present temporal state; she longs for the number of the elect to be filled up, and to see appear, in the clouds of heaven, the sign of her Deliverer and her Spouse. Her desires, expressed by her Advent liturgy, go even as far as this: and here we have the explanation of these words of the beloved disciple in his prophecy: 'The nuptials of the Lamb are come, and His wife hath prepared herself.'
But the day of His last coming to her will be a day of terror. The Church frequently trembles at the very thought of that awful judgment, in which all mankind is to be tried. She calls it 'a day of wrath, on which, as David and the Sibyl have foretold, the world will be reduced to ashes; a day of weeping and of fear.' Not that she fears for herself, since she knows that this day will for ever secure for her the crown, as being the bride of Jesus; but her maternal heart is troubled at the thought that, on the same day, so many of her children will be on the left hand of that Judge, and havng no share with the elect, will be bound hand and foot, and cast into the darkness, where there shall be everlasting weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is the reason why the Church, in the liturgy of Advent, so frequently speaks of the coming of Christ as a terrible coming, and selects from the Scriptures those passages which are most calculated to awaken a salutary fear in the mind of such of her children as may be sleeping the sleep of sin.
This, then, is the threefold mystery of Advent. The liturgical forms in which it is embodied, are of two kinds: the one consists of prayers, passages from the Bible, and similar formulae, in all of which, words themselves are employed to convey the sentiments which we have been explaining; the other consists of extermal rites peculiar to this holy time, which by speaking to the outward senses, complete the expressiveness of the chants and words.
First of all, there is the number of the days of Advent. Forty was the number originally adopted by the Church, and it is still maintained in the Ambrosian liturgy, and in the eastern Church. If, at a later period, the Church of Rome, and those which follow her liturgy, have changed the number of days, the same idea is still expressed in the four weeks which have been substituted for the forty days. The new birth of our Redeemer takes place after four weeks, as the first nativity happened after four thousand years, according to the Hebrew and Vulgate chronology.
As in Lent, so likewise during Advent, marriage is not solemnized, lest worldly joy should distract Christians from those serious thoughts wherewith the expected coming of the sovereign Judge ought to inspire them or from that dearly cherished hope which the friends of the Bridegroom have of being soon called to the eternal nuptial-feast.
The people are forcibly reminded of the sadness which fills the heart of the Church, by the somber color of the vestments. Excepting on the feasts of the saints, purple is the color she uses; the deacon does not wear the dalmatic, nor the sub-deacon the tunic. Formerly it was the custom, in some places, to wear black vestments. This mourning of the Church shows how fully she unites herself with those true Israelites of old who, clothed in sack-cloth and ashes, waited for the Messias, and bewailed Sion that she had not her beauty, and Juda, that the sceptre had been taken from him, till He should come who was to be sent, the expectation of nations. It also signifies the works of penance, whereby she prepares for the second coming, full as it is of sweetness and mystery, which is realized in the souls of men, in proportion as they appreciate the tender love of that divine Guest, who has said: 'My delights are to be with the children of men.' It expresses, thirdly, the desolation of this bride who yearns after her Beloved, who is long a-coming. Like the turtle dove, she moans her loneliness, longing for the voice which will say to her: 'Come from Libanus, my bride! come and thou shalt be crowned. Thou has responded to my heart.'
The Church also, during Advent, excepting on the feasts of saints, suppresses the angelic canticle, Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis; for this glorious song was sung at Bethlehem over the crib of the divine Babe; the tongues of the angels are not loosened yet; the Virgin has not yet brought forth her divine Treasure; it is not yet time to sin, it is not even true to say, 'Glory be to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of good will.'
Again, at the end of Mass, the deacon does not dismiss the assembly of the faithful by the words: Ite missa est. He substitutes the ordinary greeting: Benedicamus Domino! as though the Church feared to interrupt the prayers of the people, which could scarce be too long during these days of expectation.
In the night Office, the holy Church also suspends, on those same days, the hymn of jubilation, Te Deum laudamus. It is in deep humility that she awaits the supreme blessing which is to come to her; and, in the interval, she presumes only to ask, and entreat, and hope. But let the glorious hour come, when in the midst of darkest night the Sun of justice will suddenly rise upon the world: then indeed she will resume her hymn of thanksgiving, and all over the face of the earth the silence of midnight will be broken by this shout of enthusiasm: 'We praise Thee, O God! we acknowledge Thee to be our Lord! Thou, O Christ, art the King of glory, the everlasting Son of the Father! Thou being to deliver man didst not disdain the Virgin's womb!'
On the ferial days, the rubrics of Advent prescribe that certain prayers should be said kneeling, at the end of each canonical Hour, and that the choir should also kneel during a considerable portion of the Mass. In this respect, the usages of Advent are precisely the same as those of Lent.
But there is one feature which distinguishes Advent most markedy from Lent: the word of gladness, the joyful Alleluia, is not interrupted during Advent, except once or twice during the ferial Office. It is sung in the Masses of the four Sundays, and vividly contrasts with the somber color of the vestments. On one of these Sundays, the third, the prohibition of using the organ is removed, and we are gladdened by the grand notes, and rose-colored vestments may be used instead of the purple. These vestiges of joy, thus blended with the holy mournfulness of the Church, tell us, in a most expressive way, that though she unites with the ancient people of God (thus paying the debt which the entire human race owes to the justice and mercy of God), she does not forget that the Emmanuel is already come to her, that He is in her, and that even before she has opened her lips to ask Him to save her, she has already been redeemed and pre-destined to an eternal union with Him. This is the reason why the Alleluia accompanies even her sighs, and why she seems to be at once joyous and sad, waiting for the coming of that holy night which will be brighter to her than the most sunny of days, and on which her joy will expel all her sorrow.
Text courtesy of Apologia
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