Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus

Whosoever that shall call upon the Name of the Lord, shall be saved
(Joel 2.32).

“The Name Jesus“
by Abp. Fulton Sheen

The Name Jesus was a fairly common one among the Jews. In the original Hebrew, it was “Joshua”. The angel told Joseph that Mary would bring forth a Son: and thou shalt call His name JESUS. For He shall save His people from their sins (Mt. 1.21). The first indication of the nature of His mission on earth does not mention His teaching; for the teaching would be ineffective, unless there was first salvation.

He was given another name at the same time, the name Emmanuel. Behold a virgin shall be with child, and bring forth a Son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us (Mt. 1.23). This name was taken from the prophecy of Isaias (7.14) and it assured something besides a Divine presence; together with the name Jesus, it meant a Divine presence which delivers and saves. The angel also told Our Blessed Mother: Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a Son; and thou shalt call His name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the most High… (Lk. 1.31,32).

The title Son of the most High was the very one that was given to the Redeemer by the evil spirit which possessed the youth in the land of the Gergesenes. The fallen angel thus confessed Him to be what the unfallen angel said he was: What have I to do with Thee, Jesus the Son of the most High God? I adjure Thee by God that Thou torment me not (Mk. 5.7).

The salvation that is promised by the name Jesus is not a physical, economic, or social salvation, but rather a spiritual one. He would not save people necessarily from their poverty or physical pains and sufferings, but He would save them from their sins. To destroy sin is not to uproot the first causes of poverty. The name Jesus brought back the memory of their great leader, who had brought them out of Israel to rest in the promised land. The fact that He was prefigured by Joshua indicates that He had the soldierly qualities necessary for the final victory over evil, unwavering courage, resoluteness of will and unshakable devotion to the Father’s mandate.

The people enslaved under the Roman yoke were seeking deliverance; hence they felt that any prophetic fulfillment of the ancient Joshua would have something to do with politics. Later on, the people would ask Him when He was going to deliver them from the power of Cesar. But here, at the very beginning of His life, the Divine Soldier affirmed through an angel that He had come to conquer a greater enemy than Cesar. They must still render to Cesar the things that were Cesar’s; His mission was to deliver them form a far greater bondage, namely, that of Satan through sin. All through His life people would continue to materialize the concept of salvation and deliverance. The name Jesusor Savior was not given Him after He had wrought salvation, but at the very moment He was conceived in the womb of His Mother. The foundation of His salvation was from eternity and not from time.

Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus

This is My Covenant which you shall observe, between me and you, and thy seed after thee in their generations: All the male kind of you shall be circumcised: And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, that it may be for a sign of the Covenant between Me and you.

This is My Covenant which you shall observe, between me and you, and thy seed after thee in their generations: All the male kind of you shall be circumcised: And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, that it may be for a sign of the Covenant between Me and you (Gen. 17.10, 9,11-13).

Circumcision in the Old Testament was originally a rite of initiation to the life of the clan, Gen. 34.14-16. But in the above quoted passages, this circumcision of the flesh becomes the sign (like the rainbow, Gen. 9.16-17) to ‘remind’ God of His Covenant and man of his obligations deriving from his commitment to belong to God alone by membership in God’s people. Thus, Abraham and his seed and their generations were to place themselves under the rule of the Lord as their King by obedience to His laws: The Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed: that thou mayst love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul (Deut. 30.6).

Note how the observance of the Covenant was not limited only to men who were already capable of making a protestation of faith. God’s Covenant with Abraham extended -restricted* though it might be – to male infants of eight days old.
—
* At the time of Abraham, “faith was on the wane, many being given over to idolatry” (St. Thomas Aquinas, “Summa Theologica,” III, Q. 70, Art. 2) and wallowing in the basest condition idolatry could ever offer man – where his natural reason was clouded by the vehemence of carnal concupiscence even in regard to sins against nature (as the crime of perversion of the men of Sodom, Gen. 13.13; Gen. 19.4-5). Therefore, the Lord instituted circumcision “as a profession of faith and a remedy against carnal concupiscence” (St. Thomas Aquinas, ibid.).
—
But as all things happened to the Fathers of Old in figure (1 Cor. 10.11), circumcision was therefore a sign (Gen. 17.10), “although less clearly figurative” (St. Thomas Aquinas, ibid., Art. 1), of Baptism. You are circumcised with circumcision not made by hand, in despoiling of the body of the flesh, but in the circumcision of Christ: buried with Him in baptism… (Col. 2.11). Both OT circumcision and Christian Baptism symbolize a renunciation of the flesh with its sins.

The objection offered therefore by the “Bible-only” sectarians, to wit, that infants are not capable yet of professing the faith to receive Baptism, is denied. They must hold also the imposition by God of circumcision, a sign of His Covenant, on infants as superfluous, if not absurd, for St. Paul says, circumcision profiteth indeed, if thou keep the law (Rom. 2.25).

Circumcision of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

Time passes and does not return. God has assigned to each of us a definite time in which to fulfill His divine plan; we have only this time and shall have no more. Time ill spent is lose forever. Our life is made up of this uninterrupted, continual flow of time, which never returns. In eternity, on the contrary, time will be no more; we shall be established forever in the degree of love which have reached now, in time. If we have attained a high degree of love, we shall be fixed forever in that degree of love and glory; if we possess only a slight degree, that is all that we shall have throughout eternity. No further progress will be possible when time has ended. We must give God every moment full amount of love, and make each passing moment eternal, by giving it value for eternity. This is the best way to use the time given us by God. Charity allows us to adhere to God’s will with submission and love and thus at the “evening of life” (St. John of the Cross) we shall have realized God’s plan for us; we shall have reached the degree of love which God expects from each one of us: thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind (Mt. 22.37).

Eight days after the birth of the Divine Infant, He is already beginning His redemptive mission. He has not yet spoken; the world does not know Him; but He is already shedding His Blood for the salvation of mankind. Contemplating Him, we shall learn that deeds are better than words, that the greater the sacrifices they require, the greater the proof they give of real love. Furthermore, every undertaking must receive its baptism of blood in order to be fruitful.

A new year, a new life! A new life indeed! – for if we circumcise in ourselves the old man… corrupted according to the desire of error (Eph. 4.22) with his vices and passions, the “Christian” can grow in us; we can become new creatures, purified by the Blood of Christ, vivified and nourished by His grace through the Holy Eucharist, so that it may no longer be we who live, but Christ liveth in [us] (Gal. 2.2). The new year which begins today will acquire value only if lived in this light. Only by this daily circumcision of the heart will grace triumph in us, thus making the Christ-life an ever-increasing reality in us.

Jesus’ humble submission to His Father’s will, manifested by His obedience to the law*, is another lesson to be learned from today’s Feast.
—
* The law of circumcision, cf. Gen. 17.12-13, could in no way affect Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Holy One (Acts 3.15; Is. 43.3), but He willed to submit to it for as St. Paul says, it behooved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren… that He might be a propitiation for the sins of the people (Heb. 2.17).
—
It is an invitation to us to be docile to God’s will, whatever it may be – Our Lord’s disposition: my meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me(Jn. 4.34). None of us knows what awaits us in this new year, but God knows. His will has already prepared our path; every detail of our life is already determined in His mind. Let us be ready to accept, or rather to embrace with courage and readiness, everything that God wishes or permits, certain that in His holy will we shall find our peace, our salvation, and our sanctification.

A blessed new year to all!

]]> http://teresiancarmel.wordpress.com/2011/12/25/the-mystery-of-the-incarnation-a-poem-of-divine-love/ Sun, 25 Dec 2011 11:53:36 +0000 Ignis Dei http://teresiancarmel.wordpress.com/2011/12/25/the-mystery-of-the-incarnation-a-poem-of-divine-love/ +
JMJ

The Nativity of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (Jn. 1.1,14).

God is charity (1 Jn.4.8); everything He does, both in Himself and outside of Himself, is a work of His love. Being the highest and inexhaustible Good, He cannot love anything outside of Himself from the desire of increasing His happiness, as is the case with us; in Himself He possesses all. Therefore, in God, to love, and hence to see it fit to create rational beings (angels and men, with reason and free will; the former, pure spirits, that is, incorporeal with non-deliberating intellect; the latter, corporeal with deliberating reason) and irrational beings, is simply to extend, outside of Himself, His infinite goodness, His perfections, and to communicate to others His own Being and felicity. Bonum diffusivi sui(Good is diffusive of itself), says St. Thomas Aquinas. Thus, God loved man with an eternal love, I have loved thee with an everlasting love(Jer. 31.3), and, loving him, called him into existence, giving him both natural and supernatural life (the life of Christ, the seed of eternal life, implanted in us in Baptism). Through love, God not only brought man out of nothing, but chose him and elevated him to the state of divine sonship, destining him to participate intimately in His own life, in His eternal beatitude. This was the first plan of the immense charity of God with regard to man. But when man fell into sin, God, Who had created him by an act of love, willed to redeem him by an even greater act of love. See then, how the mystery of the Incarnation presents itself to us as the supreme manifestation of God’s exceeding charity toward man. By this hath the charity of God appeared towards us, because God hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world, that we may live by Him. In this is charity… He hath first loved us, and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins (1 Jn. 4.9,10). After having given man natural life, after having destined him for the supernatural life, what more could He give him than to give Himself, His Word made flesh, for his salvation?

It is not surprising, therefore, that the story of His benevolent action on behalf of man is all a poem of love, and of merciful love. The first stanza of this poem was our eternal predestination to the beatific vision of God [that is, to see God facie ad faciem (face to face, Ex. 33.11): this consists our eternal happiness in heaven] and to the fruition of the intimate life of God. The second stanza relates, in an even more touching way, the sublimity of His mercy: the mystery of the Incarnation.

The sin of our first parents had destroyed God’s original plan for our elevation to a supernatural state (the state of being born again in the regenerating waters of Baptism and in the Spirit of Truth, cf., Jn. 3.5, abiding forever in the Church, cf., Jn. 14.17).; we had forfeited our claim, and we could never atone for the sin – having offended God. God could have pardoned all, but it was becoming to His holiness and unfathomable justice to exact an adequate satisfaction, for He is just and hath loved justice: His countenace hath beheld righteousness (Ps. 10.8); man was absolutely incapable of providing this. Then the most sublime work of God’s mercy was accomplished: one Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Second – the Eternal Word - came to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. Behold the Word, God’s only-begotten Son, “who for us men and for our salvation, descended from heaven and became incarnate” (the Nicene Creed). The merciful love of God thus attains its highest manifestation: if there is no ingratitude and misery greater than sin, there can be no love greater than that of Him Who inclines over so much ingratitude and abjection to restore it to its primal splendor. God did this, not by the intervention of a prophet or the most sublime of the angels: but He did it personally as He promised: God will bring the revenge of  recompense: God Himself will come and save you(Is. 35.4; pay attention you “Bible-only” sectarians who deny the divinity of Jesus Christ the Lord and Savior!).

All three Persons of the the Blessed Trinity acted in the Incarnation, the end of which was to unite a human nature with the Person of the Word(theology calls this the “hypostatic union”). The Word remains what He was – perfect God, and the Word was God. Nevertheless, He does not disdain to assume our poor human nature, fallen through sin, Who beingin the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men and in habit found as a man (Phil. 2.6-7). This is the work of the immense charity of God, Who being full of mercy for His poor creatures who had fallen into the abyss of sin, did not hesitate to decree the redemptive Incarnation of His only-begotten Son. Thus the Eternal Word comes to us like the good shepherd who leaves everything and goes down into the valley to look for the lost sheep. This is the fruit of the exceeding charity with which God has loved us!

A Child is born to us, a Son is given to us… His Name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, God the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of peace 
(Is. 9.6)

A blessed Christmas to all!

]]> http://teresiancarmel.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/solemn-feast-of-the-immaculate-conception-of-the-blessed-virgin-mary/ Thu, 08 Dec 2011 05:02:11 +0000 Ignis Dei http://teresiancarmel.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/solemn-feast-of-the-immaculate-conception-of-the-blessed-virgin-mary/ +
JMJ

Thou art all fair, O Mary, and there is not spot of original sin in thee.
(from the Canticle of Canticles, 4.7)

The Privilege of the Immaculate Conception
by Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

The definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, made by Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1854, reads as follows:

“We declare, announce, and define that the doctrine which states that the Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved, in the first instant of Her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of God Omnipotent and because of the merits of Jesus Christ the Savior of the human race, free from all stain of original sin, is revealed by God and must therefore be believed firmly and with constancy by all the faithful” (Papal Bull, Ineffabilis Deus).

This definition contains three especially important points. First, it affirms that the Blessed Virgin was preserved from all stain of original sin from the first instant of Her conception. The conception meant is that known as passive or consummated – that in which Her soul was created and united to Her body – for it is then only that one can speak of a human person, whereas the definition bears on a privilege granted to the person of Mary.The definition states also that the Immaculate Conception is a special privilege an altogether singular grace, the work of divine omnipotence.

What are we to understand by original sin from which Mary has been preserved? The Church has not defined its intrinsic nature, but she has taught us something about it by telling us its effects: the divine hatred or malediction, a stain on the soul, a state on non-justice or spiritual death, servitude under the empire of Satan, subjection to the law of concupiscence, subjection to suffering and to bodily death in so far as they are the penalty of the common sin (cf. Second Council of Orange, in Denz. 174, 175, and the Sacred Council of Trent, in Denz 788, 789). These effects presuppose the loss of the sanctifying grace which, along with integrity of nature, Adam had received for us and for himself, and which he lost by sin, also for us and for himself (cf., the Sacred Council of Trent, in Denz 789).

It follows therefore that Mary was not preserved free from every stain of original sin otherwise than by receiving sanctifying grace into Her soul from the first instant of Her conception. Thus She was conceived in the state of justice and holiness which is the effect of divine friendship as opposed to divine malediction, and in consequence She was withdrawn from the slavery of the devil and subjection to the law of concupiscence. She was withdrawn too from subjection to the law of suffering and death, considered as penalties of the sin of our nature, even though both Jesus and Mary knew suffering and death in so far as they are consequences of our nature and endured them for our salvation.

Second, it is affirmed in the definition, as it was already affirmed in 1661 by Pope Alexander VIII that it was through the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, that Mary was preserved from original sin. Hence the opinion held by some 13th century theologians – that Mary was immaculate in the sense of not needing to be redeemed, and that Her first grace was independent of the future merits of Her Son – may no longer be admitted. According to the Papal Bull Ineffabilis Deus, Mary was redeemed by the merits of Her Son in a most perfect way, by a redemption which did not free Her from a stain already contracted, but which preserved Her from contracting one. Even in human affairs we look on one as more a savior if he wards off a blow than if he merely heals the wound it inflicts.

The idea of preservative redemption reminds us that Mary, being child of Adam and proceeding from him by way of natural generation, should have incurred the hereditary taint, and would have incurred it in fact had not God decided from all eternity to grant Her the unique privilege of an immaculate conception in dependence on the future merits of Her Son.

The Sacred Liturgy had already made this point in the prayer proper to the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, which was approved by Pope Sixtus IV (1476): “Thou hast preserved Her from all stain through the foreseen death of this same Son.” The Blessed Virgin was preserved from original sin by the future death of Her Son, that is to say, by the merits of Christ dying for us on the Cross.

It is therefore clear that Mary’s preservation from original sin differs essentially from the that of Our Savior. Jesus was not redeemed by the merits of another, not even by His own. He was preserved from original sin and from all sin for two reasons: first, because of the personal union of His humanity to the Divine Word in the very instant in which His sacred soul was created [in theology, this union is called the "hypostatic union"], since it could not be that sin should ever be attributed to the Word made flesh; secondly, since His conception was virginal and due to the operation of the Holy Ghost [and not by man], so that Jesus did not descend from Adam by way of natural generation. These two reasons are peculiar to Jesus alone.

Third, the definition proposes the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as revealed, that is, as contained at least implicitly in the deposit of Revelation – in the Sacred Scriptures and Tradition [as we have already shown in the three previous posts on the Immaculate Conception through the treatises of St. Alphonsus], or in one at least of those two sources.

The Papal Bull Ineffabilis Deus quotes actually only two texts of the Sacred Writ, Genesis III, 15 and St. Luke I,28,42.

The privilege of the Immaculate Conception is revealed as it were implicitly or confusedly in the book of Genesis in the words spoken by God to the serpent, and thereby to Satan: I will put enmity between thee and the Woman, and thy seed and Her seed: She shall crush thy head… The pronoun we translate as She is masculine in the Hebrew text; this is true also of the Greek Septuagint and the Syriac versions. St. Jerome’s Sacred Latin Vulgate Bible – the official Latin translation of the Church of the Sacred Scriptures – however has the feminine Ipsa, referring the prophecy directly to the Woman Herself and for this reason: “We do not find in Eve the principle of that enmity which God will put between the race of the Woman and the race of the serpent; for Eve, like Adam, is herself fallen a victim to the [devil]. It is only between Mary, Mother of the Redeemer, that enmity ultimately exists… ” (Fr. F.X. le Bachelet in Fr. Garrigou-Langrage, O.P.). God did not speak only of this enmity between Mary and Satan and their respective seed but also the outcome of this enmity between Mary and Satan: the victory of Our Blessed Mother: She shall crush thy head.

Taken by themselves these words are certainly not sufficient to prove that the Immaculate Conception is revealed. But the Fathers of the Church, in their comparison of Eve and Mary, have seen in them an allusion to it, and it is on this account that the text is cited by Pope Pius IX.

The promise of Genesis speaks of a victory that will be complete: She shall crush thy head. And since the victory over Satan will be complete, so also the victory over sin which makes the soul slave and devil master. But as Pope Pius IX teaches in his Bull, the victory over Satan would not be complete if Mary had not been preserved from original sin by the merits of Her Son.

The Immaculate Conception is contained therefore in the promise of Genesis as the oak is contained in the acorn. A person who had never seen an oak could never guess the value of the acorn, nor its final stage of development. But we who have seen the oak know for what the acorn is destined, and that it does not yield an elm nor a poplar. The same law of evolution obtains in the order of progressive divine revelation.

The Bull quotes also the salutation addressed by the Archangel to Mary: Ave, gratia plena (Lk. 1.28). The habitual grace which the Blessed Virgin Mary received at the instant of the creation of Her holy soul was fulness or plenitude to which the words of the Archangel on the day of the Annunciation might have been applied. Pope Pius IX even says that, from the first instant, Mary “was loved by God more than all creatures [prae creaturis universis], that He found most extreme pleasure in Her, and that He loaded Her in a wonderful way with His graces, more than all the angels and saints.”

St. Thomas Aquinas explains the reason of this plenitude of grace: “The nearer one approaches to a principle (of truth and life) the more one participates in its effects. That is why St.Denis affirms that the angels, who are nearer to God than man is, participate more in His favors. But Christ is the principle of the life of grace; as God He is its principal cause and as Man (having first His humanity is, as it were, an instrument always united to the Divinity: grace and truth came by Jesus Christ - Jn. 1.17). The Blessed Virgin Mary, being nearer to Christ than any other human being, since it is from Her that He received His humanity, receives from Him therefore a fulness of grace, surpassing that of all other creatures.”

Furthermore, the same Angelic Doctor explains that though the angels do not manifest special respect men, being their superiors by nature and living in holy intimacy with God, yet the Archangel Gabriel when saluting Mary, showed himself full of veneration for Her. He understood that She was far above him through Her fulness of grace, Her intimacy with God, and Her perfect purity.

She surpassed the angels in Her holy familiarity with the Most High. On that account, the Archangel Gabriel saluted Her saying: Dominus tecum (The Lord is with thee). It was as if he said: “You are more intimate with God than I. He is about to become Your Son, whereas I am but His servant.” In truth, Mary, as Mother of God, is more intimate with the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, than are the angels.

On the contrary, the Blessed Virgin would not have received complete fulness of grace had Her soul been even for an instant in the condition of spiritual death which follows on original sin, had She been even for an instant  deprived of grace, turned away from God, a daughter of wrath, in slavery to the devil.

Colloquy:

“O Mary, Mother of God and my Mother,
what light and strength Your sweet image brings me!
The most beautiful, the holiest, the purest of all creatures,
so ‘full of grace’ that You were worthy to bear within You
the Author and Source of all grace, truth, and life,
You do not disdain to give Yurself to me – a poor creature,
conscious of my sin and misery – as a model of purity, love, and holiness.

The privileges of Your Immaculate Conception and divine maternity are inimitable,
but You have hidden them within such a simple, humble life
that I am not afraid to approach You, and ask You
to take me by the hand and help me
to ascend the mountain of perfection with You.
Yes, You are Queen of heaven and earth;
but because you are more Mother than Queen,
You encourage me to have recourse to You saying,
O my child, hear me; blessed are they who keep my ways…
He who finds me, finds life, and
will obtain salvation from the Lord 
(Pr. 8.32, 35)
And I answer You in the words of the Church,
‘Draw me, O Immaculate Virgin,
I will run after you in the odor of Your ointments‘
(pre-Vatican II ‘Roman Breviary,” cf. Cant. 1.3)

Yes, draw me, Immaculate Mother, above all by the luminous charm
of Your spotless purity!
I feel so impure and stained by the things of earth compared with You,
the all-pure, so detached from everything,
so forgetful of Yourself that nothing moves You to act
apart from the divine desires, pleasures, and impulses,
apart from the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

If I see You always docile and ready to respond
to every least invitation, even though it be hidden under
the most human, ordinary circumstances;
if I hear You gently repeating Your ‘Yes,’ Ecce ancilla Domini… fiat…
(Behold the handmaid of the Lord… let it be done…),
in all happenings of Your life, big and little, agreeable and disagreeable,
it is because You are the Immaculate.
No shadow of creatures or purely human interests or affections
touches Your heart; and therefore, nothing
can delay Your most rapid course toward God.

Illumine my mind then with the light which emanates
from Your resplendent purity,
so that no attachment, no earthly affection may remain hidden in me
to prevent my leading a life truly [and fully] consecrated to my God.

With Your help, O Immaculate Mother, I am ready to renounce
any affection, even if slight, which could still bind me to creatures.
I want my heart to belong wholly to God, for Whom
I would keep its every throb in a spirit of perfect chastity,
so that I will never refuse anything to the Lord,
and will always be able to repeat with You my prompt fiat. Amen.

A blessed Feast to all!

+

Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

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… [Ecclesiasticus (Ecclus.) 24.24-26, DRV] Such are the sacred words taken from the Epistle of the Mass for today’s Feast – the same Epistle for the Solemn Commemoration of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mt. Carmel – and which sacred words the Holy Church therefore applies to Our Immaculate Mother.

… In me is all hope of life… On July 13, 1917 Our Blessed Mother, in Her apparition at Fatima, Portugal, gave the children a vision of hell and of the countless souls that were on the way to eternal damnation. And “in order to save them,” Our Blessed Mother tells Lucia [Sr. Lucia of the Immaculate Heart, C.D.], “God wants to spread devotion to My Immaculate Heart throughout the world” (Sister Lucy Speaks About Fatima, 1989). It must be recalled very well here that it was the sin of pride that cut off Satan from Him Who alone Is the Truth and the Life and which precipitated him into the abyss of hell: How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer? And thou saidst in thy heart: … I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the mountain of the covenant… I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the Most High. But yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, into the depth of the pit (Is. 14.12-15). How he cast himself to hit the very bottom, so to speak, of the abyss of hell by his pride, we could have it intimated in the Sacred Scriptures: When He bringeth in the first begotten into the world, He saith: Let all the angels of God adore Him (Heb. 1.6); but when Lucifer saw the human nature of Our Lord – a nature inferior to his – he rebelled saying: Non serviam! (I will not serve! – Jer. 2.20) for such subjection was harmful to his excellence. It was that same sin of pride by which the devil wounded (cf., Is. 14.12) man and which sin became in him the source of all the others; that same sin which made him merit that same place with Satan in the abyss of hell, the everlasting fire of which was prepared [originally, not for him but...] for the devil and his angels (Mt. 25.41).

The appearance of Our Immaculate Mother at Fatima, Portugal in 1917 signaled the end-times battle between the Woman and the ancient infernal serpent – now, the red dragon which appeared after Her who is the great sign of the 12th Chapter of the Book of the Apocalypse (see our post, “The Great Sign in Heaven“). In this “decisive battle” [Sr. Lucia, C.D. in a 1957 conversation with Fr. Fuentes, in Fr. Joaquin Alonso, C.M.F. (the official archivist of Fatima), La Verdad sobre el Secreto do Fatima (The Truth About the Secret of Fatima), Centro Mariano, Madrid, 1976], it is “clear which side will have the victory and which side will be defeated” (ibid.). We read in the Sacred Scriptures: Inimicitias ponam inter te [serpens] et Mulierem… Ipsa conteret caput tuum… (I will put enmity between thee [the serpent] and the Woman… She shall crush thy head, Gen. 3.15); and, in the Book of Judith: by me His handmaid He hath fulfilled His mercy… and he hath killed the enemy of His people by my hand…. the Lord Our God slew him by the hand of a woman… And they [the Jews] all adored the Lord, and said to her: the Lord… hath directed thee to the cutting off the head of the prince of our enemies… [and] hath prevented our ruin (13.18-25). Now, to prevent our ruin and even to make us walk upon the asp and the basilisk: and … trample under foot the lion and the dragon (Ps. 90.13), Our Immaculate Mother offers us again Herself – but this time, as our “last lifeline” (Fr. Karl Stehlin, F.S.S.P.X., The Immaculata Our Ideal, 2005). And this “final hope is Her Immaculate Heart, to which the entire world, especially Russia [cf., our post "When Mary Comes III"], must be consecrated [cf., our post "Ninth and Last Day of Novena to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel"]“ (ibid.).

Our Consecration then to the Immaculate Heart of Our Blessed Mother would rather be a sham and a response of false devotion if there is not being effected in us, in the Church, in the world, and especially in Russia, that restoration of the divine order of things to which we, in justice to God, ought to submit [cf., our post "The Time of God's Visitation" and comment] and in which we ought to find our true and rightful place [cf., our post "True Humility"]. Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary therefore brings about in souls and societies (the Church and nations) the fruits Our Blessed Mother speaks about in today’s Epistle and therefore, as it were, the first “healthy vital signs” of our Spiritual Life: the supernatural virtue of justice (by which Christ and Him Crucified, 1 Cor. 2.2, in us renders the primacy to the claims and rights of God) and truth (in the light of our holy Catholic Tradition) – all encompassed in the supernatural virtue of humility which is the foundation of an authentic New Life in Christ. Behold how, at the Annunciation (Lk. 1), Our Blessed Mother corresponded with God’s designs for the restoration of the life we lost and that got spoiled: She corresponded with the grace of God by the most perfect use of reason. And what did Our Blessed Mother make of it? She made of it a perpetual sacrifice of submission to the Supreme Reason; She never allowed Herself one single reasoning about the designs of God or His conduct with regard to Her, although this conduct was full of mysteries and of apparent contradictions. Hence, we shall never make any advance in the Spiritual Life unless we make the same use of our reason. God often guides souls by ways that are opposed to all human views, He takes pleasure in upsetting all our judgments, in disconcerting all our foresight, in disappointing all our efforts. We have only one thing to do, which is not to think about ourselves at all, not to reason about what God is doing with us – let God be God.

Let God be God. The interior of Our Blessed Mother then was a copy, and the very closest copy, of the interior of Our Lord. As Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself continually to His Father during the whole course of His life, obeying Him even to the death on the Cross, Our Blessed Mother also continually sacrificed Jesus in Her Heart, and Herself with Him, to the Eternal Father in Heaven. On Calvary, Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself upon the Cross by giving Himself up to all the severity of the Divine Justice – to spare us. Our Blessed Mother had in the Cross of Our Lord a share that, from the birth of Her Divine Son until His death, She felt the very same blows that He suffered, not only from men but also, as it were, from God. All the feelings which the Heart of Jesus experienced – with regard to the glory of His Father, outraged by men; the holiness of His Father, dishonored by sin; the justice of His Father, of which He Himself was the Victim; with regard to so many millions of souls to whom His Blood and His Sacrifice would be useless, and even fatal, by the abuse they would make of them – were communicated to the Heart of His Mother with all the strength and extent of which a pure and therefore most sensitive creature was capable. Our Blessed Mother, standing at the foot of the Cross, sacrificed Herself, and more than Herself, by sacrificing Her Beloved Son, and consenting to the accomplishment of the designs of God for our redemption. As Our Lord loved us so much that He gave us not only the life of His body, but in some sense the life of His soul, so Our Blessed Mother loved us so much that She gave us, in Her Crucified Son, what was dearer to Her than Her own life and Her own soul.

How shall we then show our solid devotion to and inviolable alliance with Our Immaculate Mother in this critical hour of Her and our battle with the ancient serpent and his minions – inside and out of the Church – through our Consecration to Her Immaculate Heart? By striving to imitate her interior life, Her lowly opinion of Herself, Her love of obscurity, of silence, and of retirement; Her attraction to little things, Her fidelity and generosity in corresponding to God’s invitations, inspirations, and arrangements, the beautiful simplicity of Her recollection and prayer – the only object of which was God and His will, Jesus Christ and His love, Her continual sacrifice of Herself  and of all She loved most dearly and had the greatest reason to love. Let us beg of Her that we may beat the beatings of Her Immaculate Heart (cf., our post “The Scapular…“) so that we may beat only the beatings of the Heart of God; that She obtain for us from the Sacred Heart of Our Dearest Little Jesus a great purity of mind, heart, body, and soul; that through Her Scapular, She may clothe us with Her own virtues especially that of humility and meekness; and that we may perfectly correspond to the designs of God upon us. And these designs are most certainly our death to ourselves and the destruction of our inordinate self-love. “Almighty everlasting God, Who in the Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary didst prepare a dwelling worthy of the Holy Ghost: grant in Thy mercy, that we who with devout minds celebrate the festival of that Immaculate Heart may be able to live according to Thine own Heart. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the same Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen” (Collect of the Mass).

Consideration: The Scapular – The Visible Badge of Christian Victory; Its secret: Being Subject to Our Blessed Mother Through Total Consecration to Her Immaculate Heart

The Scapular is a miniature habit – that is, it is the habit or garb of the Friars and Nuns of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mt. Carmel reduced to a form that can be worn in the daily life of the faithful who desire to unite themselves to the “Order of the Virgin” (Our Lord in His colloquy with St. Teresa of Jesus – reformer of Carmel and foundress of the Discalced Carmelites, also known as the Teresian Carmelites), to partake of our Teresian Carmelite spirit and thereby becoming sharers as well of our spiritual treasures.

Now “all our perfection consists in being conformed, united, and consecrated to Jesus Christ” (St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary) and Him Curicified (1 Corinthians 2.2): I know… the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death (Philippians 3.10). If we look at the emblem of Teresian Carmel, we see Mount Carmel surmounted by the Cross of Our Lord – being the Order instituted by Our Lord and Our Blessed Mother as the school par excellence of Christian perfection the summit of which is crowned by charity: that love of God manifested by the Crucified. And when one is granted the privilege to enter, much less to just take a peek, into the cell of a Discalced Carmelite Friar or Nun, he will see a big Cross hanging on the wall without the ‘corpus’ or the body of the Crucified. But why a ‘corpus’-less Cross in Teresian Carmel? In the fourth Station of the Cross according to the method of St. Francis of Assisi, the Saint reflects on Our Sorrowful Mother meeting His Beloved: “How earnestly did She desire to die in place of Jesus…” A Teresian Carmelite must own such sentiment of the Immaculate Heart of Our Blessed Mother and thus is he exhorted: “Be ready to take the place of your Beloved !” for the most perfect of all devotion is, without any doubt, that which the most perfectly conforms, unites, and consecrates us to Jesus Christ Crucified. Jesus, our greatest friend, has given Himself to us without reserve, body and soul, virtues, graces, and merits. “He has bought the whole of me by whole of Himself,” says St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Is it not, then, a simple matter of justice and of gratitude that we should Him all that we can give Him? He has been the first to be liberal towards us; let us, at least, be the second… “With the liberal He will be liberal.”

“Whenever someone begins a new stage of life, it does not happen automatically, but rather by means of a decision and an intentional act. For example, a man decides on a career and signs a contract with his employer. Or he chooses his state in life and seals this decision with a wedding ceremony, priestly ordination, or religious profession…” (Rev. Fr. Karl Stehling, SSPX, “The Immaculata Our Ideal,” p. 100). In a similar manner, those who enter also the Teresian Carmelite Family of Our Blessed Mother through the Scapular Confraternity seals their decision but through Total Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and its cause of which the Scapular is its sign.

It is therefore of great importance in the  acquiring of perfection (Be ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect ), which it must be remembered is only acquired by union with Our Lord and Him Crucified, to empty ourselves of everything that is not Him. In order to empty ourselves of ourselves, we must die to ourselves daily (1 Corinthians 15.31) by our conformity to God’s will just as the Mother of God had said:  Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done to me according to thy word.  Here we hand over our whole life to Our Lord by the hand of Our Blessed Mother: all the powers of our soul, that is, our understanding, our will, and our memory, along with all the powers of the body, namely, all the senses and energies, health and sickness of our whole life we commend to her with all its pleasant, unpleasant and indifferent incidents . If we die not to ourselves, and if our holiest devotions do not incline us to this necessary and useful death, we shall bring forth no fruit worth anything, and our devotions will become useless.

Often we come to know Our Blessed Mother’s wishes through inner promptings, but we can almost never be sure whether these come from her or from our self-love or even from the devil. Satan in the form of an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11.14) is sometimes able to deceive us with the holiest things, which could perhaps be good for someone else, but which God does not want of us. Even if we were to have a vision and thought that the Mother of God was appearing to us and assigning us the most exalted task, how do we know for sure that it is really She and not a deception or a diabolical snare? “The best test is obedience to one’s superiors” (St. Maximilian Kolbe, Militia Immaculatae). “One carries out a command,” continues the Saint, “not because it is pleasant, reasonable, wise, or holy in itself, but rather because the command is the will of the superior and accordingly the will of Our Immaculate Mother, and therefore ultimately God’s will. Without this attitude one is not an instrument in the hand of Our Blessed Mother, but rather – I declare it openly – an instrument in Satan’s hand, however many spiritual books one may read, however many Rosaries one may pray, however many great deeds one accomplishes.” The living Teresian Carmel, and the Confraternity of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel attached to it, in practice, consists of this ‘holy’ obedience (that is, grounded on the truths of the Faith for we walk by faith, 2 Corinthians 5.7).

Opening Prayer

Come, Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Thy  faithful, and
kindle in them the fire of Thine love. Send forth Thy Spirit,
and they shall be created; and Thou shall renew the
face of the earth.

O God, you instructed the hearts of the faithful by the
light of the Holy Spirit. Grant us by the same Spirit to be
truly wise and ever to rejoice in His consolation, through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Novena Prayer
“Flos Carmeli” by St. Simon Stock

Flos Carmeli Flower of Carmel
Vitis florigera Vine blossom-laden
Splendor Coeli Splendor of Heaven
Virgo puerpera Child-bearing Virgin
Singularis! None equals thee

Mater mitis Mother benign
Sed viri nescia Who no man didst know
Carmelitis On Carmel’s children
Da privilegia Thy favors bestow
Stella Maris! Star of the Sea

(Mention your petitions here.)

Concluding Prayers

Blessed Mother of the Son of God, Immaculate Virgin, assist me in this my necessity.
Show us herein that you are our Mother.

Sweet Mother, I place this cause into you hands.
There are none that can withstand Your power.

O Most Holy Mother of Mount Carmel, when asked by a saint to grant privileges to the family of Carmel, you rather granted an assurance of salvation to the whole world. Behold us your children, kneeling at your feet. We glory, dearest Mother, in wearing your holy habit, that habit which makes us members of your family of Carmel, that habit through which we shall have your powerful protection in life, at death and even after death. Look down with love, O Gate of Heaven, on all those now in their last agony! Look down graciously, O Virgin, Flower of Carmel, on all those in need of help! Look down mercifully, O Mother of our Saviour, on all those who do not know that they are numbered among your children.Look down tenderly, O Queen of All Saints, on the poor souls!

O Mary, conceived without original sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
O Mary, conceived without original sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
O Mary, conceived without original sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Our Father…, Hail Mary…, Glory be…

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, pray for us.

The Litany of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel

Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.

God the Father of heaven, have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world…
God the Holy Ghost…
Holy Trinity, One God…

Holy Mary, pray for us sinners.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Queen of heaven…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Vanquisher of Satan…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Dutiful Daughter…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Pure Virgin…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Devoted Spouse…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Tender Mother…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Perfect Model of Virtue…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Sure Anchor of Hope…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Refuge in affliction…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Dispensatrix of God’s gifts…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Tower of strength against our foes…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our aid in danger…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Road leading to Jesus…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our light in darkness…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our consolation at the hour of death…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Advocate of the most abandoned sinners…

For those hardened in vice,
with confidence we come to thee O Lady of Mount Carmel.
For those who grieve thy Son…
For those who neglect to pray…
For those who are in their agony…
For those who delay their conversion…
For those suffering in Purgatory…
For those who know thee not…

Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Hope of the Despairing
Intercede for us with thy Divine Son.

(Let Us Pray)

O God, who has honored the Order of Carmel with the
special title of thy Blessed Mother Mary, ever Virgin,
grant in thy mercy that we who keep her memory this day
may be shielded by her protection and be found worthy
to attain unto joy eternal. Who livest and reignest with
God the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God,
world without end. Amen.

Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ
and our Mother, penetrated with the most lively
confidence in your all-powerful and never failing
intercession, manifested so often through the Scapular, we
your loving and trustful children implore you to obtain
for us the graces and favors we ask during this Novena, if
they be beneficial to our immortal soul, and the souls
which we pray.

You know, O Most Blessed Virgin Mary, our Immaculate Mother
and Queen of Carmel, how often our souls have been the
sanctuaries of your Son Who disdains iniquity. Obtain for
us then a deep hatred of sin and that purity of heart which
will attach us to God alone so that our every thought,
word, and deed, may tend to his greater glory.

Obtain for us also a spirit of prayer and self-denial that we
may recover by penance what we have lost by sin and at
length attain to that blessed abode where you are Queen of
angels and of people. Amen.

Consideration: On the Characters of True and False Devotion to Our Blessed Mother
by St. Louis-Marie de Montfort

After having laid bare [what essentially consists true Christian devotion to our Blessed Mother], we must, in a few words, characterize the true and false devotion. True devotion must be (1) interior, (2) tender, (3) holy, (4) constant, and (5) disinterested.

1. True devotion to Our Blessed Mother is interior, that is to say, it comes from the spirit and the heart. It flows from the esteem we have of Her, the high idea we have formed of Her greatness, and the love which we have for Her.

2. It is tender, that is to say, full of confidence in Her, like a child’s confidence in his loving mother. This confidence makes the soul have recourse to Her in all its bodily or mental necessities, with much simplicity, trust, and tenderness. It implores the aid of its good Mother, at all times, in all places, and about all things; in its doubts, that it may be enlightened; in its wanderings, that it may be brought into the right path; in its temptations, that it may be supported; in its weaknesses, that it may be strengthened; in its falls, that it may be lifted up; in its discouragements, that it may be cheered; in its scruples, that they may be taken away; in its crosses, toils, and disappointments of life, that it may be consoled under them. In a word, in all its evils of body and mind, the soul’s ordinary refuge is in Mary, without fearing to be importunate to Her or to displease Our Lord.

3. True devotion to our Blessed Mother is holy, that is to say, it leads the soul to avoid sin, and to imitate in the Blessed Virgin particularly Her profound humility, Her lively faith, Her ever ready and willing obedience to God’s will – whatever it may be – Her continual prayer, Her universal mortification, Her divine purity, Her ardent charity, Her heroic patience, Her angelical sweetness, Her prudence and divine wisdom, [and Her modesty]

4. True devotion to our Blessed Mother is constant. It confirms the soul in good, and it does not let it easily abandon its spiritual exercises. It makes [the soul] courageous in opposing the the world and its fashions and maxims, the flesh in its weariness and passions, and the devil in his temptations. So that a person truly devout to our Blessed Mother is neither changeable, irritable, scrupulous, nor timid. It is not that such a person does not fall, or change sometimes in the sensible feeling of devotion, or in the amount of devotion itself, But when he falls, he rises again by stretching out his hand to his good Mother. If he loses the taste and relish of devotion, he does not disturb himself because of that; for the just and faithful client of Mary lives on the faith of Jesus and Mary, and not on sentiments and sensibilities.

5. Lastly, true devotion to our Blessed Mother, is disinterested. That is to say, it inspires the soul not to seek itself but God only, and God in His Holy Mother. A true client of Mary does not serve that august Queen from a spirit of lucre and interest, nor for its own good, whether temporal, corporal, or spiritual; but exclusively because She merits to be served, and God alone in Her. He does not love Mary precisely because She does him good, or because he hopes in Her; but because She is so worthy of love. It is on this account that he loves and serves Her faithfully in his disgusts and drynesses, as in his sweetness and sensible fervors. He loves Her as much as in Calvary, as at the marriage in Cana.

Now, there are seven kinds of false devotees and false devotions to Our Blessed Mother:

1. The critical devotees are, for the most part, proud Christian scholars, rash and self-sufficient spirits, who have at bottom some devotion to Our Blessed Mother, but who criticize nearly all the practices of devotion to Her, which simple people pay simply and holily to their Good Mother, because these practices do not fall in with their own humor and fancy. They call in doubt all the miracles and histories recorder by authors worthy of our faith, or drawn from the chronicles of religious orders; narratives which testify to us the mercies and the power of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary… These kind of false devotees and of proud and worldly people are greatly to be feared. They don an infinite wrong to the devotion to Our Blessed Mother; and they are but too successful in alienating people from it, under the pretext of destroying its abuses.

2. The scrupulous devotees are those who fear to dishonor the Son by honoring the Mother, to abase the one in elevating the other. They cannot bear that we should attribute to Our Blessed Mother the most just praise which the holy Fathers of the Church have given Her… They are unwilling that we should speak so often of Our Blessed Mother, and address ourselves so frequently to Her. These are the favorite sentences constantly in their mouths: “We must have recourse to Jesus Christ; He is our only Mediator. We must preach Jesus Christ; this is the solid devotion.” What they say is true in a certain sense, but it is very dangerous, when, by application they make of it, they hinder devotion to Our Blessed Mother and it is, under the pretext of a greater good, a subtle snare of the devil. For never do we honor Our Lord more than when we are  most honoring His Blessed Mother. Indeed we only honor the Blessed Mother that we may the more perfectly honor Our Lord, inasmuch as we only go to Her as to the way in which we are to find the end or goal we are seeking, Our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Church, with the Holy Ghost, blesses the Virgin Mary first, and Our Lord second: Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus (Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus). It is not that Our Blessed Mother is more than Our Lord, or even equal to Him. That would be an intolerable heresy; but it is that, in order to bless Our Lord more perfectly, we must begin by blessing the Blessed Virgin Mary.

3. External devotees are persons who make all devotion to Our Blessed Mother consist in outward practices. They have no taste except for the exterior of this devotion, because they have no interior spirit of their own. They will say quantities of Rosaries with the greatest speed or precipitation; they will assist at many Masses distractedly; they will go without devotion to processions; they will enroll themselves in all sorts of Confraternities, without amending their lives, without doing any violence to their passions, or without imitating the virtues of the Most Holy Virgin… If they have not sensible sweetness in their practices, they think they are doing nothing; they will get all out of joint, throw everything up, or do everything at random.

4. Presumptuous devotees are sinners abandoned to their passions and vices, or lovers of the world, who under their fair name of Christians and clients of the Blessed Virgin Mary, conceal pride, avarice, impurity, drunkenness, anger, swearing, detraction, injustice, or some other sin. They sleep in peace in the midst of their bad habits, without doing any violence to themselves to correct their faults, under the pretext that they are devout to the Blessed Mother. They promise themselves that God will pardon them; that they will not be allowed to die without confession and Viaticum; and that they will not be lost eternally because they say the Rosary, because they fast on Saturdays [which in the Liturgical calendar of the Church is the day dedicated to the commemoration of Our Blessed Mother], because they wear the Scapular [and enrolled in the Confraternity of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (the Brown Scapular Confraternity), or because they belong to the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary, or are enrolled in other congregations.

They will not believe us when we tell them that their devotion is only an illusion of the devil, and a pernicious presumption likely to destroy their souls. They say that God is good and merciful, that He has not made us to condemn us everlastingly [the error now being inculcated by the "New 'Catholic' Theology" - which supplanted the traditional Catholic Theology according to the School of St. Thomas Aquinas - in the seminaries of the "New 'Catholic' Order" ("Novus Ordo" in Latin) since Vatican II and the same poisonous 'theology' being silently fed to the faithful through the "New Mass"]… Nothing in Christianity is more detestable than this diabolical presumption!

In order to be truly devout to Our Immaculate  Blessed Mother, it is not absolutely necessary to be so holy as to avoid every sin, though this were to be wished; but so much at least is necessary, and lay it well to heart: (a) to have a sincere resolution to avoid, at least, all mortal sin, which outrages the Mother as well as the Son; (b) and to do violence to ourselves to avoid sin, to enroll ourselves in Confraternities [especially the Scapular Confraternity] to [pray] the Rosary [and meditate on its mysteries], to fast on Saturdays [which is a request also of Our Blessed Mother at Fatima], and the like, is wonderfully useful to the conversion of a sinner, however hardened: and if my reader is such a one, even if he has his foot in the abyss, I would counsel these things to him. Nevertheless, it must be on the condition that he will only practice these good works with the intention of obtaining from God, by the intercession of [Our Immaculate Mother of Carmel] the grace of contrition and the pardon of his sins, to conquer his evil habits, and not to remain quietly in the state of sin, in spite of the remorse of his conscience, the example of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Saints, and the maxim of the Holy Gospel.

5. The inconstant devotees who are devout to the Blessed Mother by intervals and whims. Sometimes they are fervent and sometimes lukewarm… They begin by taking up all the devotions to Her, and enrolling themselves in the Confraternities, and then they do not practice the rules with fidelity. They change like the moon; and Our Blessed Mother puts them under Her feet with the crescent, because they are mutable, and unworthy to be reckoned among the servants of that faithful Virgin, whose clients have for their special graces fidelity and constancy. It were better for such persons to load themselves with fewer prayers and practices, and to fulfill them with faithfulness and love, in spite of the world, the devil, and the flesh.

6. The hypocritical devotees, who cloak their sins and sinful habits under Her mantle, in order to pass in the eyes of men for what they are not.

7. There are also the interested devotees who have recourse to Our Blessed Mother only to gain some lawsuit, or to avoid some danger, or to be cured of some illness, or for some other similar necessity, without which they would forget Her altogether.

Opening Prayer

Come, Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Thy  faithful, and
kindle in them the fire of Thine love. Send forth Thy
Spirit, and they shall be created; and Thou shall renew the
face of the earth.

O God, you instructed the hearts of the faithful by the
light of the Holy Spirit. Grant us by the same Spirit to be
truly wise and ever to rejoice in His consolation, through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Novena Prayer
“Flos Carmeli” by St. Simon Stock

Flos Carmeli Flower of Carmel
Vitis florigera Vine blossom-laden
Splendor Coeli Splendor of Heaven
Virgo puerpera Child-bearing Virgin
Singularis! None equals thee

Mater mitis Mother benign
Sed viri nescia Who no man didst know
Carmelitis On Carmel’s children
Da privilegia Thy favors bestow
Stella Maris! Star of the Sea

(Mention your petitions here.)

Concluding Prayers

Blessed Mother of the Son of God, Immaculate Virgin, assist me in this my necessity.
Show me herein that you are my Mother.

Sweet Mother, I place this cause into you hands.
There are none that can withstand your power.

You give us hope, O Mother of Mercy, that through your Scapular promise we might quickly pass through the fires of purgatory to the Kingdom of your Son. Be our comfort and our hope, grant that our hope may not be in vain but that, ever faithful to your Son and to you, we may speedily enjoy after death the blessed company of Jesus and the saints.

O Mary, conceived without original sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
O Mary, conceived without original sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
O Mary, conceived without original sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Our Father…, Hail Mary…, Glory be…

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, pray for us.

The Litany of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel

Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.

God the Father of heaven, have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world…
God the Holy Ghost…
Holy Trinity, One God…

Holy Mary, pray for us sinners.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Queen of heaven…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Vanquisher of Satan…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Dutiful Daughter…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Pure Virgin…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Devoted Spouse…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Tender Mother…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Perfect Model of Virtue…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Sure Anchor of Hope…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Refuge in affliction…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Dispensatrix of God’s gifts…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Tower of strength against our foes…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our aid in danger…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Road leading to Jesus…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our light in darkness…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our consolation at the hour of death…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Advocate of the most abandoned sinners…

For those hardened in vice,
with confidence we come to thee O Lady of Mount Carmel.
For those who grieve thy Son…
For those who neglect to pray…
For those who are in their agony…
For those who delay their conversion…
For those suffering in Purgatory…
For those who know thee not…

Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Hope of the Despairing
Intercede for us with thy Divine Son.

(Let Us Pray)

O God, who has honored the Order of Carmel with the
special title of thy Blessed Mother Mary, ever Virgin,
grant in thy mercy that we who keep her memory this day
may be shielded by her protection and be found worthy
to attain unto joy eternal. Who livest and reignest with
God the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God,
world without end. Amen.

Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ
and our Mother, penetrated with the most lively
confidence in your all-powerful and never failing
intercession, manifested so often through the Scapular, we
your loving and trustful children implore you to obtain
for us the graces and favors we ask during this Novena, if
they be beneficial to our immortal soul, and the souls
which we pray.

You know, O Most Blessed Virgin Mary, our Immaculate Mother
and Queen of Carmel, how often our souls have been the
sanctuaries of your Son Who disdains iniquity. Obtain for
us then a deep hatred of sin and that purity of heart which
will attach us to God alone so that our every thought,
word, and deed, may tend to his greater glory.

Obtain for us also a spirit of prayer and self-denial that we
may recover by penance what we have lost by sin and at
length attain to that blessed abode where you are Queen of
angels and of people. Amen.

JMJ

Consideration: Discernment of the True Devotion to Our Blessed Mother (I)
by St. Louis Marie de Montfort

Jesus Christ Our Savior, true God and true Man, ought to be the last end of all our devotions, else they are false and delusive… Jesus Christ is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end (Isaias 41.4; Apocalypse 1.17; 22.13], of all things… It is in Him alone that the whole plenitude of the divinity dwells, together with all the other plenitude of graces, virtues, and perfections; because it is in Him alone that we been blessed with all spiritual benediction; and because He is our only Master, Who has to teach us; our only Lord, on Whom we ought to depend; our only Head, to Whom we must belong [as Its Body]; our only Model, to Whom we should conform ourselves; our only Physician, Who can heal us [especially our spiritual infirmities]; our only Shepherd, Who can feed us [with His Flesh and Blood in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, our heavenly food giving us eternal life]; our only Way, who can lead us; our only Truth; our only Life, Who can animate us; and our only All in all things, who can suffice us. There has been no other name given under heaven, except the name of Jesus, by which we can be saved. God has laid no other foundation of our salvation, of our perfection, and of our glory, except, Jesus Christ. Every building which is not built upon that firm rock is founded upon the moving sand, and sooner or later will fall infallibly. Every of the faithful who is united to Him, as a branch to the stock of the vine, shall fall, shall wither, and shall be fit only to cast into the fire….

If, then, we establish the solid devotion to Our Blessed Mother, it is only to establish more perfectly the devotion to Jesus Christ, and to put forward an easy and secure means for finding Our Lord Jesus Christ. [And if, then, we establish the solid devotion to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mt. Carmel - of which the Scapular is the sign of our consecration - which the Most Blessed Trinity requests of us at Fatima, Portugal, it is only to establish more perfectly the devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Our Lord]. If devotion to our Blessed Mother removed us from Jesus Christ, we should have to reject it as an illusion of the devil; but on the contrary, so far from this being the case, there is nothing which makes devotion to Our Blessed Mother more necessary for us… than that it is the means of finding our Lord Jesus Christ perfectly, of loving Him tenderly, and of serving Him faithfully.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, our Head [Ephesians 1.22; 5.23] wished to form Himself, and so to speak, to incarnate Himself, every day in His members. He speaks through His Apostle St. Paul: My little children, of whom I am in labor again, until Christ be formed in you  (Epistle to the Galatians, 4.19) so that we may exclaim with the same Holy Apostle: And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me (Epistle to the Galatians, 2.20) – the goal or purpose of the whole of our Christian Spiritual Life. But He wishes to form Himself in us through our dear Mother. He said to Her: This man and that man is born in her  (Psalms 86.5, chapter and verse follow the Sacred Latin Vulgate Bible). According to the explanation of some of the Church Fathers, the first man that is born of Mary is the God-Man, Jesus Christ; the second is a mere man, the child of God and Mary by adoption. If Jesus Christ the Head of the Church is born in Her, the predestinate, who are the members of that Head, ought also to be born in Her by necessary consequence. One and the same mother does not bring forth into the world the head without the members, nor the members without the head; for this would be a monster of nature. So in like manner, in the order of grace, the Head and the members are born of the same Mother; otherwise, he would not be one of the predestinate, nor a member of Jesus Christ, but simply a monster in the order of grace.

Besides this, Our Lord being at present as much as ever the Fruit of Mary – as heaven and earth repeat thousands and thousands of times a day, “And blessed is the Fruit of thy womb, Jesus” – it is certain that Our Lord is, for each man in particular who possess Him, as truly the fruit if the womb of Mary, as He is for the whole world in general; so that if any one of the faithful has Jesus Christ formed in his heart [see our considerations for the Fifth and Sixth Days of Novena: "Jesus Christ, the Ideal of True Christian Virtue"], he can boldly, All thanks be to Mary! what I possess is Her effect and Her fruit, and without Her I should never have had it. St. Augustine… affirms that all the predestinate, in order to be conformed to the image of the Son of God, are in this world hidden in the womb of the most holy Virgin; where they are guarded, nourished, brought up, and made to grow by that good Mother until She has brought them forth to glory after death, which is properly the day of their birth, as the Church calls the death of the just.

… [It is] particularly at the end of the world, and indeed presently [see our post "The Great Sign in Heaven"], because the Most High with His holy Mother has to form for Himself great Saints, who shall surpass most of the other Saints in sanctity, as much as the cedars of Lebanon outgrow the little shrubs… These great souls, full of grace and zeal, shall be chosen to match themselves against the enemies of God, who shall rage on all sides; and they shall be singularly devout to our Blessed Mother, illuminated by Her light, nourished by Her milk, led by Her spirit, supported by Her arm, and sheltered under her [Scapular], so that they shall fight with one hand and build with another. With one hand they shall fight, overthrow, and crush the heretics with their heresies, the schismatics with their schisms, the idolaters with their idols, and the sinners with their impieties. With the other hand they shall build the temple of the true Solomon, and the mystical city of God… By their words and examples, they shall bend the whole world to true devotion to Our Blessed Mother [especially through Her Scapular and Her Rosary]. This shall bring upon them many enemies; but it shall also bring many victories and much glory for God alone.

Opening Prayer

Come, Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Thy  faithful, and
kindle in them the fire of Thine love. Send forth Thy
Spirit, and they shall be created; and Thou shall renew the
face of the earth.

O God, you instructed the hearts of the faithful by the
light of the Holy Spirit. Grant us by the same Spirit to be
truly wise and ever to rejoice in His consolation, through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Novena Prayer
“Flos Carmeli” by St. Simon Stock

Flos Carmeli Flower of Carmel
Vitis florigera Vine blossom-laden
Splendor Coeli Splendor of Heaven
Virgo puerpera Child-bearing Virgin
Singularis! None equals thee

Mater mitis Mother benign
Sed viri nescia Who no man didst know
Carmelitis On Carmel’s children
Da privilegia Thy favors bestow
Stella Maris! Star of the Sea

(Mention your petitions here.)

Concluding Prayers

Blessed Mother of the Son of God, Immaculate Virgin, assist me in this my necessity. Show me herein that you are my Mother.

Sweet Mother, I place this cause into you hands.
There are none that can withstand Your power.

O Mary, help of Christians,you assured us that wearing your Scapular worthily would keep us safe from harm.Protect us in both body and soul with your continual aid.May all that we do be pleasing to your Son and to you.

O Mary, conceived without original sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
O Mary, conceived without original sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
O Mary, conceived without original sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Our Father…, Hail Mary…, Glory be…

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, pray for us.

The Litany of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel

Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.

God the Father of heaven, have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world…
God the Holy Ghost…
Holy Trinity, One God…

Holy Mary, pray for us sinners.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Queen of heaven…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Vanquisher of Satan…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Dutiful Daughter…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Pure Virgin…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Devoted Spouse…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Tender Mother…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Perfect Model of Virtue…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Sure Anchor of Hope…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Refuge in affliction…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Dispensatrix of God’s gifts…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Tower of strength against our foes…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our aid in danger…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Road leading to Jesus…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our light in darkness…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our consolation at the hour of death…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Advocate of the most abandoned sinners…

For those hardened in vice,
with confidence we come to thee O Lady of Mount Carmel.
For those who grieve thy Son…
For those who neglect to pray…
For those who are in their agony…
For those who delay their conversion…
For those suffering in Purgatory…
For those who know thee not…

Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Hope of the Despairing
Intercede for us with thy Divine Son.

(Let Us Pray)

O God, who has honored the Order of Carmel with thespecial title of thy Blessed Mother Mary, ever Virgin, grant in thy mercy that we who keep her memory this day may be shielded by her protection and be found worthy to attain unto joy eternal. Who livest and reignest with
God the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God,world without end. Amen.

Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ and our Mother, penetrated with the most lively confidence in your all-powerful and never failing intercession, manifested so often through the Scapular, we your loving and trustful children implore you to obtain for us the graces and favors we ask during this Novena, if
they be beneficial to our immortal soul, and the souls
which we pray.

You know, O Most Blessed Virgin Mary, our Immaculate Mother and Queen of Carmel, how often our souls have been the sanctuaries of your Son Who disdains iniquity. Obtain for us then a deep hatred of sin and that purity of heart which will attach us to God alone so that our every thought, word, and deed, may tend to his greater glory.

Obtain for us also a spirit of prayer and self-denial that we
may recover by penance what we have lost by sin and at
length attain to that blessed abode where you are Queen of
angels and of people. Amen.

Consideration: Jesus Christ, the Ideal of True Christian Virtue (II)

Jesus Christ had a most tender compassion for sinners who were sincerely humble and repentant for their sins. I came for sinners, the Lord said, and not for the just – who trust in their own justice. The publican who stood afar off, Mary Magdalen, the woman taken in adultery, the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob, were all treated by Him with a kindness and tenderness which astonishes us. But the pride of the Pharisees, their hypocrisy, their avarice, these were the objects of His most severe censure and malediction. The sins of the mind [obstinacy in error] and the spirit [pride from which flows presumption, vanity, and the like] just the sins to which the falsely devout are more subject than any others, are those which He condemned with the greatest severity, because they are a sign of more blindness of the mind and more corruption of the heart.

Jesus Christ bore with a never-failing gentleness the faults and the roughness of His disciples. According to our way of thinking, what must He not have suffered at having to live with men so imperfect and so ignorant of the things of God? Relations with our neighbor is perhaps one of the most difficult things in this life; even the saints have felt how much it cost them. And the nearer they are to God, the more need they have of condescension, to lower themselves to others, as it were, to unbend, to conceal and excuse in others a thousand faults to which they see and feel more keenly than any one else. And this is a point upon which their practice must be continual, and it all depends upon how they acquit themselves with regard to it as to whether they will make virtue amiable or displeasing to others.

Jesus Christ suffered every kind of persecution at the hands of His enemies, but He never gave way. He only opposed to them His innocence and virtue, and He always confounded them by His spotless life. When the hour came that He allowed Himself to fall into their hands, He permitted their evil passions to act, and looked upon them as instruments of Divine Justice. He kept silence when He saw them so obstinate in their malice; He sought not to justify Himself, although it would have been so easy; He allowed Himself to be condemned; He allowed them to enjoy their imaginary triumph; He pardoned them, He prayed for them, He shed His blood for them. This is the most sublime and the most difficult height of perfection.

Whoever aspires to true sanctity, and to be guided in everything by the Spirit of God, must expect to suffer from the tongues of men, to bear their calumnies, and sometimes their persecutions. [Such is the essence of the Christian Life, a fellowship of (the) sufferings of (Him Who, we know, loved us to death), Phil 3.10].   In this, above all things, we must take Jesus Christ [and Him Crucified (1 Cor. 2.2)] as our model; we must suffer, for His sake, as much as we can, in the interests of truth; our only answer to calumny must  be the innocence of our life; we must keep silence when it is not absolutely necessary to speak; we must leave the care of our justification to God, if He sees fit to justify us; we must stifle in our heart every feeling of resentment and bitterness; we must try to soften our enemies by every kind of charitable actions; we must pray to God for their pardon; and we must try to see, in all they make us suffer, only the accomplishment of God’s designs upon us.

And when virtue can thus sustain itself in contempt, in opprobrium, in ill-treatment, then we may look upon it as perfected, as consummate virtues. Therefore, God generally reserves this trial to the last. Blessed are those who pass through it! When Our Lord comes in His glory, they will have a share in it proportionate to their share in His humiliations. To desire such a state as this, to accept it when it is offered to us, to bear it patiently and with joy when we find ourselves in it, this can only  be the effect of grace, and of an extraordinary grace. As for us, let us rest content in our lowliness; let us never think we can attain of ourselves to anything so high; and let us only ask God that human respect may never cause us to abandon His interests.

Opening Prayer

Come, Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Thy  faithful, and
kindle in them the fire of Thine love. Send forth Thy
Spirit, and they shall be created; and Thou shall renew the
face of the earth.

O God, you instructed the hearts of the faithful by the
light of the Holy Spirit. Grant us by the same Spirit to be
truly wise and ever to rejoice in His consolation, through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Novena Prayer
“Flos Carmeli” by St. Simon Stock

Flos Carmeli Flower of Carmel
Vitis florigera Vine blossom-laden
Splendor Coeli Splendor of Heaven
Virgo puerpera Child-bearing Virgin
Singularis! None equals thee

Mater mitis Mother benign
Sed viri nescia Who no man didst know
Carmelitis On Carmel’s children
Da privilegia Thy favors bestow
Stella Maris! Star of the Sea

(Mention your petitions here.)

Concluding Prayers

Blessed Mother of the Son of God, Immaculate Virgin, assist me in this my necessity.Show me herein that you are our Mother.

Sweet Mother, I place this cause into you hands. There are none that can withstand Your power.

With loving provident care, O Mother Most Admirable, you covered us with your Scapular as a shield of defence against the Evil One. Through your assistance, may we bravely struggle against the powers of evil, always open to your Son Jesus Christ.

O Mary, conceived without original sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

O Mary, conceived without original sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

O Mary, conceived without original sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Our Father…, Hail Mary…, Glory be…

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, pray for us.

The Litany of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel

Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.

God the Father of heaven, have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world…
God the Holy Ghost…
Holy Trinity, One God…

Holy Mary, pray for us sinners.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Queen of heaven…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Vanquisher of Satan…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Dutiful Daughter…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Pure Virgin…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Devoted Spouse…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Most Tender Mother…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Perfect Model of Virtue…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Sure Anchor of Hope…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Refuge in affliction…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Dispensatrix of God’s gifts…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Tower of strength against our foes…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our aid in danger…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Road leading to Jesus…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our light in darkness…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our consolation at the hour of death…
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Advocate of the most abandoned sinners…

For those hardened in vice,
with confidence we come to thee O Lady of Mount Carmel.
For those who grieve thy Son…
For those who neglect to pray…
For those who are in their agony…
For those who delay their conversion…
For those suffering in Purgatory…
For those who know thee not…

Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Hope of the Despairing
Intercede for us with thy Divine Son.

(Let Us Pray)

O God, who has honored the Order of Carmel with the
special title of thy Blessed Mother Mary, ever Virgin,
grant in thy mercy that we who keep her memory this day
may be shielded by her protection and be found worthy to
attain unto joy eternal.Who livest and reignest
with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God,
world without end. Amen.

Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ
and our Mother, penetrated with the most lively
confidence in your all-powerful and never failing
intercession, manifested so often through the Scapular, we
your loving and trustful children implore you to obtain
for us the graces and favors we ask during this Novena, if
they be beneficial to our immortal soul, and the souls
which we pray.

You know, O Most Blessed Virgin Mary, our Immaculate Mother
and Queen of Carmel, how often our souls have been the
sanctuaries of your Son Who disdains iniquity. Obtain for
us then a deep hatred of sin and that purity of heart which
will attach us to God alone so that our every thought,
word, and deed, may tend to his greater glory.

Obtain for us also a spirit of prayer and self-denial that we
may recover by penance what we have lost by sin and at
length attain to that blessed abode where you are Queen of
angels and of people. Amen.

(from the traditional Roman breviary)

from a Sermon by St. Thomas Aquinas (Opusc. 57 )

Among the immeasurable benefits, which the goodness of God hath bestowed on the Christian people, is a dignity beyond all price.  For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is unto us?  The only-begotten Son of God was pleased to make us partakers of his divine nature ; that is, he took our nature upon him, being himself made man that he might, as it were, make men into gods.  And this body, which he took from us, he gave wholly unto our salvation.  For, on the Altar of the Cross, he offered up his body to God the Father, as a sacrifice for our reconciliation, and thereon he shed his own blood for our redemption ; that is, his blood is the price whereby he redeemeth us from wretchedness and bondage, and the washing whereby he cleanseth us from all sin.  And for a noble and abiding Mem

O how precious a thing then, how marvellous, how health-giving, yielding royal dainties, is the Supper of the Lord.  Than this Supper can anything be more precious?  Therein there is put before us for meat, not as of old time, the flesh of bulls and of goats, but Christ himself, our very God.  Than this Sacrament can anything be more marvellous?  Therein it is that Bread and Wine become unto us the very Body and and Blood of Christ ; that is to say, perfect God and perfect Man, Christ himself, is there under the veils of a little bread and wine.  His faithful ones eat him, but he is not mangled ; nay, when the veil which shroudeth him in the Sacrament is broken, in each broken fragment thereof remaineth the whole Christ himself, perfect God and perfect Man.  All that the senses can reach in this Sacrament, all these abide of bread and wine, but the Thing is not bread and wine.  And thus room is left for faith.  For Christ, who hath a Form that can be seen, is herein taken and received not only unseen, but seeming to be bread and wine, and the senses, which judge by the wonted look, are warranted against error.

Than this Sacrament can anything be more health-giving?  Thereby are sins purged away, strength is renewed, and the soul fed upon the fatness of spiritual gifts.  This Supper is offered up in the Church, both for the quick and the dead ; it was ordained to the health of all, all get the good of it.  Than this Sacrament can anything yield more of royal dainties?  The glorious sweetness thereof is of a truth such that no man can fully tell it.  Therein ghostly comfort is sucked from its very well-head.  Therein a Memorial is made of that exceeding great love which Christ shewed in time of his sufferings.  It was in order that the boundless goodness of that his great love might be driven home into the hearts of his faithful ones, that when he had celebrated the Passover with his disciples, and the Last Supper was ended, then, knowing that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end, and instituted this Sacrament.  For this Sacrament is the everlasting forth-shewing of his death until he come again ; this Sacrament is the embodied fulfilment of all the ancient types and figures ; this Sacrament is is the greatest wonder which ever he wrought, and the one mighty joy of them that now have sorrow, till he shall come again ; and thereby their heart shall rejoice, and their joy no man take from them.

(from the traditional Roman breviary)

After the blessed and glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ (wherein was raised up in three days that true Temple of God which had been destroyed by the ímpiety of Jewry), there came by God’s providential ordering a season of forty days, the annual commemoration of which endeth on this day.  The original great forty days, dearly beloved, were spent by the Lord in profitable instruction for our benefit.  On this wise, his bodily presence was still given to the earth during all these forty days, that our faith in his resurrection might be armed with all needful proofs.  For the death of Christ had troubled the hearts of many of his disciples ; their thoughts were sad when they remembered his agony upon the cross, his giving up of the Ghost, and the burial in the grave of his lifeless body : and so a sort of hesitation had begun to weigh on them.

Hence the most blessed Apostles and all the disciples who had been fearful concerning the death on the cross, and doubtful of the trustworthiness of the report of Christ’s resurrection, were so strengthened by the clear demonstration of the truth, that, when they saw the Lord going up into the heights of heaven, they sorrowed not ; nay, they were even filled with great joy.  And, in all verity, it was a mighty and unspeakable cause of rejoicing for all the holy multitude of believers, when they perceived that the nature of mankind was thus exalted above all creatures, even the heavenly spirits, so as to pass above the ranks of the Angels, and be raised beyond the heights of the Archangels.  For on this wise they perceived that no limit was set upon the uplifting of that nature short of the right hand of the Eternal Father, where it was to be Sharer of his throne, and Partaker of his glory ; and nevertheless it was still nothing more than that nature of man, which the Son hath taken upon him.

Therefore, dearly beloved, let us also rejoice with fitting joy.  For the Ascension of Christ is exaltation for us.  And whither the glory of the Head of the Church is passed in, thither is the hope of the body of the Church called on to follow.  Let us rejoice with exceeding great joy, and give God glad thanks.  This day is not only the possession of paradise made sure unto us, but in Christ our Head we are actually entering into the heavenly mansions above.  Through the unspeakable goodness of Christ we have gained more than ever we lost by the envy of the devil.  For those whom our venomous enemy cast down from the happiness of their first estate, those same hath the Son of God made to be of one body with himself, and hath given them a place at the right hand of the Father : with whom he liveth and reigneth, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end.  Amen.

This hymn is composed by Thomas Benson Pollock in 1868, and is sung to the tune of Pastor Pastorum.

"I am the Good Shepherd."

Faithful Shepherd, feed me
In the pastures green;
Faithful Shepherd, lead me
Where Thy steps are seen.

Hold me fast, and guide me
In the narrow way;
So, with Thee beside me,
I shall never stray.

Daily bring me nearer
To the heavenly shore;
May Thy love grow dearer,
May I love Thee more.

Hallow every pleasure,
Sanctify my pain;
Be Thyself my treasure,
Though none else I gain.

Give me joy or sadness,
This be all my care,
That eternal gladness
I with Thee may share.

Day by day prepare me
As Thou seest best,
Then let angels bear me
To Thy promised rest.

†

†

Thomas answered and said to Him: ‘My Lord and my God.’

St John 20:28

Pope St Gregory the Great

In commenting on today’s gospel, St Gregory says very beautifully: “Do you think that it happened accidentally that the Apostle Thomas was first absent, and, after he came, heard; and having heard, doubted; and having doubted, touched; and by touching obtained faith?” No, all this did not happen accidentally, but by the grace of God; for in a very wonderful way God in His mercy allowed the wounds of our unbelief to be healed by the Apostle who, because he doubted, touched the actual marks of His Divine Master’s wounds. St. Thomas, by his want of faith, did more towards helping us to believe than did the other Apostles by their faith, since he was brought back to faith by touch, and this fact encourages us to cast aside all doubt and strengthens our faith. Therefore, our Lord permitted this disciple to doubt after the Resurrection, but He did not let him continue to do so. He wished Thomas to be a witness to the truth of the Resurrection, because, in consequence of his doubts, he actually touched the marks of our Saviour’s wounds.

St Thomas places his finger into the wounded side of Our Lord.

People might have been inclined to think that the Apostles’ credulity led them to deceive themselves, or to be deceived, regarding the Resurrection, had it not been impossible even to suspect St Thomas of credulity. He said: “Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” But afterwards, being thoroughly convinced, he threw himself at Christ’s feet, exclaiming: “My Lord and my God.” Surely only one unwilling to believe could still refuse to admit the truth of the Resurrection! Thomas cried: “My Lord”; Thou art here Thyself; it is no illusion of my excited imagination, no ghost, no apparition resembling Thee that I behold; Thou art here, with the same body which suffered the torture of the Cross and the agony of death. “My God.” From the very fact that Thou art Thyself present, I know Thee, Jesus, to be indeed my God. Thus spoke St Thomas, and thus we, too, should speak with him.

Through Christ’s Resurrection we recognise His divinity. The truth, so often and so plainly proclaimed, that He was God, was confirmed by all His miracles, for God would certainly never give one, who spoke untruths, power to work miracles. It is impossible for God, being all holy, to confirm falsehoods by miracles. Therefore, our Lord’s miracles in general are a proof of His Divinity, but His Resurrection is the greatest and most glorious of them all; for Christ rose from the dead by His own power. He was not raised by some higher authority. By rising again He proved the truth of the words “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again; as the Father hath life in Himself, even so hath He granted to the Son to have life in Himself. I am the Resurrection and the Life.” Every creature has life, not of itself, but given to it by its Creator; God alone has life in Himself; consequently Jesus is God. This doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity is a fundamental doctrine in Christianity, and denial of it involves a denial of Christianity as a whole; for to deny that Jesus is God involves a denial that He spoke the truth, when He declared Himself to be God indeed, the Son of the Almighty Father. Let us always hold fast to this sacred truth, which is confirmed by the strongest proofs. Everything, all our faith and all our virtue, depends upon our belief in the Divinity of Christ.

Jesus is truly God. Of what avail is the learning of men, profound and attractive as it may appear? Every man, however wise, is not only capable of error, but does actually err in many respects.

History teaches us this truth; for we read of great men who have propounded famous theories, universally accepted and believed, and yet in course of time the errors underlying them have revealed themselves, and the theories have gradually been discarded, giving place to others, more recently put forward; until at last the mention of these men and their doctrines is enough to remind us how easy it is to make mistakes. We should indeed be in a sad plight had we to rely exclusively upon human learning. We should have no firm foothold, but only a fear of being compelled to deny tomorrow what today appears true, and to curse what today seems most sacred. But, as it is, we rely not on the doctrines of men, but on the teaching of Him who, by His Resurrection, proved Himself to be God. What can make us waver in our faith? Nothing, for what we believe is the word of the eternal, unchanging Truth, and His doctrines are as true now as they were in the past and as they will be forever. Heaven and earth may pass away, but His words can never pass away.

Jesus is the Vine from which we, the branches, grow.

Jesus is truly God. This truth strengthens us to do right. Even if men could teach infallibly what is right and true, their teaching would be of no avail, since the fairer the colours in which they depicted virtue, the more painfully should we recognise our inability to attain to it, as they could not impart to us strength to do right. But He who teaches us is truly God, the Bestower of grace, the support of our souls, the vine of which we are the branches, and the strength of our hearts, without whom we can do nothing, and with whom we can do all things. God Himself helps us to accomplish what He would have us do. How consoling and encouraging is this doctrine! Whoever recognises Christ as truly God, can never cease to strive after perfection, knowing that he will not strive in vain, as, by aid of the grace given by our risen Saviour, it is possible for him to advance daily on the way of salvation.

My Lord and my God! In Thy Resurrection I recognise Thee as my true God, whose teaching and grace are given me for my salvation. Throughout my life I will acknowledge Thee as my God, by the firmness of my faith and perseverance in doing what is right. Amen.

†

Low Sunday, 1 May 2011

Surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia!
The Lord is truly risen, alleluia!

Sanctuary of the Priory of St Pius X on Easter Sunday

And if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. (1 Corinthians 15:14)

Servus Domini wishes all readers of this blog a blessed and holy Easter!

†

The Improperia is a series of twelve antiphons and responses, in which Our Lord Jesus Christ reminds of us all He has done for us and our ingratitude towards Him. It is traditionally sung during the adoration of the Cross in the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday.

(This video only includes the first part (three verses) of the Improperia.)

My people, what have I done to you? How have I offended you? Answer me.
For I led you out of the land of Egypt, but you have prepared a cross for your Savior.

O holy God!
O holy God!
O holy strong One!
O holy strong One!
O holy immortal One, have mercy on us.
O holy immortal One, have mercy on us!

For I led you through the wilderness forty years,
And fed you with manna, and brought you into a land exceeding good;
But you have prepared a cross for your Savior.

O holy God! …

What more ought I have done for you that I have not done?
Indeed I planted you, my most beautiful vineyard,
and you have become exceeding bitter to me;
In my thirst you gave me vinegar to drink,
And with a lance you have pierced the side of your Savior.

O holy God! …

†

Good Friday, 22 April 2011

†

On Spy Wednesday and during the Sacred Triduum, the Matins and Lauds of the Divine Office are often sung in a haunting service known as the Tenebrae service (“tenebrae” means “shadows”), which is basically a funeral service for Jesus. During the Matins on Good Friday, one by one, the candles are extinguished in the Church, leaving the congregation in total darkness, and in a silence that is punctuated by the strepitus (sometimes, this is done by repeatedly hitting the pew in front with the Liber Usualis) meant to evoke the convulsion of nature at the death of Christ. It has also been described as the sound of the tomb door closing. During the Triduum, the Matins and Lauds readings come from the following day’s readings each night because the hours of Matins and Lauds were pushed back so that the public might better participate during these special three days (that is, the Matins and Lauds readings heard at Spy Wednesday’s tenebrae service are those for Maundy Thursday, the readings for Maundy Thursday’s tenebrae service are from Good Friday, and Good Friday’s readings are from Holy Saturday’s Divine Office).

†

Jesus, Lord, I ask for mercy;
Let me not implore in vain.
All my sins I now detest them;
Never will I sin again.

Via The Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church in America

On Thursday, January 6, 2011, the Armenian Church will celebrate the Feast of the Nativity and Theophany of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

In Armenian tradition, this feast day commemorates not only the birth of Christ, but also His baptism by John the Baptist. The latter is remembered through the “Blessing of Water” ceremony, which follows the Divine Liturgy on January 6.

On the eve of the Feast of the Nativity and Theophany of Our Lord— Wednesday, January 5—the Armenian Church will celebrate the Jrakalouyts (lamp-lighting) service.

Please continue reading here.

Credit: The Eastern Diocese of the
Armenian Church in America

†

If, having described the characteristic features of Advent which distinguish it from the rest of the year, we would penetrate into the profound Mystery which occupies the mind of the Church during this season, we find that the Mystery of this Coming, or Advent, of Jesus is at once simple and threefold. It is simple for it is the one same Son of God that is coming; it is threefold because He comes at three different times and in three different ways.

“In the first coming,” says St. Bernard, “He comes in the flesh and in weakness; in the second, He comes in spirit and power; in the third, He comes in glory and majesty; and the second coming is the means whereby we pass from the first to the third.”

This, then, is the mystery of Advent. Let us now listen to an explanation of this threefold visit of Christ, given to us by Peter of Blois, in his third sermon de Adventu: “There are three comings of Our Lord; the first in the flesh; the second in the soul; the third at judgment. The first was at midnight according to the words of the Gospel: At Midnight there was a cry made, Lo, the Bridegroom cometh! But this first coming is long since past for Christ has been seen on the earth and has conversed among men. We are now in the second coming, provided only we are such as that He may thus come to us; for He has said that if we love Him, He will come to us and take up His abode with us. So that this second coming is full of uncertainty for us; for who, save the spirit of God, knows them that are of God? They that are raised out of themselves by the desire of heavenly things, know indeed when He comes, but whence He cometh or whither He goeth they know not. As for the third coming, it is most certain that it will be, most uncertain when it will be; for nothing is more sure than death, and nothing less sure than the hour of death. When they shall say, peace and security, says the apostle, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as the pains upon her that is with child, and they shall not escape. So that the first coming was humble and hidden, the second is mysterious and full of love, the third will be majestic and terrible. In His first coming, Christ was judged by men unjustly; in His second, He renders us just by His grace; in His first, a lamb; in His last, a lion; in the one between the two, the tenderest of friends.”

The First Coming - the Nativity of Our Lord at Bethlehem

The holy Church, therefore, during Advent, awaits in tears and with ardour the arrival of her Jesus in His first coming. For this, she borrows the fervid expressions of the prophets, to which she joins her own supplications. These longings for the Messias expressed by the Church, are not a mere commemoration of the desires of the ancient Jewish people; they have a reality and efficacy of their own, an influence in the great act of God’s munificence, whereby He gave us His own Son. From all eternity, the prayers of the ancient Jewish people and the prayers of the Christian Church ascended together to the prescient hearing of God; and it was after the receiving and granting them, that He sent, in the appointed time, that blessed Dew upon the earth, which made it bud forth the Savior.

The Church aspires also to the second coming, the consequence of the first, which consists, as we have just seen, in the visit of the Bridegroom to the bride. This coming takes place, each year, at the feast of Christmas, when the new birth of the Son of God delivers the faithful from that yoke of bondage, under which the enemy would oppress them. The Church, therefore, during Advent, prays that she may be visited by Him who is her Head and her Spouse; visited in her hierarchy; visited in her members, of whom some are living, and some are dead, but may come to life again; visited, lastly, in those who are not in communion with her, and even in the very infidels, that so they may be converted to the true light, which shines even for them. The expressions of the liturgy which the Church makes use of to ask for this loving and invisible coming, are those which she employs when begging for the coming of Jesus in the flesh; for the two visits are for the same object. In vain would the Son of God have come, nineteen hundred years ago, to visit and save mankind, unless He came again for each one of us and at every moment of our lives, bringing to us and cherishing within us that supernatural life, of which He and His holy Spirit are the sole principle.

But this annual visit of the Spouse does not content the Church; she aspires after a third coming which will complete all things by opening the gates of eternity. She has caught up the last words of her Spouse, “Surely I am coming quickly,” and she cries out to Him, “Ah! Lord Jesus Come!” She is impatient to be loosed from her present temporal state; she longs for the number of the elect to be filled up, and to see appear, in the clouds of heaven, the sign of her Deliverer and her Spouse. Her desires, expressed by her Advent liturgy, go even as far as this: and here we have the explanation of these words of the beloved disciple in his prophecy: “The nuptials of the Lamb are come, and His wife hath prepared herself.”

The Third Coming - the Last Judgment

But the day of His last coming to her will be a day of terror. The Church frequently trembles at the very thought of that awful judgment, in which all mankind is to be tried. She calls it “a day of wrath, on which, as David and the Sibyl have foretold, the world will be reduced to ashes; a day of weeping and of fear.” Not that she fears for herself, since she knows that this day will for ever secure for her the crown, as being the bride of Jesus; but her maternal heart is troubled at the thought that, on the same day, so many of her children will be on the left hand of that Judge, and havng no share with the elect, will be bound hand and foot, and cast into the darkness, where there shall be everlasting weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is the reason why the Church, in the liturgy of Advent, so frequently speaks of the coming of Christ as a terrible coming, and selects from the Scriptures those passages which are most calcualated to awaken a salutary fear in the mind of such of her children as may be sleeping the sleep of sin.

This, then, is the threefold mystery of Advent. The liturgical forms in which it is embodied, are of two kinds: the one consists of prayers, passages from the Bible, and similar formulae, in all of which, words themselves are employed to convey the sentiments which we have been explaining; the other consists of extermal rites peculiar to this holy time, which by speaking to the outward senses, complete the expressiveness of the chants and words.

First of all, there is the number of the days of Advent. Forty was the number originally adopted by the Church, and it is still maintained in the Ambrosian liturgy, and in the eastern Church. If, at a later period, the Church of Rome, and those which follow her liturgy, have changed the number of days, the same idea is still expressed in the four weeks which have been substituted for the forty days. The new birth of our Redeemer takes place after four weeks, as the first nativity happened after four thousand years, according to the Hebrew and Vulgate chronology.

As in Lent, so likewise during Advent, marriage is not solemnized, lest wordly joy should distract Christians from those serious thoughts wherewith the expected coming of the sovereign Judge ought to inspire them or from that dearly cherished hope which the friends of the Bridegroom have of being soon called to the eternal nuptial-feast.

Violet Chasubles

The people are forcibly reminded of the sadness which fills the heart of the Church, by the sombre colour of the vestments. Excepting on the feasts of the saints, purple is the coulour she uses; the deacon does not wear the dalmatic, nor the sub-deacon the tunic. Formerly it was the custom, in some places, to wear black vestments. This mourning of the Church shows how fully she unites herself with those true Israelites of old who, clothed in sack-cloth and ashes, waited for the Messias, and bewailed Sion that she had not her beauty, and Juda, that the sceptre had been taken from him, till He should come who was to be sent, the expectation of nations. It also signifies the works of penance, whereby she prepares for the second coming, full as it is of sweetness and mystery, which is realized in the souls of men, in proportion as they appreciate the tender love of that divine Guest, who has said: “My delights are to be with the children of men.” It expresses, thirdly, the desolation of this bride who yearns after her Beloved, who is long a-coming. Like the turtle dove, she moans her loneliness, longing for the voice which will say to her: “Come from Libanus, my bride! come and thou shalt be crowned. Thou has responded to my heart.”

The Church also, during Advent, excepting on the feasts of saints, suppresses the angelic canticle, Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis; for this glorious song was sung at Bethlehem over the crib of the divine Babe; the tongues of the angels are not loosened yet; the Virgin has not yet brought forth her divine Treasure; it is not yet time to sing, it is not even true to say, “Glory be to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of good will.”

Again, at the end of Mass, the deacon does not dismiss the assembly of the faithful by the words: Ite missa est. He substitutes the ordinary greeting: Benedicamus Domino! as though the Church feared to interrupt the prayers of the people, which could scarce be too long during these days of expectation.

In the night Office, the holy Church also suspends, on those same days, the hymn of jubilation, Te Deum laudamus. It is in deep humility that she awaits the supreme blessing which is to come to her; and, in the interval, she presumes only to ask, and entreat, and hope. But let the glorious hour come, when in the midst of darkest night the Sun of justice will suddenly rise upon the world: then indeed she will resume her hymn of thanksgiving, and all over the face of the earth the silence of midnight will be broken by this shout of enthusiasm: “We praise Thee, O God! we acknowledge Thee to be our Lord! Thou, O Christ, art the King of glory, the everlasting Son of the Father! Thou being to deliver man didst not disdain the Virgin’s womb!”

On the ferial days, the rubrics of Advent prescribe that certain prayers should be said kneeling, at the end of each canonical Hour, and that the choir should also kneel during a considerable portion of the Mass. In this respect, the usages of Advent are precisely the same as those of Lent.

But there is one feature which distinguishes Advent most markedy from Lent: the word of gladness, the joyful Alleluia, is not interrupted during Advent, except once or twice during the ferial Office. It is sung in the Masses of the four Sundays, and vividly contrasts with the sombre colour of the vestments. On one of these Sundays, the third, the prohibitionof using the organ is removed, and we are gladdened by the grand notes, and rose-coloured vestments may be used instead of the purple. These vestiges of joy, thus blended with the holy mournfulness of the Church, tell us, in a most expressive way, that though she unites with the ancient people of God (thus paying the debt which the entire human race owes to the justice and mercy of God), she does not forget that the Emmanuel is already come to her, that He is in her, and that even before she has opened her lips to ask Him to save her, she has already been redeemed and pre-destined to an eternal union with Him. This is the reason why the Alleluia accompanies even her sighs, and why she seems to be at once joyous and sad, waiting for the coming of that holy night which will be brighter to her than the most sunny of days, and on which her joy will expel all her sorrow.

†

Second Sunday of Advent,  5 December 2010