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| October 13th – St. Edward the Confessor, King of England |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-13-2021, 09:13 AM - Forum: October
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October 13 – St. Edward the Confessor, King of England
This glorious saint was like a beautiful lily, crowning the ancient branch of the kings of Wessex. The times had progressed since that sixth century, when the pagan Cerdic and other pirate chiefs from the North Sea scattered with ruins the island of saints. Having accomplished their mission of wrath, the Anglo-Saxons became instruments of grace to the land they had conquered. Evangelized by Rome, even as the Britons they had just chastized, they remembered, better than the latter, whence their salvation had come; a spring-tide blossoming of sanctity showed the pleasure God took once more in Albion, for the constant fidelity of the princes and people of the heptarchy towards the See of Peter. In the year of our Lord 800, Egbert, a descendant of Cerdic, had gone on pilgrimage to Rome, when a deputation from the West Saxons offered him the crown, beside the tomb of the Prince of the apostles, at whose feet Charlemagne, at that very time, was restoring the empire. As Egbert united under one scepter the power of the seven kingdoms, so Saint Edward, his last descendant, represents today in his own person the glorious holiness of them all.
Nephew to St. Edward the martyr, our holy king is known to God and man by the beautiful title of the Confessor. The Church, in her account of his life, sets forth more particularly the virtues which won him so glorious an appellation; but we must remember moreover that his reign of twenty-four years was one of the happiest England has ever known. Alfred the Great had no more illustrious imitator. The Danes, so long masters, now entirely subjugated within the kingdom, and without, held at bay by the noble attitude of the prince; Macbeth, the usurper of the Scotch throne, vanquished in a campaign that Shakespeare has immortalized; St. Edward’s Laws, which remain to this day the basis of the British constitution; the saint’s munificence towards all noble enterprises, while at the same time he diminished the taxes: all this proves with sufficient clearness, that the sweetness of virtue, which made him the intimate friend of St. John the beloved disciple, is not incompatible with the greatness of a monarch.
Quote:Edward, surnamed the Confessor, nephew to St. Edward king and martyr, was the last king of the Anglo-Saxon race. Our Lord had revealed that he would one day be king, to a holy man named Brithwald. When Edward was ten years old, the Danes, who were devastating England, sought his life; he was therefore obliged to go into exile, to the court of his uncle the duke of Normandy. Amid the vices and temptations of the Norman court, he grew up pure and innocent, a subject of admiration to all. His pious devotion towards God and holy things was most remarkable. He was of a very gentle disposition, and so great a stranger to ambition that he was wont to say he would rather forego the kingdom than take possession of it by violence and bloodshed.
On the death of the tyrants who had murdered his brothers and seized their kingdom, he was recalled to his country, and ascended the throne to the greatest satisfaction and joy of all his subjects. He then applied himself to remove all traces of the havoc wrought by the enemy. To begin at the sanctuary, he built many churches, and restored others, endowing them with rents and privileges; for he was very anxious to see religion, which had been neglected, flourishing again. All writers assert that, though compelled by his nobles to marry, both he and his bride preserved their virginity intact. Such were his love of Christ and his faith, that he was one day permitted to see our Lord in the Mass, shining with heavenly light and smiling upon him. His lavish charity won him the name of the father of orphans and of the poor; and he was never so happy as when he had exhausted the royal treasury on their behalf.
He was honored with the gift of prophecy, and foresaw much of England’s future history. A remarkable instance is, that when Sweyn, king of Denmark, was drowned in the very act of embarking on his fleet to invade England, Edward was supernaturally aware of the event the very moment it happened. He had a special devotion to St. John the evangelist, and was accustomed never to refuse anything asked in his name. One day St. John appeared to him as a poor man begging an alms in this manner; the king, having no money about him, took off his ring and gave it to him. Soon afterwards the saint sent the ring back to Edward, with a message that his death was at hand. The king then ordered prayers to be said for himself; and died most piously on the day foretold by St. John, the Nones of January, in the year of salvation 1066. In the following century Pope Alexander III enrolled him, famous for miracles, among the saints. Innocent XI ordered his memory to be celebrated by the whole Church with a public Office, on the day of his Translation, which took place thirty-six years after his death, his body being found incorrupt and exhaling a sweet fragrance.
Thou representest on the sacred cycle the nation which Gregory the Great foresaw would rival the angels; so many holy kings, illustrious virgins, grand bishops, and great monks, who were its glory, now form thy brilliant court. Where are now the unwise in whose sight thou and thy race seemed to die? History must be judged in the light of heaven. While thou and thine reign there eternally, judging nations and ruling over peoples; the dynasties of thy successors on earth, ever jealous of the Church, and long wandering in schism and heresy, have become extinct one after another, sterilized by God’s wrath, and having none but that vain renown whereof no trace is found in the book of life. How much more noble and more durable, O Edward, were the fruits of thy holy virginity! Teach us to look upon the present world as a preparation for another, an everlasting world; and to value human events by their eternal results. Our admiring worship seeks and finds thee in thy royal abbey of Westminster; and we love to contemplate, by anticipation, thy glorious resurrection on the day of judgment, when all around thee so many false grandeurs will acknowledge their shame and their nothingness. Bless us, prostrate in spirit or in reality beside thy tomb, where heresy, fearful of the result, would fain forbid our prayer. Offer to God the supplications rising today from all parts of the world, for the wandering sheep, whom the Shepherd’s voice is now so earnestly calling back to the one fold!
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| October 10th – St Francis Borgia, Confessor |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-13-2021, 09:07 AM - Forum: October
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October 10 – St Francis Borgia, Confessor
Vanity of vanities and all is vanity. No argument was needed to impress this truth upon the Saint of today, when the coffin was opened which contained all that Spain had admired of youth and loveliness, and death suddenly revealed to him its awful reality. O ye beauties of all times, death alone never dies; it invites itself to your dances and pleasures, it assists at all your triumphs, it hears promises said to be eternal: and how quickly it can scatter your adorers! A few years, a few days, perhaps even less, and all your borrowed sweetness will be decaying in the tomb!
“Enough of vain phantoms; enough of serving mortal kings; awaken, O my soul!” Such was Francis Borgia’s reply to the teachings of death. The friend of Charles V, the great lord unequalled for nobility, fortune, and brilliant qualities, quitted the Court as soon as possible. Ignatius, the soldier at the siege of Pampeluna, beheld at his feet the viceroy of Catalonia, begging to be protected against the honors which pursued him even under the poor habit of a Jesuit, which was now his glory.
The Church relates his life in the following lines.
Quote:Francis, fourth Duke of Gandia, was the son of John Borgia and of Joanna of Aragon, grand-daughter of Ferdinand the Catholic. He passed his childhood, in his father’s house, in wonderful innocence and piety; but appeared still more admirable when he showed himself a pattern of Christian virtue and austerity, first at the court of the Emperor, Charles V, and afterwards as viceroy of Catalonia. He was charged to convey the body of the Empress Isabelle to her sepulcher at Granada. Seeing the horrible change in her features, he understood how fleeting are all earthly things, and vowed to renounce every thing as soon as possible, and devote himself to the service of the King of kings. From that day forward he made such progress in virtue that, in the midst of overwhelming occupations, his life was a faithful copy of religious perfection, so that he was called the miracle of princes.
On the death of his wife Eleonora de Castro, he entered the Society of Jesus, that he might therein be more hidden, on account of the vow which closes the door to ecclesiastical preferment. Many princes followed him in embracing a severe manner of life; and Charles V himself did not hesitate to acknowledge that his advice and example had led him to abdicate the throne. Francis devoted himself to the exercises of a penitential life, and macerated his body by fasting, iron chains, a rough hair-shirt, long and bloody disciplines, allowing himself very little sleep; while at the same time he spared no effort to conquer himself and to gain souls. His great virtue caused St. Ignatius to appoint him Commissary general for Spain; and soon afterwards, against his will, he was chosen by the whole Society third General of the Order. In this position his prudence and holiness endeared him both to Popes and to temporal rulers. He founded and enlarged many houses of his Order, and introduced the Society into Poland, the islands of the Atlantic, Mexico, and Peru, and sent apostolic men into other regions who spread the Catholic, Roman faith by their preaching, their labors, and their blood.
He had a most lowly opinion of himself, always calling himself the sinner. This humility led him to persistently refuse the Roman purple, which was more than once offered him by the Pope. Filled with contempt for himself and the world, he delighted in sweeping away dirt, begging alms from door to door, and serving the sick in the hospitals. He devoted many hours every day to heavenly contemplation, spending sometimes eight or even ten hours in prayer, and genuflecting in adoration a hundred times in the day. He never omitted saying Mass. While he was offering the divine Victim, or preaching, the heavenly ardor which consumed him betrayed itself by the radiance of his countenance. He knew by a heavenly instinct where the most holy Body of Christ, hidden in the Eucharist, was kept. Saint Pius V appointed Francis companion to Cardinal Alessandrino, in an embassy for uniting the Christian princes against the Turks. Although his strength was almost exhausted, he undertook this journey in obedience; but on the way he happily closed his life, as he had wished, at Rome, in the sixty-second year of his age, and in the year of salvation 1572. By Saint Teresa, who had often sought his advice, he was called a saint, and by Gregory XIII a faithful servant of God. Finally, after many great miracles, he was canonized by Clement X.
“O Lord Jesus Christ, the pattern and reward of true humility, we beseech thee, that as thou didst make blessed Francis a glorious follower of thee in the contempt of worldly honor, so thou wouldst grant us to be partakers of the same imitation and glory.” Such is the prayer the Church offers through thee to her divine Spouse, in the Collect of the day. She knows that the Saints always have great power with God; but especially when they would obtain for their devout clients the virtues they themselves more particularly cultivated when on earth.
How precious is this prerogative in thy case, O Francis, for it concerns the virtue which attracts God’s grace in this life, and wins such glory hereafter! Since pride has hurled Lucifer into the abyss, and the self-abasement of the Son of God has led to his exaltation above the heavens, humility, whatever men may now say, has lost nothing of its inestimable value; it is still the indispensable foundation of every durable edifice, whether spiritual or social; the basis, without which the other virtues, and even charity the Queen of them all, could not subsist a single day. Therefore, O Francis, obtain for us this humility; thoroughly convince us of the vanity of this world’s honors and false pleasures. May the holy Society, which thou after St. Ignatius didst render still more valuable to the Church, cherish this spirit of thine, so that it may deserve more and more the esteem of heaven and the gratitude of earth.
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| The Sixth Apparition at Fatima - October 13th |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-13-2021, 08:49 AM - Forum: Our Lady
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Sixth Apparition - October 13th, 1917
During the last three apparitions, Our Lady promised the children that the last time She would appear, in October, She would effect a miracle that everyone would see and thereby believe. Lucia had repeated this promise to others and the news of it had spread like wildfire throughout the whole country. Think of it, being warned ahead of time that a very great miracle would happen not a hundred years from now but within the next thirty days. The expectation, the anxiety of waiting for this tremendous sign weighed heavily on believers, especially on the children’s families. Unbelievers sneered at the prediction and the enemies of the Church called it a huge hoax that the Church was trying to put over on the people. For them, October the thirteenth would be a day of great celebration, the day when the hoax would be revealed and the Church completely discredited.
The children were greatly saddened at the unbelief of so many, but they had full trust in the goodness of Our Lady; so they had no worries. Their families, however, were tormented, especially by the neighbors, so many of whom would not believe in the apparitions. They even threatened the family with severe penalties if this promise turned out to be a hoax.
“My family was extremely worried,” Maria dos Anjos, Lucia’s oldest sister, stated. “The closer the day came, the more we insisted with Lucia that she give up this dream of hers. We would all have to suffer because of her imaginings. Father scolded her often, though he never struck her. Mother was not so easy. One rumor was going around that they would place bombs at the Cova da Iria to scare everyone that went there. Some people suggested that their mothers lock the children in a room until they denied the whole story. We did not speak of it in front of Lucia, but we were frightened and we
wondered what was going to happen to us. Some others suggested we take Lucia away some place where no one could find her. We didn’t know what to do.
“Mother wanted to do what was right, but she didn’t understand. ‘If it were Our Lady,’ mother lamented, ‘She could have performed a miracle already, start a spring or something else. Oh, how will all this end?’ But the children showed no fear at all. I went to the children one day as they were speaking together at the well. ‘Have you decided yet that you saw nothing? They are warning us that they will throw bombs at our homes,’ I said. ‘Tell it only to me and I’ll tell the Pastor. Do you want me to tell him? Do you?’ Lucia frowned but did not speak. Jacinta, with tears in her eyes, said very softly, ‘Yes, you may do as you wish, but we have seen!’”
Lucia’s mother was so panic-stricken by the thought of impending disaster that on the morning of the twelfth, she jumped out of bed, ran into Lucia’s room and begged her to go to Confession. “People say we’re going to die tomorrow; they’ll kill us if the miracle doesn’t happen.”
“If you want to go to Confession, mother, I’ll go with you,” she answered very calmly, “but I’m not afraid. I am positive that the Lady will do what She promised to do tomorrow.” After this, nothing more was said about confession.
Things were different in the Marto home. Nothing could shake the belief of Senhor Marto. He tells how the Pastor of Porto de Mós came with one of his parishioners, a few days before the thirteenth. He wanted to make the children contradict themselves. He questioned Francisco and got nowhere. He wanted to talk to Lucia and Jacinta but they had gone with a donkey to Boleiros to bring home some lime. The priest wouldn’t wait for them to return, but went after them with the older boy, John. He was going to force the children to deny their story, or else he would do something drastic.
“Listen, good girl,” the priest said to Lucia, “you are going to tell me that it is all an invention. Even if you don’t admit it, I’ll say it is and I’ll have it spread everywhere, and you won’t escape either.”
Lucia did not say a word, but Senhor Marto spoke up, “The best thing to do is to telegraph everywhere immediately.”
“Exactly what we should do! No one will come here on the thirteenth,” the priest said triumphantly.
The man with him said, “This is nothing but witchcraft.”
Senhor Marto became very angry at this, so Jacinta vanished because she abhorred any display of anger. Then her father said to the priest, “If you’re going to do that, leave the children alone. No one will stop you from doing what you please.” Senhor Marto took Lucia and John home, followed by the priest and his companion. They saw Jacinta sitting on the porch combing another little girl’s hair.
“Listen, Jacinta,” said the priest, “so you did not want to tell us anything. Lucia has told the whole story. It’s a lie.”
“No, Lucia told nothing,” she answered very firmly. He kept insisting but Jacinta was just as insistent. They were baffled by the firmness of the child, so much so that Senhor Marto thought they would come to believe in the apparitions. Then the man took a coin out of his pocket to give to Jacinta.
Senhor Marto reached out his hand to stop the man, “Stop. That should never be done!” he said.
“Can’t I at least give your son John something?”
“It is not necessary,” the father answered, “but if you wish, you may.”
As they were going, the priest turned to Senhor Marto and said, “You have played your role well.”
“Well or not, I don’t know. But here in my house, this is the way we do things. You did not succeed in making the children contradict themselves. Even if you did, I would have stuck to my belief that they have been speaking the truth.” Senhor Marto was a good father, loyal always to his children even as they were loyal to him, because they all believed implicitly in God and His Holy Mother Mary.
On the morning of October 13, 1917, fear and panic prevailed in Fatima. Rain was pouring from the heavens, a sad beginning for the glorious day promised by Our Lady and the children. The rain, however, did not dampen the spirits of the many thousands of people who came from every section of Portugal to witness the miracle promised.
Even the daily newspapers, until now so inimical to the happenings at Fatima, sent reporters to the scene, and since for days afterwards they carried long articles on the unusual events, we will use excerpts from the newspaper accounts to give an authentic history of the occasion.
“Nearby communities, towns and villages, emptied of people,” said the reporter for O Dia, a Lisbon newspaper. “For days prior to the thirteenth, groups of pilgrims traveled towards Fatima. They came on foot, buskins on their brawny legs, food bags on their heads, across the pine groves, where the cowberries seem like drops of dew upon the verdure, along the sands, where the windmills rotate. A slow and swaying gait swung
the hems of their skirts from side to side and waved orange kerchiefs upon which sat their black hats.
“Workers from Marinha; farmers from Monte Real, Cortes and Marrazes; women from distant hills, the hills of Soubio, Minde and Louriçal; people from everywhere whom the voice of the miracle had reached, left their homes and fields and came on foot, by horse or by carriage. They traveled the highways and the roads, between hills and pine groves, which for two days came to life with the rolling of the carriages, the trot of the donkeys and the voices of the pilgrims.
“Fall gave tints of red to the vineyards. A chilly and piercing northeaster, forerunner of winter, waved the transparent poplars along the margins of the rivers.
“Over the sands, the white sails of the windmills rotated. In the woods, the green tops of the pines bowed to the wind. Clouds slowly closed the skies, while the fog rolled in with light, soft puffs. In the vast beach of Vieira, the sea foamed, roared and coiled in high waves, as the sinister howl of its voice traveled over the fields.
“All night long and into early morning, there fell a persistent rain. It soaked the field, saddened the air, and chilled to the bone the men, women and children and the beasts plodding their way towards the hill of the miracle. The rain kept falling, a soft, unending drizzle. Drops trickled down the women’s skirts of coarse wool or striped cotton, making them as weighty as lead. Water dripped from the caps and broad-brimmed hats onto the new jackets of their suits for seeing God. The bare feet of the women and the hobnailed shoes of the men sloshed in the wide pools of the muddy roads. They seemed not to notice the rain.
“They went up the hills without stopping, illuminated by faith, anxious for the miracle promised by Our Lady to the pure and simple children who watched sheep, for the thirteenth at approximately 1:30 p.m., according to the legal time.” (But according to the sun, this hour would correspond to noon in Fatima because the sun at that moment was at its highest point in the sky.)
“A murmur drifting down from the hills reached us. It was a murmur like the distant voice of the sea lowered faintly before the silence of the fields. It was the religious songs, now becoming clear, intoned by thousands of voices. On the plateau, over a hill, or filling a valley, there was a wide and shuffling mass of thousands upon thousands of souls in prayer.”
O Século, another Lisbon newspaper, carried an extensive article on the occurrences of the day. Their reporter chose for his observation point the road between Châo de Maçâs and Ourém. “Along the road, we met the first groups going to the holy place, many walking more than ten miles, men and women, most of them barefoot, with the women carrying bags on their heads, topped with their heavy shoes, while the men leaned on their sturdy staffs and carried their umbrellas as a precaution. Saying the Rosary in a sad rhythm, as if immersed in a dream, they seemed unaware of all that happened around them, disinterested in either the landscape or the other wayfarers. A woman broke out with the first part of the Hail Mary, the hailing; her companions took up in chorus the second part, the supplication. With slow cadenced steps, they threaded along the dusty road, among pine groves and olive orchards, so that they might arrive before nightfall at the place of the apparition. There in the open, under the cold light of the stars, they
planned to sleep and get the best places near the blessed holm oak to enable them to have a better view.
“As they entered the town, some women, already infected by the environment with the virus of atheism, joked about the great event. ‘Aren’t you going tomorrow to see the saint?’ one asked. ‘Me? No! Not unless she comes to see me!’ They laughed heartily but the devout went on indifferent to anything which was not the motive of their pilgrimage. All night long, the most varied vehicles moved into the town square carrying the faithful and the curious, and also old ladies, somberly dressed, weighed down by their years. The ardent fire of faith shining in their eyes gave them heart to leave for a day the little corner in the home from which they were inseparable.
“At dawn, new groups surged undauntedly and crossed through the villages, without stopping for a moment, breaking the early morning silence with their beautiful religious hymns. The delicate harmony of the women’s voices made violent contrast with their rustic appearance.
“The sun was rising, though the skies presaged a storm. Dark clouds loomed directly over Fatima. Nothing would stop the crowd converging from every road on towards the holy place. Oxcarts dragged slowly alongside those who came in luxurious automobiles, gliding swiftly along the road and continually sounding their horns. There were carriages of all types: victoria chaises, landaus, and wagons fitted out for the occasion with seats, and crowded to the limit.
“Almost all brought besides food, a bundle of straw for the animals, which the poor man of Assisi called our brothers, and which carried out their tasks so bravely. Once in a while, one could see a small wagon trimmed with ornaments, small bells jingling softly as it moved along, yet the festive mood was discreet, manners were reserved, and the order perfect. Though little donkeys trotted along the side of the road, there were great numbers of cyclists who had to perform real feats to keep from tumbling.
“About ten in the morning, the skies became overcast. Soon it had turned to rain. Sheets of rain, driven by a chilly autumn wind, whipped the faces of the pilgrims, drenched the roads, and chilled the people to the bone. While some sought shelter under the trees, against the walls or in scattered houses, others continued their march with impressive endurance.
“The road to Leiria dominates to a great extent the wastes of Fatima where it is said the Virgin appeared to the little shepherds. Parked along this road were the carriages of the pilgrims and the sightseers. The majority of the pilgrims, the thousands that came from many miles around and from the provinces, gathered about the small holm oak, which, in the words of the children, the Vision chose for Her pedestal. This was the center of a great circle around which the devout and other spectators ranged themselves.”
Some estimated the crowd at the Cova da Iria this day to be at least seventy thousand persons. A professor of the University of Coimbra, Dr. Almeida Garrett, after careful consideration, placed the number at over one hundred thousand. “There were so many people there even on the twelfth,” said Senhora da Capelinha, “that the din could be heard even in our hamlet. The people spent the whole night in the open since there was no shelter for them. Before the sun rose they were already up, praying, weeping and singing. I came very early and was able to get close to the holm oak. The trunk was the only thing left of it but I had adorned it the night before with flowers and ribbons.”
Away at Lucia’s home, everyone was disturbed. Senhora dos Santos was sad as she never had been before. She feared that this was Lucia’s last day on earth. Tears running down her face, she looked at her daughter who tried to cheer her. “Don’t fear, mãnezinha, little mother,” Lucia said with a caress, “for nothing will happen to us. Our Lady shall do what She promised.”
When Lucia was ready, Senhora dos Santos decided to go also, “for if my daughter dies, I want to be at her side.” Accompanied by her husband, she took Lucia to Jacinta’s house. The house overflowed with people; scores upon scores pressed outside, waiting for the children. “The curious and the devout filled the house to the limit,” Ti Marto recalls. “It rained hard and the road was a mire; it was all thick slime. My wife was worried.
There were people over the beds and the trunks, soiling everything. ‘My dear, don’t let it bother you,’ I calmed her. ‘When the house is full no one else can come in.’ When the time came for me to leave after the children, a neighbor took me aside and said in my ear, ‘Marto, you’d better not go for you may be mistreated. The children, as they are only children, no one will hurt them. But you are in danger of being harmed.’ ‘As to me,’ I replied, ‘I’m going in my good faith. I’m not afraid at all. I’ve no doubt as to the good outcome.’ My Olimpia was very frightened, practically at her wit’s end, recommending herself to Our Lady. She awaited the worst, as priests and many others presaged only evil.
“The children were as much at ease as they could be. Francisco and Jacinta hadn’t a care in the world. ‘Look’ said Jacinta, ‘if they hurt us, we’ll go to Heaven, but pity them, for they shall go to Hell.’
“A lady from Pombalinho, no less than the Baroness of Almeirim, had brought two dresses for the girls, a blue one for Lucia and a white one for Jacinta. She dressed them herself and placed garlands of artificial flowers on their heads. It made them look like little angels. We left the house under torrents of rain. The road was oozing mud but it did not keep the women and even the fine ladies from kneeling before the children.
‘Don’t do that, women!’ I had to say again and again. They believed that the children had the power of the saints.
“After many struggles and interruptions, we came at last to the Cova da Iria. The crowds were so thick, that it was difficult to pierce through them. It was then that a chauffeur took my Jacinta in his arms and, pushing along, opened a way to the posts with the lanterns, continually shouting, ‘make way for the children who have seen Our Lady!’
“I followed them closely, but Jacinta seeing me pressed among the people, feared for me. ‘Don’t push my father,’ she broke out. ‘Don’t push my father!’ “The man set Jacinta on the ground near the holm oak, but the crush there was so great that the child began to cry. Francisco and Lucia placed her between themselves. “My Olimpia was on the other side, I don’t know where, but my comadre, Maria Rosa dos Santos, was close by the children. I was a little distance away and suddenly became aware of a fiendish looking man bearing down on my shoulder with his staff.
‘The trouble begins,’ I said to myself. The multitude swayed back and forth until the moment came when everyone stood still and quiet. The time had come for the apparitions, it was noon by the sun.” “There was a priest close by,” Senhora da Capelinha tells, “who had spent the night near the holm oak and he was saying his breviary. When the children arrived, dressed as if for First Communion, he asked them about the time of the apparition. ‘At noon,’ Lucia responded. The priest took out his watch and said, ‘Look, it is already noon.’ ‘Our Lady never lies. Let us wait.’ A few minutes went by. He looked at his watch again.
‘Noon is gone. Everyone out of here! The whole thing is an illusion!’ “Lucia did not want to leave so the priest began pushing the three children away. Lucia, almost in tears, said, ‘Whoever wants to may go away, I’m not going. I’m on my own property. Our Lady said She was coming. She always came before and so She must be coming again.’ Just then, she glanced towards the east and said to Jacinta, ‘Jacinta, kneel down; Our Lady is coming. I’ve seen the flash.’ The priest was silenced. I never saw him again.” The hour of the apparition had arrived; the miracle that was promised had begun to take place.
“Silence, silence, Our Lady is coming,” Lucia cried out as she saw the flash. Our Lady came. Her snow-white feet rested upon the beautiful flowers and ribbons with which Senhora da Capelinha had adorned the tree. The faces of the three children assumed an unworldly expression, their features becoming more delicate, their color mellow, their eyes intent upon the Lady. They did not hear Lucia’s mother warning her to look closely so as not to be deceived. Lucia inquired of the Queen of Heaven:
“What does Your Grace want of me?”
“I want a chapel to be built here in My honor. I am Our Lady of the Rosary. Continue to say the Rosary every day. The war will end soon and the soldiers will return to their homes.”
“I have many things to ask of You: to heal some sick people and to convert some sinners, etc.”
“Some, yes; others, no.
“People must amend their lives and ask pardon for their sins.”
Then growing sadder: “They must not offend Our Lord any more for He is already too much offended.”
“Do you want anything more?”
“Nothing more.”
“Then neither will I ask anything more of You.”
As Our Lady took leave of the children, She opened Her hands which emitted a flood of light. While She was rising, She pointed towards the sun, and the light gleaming from Her hands brightened the sun itself.
“There She goes; there She goes!” shouted Lucia, without for a moment taking her eyes from the beautiful Queen of Heaven. Lucia did not afterwards remember having said these words, though Francisco and Jacinta and many others distinctly heard her.
Lucia said later that she had no recollection of it. “I was not even aware of the presence of the people. My purpose was not to call the attention of the people to it; I did it, carried away by an interior movement which impelled me to it.”
The echo of Lucia’s shout came back in a huge, immense cry of wonder and astonishment from the multitude. It was at this precise moment that the clouds were quickly dispersed and the sky was clear. The sun was now pale as the moon. To the left of the sun, Saint Joseph appeared holding in his left arm the Child Jesus. Saint Joseph emerged from the bright clouds only to his chest, sufficient to allow him to raise his right hand and make, together with the Child Jesus, the Sign of the Cross three times over the world. As Saint Joseph did this, Our Lady stood in all Her brilliancy to the right of the sun, dressed in the blue and white robes of Our Lady of the Rosary.
Meanwhile, Francisco and Jacinta were bathed in the marvelous colors and signs of the sun, and Lucia was privileged to gaze upon Our Lord dressed in red as the Divine Redeemer, blessing the world, as Our Lady had foretold. Like Saint Joseph, He was seen only from His chest up. Beside Him stood Our Lady, dressed now in the purple robes of Our Lady of Sorrows, but without the sword. Finally, the Blessed Virgin appeared again to Lucia in all Her ethereal brightness, clothed in the simple brown robes of Mount Carmel.1
As the children stared enraptured by these most beautiful heavenly visions, the countless thousands of people were amazed and overpowered by other miracles in the skies. The sun had taken on an extraordinary color. The words of eyewitnesses best describe these stupendous signs. “We could look at the sun with ease,” Ti Marto testified; “it did not bother at all. It seemed to be continually fading and glowing in one fashion, then another. It threw shafts of light one way and another, painting everything in different colors, the people, the trees, the earth, even the air. But the greatest proof of the miracle was the fact that the sun did not bother the eyes.” A man like Ti Marto who spent all of his days in the open fields with his flocks and tended his garden under the hot sun of the Portuguese hills, marveled at this fact. “Everybody stood still and quiet, gazing at the sun,” he went on. “At a certain point, the sun stopped its play of light and then started dancing. It stopped once more and again started dancing until it seemed to loosen itself from the skies and fall upon the people. It was a moment of terrible suspense.”
Maria da Capelinha gave the author her impressions of this tremendous miracle. “The sun cast different colors, yellow, blue and white. It trembled constantly. It looked like a revolving ball of fire falling upon the people.” As the sun hurled itself towards the earth in a mighty zigzag motion, the multitude cried out in terror, “Ai Jesus, we are all going to die here; Ai Jesus, we are all going to die here.” Some begged for mercy, “Our
Lady save us”; many others made acts of contrition. One lady was even confessing her sins aloud.
At last the sun swerved back to its orbit and rested in the sky. “Everyone gave a sigh of relief; we were still alive, and the miracle promised by the children had come to pass.” Our Lord, already so much offended by the sins of mankind and particularly by the mistreatment of the children by the officials of the county, could easily have destroyed the world on that eventful day. However, Our Lord did not come to destroy, but to save.
He saved the world that day through the blessing of good Saint Joseph and the love of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for Her children on earth. Our Lord would have stopped the great World War then raging and given peace to the world through Saint Joseph, Jacinta later declared, if the children had not been arrested and taken to Ourém. “What you do to these My least brethren,” warns Our Lord, “you do to Me.”
“I cannot give details of this apparition; it took place on the thirteenth of October, at the height of the sun and in a change of light that gave us the understanding that She showed Herself as such: Our Lady of Carmel.”
The miracle had come to pass at the hour and day designated by Our Lady. No one was disappointed, no one but Our Lady, perhaps, Who had said the miracle would have been much greater if the children had not been so mistreated. Many thousands of people in the Cova da Iria and in neighboring villages witnessed the overwhelming signs. Their reports are of intense interest. There are slight variations in their descriptions of the events, though all agreed it was the most tremendous, the most awe-inspiring sight they ever witnessed.
Some idea can be had of its effect on the people by reading the newspaper accounts of the day.
“At one o’clock, solar time, the rain stopped,” O Dia reported. “The sky had a certain greyish tint of pearl and a strange clearness filled the gloomy landscape, every moment getting gloomier. The sun seemed to be veiled with transparent gauze to enable us to look at it without difficulty. The greyish tint of mother-of-pearl began changing as if into a shining silver disc, that was growing slowly until it broke through the clouds. And the
silvery sun, still shrouded in the same greyish lightness of gauze, was seen to rotate and wander within the circle of the receded clouds! The people cried out with one voice; the thousands of the creatures of God, whom faith raised up to Heaven, fell to their knees upon the muddy ground.
“Then as if it were shining through the stained glass windows of a great cathedral, the light became a rare blue, spreading its rays upon the gigantic nave... Slowly the blue faded away and now the light seemed to be filtered through yellow stained glass. Yellow spots were falling now upon the white kerchiefs and the dark poor skirts of coarse wool.
They were spots which repeated themselves indefinitely over the lowly holm oaks, the rocks and the hills. All the people were weeping and praying bareheaded, weighed down by the greatness of the miracle expected. These were seconds, moments, that seemed hours; they were so fully lived.”
O Século, another newspaper of Lisbon, carried a more detailed account of the extraordinary events. “From the height of the road where the people parked their carriages and where many hundreds stood, afraid to brave the muddy soil, we saw the immense multitude turn towards the sun at its highest, free of all clouds. The sun resembled a plate of dull silver. It could be stared at without the least effort. It did not burn or blind. It seemed that an eclipse was taking place. All of a sudden a tremendous shout burst forth, ‘Miracle, miracle! Marvel, marvel!’
“Before the astonished eyes of the people, whose attitude carried us back to biblical times, and who, white with terror, heads uncovered, gazed at the blue sky, the sun trembled and made some abrupt unheard-of movements beyond all cosmic laws; the sun danced, according to the typical expression of the peasants.
“On the running board of the bus from Torres Novas, an old man whose stature and gentle, manly features recall those of Paul Deroulede, turned toward the sun and recited the Credo in a loud voice ... I saw him later addressing those about him who still kept their hats on, begging them vehemently to take their hats off before this overwhelming demonstration of the existence of God. Similar scenes were repeated at other places. A
lady, bathed in tears and almost choking with grief, sobbed, ‘How pitiful! There are men who still do not bare their heads before such a stupendous miracle!’
“Immediately afterwards the people asked each other if they saw anything and what they had seen. The greatest number avowed that they saw the sun trembling and dancing; others declared that they saw the smiling face of the Blessed Virgin Herself; they swore that the sun turned around on itself as if it were a wheel of fireworks and had fallen almost to the point of burning the earth with its rays. Some said they saw it change colors successively.”
The testimony of another witness, Dr. Almeida Garrett, professor at the University of Coimbra, is most informative and corroborates the others. “As I
waited,” he said, “with cool and serene expectation, looking upon the place of the apparitions and with a curiosity that was fading because the hour was passing away so slowly without anything to arouse my attention, I heard the rustle of thousands of voices. I saw the people stretched out over the
large field turn about from the point upon which their desires and anxieties had converged so far to the opposite side, and they looked up at the sky. It was almost two o’clock war-time or about noon, sun-time.
“The sun had broken jubilantly through the thick layer of clouds just a few moments before. It was shining clearly and intensely. I turned to this magnet that was drawing all eyes. It looked to me as a luminous and brilliant disc, with a bright well-defined rim.
It did not hurt the eyes. The comparison (which I heard while still at Fatima) with a disc of dull silver, did not seem right to me. The color was brighter, far more active and richer than dull silver, with the tinted luster of the orient of a pearl. “Nor did it resemble the moon on a clear night. Everyone saw and felt that it was a body with life. It was not spheric like the moon, neither did it have an equal tonality of color. It looked like a small, brightly polished wheel of iridescent mother-of-pearl. It could not be taken for the sun as though seen through fog. There was no fog at that time. (The rain and the fog had stopped.) The sun was not opaque, veiled or diffused. It gave light and heat and was brightly outlined by a beveled rim. The sky was banked with light clouds, patched with blue here and there. Sometimes the sun stood out alone in rifts of clear sky. The clouds scuttled along from west to east without dimming the sun.
They gave the impression of passing behind it, while the white puffs gliding sometimes in front of the sun seemed to take on the color of rose or a delicate blue. “It was a wonder that all this time it was possible for us to look at the sun, a blaze of light and burning heat, without any pain to the eyes or blinding of the retina. This phenomenon must have lasted about ten minutes, except for two interruptions when the sun darted forth its more refulgent, lightning-like rays, that forced us to look away. “The sun had an eccentricity of movement. It was not the scintillation of a celestial body at its highest power. It was rotating upon itself with exceedingly great speed. Suddenly, the people broke out with a cry of extreme anguish. The sun, still rotating, had unloosened itself from the skies and came hurtling towards the earth. This huge, fiery millstone threatened to crush us with its weight. It was a dreadful sensation.
“During this solar occurrence, the air took on successively different colors. While looking at the sun, I noticed that everything around me darkened. I looked at what was nearby and cast my eyes away towards the horizon. Everything had the color of an amethyst: the sky, the air, everything and
everybody. A little oak nearby was casting a heavy purple shadow on the ground.
“Fearing impairment of the retina, which was improbable, because then I would not have seen everything in purple, I turned about, closed my eyes,
cupping my hands over them, to cut off all light. With my back turned, I opened my eyes and realized that the landscape and the air retained the purple hue. “This did not give the impression of being an eclipse. While still looking at the sun, I noticed that the air had cleared and I heard a nearby peasant say, ‘This lady looks yellow.’ As a matter of fact, everything far and near had changed now. People seemed to have jaundice. I smiled when I saw everybody looking disfigured and ugly. My hand had the same color...”
The testimony of this learned man demonstrates how difficult it is to describe adequately the marvelous signs that occurred in the skies on this day. October the thirteenth, 1917, was a day to remember for all the people who witnessed these events. The reporter for the Ordem, a newspaper of Oporto, wrote about it in these words: “The sun was sometimes surrounded by blood-red flames; at other times it was aureoled with yellow and soft purple. Again it seemed to have the swiftest rotation and then seemed to detach itself from the heavens, come near the earth and give forth a tremendous heat.”
Another witness, the Reverend Manuel da Silva, wrote a letter to a friend on the evening of the thirteenth, in which he tried to describe the events of the day. He spoke about the morning’s rain and then, “immediately the sun came out with a well-defined rim and seemed to come down to the height of the clouds. It started to rotate intermittently around itself like a wheel of fireworks, for about eight minutes. Everything became almost dark and the people’s features became yellow. All were kneeling in the mud.”
Inácio Lourenço was a nine-year-old boy at the time, living in the village of Alburitel, ten miles away from Fatima. He is now a priest and he remembers this day vividly. He was in school. “About noon,” he said, “we were startled by the cries and exclamations of the people going by the school. The teacher was the first to run outside onto the street with all the children following her. The people cried and wept on the street; they
were all pointing towards the sun. It was ‘The Miracle’ promised by Our Lady. I feel unable to describe it as I saw it and experienced it at the time. I was gazing at the sun. It looked so pale to me; it did not blind. It was like a ball of snow rotating upon itself. All of a sudden it seemed to be falling, zigzag, threatening the earth. Seized with fear, I hid myself among the people. Everyone was crying, waiting for the end of the world.
“Nearby, there was a godless man who had spent the morning making fun of the simpletons who had gone to Fatima just to see a girl. I looked at him and he was numbed, his eyes riveted on the sun. I saw him tremble from head to foot. Then he raised his hands towards Heaven, as he was kneeling there in the mud, and cried out, ‘Our Lady, Our Lady.’
Everyone was crying and weeping, asking God to forgive them their sins.
After this was over, we ran to the chapels, some to one, others to the other one in our village. They were soon filled. “During the minutes that the miracle lasted, everything around us reflected all the colors of the rainbow. We looked at each other and one seemed blue, another yellow, another red, and so on. This increased the terror of the people. After ten minutes, the sun resumed its place, pale and without splendor. When everyone realized the danger was over, there was an outburst of joy. Everyone broke out in a hymn of praise to Our Lady.”
As the miracle came to its end and the people arose from the muddy ground, another surprise awaited them. A few minutes before, they had been standing in the pouring rain, soaked to the skin. Now they noticed that their clothes were perfectly dry. How kind was Our Lady to Her friends who had braved rain and mud, and put on their very best clothes for Her visit.
The Bishop of Leiria wrote in his Pastoral Letter that those who witnessed the events of this great day were fortunate indeed. He said, “The children long before set the day and hour at which it was to take place. The news spread quickly over the whole of Portugal and although the day was chilly and pouring rain, many thousands of people gathered...
They saw the different manifestations of the sun paying homage to the Queen of Heaven and Earth, who is more radiant than the sun in all its
splendor. This phenomenon, which no astronomical observatory registered, was not natural. It was seen by people of all classes, members of the
Church and non-Catholics. It was seen by reporters of the principal newspapers and by people many miles away.”
These are his official words, spoken after long study and careful interrogations of many witnesses of the apparition. There is no possibility of error or illusion when close to a hundred thousand people concur in their testimony. God in Heaven had called the people of the world to join with the heavens in paying honor and glory to His Blessed Mother, Mary
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| Feast of Our Lady of the Pillar, Patroness of Spain - October 12th |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-12-2021, 11:51 AM - Forum: Our Lady
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OCTOBER 12 - Our Lady of the Pillar, Patroness of Spain
Known to all Spaniards is the story of the ancient and pious tradition. The Apostle Santiago walked along the banks of the Ebro, announcing the good news to the brave and untamed Iberians. The indifference of his listeners had him saddened and he was already on the verge of fainting when the Virgin Mary appeared to him one night, announcing that his works would not be sterile and that the seed spilled by him and lovingly protected by her virginal hands would bear fruit. of blessing through the ages. Encouraged by this vision, the Apostle continued his evangelizing work, preserving indelible memory of that place that had been sanctified with the presence of the Mother of God and the Pillar on which its plants had perched.
There a temple was later built that is the current basilica of Pilar in Zaragoza, source of graces, scene of forgiveness and conversions, center of pilgrimages that come there from all over Spain, which considers the Virgen del Pilar as its heavenly patron, and to Pilar himself, as a symbol of his faith and the center of his religious fervor, always powerful and sincere. From that throne, in which Our Lady receives the homage of all Spaniards, she pours out her graces in all directions, watches over the preservation of the faith, and kindly prays for the flowering of the immense and lush tree of Hispanity. Oh Mother, our Mother of Pilar, who has freed Spain from so many dangers through the centuries and who signifies with miracles, like that of the young man from Calanda, to whom you restored the foot that was cut and buried.
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| Feast of Our Lady of the Pillar, Patron of Spain - October 12th |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-12-2021, 11:51 AM - Forum: October
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OCTOBER 12 - Our Lady of the Pillar, Patron of Spain
Known to all Spaniards is the story of the ancient and pious tradition. The Apostle Santiago walked along the banks of the Ebro, announcing the good news to the brave and untamed Iberians. The indifference of his listeners had him saddened and he was already on the verge of fainting when the Virgin Mary appeared to him one night, announcing that his works would not be sterile and that the seed spilled by him and lovingly protected by her virginal hands would bear fruit. of blessing through the ages. Encouraged by this vision, the Apostle continued his evangelizing work, preserving indelible memory of that place that had been sanctified with the presence of the Mother of God and the Pillar on which its plants had perched.
There a temple was later built that is the current basilica of Pilar in Zaragoza, source of graces, scene of forgiveness and conversions, center of pilgrimages that come there from all over Spain, which considers the Virgen del Pilar as its heavenly patron, and to Pilar himself, as a symbol of his faith and the center of his religious fervor, always powerful and sincere. From that throne, in which Our Lady receives the homage of all Spaniards, she pours out her graces in all directions, watches over the preservation of the faith, and kindly prays for the flowering of the immense and lush tree of Hispanity. Oh Mother, our Mother of Pilar, who has freed Spain from so many dangers through the centuries and who signifies with miracles, like that of the young man from Calanda, to whom you restored the foot that was cut and buried.
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| Abp. Viganò: the ‘pandemic Sanhedrin’ is spinning a ‘labyrinth’ of COVID lies |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-12-2021, 08:56 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
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Abp. Viganò: the ‘pandemic Sanhedrin’ is spinning a ‘labyrinth’ of COVID lies
Our ‘Ariadne's thread’ is the defense of the family, of the social and religious fabric of the nation, of our culture which is inescapably Christian, Catholic and Roman.
![[Image: vigano_venice_conference-810x500-810x500.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/vigano_venice_conference-810x500-810x500.jpg)
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò addresses the Venice Document conference
Mon Oct 11, 2021
(LifeSiteNews) — The following is a translation of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s address to the Italian People gathered in Rome and throughout Italy on Saturday.
You have gathered today in Rome, in Piazza del Popolo, and in many other squares in Italy, as hundreds of thousands of people around the world manifest their opposition to the establishment of a global tyranny. Millions of citizens of every nation, in the deafening silence of the media, have been shouting their own “No!” For months: No to pandemic madness, No to lockdowns, curfews, the imposition of vaccinations, No to health passports, to the blackmail of a totalitarian power enslaved by the elite.
Almost two years have passed since the beginning of this planetary nightmare. We entered a labyrinth step by step. At the beginning it was the masks indoors; then came the lockdowns with self-certifications; then the curfew … remember? Each time, faced with an abuse that might seem justified by the emergency, we have accepted to let ourselves be deprived of a bit of freedom. Step by step. They prevented us from going to church, leaving the house, working, going to school, visiting loved ones and even dying relatives in the hospital. Step by step. At a certain time of the evening, in our streets, we saw only the riders for the Amazon and JustEat deliveries: New victims of the Great Reset, new slaves of the System, together with many small entrepreneurs, owners of shops, bars and restaurants, forced into bankruptcy by absurd, illegitimate and counterproductive rules.
Not to mention the psychological breakdown that has affected many of us, from the youngest to the oldest: some deprived of any social contact, the others confined in the RSA without treatment, condemned to die by a ministerial protocol. Step by step, we got used to the idea that a Technical-Scientific Committee could decide — so at least we were told — that the virus circulated only after 6 p.m., or that it hit standing and not-sitting patrons in bars, that it infected in churches or museums but not on commuter trains or buses full of students.
Step by step, they made us believe that a seasonal flu like any other coronavirus could kill thousands of people, without however telling us that general practitioners and hospital wards had been forbidden to administer treatment, waiting for the disease to worsen. They did not tell us that COVID, on the recommendation of the health authority, had to be treated as a lung disease, while it was of circulatory origin; they did not tell us that autopsies had been prohibited and that the corpses were cremated, to prevent them from discovering the causes of the disease and understanding how to cure it.
But in the meantime they showed us General Figliuolo’s military trucks, loaded with corpses; and they were careful not to explain that those trucks contained a few coffins, accumulated in Bergamo after a period in which the funeral home had been prevented from collecting the bodies and organizing their funerals. But what an impact, on the entire population, confined at home in front of the television, hypnotized by media terrorism, scientifically planned according to the most cynical principles of propaganda!
Think of the elderly, far from their loved ones, deprived of any comfort, even spiritual — even priests were forbidden to access to administer Extreme Unction! — forced to suffer this daily hammering, to see their bed neighbor die, to witness the despair of people even more lonely than them. Today we discover that the administration of Propofol, an anesthetic used to induce pharmacological coma, was not only practiced by the Primary of Montichiari arrested for voluntary murder, but was common practice in all hospitals, as confirmed in an interview by the President of the Primaries and as Dr. Rock.
In practice, they are telling us with the utmost tranquility that last year the seriously ill of Covid, before being intubated, were sedated with Propofol, in the knowledge that this would have caused their death. And they tell us so brazenly, because they are evidently convinced that none of us will have anything to object, that no magistrate will open a file, that no journalist will denounce this latest scandal, that no politician will dare to criticize the Prime Minister or the Minister of Health.
Step by step, we have come to see ourselves forced, in order not to lose our job and to be able to carry out normal activities, to present a document — the green pass — which certifies the state of health of contagious and contagious vaccinated and substantially unreliable masks. Because, as you know, the vaccine does not protect against infection and the masks do not guarantee that the result corresponds to reality. For what? For a flu that could be cured — and which in many cases has been cured with documented success, where they left it — but which had to be incurable, in order to legitimize the testing of vaccines in derogation from ordinary rules.
And always in these days — days when the truth seems to come more and more to light — we learn from the statements of some doctors that swabs, on the basis of which they confined us to the house or forced us to ridiculous and exhausting quarantines; the swabs they imposed on us to detect positive cases to use for the famous expert statistics are unreliable. And they tell us today, with impunity, after having ruined the economy, the social fabric, the psychophysical balance of an entire nation. But if those swabs aren’t needed today, they weren’t needed yesterday either; and not only the “conspiracy theorists” said so, but their own inventors, claiming that they had no diagnostic use. But since today masks need to be delegitimized because they are the only alternative — albeit expensive — to the inoculation of the experimental gene serum, they are magically no longer reliable, whereas before they were by law. A bit like COVID after 6 p.m.
A little while ago I mentioned the labyrinth into which we have entered. More precisely: A labyrinth in which we found ourselves following those who promised us to get out, knowing full well that it has no exit. With every step we have taken, entering the maze of this labyrinth, we have strayed and lost.
Because this IS a labyrinth. A tangle of pseudoscientific affirmations, of logical contradictions, of apodictic proclamations, of dogmas proclaimed by the new COVID priests, by the pandemic Sanhedrin.
There is nothing consequential and rational in what we are told, and it is precisely in believing that what they tell us makes sense, that we go further and further into the labyrinth. “Let’s get vaccinated to save the frail and the elderly who cannot be vaccinated,” they told us, while vaccinating the frail and the elderly. “Let’s get vaccinated to be able to take off the masks and start living again,” and shortly after we discovered that not only should we have to wear the masks, but that one dose of serum was no longer enough, and not even two, and perhaps not even three.
Meanwhile, the frail and the elderly die of COVID even after the double dose, and if they survive it is because in hospitals — deny me, if you can — for some time the patients of COVID have been given azithromycin, making it appear as a cure against intestinal parasites but knowing full well that it is used against the virus. In order not to undermine the credibility of vaccines, certainly not for the health of patients.
We have to get out of this maze, dear friends. But we cannot get out of it by simply protesting against the green pass, which is only the most recent tool of repression, and certainly not the last. Of course: The green pass is a legal aberration, a hateful blackmail, a proof of the pretext of the pandemic alarm; but if also revoking the green pass, there would remain the absurdity of considering a curable virus deadly that has not caused more deaths than those of the past few years; the absurdity of wearing masks that are not only useless — by the very admission of the “experts” — but which, on the contrary, cause serious lung diseases and brain pathologies; the absurdity of considering a “vaccine” as a drug that does not serve to give immunity and that proves to have such serious side effects, to overcome the deaths of all vaccines in the last ten years in just a few months of administration; the absurdity of letting us inoculate an experimental drug that acts on our DNA, making us genetically modified organisms; the absurdity of following directions and protocols that seem written by sorcerers and not by conscientious doctors, given the series of counter-orders that have now reached the pathetic.
The absurdity of seriously and calmly refuting statements so scandalous and false that they do not deserve an answer. Draghi’s: “Whoever gets vaccinated is saved, whoever doesn’t get vaccinated dies” is a lie; to say “The vaccinated do not die from Covid” is false, just as it is false to say that COVID is a deadly disease, since it becomes such only if it is not treated. And it is false that there are no treatments, because those much discredited treatments are now used by the European authorities for preventive purposes on the Afghan refugees we welcomed a few weeks ago.
It is all false. False data on deaths from COVID. False reliability of the swabs. False efficacy and non-dangerousness of vaccines. False admissions in intensive care. False “non-correlation” of “sudden illness” affecting the vaccinated. False news alerts, false services of entertainment programs in which the usual “experts” and virostar intervene, false the predictions of statisticians. Let’s get out of the maze!
We reject the media narrative, perhaps deciding to turn off the television, which today has turned into an infernal tabernacle. Let’s break the logical short circuit of those who demand our consent even when they lie shamelessly. And to get out of the labyrinth, dear friends, it is necessary to look at things with a look that is not limited to single facts, but sees them all in a broader framework, in which the pandemic is a social engineering tool artfully provoked with the aim to take us to the green pass, to total control, to the limitation of natural and constitutional freedoms in the name of a Great Reset that none of us want, that no one has ever asked us to vote, which concentrates power and wealth in the hands of an elite — that of the “philanthrocapitalists” like Gates and Soros — and who consider the rest of humanity as a reservoir of slaves and customers, to whom to give that minimum of money — created out of nothing and which weighs on them as a debt — that it serves to allow them to buy the goods that this elite produces; goods produced with cheap labor, of course, forced to do everything to survive. While he prepares to sell us air, water and sunlight, perhaps under the pretext of the green emergency and under the pressure of Greta Thunberg’s ridiculous Fridays for Future.
We leave the labyrinth, recognizing that there is a problem of authority: civil authority that does not pursue the common good of citizens, and religious authority that has not only stopped caring for the eternal salvation of the faithful, but delivers them into the jaws of an infernal dragon. We get out of the labyrinth by learning to use critical judgment, not to be deceived by those with a record of such abuses, lies and crimes, so as not to let us assume that they will behave differently with us. We leave the labyrinth realizing that a world war is underway, fought not with real weapons, but with unconventional weapons, such as censorship of information, the enslavement of doctors, the complicity of politicians, magistrates and law enforcement agencies; a war that leaves innocent victims in its path, that destroys society, that affects people in the soul even before the body, that has been declared against everything that recalls our civilization, our culture, our faith, the our values. A war between light and darkness, between good and evil. We must recognize that, if we have come to this point, we owe it in large part to our infidelity, to letting others decide for God what is right and what is not, to allowing that in the name of tolerance allowed the violation of natural law and the degeneration of Christian morality, the murder of children in the womb, the killing of the sick and the elderly, and the corruption of children and young people.
What is happening today is the poisoned fruit of decades of dissolution, of rebellion against the Law of the Lord, of sins and vices that cry out for vengeance in the sight of God. Providence shows us how the world can become, when it abandons the Lordship of Jesus Christ and places under the bondage of Satan.
Mine are not apocalyptic words — as some say — but a severe warning, as a Pastor, to return to God, to recognize that where Christ the King and Mary Queen do not reign, the cruel and ruthless tyranny of the devil reigns, which promises universal brotherhood, while he wants only your destruction on earth and your eternal damnation.
Jesus Christ is King and Lord of History, in His hands are the fates and destinies of each of us, of the States and of the Holy Church. He will not allow us to succumb to the onslaught of the enemy of mankind. Return, let us all return to him, with the trust of the prodigal son who humbly asks his father to forgive him and to welcome him back into his home. Let us go back to being Christians, proud of our Faith and of the civilization that Religion has built up in the course of two thousand years of history. Let’s go back to defending in civil and political commitment those non-negotiable values that today we see denied and trampled on. But above all — I beg you, I implore you — let us go back to living in the Grace of God, to frequent the Sacraments, to practice the virtues, to be Christians consistent with the promises of Baptism, authentic witnesses of Christ.
To get out of the labyrinth, it is necessary to retrace the path taken backwards: our “Ariadne’s thread” is the defense of the family, of the social and religious fabric of the nation, of our culture which is inescapably Christian, Catholic and Roman.
We Italians are not racists! In the name of Charity that over the centuries has represented one of the pride of Christian Europe, we can welcome those who are persecuted and proscribed by their country, but we cannot be responsible for the exploitation of millions of migrants, under the pretext of hospitality. We know that their immigration to Europe was planned by the elite to destroy our civil, cultural and religious identity; it serves the elite to create social chaos, to introduce underpaid labor, to foment wars among the poor and to deprive the countries they come from of their young people.
To get out of the labyrinth, we must resist with courage and firmness, as our fathers were able to oppose the dictatorships of the last century. Civil disobedience, coordination of protest actions, contacts with the movements of other states, union in an anti-globalist alliance that ensures help and support against the authorities subservient to the system. A serene resistance, nourished by the awareness that the world envisaged by the Great Reset is not our world, since it is founded on an ideology of death, on an anti-human and anti-Christic thought, and which is based only on the strength of weapons or on blackmail towards those who cannot rebel.
They forget, these wretched servants of the New Order, that theirs is a utopia, indeed a hellish dystopia, which is repugnant to all of us precisely because it does not consider that we are not made of electromagnetic circuits, but of flesh and blood, of passions, of affections, of acts of heroism and generosity. Because we are human, made in the image and likeness of God, endowed with intelligence and free will. But this, the demons cannot understand: for this they will fail miserably.
And so that this day on which you publicly and courageously manifest your opposition to the impending tyranny does not remain sterile and devoid of supernatural light, I invite you all to recite with me the words that the Lord has taught us. Let us do it with fervor, with an impulse of charity, invoking the protection of Our Lord and His Most Holy Mother on all of us, on our families, on our homeland and on the whole world:
Our Father, who art in heaven …
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| ‘A different Church’: Pope calls for synod on synodality to usher in ‘change’ |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-12-2021, 08:09 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
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Bringing Vatican II to it's full conclusion...
‘A different Church’: Pope calls for synod on synodality to usher in ‘change’
Highlighting the themes of 'unity, communion … fraternity,' the pontiff declared that the synod has 'three key words: communion, participation and mission,'
which would enable the Church to undergo a process of 'change' and 'healing.'
Mon Oct 11, 2021
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis has opened the multi-year Synod on Synodality by calling for the Catholic Church to “encounter, listen and discern,” and to become “a different Church.”
The weekend of events, starting the multi-year Synod on Synodality, consisted of a “Moment of Reflection” on Saturday and a Solemn Mass on Sunday, at which the Pope preached on the synodal process.
Highlighting the themes of “unity, communion … fraternity,” the pontiff declared that the synod has “three key words: communion, participation and mission,” which would enable the Church to undergo a process of “change” and “healing.”
Managing editor of Catholic Family News Matt Gaspers observed that the synod is “an extension of the Second Vatican Council,” designed to promote a “parallel church” which would act against the Catholic faith.
Moment of reflection: Ecumenical mission of the synod
Pope Francis began his Saturday synodal reflection by noting his desire to have the Synod guided by the scriptural verse “that they may all be one.”
“This is what we are called to: unity, communion, the fraternity born of the realization that all of us are embraced by the one love of God,” he added.
The phrase “that they may all be one,” used so often in ecumenical parlance, is a truncated quotation from Scripture, leaving out the remainder of the phrase which reads “that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” As such, it cannot refer to any unity outside the fullness of the Church, but is a reference to others becoming members of the Church and consequently of the mystical body of Christ.
Pointing to the Second Vatican Council as a reference for the Synod on Synodaliy, Francis stated that a synod only “proves truly beneficial if it becomes a living expression of ‘being Church,’ of a way of acting marked by true participation.”
Mentioning those who “remain on the fringes,” the Pope added that “[e]nabling everyone to participate is an essential ecclesial duty!”
The vademecum and preparatory document described the Synod’s “act of discerning” as entailing listening to “people who have left the practice of the faith, people of other faith traditions, people of no religious belief, etc.”
To avoid synodal ‘risks,’ Pope called for ‘a different Church’
The 84-year-old Pontiff saw the Synod as a “great opportunity for a pastoral conversion in terms of mission and ecumenism,” while also highlighting certain “risks.” He described three risks as “formalism,” “intellectualism,” and “the temptation of complacency.”
To avoid the “risk” of “formalism,” Francis declared that this would “require changing certain overly vertical, distorted and partial visions of the Church, the priestly ministry, the role of the laity, ecclesial responsibilities, roles of governance and so forth.”
Avoiding the “risk” of “complacency” necessitates the Synod being “a process of becoming,” which would change the very nature of the Church into a “synodal Church,” a “listening Church,” and a “Church of closeness.”
The Pope did not mention the Church’s God-given mission of teaching the faith. Instead he quoted French theologian Fr. Yves Congar, a hugely influential figure at Vatican II, saying: “‘There is no need to create another Church, but to create a different Church.’ That is the challenge. For a ‘different Church,’ a Church open to the newness that God wants to suggest, let us with greater fervour and frequency invoke the Holy Spirit and humbly listen to him, journeying together as he, the source of communion and mission, desires: with docility and courage.”
“Keep us from becoming a ‘museum Church,’ beautiful but mute, with much past and little future,” continued Pope Francis.
He decried the phrase of “We have always done it that way,” saying that such a spirit is “poison for the life of the Church” and is promoted by people who “apply old solutions to new problems.”
The Pontiff’s words were firmly rejected by U.K. author Deacon Nick Donnelly, who wrote: “I will not be part of this different Church. I will remain a member of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church instituted by Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Synod is a ‘process of healing’ which will change the Church
The second formal event opening the Synod took place Sunday, with a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica and a homily from the Pope, in which he repeated his emphasis on “listening,” “encountering,” and discerning, while avoiding any mention of teaching and doctrinal adherence.
Comparing the Synod’s process of “listening” and “encountering” to Christ’s actions, Pope Francis declared that the three words “Encounter, listen and discern … characterize the Synod.”
“We too are called to become experts in the art of encounter,” said the Pope. While promoting practices such as “adoration,” he took aim at what he styled as taking “refuge in formality or presenting the proper image — the clerical and courtly spirit, where I am more Monsieur l’abbé than Father,” adding that “the experience of encounter changes us.”
Stating that the Holy Spirit asks the Church to “listen to the world, to the challenges and changes that it sets before us,” the Pope asked that Catholics “not soundproof our hearts; let us not remain barricaded in our certainties. So often our certainties can make us closed. Let us listen to one another.”
This sentiment was met with disapproval from popular U.K. blogger, Fr. Raymond Blake, who commented, “I can’t help feeling that after Covid most congregations worldwide are down by about 40/50% most pastors have more important things to be concerned about.”
Describing the Synod on Synodality as a process of “spiritual” and “ecclesial discernment,” the Pope said, “On the contrary, whenever we enter into dialogue, we allow ourselves to be challenged, to advance on a journey. And in the end, we are no longer the same; we are changed.”
By allowing the Church to undergo a process of change, the Synod would thus become “a process of healing guided by the Spirit,” the Pope declared.
Synodal journey is the completion of Vatican II’s vision of ‘Church’s renewal’
LifeSiteNews spoke to Matt Gaspers, managing editor of Catholic Family News, to ask him about the opening of the Synod, which he suggested was promoting a “parallel church.”
“Between the Pope’s own comments on the subject and the official documents issued by the Vatican, the ‘Synod on Synodality’ (Oct. 2021 – Oct. 2023) is clearly intended to be an extension of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) — one might even dub it ‘Vatican III’,” noted Gaspers.
“The Preparatory Document (PD), for example, directly connects the synodal ‘journey,’ now beginning, with ‘the Church’s ‘renewal’ proposed by the Second Vatican Council’ (PD, 1). The same document lists ‘ten thematic nuclei’ (also found in the accompanying Vademecum or Handbook) which essentially reiterate several novel themes addressed at the Council, including ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, the importance of the laity, and so forth (cf. PD, 30; Handbook, 5.3).”
Pointing to the Pope’s quote from Fr. Congar, Gaspers stated that it highlighted the link between the Synod and the ecclesial revolution of Vatican II: “Further confirmation of the Synod’s connection to the Council was provided by Pope Francis in his October 9 address to Synod participants (the day before the official opening). He quoted Fr. Yves Congar (1904-1995), a progressive Dominican peritus (theological expert) at Vatican II, who “once said: ‘There is no need to create another Church, but to create a different Church’ (True and False Reform in the Church).”
Gaspers continued: “This calls to mind what Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò wrote in his first major intervention regarding the Council (June 9, 2020), namely, “that from Vatican II onwards a parallel church was built, superimposed over and diametrically opposed to the true Church of Christ. This parallel church progressively obscured the divine institution founded by Our Lord in order to replace it with a spurious entity, corresponding to the desired universal religion that was first theorized by Masonry.”
Synod’s next stages
The Synod now moves first to the diocesan stage, where discussions will be held based on the vademecum and the preparatory document, although bishops are urged to adapt the documents to suit local situations and “to listen.” The results of this stage will form the working document or instrumentum laboris, which will be discussed at continental meetings of bishops’ conferences across the globe.
The overall process will conclude with the October 2023 synod of bishops in Rome when the bishops will assess a second version of the instrumentum laboris. While two years has been set aside for the synod, the mass of material demanded by the preparatory documents could make even a two-year limit an ambitious one for the scope of the proposed process.
The former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, has previously attacked the modern notion of synodality, saying that “its original defect, which consists of the political misunderstanding that the Church revolved around power that now has to be limited and shared ‘democratically,’ must not be exaggerated.”
“In reality, the spiritual authority of the bishops and the mission of the laity is at the service of revealed truth and the eternal salvation of all those for whom Jesus Christ sacrificed His life on the cross,” he added.
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| Merck Asks FDA For Emergency Approval Of New COVID Drug Despite Safety Concerns |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-11-2021, 08:12 AM - Forum: Pandemic 2020 [Secular]
- No Replies
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Merck Asks FDA For Emergency Approval Of New COVID Drug Despite Safety Concerns
![[Image: merck30.jpg?itok=9DDeBas1]](https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/merck30.jpg?itok=9DDeBas1)
ZH [Emphasis mine.]| OCT 11, 2021
Despite warnings from scientists that its new COVID drug could have seriously harmful side effects like causing cancers and birth defects, Merck officially submitted the drug, Molnupiravir, to the FDA for approval. If it's approved, it would be the first antiviral pill to treat the virus.
According to the NYT, the drug would revolutionize COVID treatment since it would be able to relatively inexpensively treat many more high-risk patients sick with COVID, especially those that haven't been vaccinated (the drug was only tested on patients who hadn't been vaccinated). Still, the drug will be a cash cow for Merck, since Merck is planning to charge customers 40x the cost to make the drug.
Despite the price, countries are lining up for deals with Merck even before the drug has been approved. Merck has struck deals with the US government, as well as South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and others.
The $700 course of the pill is meant to be taken at home as four capsules twice a day for five days, constituting a total of 40 pills. Per the trial data released by Merck - which was greeted with fawning from doctors and scientists - it halved hospitalizations and deaths (though the trial was cut short by a supervisory board who claimed the data was so positive it would be unethical to withhold the drug from the placebo group). The approval could come within weeks, per the NYT.
As many as 10MM Americans would be eligible for the drug if approved, but the supply will likely be slim initially; the US has ordered 1.7MM courses already.
Fortunately, other companies are nearly ready to release data from their own antiviral pill trials. An antiviral pill being developed by Pfizer and one from Atea Pharmaceuticals teamed up with Roche will report study results in the next months.
The FDA has many decisions to make beyond just approving the drug, or not. It must decide whether pregnant women - and any other at-risk groups - will be eligible. Initially, Merck is seeking authorization for its pill to be given only to high-risk adults, including people with any of the following characteristics: over 60, have obesity, diabetes or heart disease.
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| Feast of the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary - October 11th |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-11-2021, 08:07 AM - Forum: Our Lady
- Replies (2)
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October 11 – The Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary
In the sixteenth century, even amidst their many divergences, the so-called Reformers agreed in utterly rejecting all the honors paid by the Catholic Church to the Blessed Virgin Mary, on the grounds that such veneration of the Mother detracted from the supreme worship due to her Divine Son. Four centuries have more than sufficed to show the result of so doing: the Son has followed the Mother! The descendants of those who refused to Mary the title and rights of Theotokos,—Mother of God—refuse to Jesus the title of Son of God in the traditional sense of the term. Many reject His Godhead altogether, placing Him merely at the head of the line of great moral and social world-teachers; others still retain the word “divinity” with respect to Him, but for them it is no longer synonymous with “deity.”
Holy Scripture tells us that those who first came to adore him who is Son of God and Son of Mary found him “with Mary his Mother.” At the scene of the first miracle at Cana, which marked the opening of his public life, “the Mother of Jesus was there.” In the tremendous hour when all was consummated, when types and shadows gave place to the mighty reality, “there stood by the Cross of Jesus His Mother.” And when the little flock who were to be the nucleus of the Church of God awaited in prayer the coming of the Paraclete, Who would teach them all truth, again it was in company with “Mary the Mother of Jesus.” Far from taking from the honor and love due to the Word Incarnate, devotion to Mary is a strong bulwark protecting the central doctrine. He is ever found with his Mother; where Mary is denied her rights, sooner or later Jesus is denied his; they stand or fall together.
This was realized in the year 431 when, at the General Council of Ephesus, the Church condemned the Nestorian heresy, whereby the Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius, had taught that, since in Christ there are two persons, a Divine and a human, Mary was mother only of the Man “Christ,” and therefore could not be called ”Mother of God.” He therefore denied ”that wondrous and substantial union of the two natures which we call hypostatic.”
On the occasion of the fifteenth centenary of the Council of Ephesus, the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius XI, issued the Encyclical Lux Veritatis, recalling the history of the heresy and commenting thus upon the dogma of the hypostatic union: “When once the doctrine of the hypostatic union is abandoned, whereon the dogmas of the Incarnation and of man’s Redemption rest and stand firm, the whole foundation of the Catholic religion falls and comes to ruin … When once this dogma of the truth is securely established, it is easy to gather from it that, by the mystery of the Incarnation, the whole aggregate of men and of mundane things has been endowed with a dignity than which certainly nothing greater can be imagined, and surely grander than that to which it was raised by the work of creation.”
Proceeding to speak of the special dignity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Pope emphasizes that, “because she brought forth the Redeemer of mankind, she is also in a manner the most tender Mother of us all, whom Christ our Lord deigned to have as his brothers; wherefore we may confidently entrust to her all things that are ours, our joys, our troubles, our hopes; especially if more difficult times fall upon the Church—if faith fail because charity has grown cold, if private and public morals take a turn for the worse.”
In this last connection we are reminded of another result of the loss of devotion to the Mother of God. Frequently and truly we hear and speak of the “paganism” of the present age. The decay of faith has been followed inevitably by a decline in morality, and our elaborate and complex civilization is threatened with the dissolving agent which contributed in no small measure to the overthrow of the magnificent civilization of old Rome: namely, the loss of the domestic virtues, the disappearance of healthy, normal family life, consequent upon the abandonment of the Christian ideals of marriage and parenthood.
It is a truism that one of the greatest social effects of Christianity was to raise the status of womanhood. Her legal position in the Ancient World was little better than that of a slave, and although classical literature furnishes us with examples of women who, in pagan homes, yet enjoyed high honor and affection, such are few indeed, and but serve to prove the rule. Divorce, infanticide, general degradation of womanhood, and not infrequently of childhood, were accepted features of pagan social order. The ideal and model of the “new woman” of the Christian dispensation was the Mother of God. It was Mary, “Mother of fair love,” “Madonna,” “our Lady,” who ennobled the degenerate old civilization, just as she tamed the fierce barbarian peoples; she it was who inspired the ideals of the later chivalry. In Mary, all her sex was uplifted; in her motherhood all motherhood became blessed. Now again the world needs the hallowing influence of the Mother of God and of men, if “the life of the family, the beginning and the foundation of all human society” is to be preserved in all its nobility and its purity.
Desirous “to mark the commemoration, and help to nourish the piety of clergy and people towards the great Mother of God,” His Holiness concludes the Encyclical by establishing the new feast of the Divine Motherhood, to be celebrated on October 11 by the universal Church.
Introit
Ecce, Virgo concipiet, et pariet Filium, et vocabitur nomen ejus Emmanuel.
Behold, a Virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.
Cantate Domino canticum novum, quia mirabilia fecit. Gloria Patri. Ecce.
Sing ye to the Lord a new canticle: because he hath done wonderful things. Glory be to the Father. Behold.
Collect
Deus, qui de beatæ Mariæ Virginis utero Verbum tuum, angelo nuntiante, carnem suscipere voluisti: præsta supplicibus tuis; ut, qui vere eam Genetricem Dei credimus, ejus apud te intercessionibus adjuvemur. Per eumdem Dominum.
O God, who wast pleased that at the message of an angel, thy Word should take flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary: grant that we, thy suppliants, who believe her to be truly the Mother of God, may be helped by her intercession with thee. Through the same.
Epistle
Lesson from the book of Wisdom. Ch. xxiv.
As the vine I have brought forth a pleasant odour: and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches. I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue. Come over to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled with my fruits. For my spirit is sweet above honey, and my inheritance above honey and the honeycomb. My memory is unto everlasting generations. They that eat me, shall yet hunger: and they that drink me, shall yet thirst. He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin. They that explain me shall have life everlasting.
Gradual
Egredietur virga de radice Jesse, et flos de radice ejus ascendet.
There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root.
℣. Et requiescet super eum Spiritus Domini.
℣. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.
Alleluial, alleluia. ℣. Virgo Dei Genetrix, quem totus non capit orbis, in tua se clausit viscera factus homo. Alleluia.
Alleluia, alleluia. ℣. O Virgin Mother of God, the world sufficeth not to contain him who, made man, was shut up in thy womb. Alleluia.
Gospel
Sequel of the holy Gospel according to St. Luke. Ch. ii.
At that time: When they returned, the child Jesus remained in Jerusalem; and his parents knew it not. And thinking that he was in the company, they came a day’s journey, and sought him among their kinsfolks and acquaintance. And not finding him, they returned into Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass, that, after three days, they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his wisdom and his answers. And seeing him, they wondered. And his mother said to him: Son, why hast thou done so to us? behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said to them: How is it that you sought me? did you not know, that I must be about my father’s business? And they understood not the word that he spoke unto them. And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them.
Offertory
Cum esset desponsata mater ejus Maria Joseph inventa est in utero habens de Spiritu Sancto.
When his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
Secret
Tua, Domine, propitiatione, et beatæ Mariæ semper Virginis, Unigeniti tui matris, intercessione, ad perpetuam atque præsentem hæc oblatio nobis proficiat prosperitatem et pacem. Per eumdem Dominum.
Through thy merciful forgiveness, O Lord, and through the intercession of Blessed Mary ever Virgin, may this oblation avail us to the ensuring, now and always, of prosperity and peace. Through the same.
Preface of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Et te in festivitate.
Communion
Beata viscera Mariæ Virginis, quæ portaverunt æterni Patris Filium.
Blessed is the womb of Mary the Virgin, which bare the Son of the eternal Father.
Postcommunion
Hæc nos communio, Domine, purget a crimine: et, in tercedente beata Virgine Dei Genetrice Maria, cælestis remedii faciat esse consortes. Per eumdem Dominum.
May this communion, O Lord, cleanse us from sin: and by the intercession of Blessed Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, may it unite us in him who is the heavenly healer of our souls. Through the same.
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| Feast of the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary - October 11th |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-11-2021, 08:07 AM - Forum: October
- No Replies
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October 11 – The Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary
In the sixteenth century, even amidst their many divergences, the so-called Reformers agreed in utterly rejecting all the honors paid by the Catholic Church to the Blessed Virgin Mary, on the grounds that such veneration of the Mother detracted from the supreme worship due to her Divine Son. Four centuries have more than sufficed to show the result of so doing: the Son has followed the Mother! The descendants of those who refused to Mary the title and rights of Theotokos,—Mother of God—refuse to Jesus the title of Son of God in the traditional sense of the term. Many reject His Godhead altogether, placing Him merely at the head of the line of great moral and social world-teachers; others still retain the word “divinity” with respect to Him, but for them it is no longer synonymous with “deity.”
Holy Scripture tells us that those who first came to adore him who is Son of God and Son of Mary found him “with Mary his Mother.” At the scene of the first miracle at Cana, which marked the opening of his public life, “the Mother of Jesus was there.” In the tremendous hour when all was consummated, when types and shadows gave place to the mighty reality, “there stood by the Cross of Jesus His Mother.” And when the little flock who were to be the nucleus of the Church of God awaited in prayer the coming of the Paraclete, Who would teach them all truth, again it was in company with “Mary the Mother of Jesus.” Far from taking from the honor and love due to the Word Incarnate, devotion to Mary is a strong bulwark protecting the central doctrine. He is ever found with his Mother; where Mary is denied her rights, sooner or later Jesus is denied his; they stand or fall together.
This was realized in the year 431 when, at the General Council of Ephesus, the Church condemned the Nestorian heresy, whereby the Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius, had taught that, since in Christ there are two persons, a Divine and a human, Mary was mother only of the Man “Christ,” and therefore could not be called ”Mother of God.” He therefore denied ”that wondrous and substantial union of the two natures which we call hypostatic.”
On the occasion of the fifteenth centenary of the Council of Ephesus, the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius XI, issued the Encyclical Lux Veritatis, recalling the history of the heresy and commenting thus upon the dogma of the hypostatic union: “When once the doctrine of the hypostatic union is abandoned, whereon the dogmas of the Incarnation and of man’s Redemption rest and stand firm, the whole foundation of the Catholic religion falls and comes to ruin … When once this dogma of the truth is securely established, it is easy to gather from it that, by the mystery of the Incarnation, the whole aggregate of men and of mundane things has been endowed with a dignity than which certainly nothing greater can be imagined, and surely grander than that to which it was raised by the work of creation.”
Proceeding to speak of the special dignity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Pope emphasizes that, “because she brought forth the Redeemer of mankind, she is also in a manner the most tender Mother of us all, whom Christ our Lord deigned to have as his brothers; wherefore we may confidently entrust to her all things that are ours, our joys, our troubles, our hopes; especially if more difficult times fall upon the Church—if faith fail because charity has grown cold, if private and public morals take a turn for the worse.”
In this last connection we are reminded of another result of the loss of devotion to the Mother of God. Frequently and truly we hear and speak of the “paganism” of the present age. The decay of faith has been followed inevitably by a decline in morality, and our elaborate and complex civilization is threatened with the dissolving agent which contributed in no small measure to the overthrow of the magnificent civilization of old Rome: namely, the loss of the domestic virtues, the disappearance of healthy, normal family life, consequent upon the abandonment of the Christian ideals of marriage and parenthood.
It is a truism that one of the greatest social effects of Christianity was to raise the status of womanhood. Her legal position in the Ancient World was little better than that of a slave, and although classical literature furnishes us with examples of women who, in pagan homes, yet enjoyed high honor and affection, such are few indeed, and but serve to prove the rule. Divorce, infanticide, general degradation of womanhood, and not infrequently of childhood, were accepted features of pagan social order. The ideal and model of the “new woman” of the Christian dispensation was the Mother of God. It was Mary, “Mother of fair love,” “Madonna,” “our Lady,” who ennobled the degenerate old civilization, just as she tamed the fierce barbarian peoples; she it was who inspired the ideals of the later chivalry. In Mary, all her sex was uplifted; in her motherhood all motherhood became blessed. Now again the world needs the hallowing influence of the Mother of God and of men, if “the life of the family, the beginning and the foundation of all human society” is to be preserved in all its nobility and its purity.
Desirous “to mark the commemoration, and help to nourish the piety of clergy and people towards the great Mother of God,” His Holiness concludes the Encyclical by establishing the new feast of the Divine Motherhood, to be celebrated on October 11 by the universal Church.
Introit
Ecce, Virgo concipiet, et pariet Filium, et vocabitur nomen ejus Emmanuel.
Behold, a Virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.
Cantate Domino canticum novum, quia mirabilia fecit. Gloria Patri. Ecce.
Sing ye to the Lord a new canticle: because he hath done wonderful things. Glory be to the Father. Behold.
Collect
Deus, qui de beatæ Mariæ Virginis utero Verbum tuum, angelo nuntiante, carnem suscipere voluisti: præsta supplicibus tuis; ut, qui vere eam Genetricem Dei credimus, ejus apud te intercessionibus adjuvemur. Per eumdem Dominum.
O God, who wast pleased that at the message of an angel, thy Word should take flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary: grant that we, thy suppliants, who believe her to be truly the Mother of God, may be helped by her intercession with thee. Through the same.
Epistle
Lesson from the book of Wisdom. Ch. xxiv.
As the vine I have brought forth a pleasant odour: and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches. I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue. Come over to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled with my fruits. For my spirit is sweet above honey, and my inheritance above honey and the honeycomb. My memory is unto everlasting generations. They that eat me, shall yet hunger: and they that drink me, shall yet thirst. He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin. They that explain me shall have life everlasting.
Gradual
Egredietur virga de radice Jesse, et flos de radice ejus ascendet.
There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root.
℣. Et requiescet super eum Spiritus Domini.
℣. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.
Alleluial, alleluia. ℣. Virgo Dei Genetrix, quem totus non capit orbis, in tua se clausit viscera factus homo. Alleluia.
Alleluia, alleluia. ℣. O Virgin Mother of God, the world sufficeth not to contain him who, made man, was shut up in thy womb. Alleluia.
Gospel
Sequel of the holy Gospel according to St. Luke. Ch. ii.
At that time: When they returned, the child Jesus remained in Jerusalem; and his parents knew it not. And thinking that he was in the company, they came a day’s journey, and sought him among their kinsfolks and acquaintance. And not finding him, they returned into Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass, that, after three days, they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his wisdom and his answers. And seeing him, they wondered. And his mother said to him: Son, why hast thou done so to us? behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said to them: How is it that you sought me? did you not know, that I must be about my father’s business? And they understood not the word that he spoke unto them. And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them.
Offertory
Cum esset desponsata mater ejus Maria Joseph inventa est in utero habens de Spiritu Sancto.
When his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
Secret
Tua, Domine, propitiatione, et beatæ Mariæ semper Virginis, Unigeniti tui matris, intercessione, ad perpetuam atque præsentem hæc oblatio nobis proficiat prosperitatem et pacem. Per eumdem Dominum.
Through thy merciful forgiveness, O Lord, and through the intercession of Blessed Mary ever Virgin, may this oblation avail us to the ensuring, now and always, of prosperity and peace. Through the same.
Preface of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Et te in festivitate.
Communion
Beata viscera Mariæ Virginis, quæ portaverunt æterni Patris Filium.
Blessed is the womb of Mary the Virgin, which bare the Son of the eternal Father.
Postcommunion
Hæc nos communio, Domine, purget a crimine: et, in tercedente beata Virgine Dei Genetrice Maria, cælestis remedii faciat esse consortes. Per eumdem Dominum.
May this communion, O Lord, cleanse us from sin: and by the intercession of Blessed Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, may it unite us in him who is the heavenly healer of our souls. Through the same.
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| Pope Pius XI : Lux Veritatis - On the Council of Ephesus [Feast of Divine Maternity] |
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Posted by: Stone - 10-11-2021, 07:59 AM - Forum: Encyclicals
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To Our Venerable Brethren, Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, and other Local Ordinaries enjoying Peace and Communion with the Apostolic See.
Venerable Brethren and Beloved Children, Health and Apostolic Benediction.
History, the light of truth, and the witness of the ages, if only it be rightly discerned and diligently examined, teaches us that the divine promise of Jesus Christ: “I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Matthew xxviii, 20), has never failed the Church His Bride, and therefore that it will never fail her in time to come. Nay, further, the more turbulent the waves by which the divine bark of Peter is tossed, in the course of ages, the more present and powerful is her experience of the help of heavenly grace. This happened more especially in the first age of the Church, not only when the Christian name was regarded as an execrable crime, to be punished by death, but also when the genuine faith of Christ, confounded by the perfidy of the heretics who were spreading, chiefly in the eastern regions, was placed in grave jeopardy. For even as the persecutors of the Catholic name, one after another, perished miserably, and the Roman Empire itself came to ruin, so all the heretics, as withered branches (cf. John xv, 6) torn from the divine vine, could neither drink the sap of life nor bring forth fruit.
2. The Church of God, on the contrary, in the midst of so many storms and the vicissitudes of things that perish, trusting in God alone, has ever gone on her way, with firm, secure steps, and has never ceased from her strenuous defence of the integrity of the sacred deposit of Gospel truth, entrusted to her by her Founder.
3. These things come to our mind, Venerable Brethren, when we are about to speak to you, in these letters, concerning that most auspicious event, namely, the Ecumenical Synod which was held at Ephesus, fifteen hundred years ago; for there, assuredly, the crafty perversity of those who erred was exposed, and there, too, was manifest the most firm faith of the Church upheld by heavenly aid.
4. We know, indeed, that two Committees of distinguished men have been set up, at Our desire, to secure that this centenary commemoration may be worthily celebrated not only here in the city which is the capital of the Catholic world, but also among all nations. (See the letter to the most eminent Cardinals, B. Pompili and A. Sincero, December 25, 1930. Acta Apostolicae Sedis, Vol. XXIII, pp. 10-12). And we are well aware that those to whom we have committed this special office have spared no care and labour and have used every effort to secure its successful accomplishment. These generous efforts have, almost everywhere, met with a willing and spontaneous response, with remarkable unanimity, from both Pastors and people; all which is a matter for heartfelt congratulation, because we are confident that it will prove to be a source of no mean benefits to the cause of Catholicism.
5. But when we carefully consider this event and all the facts and circumstances connected therewith, we feel that it becomes the office commited to Us by God, that We Ourselves should speak with you in these Encyclical Letters concerning this most important matter, before the end of the celebration, and just when we have come again to the sacred season when the Blessed Virgin Mary brought forth our Saviour for us. For We cherish a good hope that not only will these words of ours be pleasing and profitable to you and to your flock; but also that if the same are considered and weighed by some of those who differ from the Apostolic See, brethren and sons most dear to us, moved thereto by the desire of the truth, it may well be that, taught by history the guide of life, they will at least be affected by a longing, or nostalgia, for the one fold and the one Shepherd, and for embracing that genuine faith which is ever preserved safe and whole in the Roman Church. For in the plan which the fathers of the council followed in their attack on the Nestorian heresy, and in the whole celebration of the Ephesian Synod, three dogmas of the Catholic religion, with which we are chiefly concerned here, were luminously manifest to the eyes of all; namely, that there is one person in Jesus Christ and this is Divine; that the Blessed Virgin Mary is to be acknowledged and venerated by all as really and truly the Mother of God; and likewise that in matters of faith and morals, the Roman Pontiff has a God-given authority, supreme, high, and subject to none over all and several faithful Christians.
6. Wherefore, let us pursue the subject in order, taking as our beginning the doctrine and the admonition which the Apostle of the Gentiles addressed to the Ephesians: “Until we all meet into the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ: That henceforth we be no more children tossed to and from, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive. But doing the truth in charity, we may in all things grow up in Him who is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body being compacted and fitly joined together, by what ever joint supplieth, according to the operation in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edi*ing of itself in charity.” (Ephesians iv, 13-16.)
7. Now, even as the Fathers of the Synod of Ephesus followed these apostolic injunctions by that wonderful union of minds, so we would fain have all, without distinction, and laying aside prejudiced opinions, take these words as addressed to themselves and happily put them into practice.
8. As all know, Nestorius was the author of the whole controversy; not that he had produced a new doctrine by his own ingenuity and study; for he had, rather, borrowed it from Theodore the Mopsuestine Bishop; and having developed it more fully, and clothed it with an appearance of novelty, with a great apparatus of words and sentences-for he was gifted with a flow of eloquence-he began to proclaim it, and used every effort to spread it abroad. Born at Germanicia, a town in Syria, he went to Antioch as a youth, in order that he be educated there in sacred and profane learning. In this city, which was very famous in that age, he first of all entered the monastic life; and then left it, from mobility of mind; and being made a priest, gave himself wholly to the office of preaching, desiring the applause of men rather than the glory of God. But the fame of his eloquence so affected the people, and spread so far and wide, that he was called to Constantinople, which was then widowed of its Pastor: and, amid great expectations on the part of all, he was raised to the episcopal dignity. Seated in this famous See, far from abandoning his novel doctrine, he persisted in teaching it and propagating it, with greater authority and more arrogance of mind.
9. In order that the case may be rightly understood it may be well to touch briefly on the chief points of the Nestorian heresy. For that arrogant man, thinking that two whole hypostases, namely, that of Jesus which was human and that of the Word which was divine, came together in one “prosopon,” as he called it, denied that wondrous and substantial union of the two natures which we call hypostatic; and for this reason he asserted that the Only begotten Word of God was not made man but was in human flesh, by indwelling, by good pleasure and by the power of operation. Wherefore he was to be called “Theophoros,” or God-bearer, in much the same way as prophets and other holy men can be called God-bearers by reason of the divine grace imparted to them.
10. From these perverse novelties of Nestorius it was an easy step to recognize two persons in Christ, one divine and the other human; and it followed further by necessity that the Blessed Virgin Mary was not truly the Mother of God or Theotocos; but was, rather, the Mother of the man Christ, or Christotocos, or at most Theodocos; that is to say, the receiver of God (cf. Mansi Conciliorum Amplissima Collectio IV, I.c. 1007; Schwartz, Acta Conciliorum Ecumenicorum, 1, 5, p. 408).
11. These evil dogmas, which were not taught now covertly and obscurely by a private individual, but were openly and plainly prodaimed by the Bishop of the Constantinopolitan See himself, caused a very great disturbance of the minds of men, more especially in the Eastern Church. And among the opponents of the Nestorian heresy, some of whom were found in the capital city of the Eastern Empire, the foremost place was undoubtedly taken by that most holy man, the champion of Catholic integrity, Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria. For as he was most zealous in his care of his own sons and likewise in that of erring brethren, he had no sooner heard of the perverse opinion of the Bishop of Constantinople than he strenuously defended the orthodox faith in the presence of his own flock, and also addressed letters to Nestorius and endeavoured in the manner of a brother to lead him back to the rule of Catholic truth.
12. But when the hardened pertinacity of Nestorius had frustrated this charitable attempt, Cyril, who understood and strenuously maintained the authority of the Roman Church, would not himself take further steps, or pass sentence in such a very grave matter, until he had first applied to the Apostolic See and had ascertained its decision. Accordingly he addressed most dutiful letters to “the most blessed Father Celestine, beloved of God,” wherein among other things he writes as follows: “The ancient custom of the Churches admonishes us that matters of this kind should be communicated to Your Holiness. . . ” (Mansi, l.c. IV. 1011.) “But we do not openly and publicly forsake his Communion (i.e. Nestorius’) before indicating these things to your piety. Vouchsafe, therefore, to prescribe what you feel in this matter so that it may be clearly known to us whether we must communicate with him or whether we should freely declare to him that no one can communicate with one who cherishes and preaches suchlike erroneous doctrine. Furthermore, the mind of Your Integrity and your judgment on this matter should be clearly set forth in letters to the Bishops of Macedonia, who are most pious and devoted to God, and likewise to the Prelates of all the East.” (Mansi, l.c. IV. 1015.)
13. Nor was Nestorius ignorant of the supreme authority of the Roman Bishop over the universal Church, for more than once in letters addressed to Celestine he attempted to justify his own teaching and to prevent the mind of the most holy Pontiff and win it over to himself. But all in vain; for the ill-considered words of the heresiarch contained serious errors, and when once the Bishop of the Apostolic See clearly discerned them he forthwith applied his hand to a remedy, and lest the plague of heresy should become more perilous through delay he had them examined by a synodical judgment and solemnly condemned them, and decreed that they must be condemned by all.
14. And here, Venerable Brethren, We would have you consider carefully how much the Roman Pontiff’s manner of acting in this case differed from that which had been followed by the Bishop of Alexandria. For the latter, although he occupied the See which was held to be the first in the Eastern Church, would not, as we have said, decide a very grave controversy concerning the Catholic faith for himself before he had certain knowledge of judgment of the Apostolic See. Celestine, on the contrary, having summoned a Roman Synod and weighed the matter maturely in virtue of his supreme and absolute authority over the whole of the Lord’s flock, made and solemnly sanctioned these decrees concerning the Bishop of Constantinople: “Know clearly, therefore,” he wrote to Nestorius, “that this is Our judgment: that unless you preach concerning Christ our God those things which are held by
the Romans, the Alexandrian and the whole Catholic Church, and which the holy Church of the City of Constantinople most rightly held up till your time; and unless you shall condemn in an open and written confession this perfidious novelty which seeks to separate that which the venerable Scripture joins together; within ten days, to be numbered from the first day on which this decision becomes known to you, you are cast out from the communion of the Universal Catholic Church. We have sent this form of Our judgment to you by Our said son, the deacon Possidonius, together with all the documents addressed to Our holy brother priest, the aforesaid Bishop of the city of Alexandria, who has given us further information on this matter; we have sent these so that he may act in Our place so that Our statute may be known, whether to you or to all the brethren; for all ought to know what is being done in a matter wherein the cause of all is concerned.” (Mansi, I.c. IV. 1034 sq.)
15. The Roman Pontiff ordered the Patriarch of Alexandria to execute his sentence in the following grave words: “Wherefore in virtue of the authority of Our See, and acting in Our stead, you will strictly enforce this sentence that he must either within ten days to be numbered from the day of this decision condemn his evil preachments in a written profession, and prove that he holds the same faith concerning the birth of Christ our God which is held by the Roman Church and that of your holiness and by the devotion of all; or if he will not do this, then your holiness to make provision for that Church, must know that he must by all means be removed from our body.” (Migne, P.L. 50, 463; cf. Mans, I.c. IV. 1019 sq.)
16. But some writers of the past age and of more recent days, seeking to evade the luminous authority of the documents which we have cited, have given the following account of the whole matter, which they often set forth in somewhat arrogant fashion. It may be granted, they say readily, that the Roman Pontiff issued a peremptory and absolute judgment which the Bishop of Alexandria had provoked in his animosity for Nestorius, and which he very gladly made his own; none the less, the council afterwards summoned at Ephesus took the matter already judged and together condemned by the Apostolic See, and judged it afresh from the beginning and
decreed by its supreme authority what must be believed about it by all. From this they say it may be gathered that an Ecumenical Council is possessed of rights altogether more powerful and more valid than the authority of the Roman Bishop.
17. But in this they have constructed a fabric of falsehood clothed with a specious appearance of truth. This may be readily seen by any one who, laying aside preconceived opinions, looks at the faithful record of fact and diligently examines the documentary evidence. For, in the first place, it must be observed that when the Emperor Theodosius, acting also in the name of his colleague Valentinian, summoned the Ecumenical Council, the judgment of Celestine had not yet arrived at Constantinople, and nothing was known about it there. Moreover, when Celestine found that a Synod at Ephesus had been ordered by the Emperors, he made no manner of objection against it; nay, more, in letters to Theodosius (Mansi, I.c. IV. 1291) and to the Bishop of Alexandria (Mansi, I.c. IV. 1292) he both praised this proposal and delegated and proclaimed his legates who were to preside at the Council, namely, the Patriarch Cyril, the Bishops Arcadius and Projectus, and the Priest Philip. But by acting thus the Pontiff did not leave an unjudged case to the decision of the Council; but, as he said himself, the things which he had already decreed (Mansi, I.c. IV. 1287) were still to remain, and he ordered the Fathers of the Council to execute the sentence passed by himself, yet so that, by taking counsel together, and offering prayers to God, they were to strive, as far as possible, to bring back the erring Bishop of Constantinople to the unity of the faith. Thus, when Cyril asked the Pontiff how he was to act in this matter, that is to say, “whether the holy Synod ought to receive the man on his condemning the things which he had preached, or whether, because the appointed time had now run out, the sentence long since passed must abide,” Celestine answered as follows: “It is for your holiness, together with the venerable council of brethren, to see that the disturbances that have arisen in the Church may be repressed, and when by the help of God the matter is finished, We may learn this from the correction which has been decided. We do not say that We are absent from your assembly; for We cannot be absent from those with whom, wheresoever they may be, We are joined together by one faith. . . We are there because We are thinking that which is being done there for all; We do that spiritually which We seem not to do in a bodily manner. We yearn for Catholic peace; We yearn for the salvation of him who is perishing, yet so if he will but confess his sickness. We say this that We may not seem to be wanting to one who is willing to correct himself. May he prove that We do not have feet swift to shed blood, when he knows that a remedy is offered also to him.” (Mansi, l.c. IV. 1292.)
18. But if these words of Celestine show us his fatherly heart, and make it abundantly clear that he desired nothing more earnestly than that the light of the true faith should illuminate the eyes that were blinded, and that he would rejoice when those who were in error came back to the Church, at the same time, the instructions which he gave to his Legates, when they were setting out for Ephesus, prove how great was the Pontiff’s care and solicitude in bidding them preserve the divinely given rights of the Roman See safe and intact. Thus, among other things, he says: “We command you that the authority of the Apostolic See ought to be safeguarded; for the instructions delivered to you tell you this, that you are to be present in the assembly, and if they come to a discussion you are to judge of their opinions but are not to engage in the contest.” (Mansi, 1.c. IV. 556.)
19. And the Legates acted in this way with the assent of the Fathers of the sacred Synod. For, following firmly and faithfully the aforesaid absolute commands of the Pontiff when they arrived at Ephesus after the first act was completed, they demanded that all the things decreed in the previous assembly should be submitted to them so that they might be confirmed and ratified in the name of the Apostolic See: “We pray you to order that all things that have been done in this holy Synod before our arrival may be shown to us, so that we also may confirm them according to the judgment of our blessed Pope and of this present holy Synod. . . ” (Mansi, 1.c. IV. 1290.)
20. Philip the Priest also, in the presence of the whole Council, gave utterance to that excellent pronouncement on the Primacy of the Roman Church which is cited in the dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aetemus of the Vatican Council (Conc. Vatic. sess. IV. cap. 2): Namely: “No one doubts, as it was known in all ages, that
the holy and most blessed Peter, the prince and head of the Apostles, the pillar of the faith, and the foundation of the Catholic Church, received from our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of mankind, the keys of the kingdom; and the power of binding and loosing sins was given to him; and unto this time, and ever, he lives and exercises judgment in his successors.” (Mansi, I.c. IV. 1295.)
21. What more need be said? Did the Fathers of the Ecumenical Council make any objection to this manner of acting adopted by Celestine and his Legates, or oppose it in any way? By no manner of means. On the contrary, written monuments remain which plainly show their own dutiful observance and reverence. For when, in the second session of the sacred synod, the Papal Legates, reading the letters of Celestine, said among other things: “In Our solicitude, We have sent to you our holy brothers and fellowpriests of one mind with Ourselves, those trustworthy men Arcadius and Projectus the Bishops, and Philip our Priest, that they may be present at what is being done, and may execute the things which have already been decreed by Us; whereunto we doubt not that your holiness will give your consent” (Mansi, 1.c., IV. 1287); the Fathers of the Council were so far from refusing this sentence as it were of a supreme judge that, praising it with one voice, they saluted the Roman Pontiff with these abundant acclamations: “This is a just judgment! The whole synod gives thanks to Celestine the new Paul, to Cyril the new Paul, to Celestine the guardian of the faith, to Celestine one at heart with the Synod, to Celestine the whole Synod gives thanks; there is one Celestine, one Cyril, one faith of the Synod, one faith of the whole world.” (Mansi, 1.c., IV. 1287.)
22. But when they came to the condemnation and rejection of Nestorius, the same Fathers of the Council did not think that they were free to judge the whole cause afresh; but openly profess that they are prevented and compelled by the sentence of the Roman Pontiff: “Understanding that he (Nestorius) thinks and preaches impiously, and compelled by the sacred canons and by the letter of our most holy Father and fellowminister Celestine the Bishop of the Roman Church, we come of necessity, and with tears, to this lamentable sentence against him. Wherefore our Lord Jesus Christ, who was assailed by this
man’s words of blasphemy, has declared, through this most holy Synod, that the said Nestorius is deprived of the Episcopal dignity, and is a stranger to the whole fellowship and company of Priests.” (Mansi, 1.c. IV. 1294 sq.)
23. And in the second session of the Council, Firmus Bishop of Caesarea, in like manner, openly professed the same thing in these words: “The Apostolic and Holy See, through the letters of the most Holy Bishop Celestine, which he sent to the most religious Bishops, prescribed beforehand the judgment and rule concerning the present matter, which we also have followed; and because Nestorius, having been cited by us has not appeared, we have put that form in execution, declaring the canonical and apostolic judgment against him.” (Mansi, 1.c., IV. 1287 sq.)
24. Now all the various documents which have been rehearsed by Us, one after another, prove so expressly and significantly that already, throughout the universal Church, there was a strong and common faith in the authority of the Roman Pontiff over the whole flock of Christ, an authority subject to no one and incapable of error, so that these things bring back to Our mind the clear and luminous words of Augustine, uttered a few years before this, concerning the judgment passed by Pope Zosimus against the Pelagians in his Epistula Tractatoria: “In these words of the Apostolic See, the Catholic faith is so venerable, so firmly founded, so certain and so clear, that it were impious for a Christian to doubt of it.” (Epist. 190; Corpus Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, 57, p. 159 sq.)
25. Would that that most holy Bishop of Hippo could have been present at the Synod of Ephesus; how much his marvellously acute intellect, perceiving the dividing line in the discussions, would have illustrated the dogmas of Catholic truth, and how he would have defended them with all his strength of mind! But when the imperial legates, bearing the letters of invitation, arrived at Hippo, there was nothing left them to do but to lament that that great luminary of Christian wisdom was extinguished and that his See was laid waste by the Vandals.
26. We are well aware, Venerable Brethren, that some of those who, especially in the present age, devote themselves to historical research, use every effort to clear Nestorius from the stain of heresy; and that they also accuse the most holy Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, of unjust animosity, saying that, because Nestorius was obnoxious to him, he calumniated him and strove with all his strength to procure his condemnation for things which he had never taught. Our most blessed predecessor Celestine, whose simplicity is said to have been abused by Cyril, and the holy Synod of Ephesus also, are involved in this most grave accusation by these defenders of the Bishop of Constantinople.
27. The Church, however, protests against this futile and temerarious attempt; for she has at all times acknowledged the condemnation of Nestorius as rightly and deservedly decreed; and has regarded the doctrine of Cyril as orthodox; and has counted the Council of Ephesus among the Ecumenical Synods, celebrated under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and has held it in veneration. For, to omit very many luminous monuments of documentary evidence, all know, assuredly, that many associates of Nestorius, who had seen with their own eyes the whole course of events, and who had no friendly intimacy with Cyril: despite the fact that they were drawn to the opposite side, by their friendship with Nestorius, by the great charm of his writings, and by the very heat engendered in the disputations; nevertheless, after the Synod of Ephesus, moved as it were by the light of truth, gradually deserted the heretical Bishop of Constantinople, who by the just law of the Church was to be avoided. Some of these were certainly still living when Our predecessor of happy memory, Leo the Great, wrote in these terms to Paschasinus, Bishop of Lilybeta, and his own legate to the Council of Chalcedon: “Know that the whole Church of Constantinople, with all its monasteries and many Bishops, has given its consent, and has subscribed to the anathematization of Nestorius and Eutyches and their dogmas” (Mansi, 1.c. VI. 124); but in his dogmatic letter to the Emperor Leo, he quite openly rebukes Nestorius as a heretic and a teacher of heresy, without any one gainsaying it; for he says: “Let Nestorius, therefore, be anathematized, who believed the Blessed Virgin Mary to be the mother, not of God, but of man only, so that he made one person of the flesh, and another of the Godhead, and did not perceive that there was but one Christ, in the Word of God and in the flesh; but preached separately and severally one the Son of God, and the other of man.” (Mansi, 1.c. VI. 351-354.) The same thing, as every one knows,
was solemnly sanctioned by the Council of Chalcedon, when it condemned Nestorius again, and praised the teaching of Cyril. And Our most holy predecessor Gregory the Great, when he had just been raised to the Chair of Blessed Peter, in his synodical letter to the Eastern Churches, having mentioned these four Ecumenical Councils, namely, those of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, speaks of them in these words of great moment and nobility: ” . . . On these, as on a four square stone, the structure of the holy faith arises; and of whatever life or office he may be, whosoever does not hold their solidity, even though he is seen to be a stone, yet he lieth outside the edifice.” (Migne, P.L. 77, 478; cf. Mansi, l.c. IX. 1048.) Wherefore all should hold it as certain that Nestorius really preached heretical novelties; that the Patriarch of Alexandria was a strenuous defender of the Catholic faith; and that the Pontiff Celestine, together with the Synod of Ephesus, maintained both the ancient doctrine of the fathers and the supreme authority of the Apostolic See.
II
28. But now, Venerable Brethren, let us examine more deeply those points of doctrine which the Synod of Ephesus, by the very fact of its condemnation of Nestorius, openly professed and sanctioned by its authority. Now, apart from the rejection of the Pelagian heresy and the condemnation of those who favoured it-one of whom, without doubt, was Nestroius-there was one matter mainly in question, and it was solemnly and almost unanimously confirmed by the Fathers, that is to say that the opinion of this heresiarch was wholly impious and repugnant to the Sacred Scriptures; and that, therefore, that which he denied was altogether certain, namely, that there is one Person in Christ, and that the same is Divine. For when Nestorius, as We have said, obstinately contended that the Divine Word was not united to the human nature in Christ substantially and hypostatically, but by a certain accidental and moral bond, the Fathers of Ephesus, in condemning Nestorius, openly professed the right doctrine concerning the Incarnation, which must be firmly held by all. And indeed, Cyril in the letters and chapters already addressed to Nestorius beforehand, and inserted in the acts of this Ecumenical Synod, in wonderful agreement with the Roman Church, maintained these things in eloquent and reiterated words: “In no wise, therefore, is it lawful to divide the one Lord Jesus Christ into two Sons…. For the Scripture does not say that the Word associated the person of a man with Himself, but that He was made flesh. But when it is said that the Word was made flesh, that means nothing else but that He partook of flesh and blood, even as we do; wherefore, He made our body His own, and came forth man, born of a woman, at the same time without laying aside His Godhead, or His birth from the Father; for in assuming flesh He still remained what He was.” (Mansi, l.c. IV. 891.)
29. For we are taught, by Holy Scripture and by Divine Tradition, that the Word of God the Father did not join Himself to a certain man already subsisting in Himself, but that Christ the Word of God is one and the same, enjoying eternity in the bosom of the Father, and made man in time. For, indeed, that the Godhead and Manhood in Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of mankind, are bound together by that wondrous union which is justly and deservedly called hypostatic, is luminously evident from the fact that in the Sacred Scriptures the same one Christ is not only called God and man, but it is also clearly declared that He works as God and also as man, and again that He dies as man and as God He arises from the dead. That is to say, He who is conceived in the Virgin’s womb by the operation of the Holy Ghost, who is born, who lies in a manger, who calls Himself the son of man, who suffers and dies, fastened to the cross, is the very same who, in a solemn and marvellous manner, is called by the Eternal Father “my beloved Son” (Matthew iii. 17; xvii. 5; 2 Peter i. 17), who pardons sins by His divine authority (Matt. ix. 2-6; Luke v. 20-24; vii. 48; and elsewhere), and likewise by His own power recalls the sick to health (Matt. viii. 3; Mark i. and 41; Luke v. 13; John ix; and elsewhere). As all these things show clearly that in Christ there are natures by which both divine and human works are performed, so do they bear witness no less clearly that the one Christ is at once both God and man because of that unity of person from which He is called “Theanthropos” (God-Man).
30. Moreover, this doctrine which has ever been handed down may be proved and con firmed, as all can see, from the dogma of man’s Redemption. For how indeed could Christ be
called “the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans viii. 29), or be wounded because of our iniquities (Isaias liii. 5; Matt. viii. 17), and redeem us from the servitude of sin, unless He had a human nature like as we have? And so, too, how could He make perfect satisfaction to the justice of the Heavenly Father which had been violated by mankind, unless He possessed an immense and infinite dignity by reason of His Divine Person?
31. Nor can this point of Catholic truth be disputed on the ground that, if our Redeemer had no human person, then it would seem that some perfection would be wanting to His human nature, which would make Him as man less than we are. For as it is acutely and sagaciously observed by Aquinas, “personality pertains to the dignity and perfection of any thing in so far as it pertains to the dignity and perfection of any thing that it should exist by itself, which is what we understand by the name of personality; but there is more dignity in any thing if it exists in another of greater dignity than itself, than if it existed by itself, and therefore there is more dignity in the human nature of Christ than in ours, on this very ground, that in us it has its own personality, as existing by itself, but in Christ it exists in the person of the Word; even as it pertains to the dignity of a form to be completive of the species; nevertheless, the sensitive is more noble in man, because of the conjunction with the more noble completive form, than it can be in a brute animal, in which it is itself the completive form.” (Summ. Theol., III. ii. 2.)
32. Moreover, it may be worth while to remark here that, just as Arius, that most crafty subverter of Catholic unity, attacked the Word’s Divine nature consubstantial to the Eternal Father, so Nestorius, taking quite another way, namely by rejecting the Redeemer’s hypostatic union, denied the full and perfect divinity of Christ, though not of the Word. For if, as he wrongly imagined, it was only by a moral union that the divine and human nature were joined together in Christ-to which, indeed, as We have said, the prophets, also, and the other heroes of Christian sanctity, have in some manner attained, according to their respective union with God-the Saviour of mankind would differ but little, or not at all, from those whom He redeemed by His grace and by His precious blood. Thus, when once the doctrine of the hypostatic union is abandoned, whereon the dogmas of the Incarnation and of man’s Redemption rest and stand firm, the whole foundation of the Catholic religion falls and comes to ruin. Wherefore, we do not wonder that, when the peril of the Nestorian heresy arose, the whole Catholic world was shaken: We do not wonder that, when the Bishop of Constantinople rashly and wrongly opposed the faith of the fathers, the Synod of Ephesus keenly contended against him, and carrying out the sentence of the Roman Pontiff, struck him down with a dire anathema.
33. We, therefore, in full accordance with all the ages of Christian history, venerate the Redeemer of mankind not as “Elias . . . or one of the Prophets,” in whom the heavenly Godhead dwelt by His grace, but together with the Prince of the Apostles, who knew this mystery by divine revelation, we make profession with one voice: “Thou are Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matt. xvi. 16.)
34. When once this dogma of the truth is securely established, it is easy to gather from it that by the mystery of the Incamation the whole creation of men and of mundane things has been endowed with a dignity than which, certainly, nothing greater can be imagined, and surely grander than that to which it was raised by the work of creation. For here in the race of Adam we have one, namely Christ, who has attained unto the eternal and infinite Godhead, and is joined thereto in a most close and mysterious manner; Christ, indeed, we call our brother, endowed with human nature, but also God with us, or Emmanuel, who by His grace and His merits, draws us all back to our divine Author and also recalls us to that heavenly beatitude from which we had miserably fallen away by original sin. Let us, therefore, turn to Him with a thankful heart; let us follow His precepts; let us imitate His examples. For thus shall we become sharers of His divinity “who deigned to become a partaker of our humanity” (Roman Missal).
35. But if, as We have said, at all times throughout the course of ages, the true Church of Christ has most diligently defended this genuine and uncorrupted doctrine concerning the personal unity and the divinity of her Founder, it has not been so, alas! with those who wander unhappily outside the one fold of Christ. For whenever anyone pertinaciously withdraws himself from
the infallible teaching authority of the Church, We grieve to say that he gradually loses the true and certain doctrine concerning Jesus Christ. And, indeed, with regard to the many and various religious sects, especially those dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which still bear the Christian name, and which, at the beginning of their separation, firmly professed that Christ is God and man; if we ask them now what they hold about Him, we shall certainly receive diverse and contradictory answers. For a few among them, indeed, have kept the full doctrine and the full faith concerning the person of our Redeemer; but others, if in a manner they affirm something like it, yet they seem to savour of vaporous scents whose reality is departed. For they set Jesus Christ before us as a man endowed with divine gifts and in a mysterious manner united to the Divinity beyond all others and very near to God; but they are far removed from the full and sincere profession of the Catholic faith. Others again, recognising nothing of the Divine in Christ, profess that He is a mere man, adorned indeed with excellent gifts of soul and body, but subject to errors and to human infirmity. From which it is clearly seen that all these, no less than Nestorius, make a temerarious attempt to “dissolve Christ,” and that, therefore, on the testimony of John the Evangelist, they are not of God (cf. 1 John iv. 3).
36. Wherefore, with a fatherly heart, from the summit of this Apostolic See, We exhort all those who glory in being the followers of Christ, and who place in Him their own hope and salvation and that of human society, that they should ever join themselves more firmly and more closely to this Roman Church, in which alone Christ is believed in with whole and perfect faith, is worshipped with the sincere worship of adoration, and is beloved with the perpetual flame of burning charity. Let them remember, and in particular those who preside over a flock separated from Us, that the faith which their fathers solemnly professed at Ephesus is preserved unchanged and is strenuously defended, as in past ages so also in the present, by this supreme Chair of Truth. Let them remember that the unity of this genuine faith rests and stands firm only on the one rock set by Christ, and can be preserved safe and intact by the supreme authority of the successors of Blessed Peter.
37. We spoke more fully, indeed, on this unity of the Catholic religion, a few years ago, in Our Encyclical letter Mortalium animos; still it may be useful to recall the matter briefly here; for the hypostatic union of Christ, solemnly confirmed in the Synod of Ephesus, bears and sets before us the image of that unity with which our Redeemer willed that His mystical body, that is to say the Church, should be adorned; “one body” (I Corinthians xii. 12) “compacted and fitly joined together” (Ephesians iv. 16). For if the personal unity of Christ is the mystical exemplar to which He Himself willed that the union of Christian society should be conformed, every wise man will see that this can only arise, not from any pretended conjunction of many disagreeing among themselves, but from one hierarchy, from one supreme teaching authority, from one law of believing, and from one faith of Christians. (See the Encyclical Letter Mortalium animos.) To this unity of the Church, consisting in communion with the Apostolic See, Philip, the Legate of the Roman Bishop, bore admirable testimony in the Synod of Ephesus; for when the Fathers of the Council, with one voice, were applauding the letters sent by Celestine, he addressed them in these memorable words: “We give thanks to the holy and venerable Synod that, when the letters of our holy Pope were recited, as holy members by your holy voices and exclamations, ye joined yourselves to the Holy Head. For your beatitude is not ignorant that the Blessed Peter is the head of the whole faith, as also of the Apostles.” (Mans, I.c. IV 1290.)
38. But if at any time, now more than ever, does it behove all the good to bind themselves by a sincere profession of faith to Jesus Christ and to the Church, His mystical Bride, now when so many men everywhere are striving to cast off the sweet yoke of Christ, when they reject the light of His doctrine, spurn the streams of His grace, and repudiate the divine authority of Him who has become, according to the words of the Gospel, “a sign which shall be contradicted” (Luke ii. 34). And now, since numberless and daily growing evils come forth from this lamentable falling away from Christ, let all seek an opportune remedy from Him who alone under heaven has been given to men whereby we must be saved (Acts iv. 12). For it is in this way only, when the Sacred Heart of Jesus inspires the minds of mortal men,
that happier times can arise for each of us one by one, for family life, and for civil society, at present so sadly disturbed.
III
39. Now from this head of Catholic doctrine upon which We have touched hitherto, there follows of necessity the dogma of the divine maternity which We preach as belonging to the Blessed Virign Mary. “Not that the nature of the Word or His Godhead”-as Cyril admonishes us-“took the source of its origin from the holy Virgin; but because He derived from her that sacred body, perfected by an intellectual soul, whereto the Word of God was hypostatically united, and therefore is said to be born according to the flesh.” (Mansi, I.c. IV. 891.)
And, indeed, if the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary is God, assuredly she who bore him is rightly and deservedly to be called the Mother of God. If there is only one person in Christ, and this is Divine, without any doubt Mary ought to be called, by all, not the mother of Christ the man only, but Theotocos, or God-bearer. Let us all, therefore, venerate the tender Mother of God, whom her cousin Elizabeth saluted as “the Mother of my Lord” (Luke i. 43), who, in the words of Ignatius Martyr, brought forth God (Ad Ephes. vii. 18-20); and from whom, as Tertullian professes, God was born; whom the Eternal Godhead has gifted with the fulness of grace and endowed with such great dignity.
40. Nor can anyone reject this truth, handed down from the first age of the Church, on the pretext that the Blessed Virgin Mary did, indeed, supply the body of Jesus Christ, but did not produce the Word of the Heavenly Father; since, as Cyril already rightly and lucidly answered in his time (cf. Mansi, I.c. IV. 599), even as those in whose womb our earthly nature, not our soul is procreated, are rightly and truly called our mothers; so did she, from the unity of her Son’s person, attain to divine maternity.
41. Wherefore, the impious opinion of Nestorius, which the Roman Pontiff, led by the Holy Spirit, had condemned in the preceding year, was deservedly and solemnly condemned again by the Synod of Ephesus. And the populace of Ephesus were drawn to the Virgin Mother of God with such great piety, and burning with such ardent love, that when they understood the judgment passed by the Fathers of the Council, they hailed them with overflowing gladness of heart, and gathering round them in a body, bearing lighted torches in their hands, accompanied them home. And assuredly, the same great Mother of God looked down from heaven on this spectacle, and smiling sweetly on these her children of Ephesus, and on all the faithful Christians throughout the Catholic world, who had been disturbed by the snares of the Nestorian heresy, embraced them with her most present aid and her motherly affection.
42. From this dogma of the divine maternity, as from the outpouring of a hidden spring, flow forth the singular grace of Mary and her dignity, which is the highest after God. Nay more, as Aquinas says admirably: “The Blessed Virgin, from this that she is the Mother of God, has a certain infinite dignity, from the infinite good which is God.” (Summ. Theo., III. a.6.) Cornelius a Lapide unfolds this and explains it more fully, in these words: “The Blessed Virgin is the Mother of God; therefore she is far more excellent than all the Angels, even the Seraphim and Cherubim. She is the Mother of God; therefore she is most pure and most holy, so that under God no greater purity can be imagined. She is the Mother of God; therefore whatever privilege (in the order of sancti*ing grace) has been granted to any one of the Saints, she obtains it more than all” (In Matt. i. 6).
43. Why, therefore, do the Reformers (Novatores) and not a few nonCatholics bitterly condemn our piety towards the Virgin Mother of God, as though we were withdrawing the worship due to God alone? Do they not know, or do they not attentively consider that nothing can be more pleasing to Jesus Christ, who certainly has an ardent love for his own Mother, than that we should venerate her as she deserves, that we should return her love, and that imitating her most holy example we should seek to gain her powerful patronage?
44. Here, however, We would not omit to mention a matter which has given Us no little consolation, namely that in the present time, even among the Reformers, some understand the dignity of the Virgin Mother of God better, and are led and moved to reverence her duly, and hold her in honour. This, when it comes from the inward and sincere conscience, and is not as
sometimes happens effected to conciliate the minds of Catholics, bids Us hope that by the prayers and efforts of all the good, and by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, who cherishes a mother’s love for her erring children, they may at length be brought back to the one true flock of Jesus Christ, and therefore to Us who, though unworthily, hold His place and His authority on earth.
45. But there is another matter, Venerable Brethren, which We think We should recall in regard to Mary’s office of Maternity, something which is sweeter and more pleasing; namely that she, because she brought forth the Redeemer of mankind, is also in a manner the most tender mother of us all, whom Christ our Lord deigned to have as His brothers (Romans viii. 29). As Our predecessor of happy memory, Leo XIII, says: “Such a one God has given as one to whom by the very fact that He chose her as the Mother of His only begotten Son, He clearly gave the feelings of a mother, breathing nothing but love and pardon-such did Jesus Christ show her to be, by His own action, when He spontaneously chose to be under her, and submit to her as a son to a mother; such did He declare her to be, when, from the Cross, He committed all mankind, in the person of His disciple John, to her care and protection; and as such, lastly, she gave herself, when embracing with a great heart, this heritage of immense labour from her dying Son, she began at once to fulfil all a mother’s duties to us all.” (Encyclical Letter Octobri mense adveniente. September 21, 1892.) From this it comes that we are all drawn to her by a powerful attraction, that we may confidently entrust to her all things that are ours-namely our joys, if we are gladdened; our troubles, if we are in anguish; our hopes, if we are striving to reach at length to better things. From this it comes that if more difficult times fall upon the Church; if faith fail, if charity have grown cold, if private and public morals take a turn for the worse; if any danger be hanging over the Catholic name and civil society, we all take refuge with her, imploring heavenly aid. From this it comes lastly that in the supreme crisis of death, when no other hope is given, no other help, we lift up to her our tearful eyes and our trembling hands, praying through her for pardon from her Son, and for eternal happiness in heaven.
46. Let all, therefore, with more ardent zeal in the present necessities with which we are afflicted, go to her and beseech her with instant supplication “that, through her prayers to her Son, the erring nations may return to the Christian institutions and precepts, which are the firm support of public safety, and from which arises an abundance of much desired peace and of true happiness. Let them implore of her the more earnestly, what ought to be desired above all things by all the good, namely that the Church our mother may gain and tranquilly enjoy her liberty; which she always uses for the best advantage of men, and from which individuals and states have never suffered any losses, but have at all times experienced very many and very great benefits.” (From the aforesaid Encyclical Letter.)
47. But one thing in particular, and that indeed one of great importance, We specially desire that all should implore, under the auspices of the heavenly Queen. That is to say, that she who is loved and worshipped with such ardent piety by the separated peoples of the East would not suffer them to wander and be unhappily ever led away from the unity of the Church, and therefore from her Son, whose Vicar on earth We are. May they return to the common Father, whose judgment all the Fathers of the Synod of Ephesus most dutifully received, and whom they all saluted, with concordant acclamations, as “the guardian of the faith”; may they all turn to Us, who have indeed a fatherly affection for them all, and who gladly make Our own those most loving words which Cyril used, when he earnestly exhorted Nestorius that “the peace of the Churches may be preserved, and that the bond of love and of concord among the priests of God may remain indissoluble.” (Mansi, I.c. IV. 891.)
48. And would that that most happy day might speedily dawn upon us when the Virgin Mother of God, who is admirably depicted in the tessellated work of Our predecessor, Sixtus III, in the Liberian Basilica-which We Ourselves have had restored to its pristine beauty-may see all the sons separated from Us returning, that they may venerate her along with Us with one mind and with one faith. This will assuredly be for Us a source of the very greatest pleasure.
49. Moreover, We may well regard it as a happy omen, that it has fallen to Us to celebrate this fifteenth centenary: to Us, We say, who have defended the dignity and the sanctity of chaste wedlock against the encroaching fallacies of every kind (Encyclical Letter, Casti connubii, December 21, 1930), and who have both solemnly vindicated the sacred rights of the Catholic Church over the education of youth, and have declared and explained the manner in which it should be given, and the principles to which it should be conformed. (Encyclical Letter, Divini illius Magistri, December 21, 1929.) For the precepts which We have set forth, concerning both these matters, have in the office of the divine maternity, and in the family of Nazareth, an excellent example proposed for the imitation of all. As Our predecessor, Leo XIII of happy memory, says: “Fathers of families indeed have in Joseph a glorious pattern of vigilance and paternal prudence; mothers have in the most holy Virgin Mother of God a remarkable example of love and modesty and submission of mind, and of perfect faith; but the children of a family have in Jesus, who was subject to them, a divine model of obedience, which they may admire, and worship and imitate.” (Apostolic Letter, Neminem fugit, January 14, 1882.)
50. But in a more special manner it is fitting that those mothers of this our age, who being weary, whether of offspring or of the marriage bond, have the office they have undertaken degraded and neglected, may look up to Mary and meditate intently on her who has raised this grave duty of motherhood to such high nobility. For in this way there is hope that they may be led, by the help of grace of the heavenly Queen, to feel shame for the dishonour done to the great sacrament of matrimony, and may happily be stirred up to follow after the wondrous praise of her virtues, by every effort in their power.
51. If all these things prosper according to Our purpose, that is to say if the life of the family, the beginning and the foundation of all human society, is recalled to this most worthy model of holiness, without doubt We shall at length be able to meet the formidable crisis of evils confronting Us, with an effective remedy. In this way, it will come to pass that “the peace of God which passeth all understanding” may “keep the hearts and minds” of all (Phil. iv. 7), and that the much desired Kingdom of Christ, minds and forces being joined together, may be everywhere established.
52. We will not close this Encyclical Letter, Venerable Brethren, without mentioning a matter which will surely be pleasing to you all. Desiring that there may be a liturgical monument of this commemoration, which may help to nourish the piety of clergy and people towards the great Mother of God, We have commanded Our supreme council presiding over Sacred Rites to publish an Office and Mass of the Divine Maternity, which is to be celebrated by the universal Church. And, meanwhile, as an earnest of heavenly gifts, and a pledge of Our paternal affection, We impart the Apostolic Benediction, very lovingly in the Lord, to you, Venerable Brethren, one and all, and to your clergy and people.
Given at Rome, at St. Peter’s, December 25, the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the year 1931, the tenth of Our Pontificate.
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