Christum regem adoremus dominantem gentibus, qui se manducantibus dat spiritus pinguedinem.
Let us adore Christ, the King, who ruleth the nations, who giveth fatness of spirit to them that eat him.
My days are vanished like smoke, and my bones are grown dry like fuel for the fire: I am smitten as grass, and my heart is withered: because I forgot to eat my bread. Thus sadly speaks the hundred and first Psalm, whose title is: Prayer of the poor man, when he was anxious, and poured out his supplication before the Lord.[1] And who is this poor man? It is Adam; it is the whole human race, the inheritor of Adam’s miseries. God had given him His divine law, as his food; as the bread of his soul, He had given him the Word of God. Instigated by the old serpent, and led on by the woman, Adam took the forbidden fruit; he forgot the Word. Deservedly has he been blighted as the grass of the field: deservedly has his heart been withered; for he has despised the fruit of life, he has drunk poison, he has preferred to eat ashes,[2] rather than the nourishment that was made for him.
But lo! there appeareth the true bread of heaven, He, in whose Flesh thou mayst, if thou wilt, find the Word thou hadst forgotten. Cry out, from the depths of thy poverty, to heaven; regain thy former plenty. Eat! for thou art member of Him who hath said: ‘I am the living Bread, which came down from heaven.’[3] Thou hadst forgotten to eat thy bread; but now that Christ is crucified, all the ends of the earth shall remember, and shall be converted unto the Lord.[4] Poor withered grass! thy flesh[5] shall flourish again, because of the Saviour’s Blood;[6] it shall become, as St. Bernard tells thee, like that holy herb of the virgin field, that lies in the crib for thy sake.[7]
Bird of the desert! bird of the night, that sattest moaning on the heap of ruins, thy loneliness was scoffed at by the enemy that had scared thee. But the Lord God, thy Redeemer, hath broken the captive’s chains. Peoples and kings, gathered together in Sion, declare His name in unity. It is their proclamation of His victory, the declaration of His greatness and His strength.[8] ‘Jerusalem, then,’ says St. Augustine, ‘Jerusalem, our mother, having come back from exile, and surrounded by her many children, answereth Him, her God, in unity. That God is one; the Church is unity; unity alone can give response to the God who is One.’[9] And Jesus, who is the Head of this triumphant unity, which overthrows the kingdom of Babylonish discord and disunion, gives Himself this response to His Father: ‘In the midst of the Church, will I praise Thee; in the sight of a great Church, I will pay My vows, I will offer the victim which is to save them; and the poor shall eat, and shall be filled; and their hearts, which before were parched up, shall become freshened unto life, and shall live for ever and ever.’[10]
Praise and glory be to this Christ, the Saviour, who thus, by His Flesh offered up in Sacrifice, restores to us the bread of life and understanding![11] O Body of Jesus! most august temple built by eternal Wisdom to Himself! From His side,[12] opened by a spear, comes the sacred stream, which brings the Word to our parched lips. He hath visited the earth, and inebriated it; He hath prepared their food for the children of men. But the cup He proffers is a chalice of sacrifice; the table He sets up, is an altar: for so is the preparation of the food He gives.[13] It is a Victim who gives us His own Flesh to eat, and His own Blood to drink; so that immolation, sacrifice, is the direct and necessary preparation of the banquet He puts before His guests.
Yea, are not they themselves Christ’s food at that sacred table? He gives Himself, but He intends to have these His guests in return, and make them all His own. We are those guests; and what other preparation can we make, but that Which He goes through—sacrifice? Such, such must be the preparation! Ita est præparatio ejus! Observe how, when Wisdom is shown us in Scripture as setting forth the table, and inviting the little ones to eat His bread and drink His wine, He does not slay one, but many victims: He hath slain His victims![14] After His Incarnation, He uses the same language; He sends His messengers, He invites us to the marriage-feast, saying: ‘I have prepared the feast; my beeves and fatlings are slain, my victims are ready; come! for all things axe ready!’[15] What means this, but that, for the very members of Christ—who are the victims fattened, as our Invitatory expresses it, with the fatness of the Spirit—the true immediate preparation for the sacred banquet is immolation, that is sacrifice, that is the Mass, celebrated, or assisted at, in most perfect possible union with the great, the principal, Victim. Quoniam ita est præparatio ejus!
Christians! you have been brought around the one same Table, by the same love, the same thirst, which you have all for the strong living God;[16] understand this well, then: He will give Himself to you the more completely and intimately, in proportion as the same Sacrifice, which gives Him to you, shall have made you become the food of His own longing love. The hour of the Sacrifice is that, wherein the bride finds her well Beloved under the tree of the cross, takes Him as a bunch of myrrh, and puts Him next her heart:[17] it is the hour wherein the King takes her into His divine stores, and gives her to partake of the vine of Engaddi, after He has pressed out the precious drink in the wine-press of His love[18] And for Him, the Spouse, what is this same hour? It is one of harvest, one of vintage. It is then that the south-wind, the holy Spirit who produces the sacred Mysteries, breathes upon the bride, who is the garden of Christ, and fills her with the fragrance of grace;[19] the divine Spouse then comes down into this His garden, that He may eat the fruit of His trees, and gather the myrrh and spices that grow there, and drink the wine for which He so thirsted that it drew Him down from heaven;[20] it is the love which we can so richly and warmly give Him;[21] and He so loves our love, as to deign to call it the best of wine, worthy for the Beloved to drink, and for His divine lips to relish and enjoy.[22]
Then, let the soul prepare herself for the banquet of her Beloved, by making ready the feast which He expects from her. Let her rise early in the morning with this thought upon her, as He Himself does.[23] Let her go down to the garden,[24] to see if the flowers be in order, and the lilies He loves so much be fresh;[25] let her go forth into the field, and gather for Him fruits both new and old;[26] let her examine the vineyard, which the Spouse values so highly as to reserve the vintage to Himself;[27] let her see if the vineyard be in flower, and if the flowers be ready to bring forth fruit,[28] and give promise of those fragrant clusters which are so much sought after by her Lord.[29] Then, finally, let her repair with Him into her mother’s house, the holy Church, and there in the Sacrifice receive from Jesus the precious lessons of how to love God;[30] and, like a new Esther, let her, in her turn, give to her Assuerus that generous wine which induces the King to lend her His own power, grant her requests, and destroy her enemies.[31] The psalmist tells us, in his bold language of inspiration, that there is an inebriation on God’s part, and that He is then terrible to the powers of hell;[32] but there is mention made also, in the sacred volume, of a cup of choice wine presented by the bride, in her mother’s house, to the Spouse:[33] it is the wine He Himself has left to His Church. For this purpose, wishing to proffer to her Spouse the wine which gladdens, and the bread which pleases His heart,[34] the bride takes Him and leads Him to that house of her mother,[35] yea, into that blessed spot where she first received the life of grace and truth.[36]
There, in that sanctuary of love, Rebecca, the mother of the two people that are hostile one to the other,[37] prepares for her spouse Isaac the food he loves so much,[38] which is to induce him to impart his blessing to her favourite child. Esau is a type of the stiff-necked and carnal Jew, who despises the Church, and heeds not the spirit of the promises; he dwells at a distance from home; he is in pursuit of wild beasts, an image of his own fierce instincts. Jacob, on the contrary, is a peaceful man, and keeps with his mother at home,[39] and gives a helping hand to the valiant woman, who, with faith, carries out the design of heaven. Rebecca robes him in Esau’s garments, the precious garments of the first-born, which are in the mother’s keeping; they are the insignia of priesthood; and when Jacob is vested in them, he takes two kids from the flock, and immolates them. These, as the fathers tell us, are an image, both of the meekness of Christ,[40] and of the two peoples, Jew and Gentile, which, by being made one in His Blood,[41] have become the food of God.[42] But it is Rebecca who guides Jacob in all he does; she receives from him the victim he has slain, and of it makes the food so loved by her spouse: in this, she represents the Church, who, in the holy Sacrifice, directs the priest and unites the people, and so prepares for her Lord the food she knows to be so dear to Him.[43]
The same great teaching had been given even earlier than this, and with as much dearness. It was under the oak of Mambre, and in the days of tent-life. Abraham, the father of believers, there received three guests; they represented the mystery of the holy Trinity. In the name of his countless children, he offers to the three mysterious guests a repast, which is full of symbolism, as it is described to us in the sacred volume.[44] Penetrating into the mystery of Three in One, Abraham thus speaks to his three guests as though they were one: ‘Lord! if I have thus found favour in thy sight, pass not away from thy servant.' He then presses them to take food; and they readily consent. Then Abraham made haste into the tent to Sara, and said unto her: ‘Make haste! temper together three measures of flour, and make cakes upon the hearth.’ He is full of considerateness, says St. Ambrose; he cannot think of depriving his wife of a share in the work of religion he has in hand; he would have her join him in all things; she is a type of the Church. Let man then hasten and kill the fatted calf, in figure of the Lord’s Passion;[45] the woman’s part is to prepare man himself, and make him the food of God; for the three measures of flour, taken by Sara, signify the threefold posterity of Noe, which forms the three races of the human family.[46] They are again mentioned, and with the same import, in the Gospel;[47] and the woman, the Church, again appears, making the bread of heavenly wheat out of them;[48] it is the Bread which is the Body of Christ; it is eaten by man in the Eucharistic banquet; and thus Christ and man become the food of God and the joy of the holy Trinity.
Oh! exclaims St. Ambrose, how happy the man who thus becomes sweet food to divine Wisdom![49] But this holy zeal, this earnestness of faith, this fervour of devotion, which, as the same saint says, should transform us spiritually into a nourishment which will give pleasure to God[50]—where are we to get them, if not from the Church, whose special work it is to provide us with all this in the sacred mysteries? And this preparation, both for the Head and His members, being the Sacrifice, could the Christian do better than let himself be led, in all simplicity, by this mother of the living? She will lead him to God by her sacred liturgy. Surely, he may unreservedly commit his spiritual direction to this holy mother Church, seeing that our Lord Himself has left everything to her, in what regards the administration of this Sacrament of His love. She is to regulate the ceremonies, the solemnity, the preparations, everything, in a word, which is to accompany the great Sacrifice, of which Communion is to be the completion and the issue.
The whole of this feast, which we have been celebrating during these eight days, tells us very eloquently that Communion is not a work of private devotion. Private devotion is not an adequate preparation for man’s receiving this visit from his Lord—a visit whose scope is to bring us closer and closer into union with Christ our Head, and with all His members, who, in the immolation of the one universal Sacrifice, are all made one grand offering to the glory of the Father. For a soul that longs to be united to her Lord, and to gain that full Catholic point of view which is the one intended by God, by far the surest means is to have a clear understanding of what the sacred function is, and to follow attentively the holy ceremonies and formulas, as far as they come within the reach of the faithful. Let not that soul be afraid of having her recollection interfered with, or her love cooled, by taking the way of the Church for her own. She is quite right in being desirous to approach the holy table in the right dispositions; then let her do as the Church does. She will be all the more pleasing to Jesus who is coming to her, she will be all the better prepared for union with Him, as a member of His mystical body the Church, the more she is a faithful child of that Church; and if she be that, if she be a disciple of that great school, if she live under the mighty influence of the divine liturgy, she will never think of making her preparation for holy Communion by shutting her eyes and ears to what the Church does during the great Sacrifice; for she knows that unconscious egotism and narrow individualism are the ordinary results of private methods.
The apostles and their immediate disciples, the authorized founders of the liturgies of the first age of the Church, had no fear of lessening the devotion of the early Christians by the magnificent and gorgeous ceremonial, which they made inseparable from a participation in the sacred Mysteries. So was it also with our ancestors, the martyrs; when obliged by persecution to shelter in the catacombs, they had the Mass celebrated there with a solemnity such as we, now-a-days, never witness. Thus, when Pope Saint Xystus II. was martyred, he was seated on his throne in one of those glorious hiding-places; the Sacrifice of the Mass was being offered up, and the Pontiff, in apostolic majesty, was surrounded by the numerous ministers officiating in the holy function; they feared not to brave imperial edicts and persecutions, provided they could but keep up the solemnity of the Christian rites, for these gave the faithful to partake, in one same banquet, of the Bread of the strong, which united them all together, and gave each partaker courage. When the Church gained freedom by her triumph, she continued these solemn rites of her Sacrifice; nay, she even added to their solemnity, when gilded and brilliantly lighted basilicas had replaced the dark crypts and cemeteries. The fathers and holy doctors of the Church, the saints of the great times of her independence, all made this the habitual preparation for receiving the blessed Sacrament, viz: the magnificence of the liturgy, and the solemnity of the holy Sacrifice, at which all the people assisted, and all took that active participation in it which we have already described. And yet, we never hear that this obligatory crowded assistance, this exterior pomp, this sustained attention to the sacred ceremonies, ever impeded their fervour, or kept our Lord from having saints among His people. We never find anything to indicate that their appreciation of divine things was thereby dulled, or that their saintliness was impaired by it, or that society —of which they were the guides, respected and obeyed—was kept in a state of backwardness, or unfitted to bear comparison, in anything worth comparison, with our own times. But perhaps the Church of those ages would have shown more wisdom, and more spirituality, had she left these sons and daughters of hers all to themselves, to make their own meditations in silence and solitude? The thought would be a very untrue, not to say, a most impertinent one. Certainly, such an idea had not yet made way in the thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth century, when faith and genius built those glorious cathedrals which are still the pride of our Europe. They were built that the ceremonies of religious worship might have a more worthy development, and attract more abundant witnesses, and produce holiness in the children of the Church, who then preferred her ways to any others.
But may not these times of ours be happier ones for piety? May not the time have come, when, being made independent of the senses by improved systems of asceticism scarcely dreamt of in those earlier ages, the human soul, when it would go to God, has no further need of those exterior helps which were all very well for centuries when Augustine, or Leo the Great, or Hildegarde, or Bernard, lived, but are quite unnecessary for a generation so highly spiritual as our own? The fruits of a tree must decide whether it be a good or a poor one.[51] One should examine if there have been satisfactory results from abandoning the paths marked out by the Church, and so zealously kept to by our fathers in the faith.
The sixteenth century was made to witness hell triumphing over the ruins of altars in all the northern countries of Europe, especially in England. The long interruption of liturgical solemnity brought with it, amongst many of the faithful of these later times, a lowering, or even a total ignorance, of what the Mass is as a Sacrifice. The great mystery of the Eucharist seemed, to certain pious souls, to be nothing else than our Lord’s presence, who abides among us for the purpose of receiving our private visits, and of Himself occasionally coming to be our guest in holy Communion. That was all that the Eucharist meant, as far as the practical knowledge of these people wont! As to that part of the Eucharistic mystery, which consists in our Lord’s being mystically immolated by the wonderful words of Consecration, and thereby expiating for the sins of men, and paying to His eternal Father, in our name, the great debts of adoration and thanksgiving; as to His daily receiving thereby the fervent supplications of our mother the Church, and, because of her suppliant worship in union with His own Sacrifice, His warding off from this poor world the chastisements it deserves: in a word, as to the Mass—it says much less to the hearts of these good people, than does Exposition, or Benediction, or Forty-Hours, or even a mere visit to the blessed Sacrament made very privately and very quietly. For them, Mass is but a preliminary condition for having something else which they look forward to; Mass, in their minds, is but a means for producing the real Presence. On this account, though the Church has formally discountenanced the practice of having the blessed Sacrament exposed during a low Mass, the Christians of whom we are speaking would far prefer being present at such a Mass, than at one where the Church’s wishes are respected; and their reason is, that the Exposition gives them all they want, and all they expect from the Mass. As for High Mass, unless it happen to be one with Exposition, they would rather not go to it, for it is å distraction to them! Sometimes, however, they will go to a solemn Mass; but as to the powerful influence for good, which the heavenly agency of the liturgy would exercise upon them if they would but allow it, they have evidently no notion of such a fact; for you will see them giving all their attention to some book they have brought with them, and out of which they are taking reflections, which, though quite correct in themselves, have no relation to the great Sacrifice at which they are assisting. The Elevationbell tells them nothing but this—that our Lord has descended upon the altar; they, of course adore; but they never think of uniting themselves with the divine Victim, or of offering themselves, together with the Church, for the sublime intentions which she expresses in her liturgy of each feast or season. If they intend to go to Communion on that day, they will perhaps lay aside, for some moments previous to approaching the rails, the prayer-book which they had been using, that they may sweetly occupy themselves with the sentiments excited by its reading. And thus are they occupied up to the moment when, having admitted them to the Sacrament of unity, our Lord must seek in the distant grace of their Baptism, rather than in their sentiments and thoughts of the moment, that intimate fellowship with the Church, which Communion demands of us, and which it is intended to confirm within us.
Is it, then, to be wondered at that, with very many souls, religion, whose true basis is sacrifice, rests on little but a vague sentimentality? This gradually effaces the fundamental notions of God’s dominion, and sovereign justice; of worship, reparation, service, and homage, which are our first duties towards our Maker. Whence comes there, in so many Christians who are in the habit of going to the Sacraments, that weakness of faith, that total absence of the practical notion of the Church, which made itself so painfully felt to our bishops at the time of the Council? It is because, together with the grandeur of the liturgy, to which they are total strangers, public worship has lost its social character; Communion, consequently, has lost its full meaning, and leaves its receivers in their state of contented isolation; for it is not, as far as they are concerned, the bond of unity, through Christ the Head, with the whole body whereof they were made members by Baptism. To say nothing of those nominal Catholics, with whom the word Church seems to be a term one meets with in history, but which has no present objective existence, are there many, even among those who are frequent, or daily, communicants, who understand this axiom of Saint Augustine: 'The Eucharist is our daily Bread, for the virtue it implies is unity; and unity of the members in a body, is the health of that body, and the health of each member’?[52]
Twice already had two sons of St. Benedict taken up the defence of the adorable Sacrament against its adversaries,[53] when, in the thirteenth century, there came forward in the same cause a monk of Cluny, by name Algerus. He composed a volume worthy of its two predecessors; and though its dogmatic character excludes everything approaching to hyperbole, yet we find this same truth expressed thus forcibly: ‘The Mystery of Christ’s true Flesh in the Sacrament of the altar, is a profit to those only who, in the same Sacrament, receive also the mystery of His members, that is, union with the entire body, which is the Church; because, just as the head has no vital influence, when separated from the body, so Christ confers life upon no man, unless there be unity of the body of the Church: for, as Christ is inseparable from His mystical body, so He is never received in His Sacrament save in His entirety, that is, as incorporated with us by the mystery of His and our union.’[54]
The doctrine here expressed is very profound. It enables us to appreciate the magnificence of such a sight as was to be seen, in former times, of the whole assembly of the faithful concluding the solemnity of the Sacrifice by all communicating of the divine Victim. This unanimous meeting at the holy table of all those who have been made members of the Church by Baptism, is a sight which we cannot expect to behold in an age like our own, which is so full of immorality, infidelity, and cowardly human respect. And those of the Church’s children whose fervent assiduity at the divine banquet is a consolation to her amidst the general neglect, cannot always wait for the late hour of High Mass, though it would bring them closer into the spirit of the mystery of Communion, and would be more in accordance with the desires of the Church. They are generally prevented from such a practice by their delicate health, or by other obstacles, which are, no doubt, very difficult to be removed; and our loving mother the Church is quite aware of the moral impossibility of anything like a general return to the ancient practice. Still, we cannot forbear regretting the difficulty, and envying those happy times, when each of the faithful partook sacramentally of the Sacrifice which was celebrated in the presence of the whole congregation.[55] Yet she does not press her wishes in this regard, except for the sacred ministers, who are assistants at the Sacrifice; and even for them, she does not prescribe it as an express command: ‘Let them know,’ she says, in her Council of Trent, ‘that it is extremely becoming, that, at least on Sundays and solemn feasts, they should receive holy Communion at the altar where they give their ministry.’[56] The fathers of the same Counoil thus admirably express the traditional teaching, which we have been putting before our readers: ‘The holy Council, with fatherly affection, admonishes, exhorts, begs and implores, by the bowels of the mercy of our God, that all and each of those who bear the name of Christians, will, at length, be united to each other in this sign of unity, in this bond of charity, in this symbol of concord. Let them be mindful of the infinite majesty, and the wonderful love, of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave His beloved life as the price of our salvation, and His Flesh as our food. Let them believe and venerate these sacred mysteries of His Body and Blood with such constancy and resoluteness, with such devotion of soul, and love, and worship, as that they may frequently receive that supersubstantial Bread. May it be to them their true life, and the perpetual health of their soul! And being strengthened by its strength, may they go through the journey of this miserable life, and reach their heavenly country, where they may eat, unveiled, that same Bread of the angels, which they now receive under the sacred veils’ (of the sacramental Species).[57]
The Church of Armenia chants, even to this day, at the time of Communion, an admirable canticle, which is of the same character as the short, but sublime invitation to the sacred Table, which we gave yesterday from the ancient Church of Gaul.
Dum Communicant Qui Digni Sunt (Chorus modulatur hoc Canticum)
Mater fidei, sacer cœtus Sponsorum, Et thalamus sublimis! Domus Sponsi immortalis Qui te exornavit in æternum!
Tu es secundum coelum mirabile De gloria in gloriam excelsum. Ad instar lucis nos parturis Per filiale baptisterium.
Panem istum purificantem distribuis, Das ad bibendum sanguinem tuum tremendum, Trahis ad supernum ordinem Intelligibilium non factum.
Venite, filii novæ Sion, Accedite ad Dominum nostrum cum sanctitate. Gustate sed et videte Quia suavis est Dominus Deus noster virtutum.
Illa di visit Jordanem, Tu mare peccatorum mundi; Illa magnum ducem habuit Josue, Tu Jesum Patri consubstantialem.
Antiqua figura tibi etiam similis, Altare supereminens. Illa confregit portas adamantinas, Tu inferni a fundamentis.
Panis hic est Corpus Christi, Hic calix Sanguinis novi Testamenti. Occultum sacramentum nobis manifestatur, Deus in hoc a nobis videtur.
Hic est Christus Verbum Deus Qui ad dexteram Patris sedet, Et hic sacrificatur inter nos, Tollit peccata mundi.
Ille qui benedictus est in æternum Una cum Patre et Spiritu, Nunc et magis in futurum Et sine fine semper in saecula.
O mother of faith, sacred assembly and sublime nuptial couch of the marriage-feast! O house of the immortal Spouse, adorned by him with everlasting beauty!
Thou art the wonderful second heaven, whose majesty is from glory to glory! Thou, as light produces light, bringest us forth, by the font, which gives us to thee thy children.
Thou art distributing the Bread that purifies; thou art giving us to drink what thou possessest —the adorable Blood; thou art drawing us to that uncreated supernal order of things.
O come ye children of the new Sion, approach with holiness your Lord! Yea, taste and see that our Lord, the God of armies, is sweet.
That Sion of old divided the waters of Jordan, thou breakest up the sea of sins; she of old had Josue as her leader; thou, Jesus, consubstantial with the Father.
The lofty altar, too, was an ancient figure of thee: it broke down the gates of adamant; thou, those of hell, even to its foundations.
This is the Body of Christ, this the chalice of the Blood of the new Testament. The hidden Sacrament is shown to us, and herein God is seen by us.
This is Christ the Word, God, who is sitting at the right hand of the Father: and he is sacrificed in our presence, and takes away the sins of the world.
It is he who is blessed for ever, together with the Father and the Spirit, now and ever more for time to come, and, without end, for everlasting ages.
Let us once more borrow from the liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions (Book viii). The following formula of thanksgiving after Communion will tell us what is the spirit of the Church, and what she would have us do at that precious time. We find that she is intent upon the great interests of Jesus, her Spouse. In this ecstasy of her love, in this moment of her intimate union with her God, she strives to keep her children from having narrow-minded thoughts, and intentions which look to nothing beyond self, the result of private devotion, so unseasonable for such grand acts of the Christian life as are the Sacrifice of Mass and Communion in the universal Victim, as we have heard the fathers expressing it. Scarcely, then, have the sacred Species been distributed, than the deacon cries out: Surgamus, let us rise! Thereupon, all stand up, and unite in this prayer, which is read by the bishop:
Invocatio Post Communionem
Domine Deus omnipotens, Pater Christi tui, benedicti Filii; exauditor eorum qui recte invocant te, cognitor precum etiam eorum qui tacent: gratias agimus tibi, quod nos dignos censuisti qui participaremus sancta tua mysteria, quæ præbuisti nobis ad plenam eorum quæ bene cognovimus persuasionem, ad custodiam pietatis, ad remissionem delictorum; quoniam nomen Christi tui invocatum est super nos, et tibi adjuncti sumus.
Qui segregasti nos ab impiorum communione, aduna cum iis qui tibi sunt consecrati, firma nos in veritate per sancti Spiritus adventum, quæ ignoramus revela, quæ deficiunt supple, quæ novimus corrobora.
Sacerdotes inculpatos conserva in cultu tuo. Reges tuere in pace; magistratus in justitia; aerem in temperie; fruges in ubertate; mundum in omnipotente providentia. Gentes bellicosas seda. Errantes converte. Populum tuum sanctifica; virgines conserva; conjuges custode in fide; castos robora; infantes ad maturam ætatem perduc; nuper initiatos firma; catechumenos erudi, ac dignos initiatione redde; nosque omnes congrega in regnum coelorum, in Christo Jesu Domino nostro:
Cum quo tibi gloria, honor, ac veneratio, et sancto Spiritui in saecula. Amen.
O Lord God almighty, Father of Christ, thy blessed Son! who graciously hearest them that call upon thee in uprightness, who knowest the prayers of those even who are silent; we thank thee, for that thou hast deemed us worthy to partake of thy sacred mysteries: thou hast given to us, for fully strengthening our faith in those things which we so well know, for the preservation of piety, and for the forgiveness of our sins; for the name of thy Christ has been invoked upon us, and we have been joined to thee.
O thou that hast separated us from communion with the ungodly, unite us with them that are consecrated to thee; strengthen us in the truth, by the coming of the Holy Ghost; teach us the things we know not; supply our deficiencies; confirm us in the truths we already know.
Preserve thy priests blameless in thy service. Keep kings in peace; magistrates in justice; the air salubrious; the fruits in abundance; the world in thine almighty providence. Pacify nations that are waging war. Convert them that are astray. Sanctify thy people; preserve thy virgins; keep in fidelity them that are in wedlock; strengthen the chaste; lead little ones to mature age; confirm the newly initiated; teach the catechumens, and make them worthy of initiation; and gather us all together into the kingdom of heaven, in Christ Jesus our Lord:
To whom, together with thee, and the holy Spirit, be glory, and honour, and adoration for ever. Amen.
[1] Ps. ci. 1, 4, 5. [2] Ibid. 10. [3] St. John vi. 51. [4] Ps. xxi. 28. [5] Is. xl .6-8. [6] St. Aug. in Ps. ci. [7] St. Bernard. ad mil. tempi. vi. [8] Ps. ci. 24. [9] In Ps. ci. [10] Ps. xxi. 23-27. [11] Ecclus. xv. 3. [12] Ezechiel xlvii. 2. [13] Ps. lxiv. 10. [14] Prov. ix. 2-5. [15] St. Matt. xxii. 4. [16] Ps. xli. 3. [17] Cant. i. 12. [18] Ibid. i. 3, 13; ii. 3, 4. [19] Ibid. iv. 16. [20] Ibid. v. 1. [21] Ibid. v. 6. [22] Ibid. vii. 9. [23] Ibid. vii. 12. [24] Ibid. vi. 10. [25] Cant.ii. 16. [26] Ibid. vii. 11-13. [27] Ibid. viii. 11, 12. [28] Ibid. vii. 12. [29] Ibid. 7, 8. [30] Ibid. viii. 2. [31] Esth. v. 4-8; vii. 1-10. [32] Ps. lxxvii. 65, 66. [33] Cant. viii. 2. [34] Ps. ciii. 14. [35] Cant. viii. 2. [36] Ibid. iii. 4. [37] Gen. xxv. 23. [38] Ibid. xxvii. 14. [39] Gen. xxv. 27. [40] St. Ambr. De Jacob et vit. beat. lib. ii., c. 2. [41] Eph. ii. 14-16. [42] Comm. in Gen., lib. ii. ap. Euch. [43] Gen. xxvii. [44] Ibid. xviii. 1-9. [45] Ambr. De Abr. lib. i. c. 5. [46] Ap. Euch. Comm. in Gen. lib. ii. [47] St. Matt. xiii. 33. [48] St John. xii. 24, Ap. Ambr. Serm. 13. [49] In ps. cxviii. Serm. 18. [50] Ibid. [51] St. Luke vi. 44. [52] St. Aug. Serm. 57, 137. [53] Paschasius Radbert and ourLaufranc, against Scotus Erigena, and Berengarius. [54] De Sacram. Corp. et Sang. Dom. lib. i. c. 3. [55] Conc. Trid. Sessio. 22 de Sacrif. Miss. c. 6. [56] Sess. 23. de Reform. c. 13. [57] Sess. xiii. de Each. c. 8.
SCOTLAND had long been Christian when Margaret was given to her to establish, amidst a population so diversified, and so often at mutual enmity as was hers, that unity which makes a nation. Ancient Caledonia, defended by her lakes, mountains, and rivers, had, up to the fall of the Roman empire, kept her independence. But, whilst herself inaccessible to invading troops, she had become the refuge of the vanquished of every race and the proscribed of every epoch. Many an advancing wave, that had paused at the feet of her granite frontiers, had swept pitilessly over the southern provinces of the great British island. Britons, Saxons, and Danes in turn, dispossessed and driven from their homes, fleeing northwards, had successively crept in, and settling down as best they might, had maintained their own customs in juxtaposition with those of the first inhabitants, adding consequently their own mutual jealousies to the inveterate divisions of the Picts and Scots. But from the very evil itself the remedy was to come. God, in order to show that he is master of revolutions just as he is of the surging waves, was about to confide the execution of his merciful designs upon Scotland to such casual instruments as a storm or a political overthrow may sometimes prove to be.
At the opening of the eleventh century, Danish invasion had driven from the English shore the sons of the Saxon king, Edmund Ironside. The crowned apostle of Hungary, St Stephen I, generously received the fugitives at his court, welcoming in these helpless children the great-nephews of a saint, namely Edward the Martyr. To the eldest he gave his own daughter in marriage, and the second he affianced to the niece of St Henry, emperor of Germany. Of this last mentioned union were bom three children, Edgar, surnamed Atheling, Christina, afterwards a nun, and Margaret, whose feast the Church is keeping to-day. By the turning tide of fortune, the exiles once more returned to their country, and Edgar was brought to the very steps of the English throne. For in the meantime, the sceptre had passed from the Danish princes back again to the Saxon line, in the person of their uncle, St Edward the Confessor, and by very birthright seemed destined to pass ultimately to Edgar Atheling. But almost immediately after their return from exile, the death of St Edward and the Norman conquest again banished the royal Saxon family. The ship bearing these noble fugitives, bound for the continent, was driven in an opposite direction by a hurricane, and stranded on the Scottish shore. Edgar Atheling, in spite of the efforts of the Saxon party, was never to raise up the fallen throne of his sires; but his sister, the saint of this day, made conquest of the land whither the storm, God's instrument, had carried her.
Having become the wife of Malcolm III, her gentle influence softened the fierce instincts of the son of Duncan, and triumphed over the barbarism still so dominant in those parts of the country as to separate them utterly from the rest of the known world. The fierce highlander and haughty lowlander, reconciled at last, now followed their gentle queen along hitherto unknown paths, thrown open by her to the light of the Gospel. The strong now bent down to meet the weak or the poor; and all alike, casting aside the rigidity of their hardy race, let themselves be captured by the alluring charms of Christian charity. Holy penitence resumed its rights over the gross instincts of mere nature. The frequentation of the Sacraments, once more brought into esteem, produced seasonable fruits. Everywhere, whether in Church or in State, abuses vanished. The whole kingdom became one family, whereof Margaret was called the mother; for Scotland was bom by her to true civilization. David I (inscribed like his mother in the catalogue of the saints) completed the work begun by her; and another child of Margaret’s, alike worthy of her, Matilda of Scotland, surnamed ‘good Queen Maud,’ was married to Henry I of England; and thus an end was put on the English soil to the persistent rivalries of victors and vanquished, by this admixture of Saxon blood with the Norman race.
The following are the words given in the liturgy concerning St Margaret.
Margarita, Scotorum regina, paterno Angliæ regum, materno Cæsarum sanguine clarissima, illustrior adhuc fuit Christiana virtute. Hæc in Hungaria nata ubi pater tunc temporis exsulabat, post exactam summa cum pietate puerilem ætatem, una cum genitore, qui a sancto Eduardo patruo, Anglorum rege, ad paterni regni fastigium vocabatur, in Angliam venit. Mox, alternante parentum fortuna, ex Angliæ littore solvens vi tempestatis expulsa, seu verius divinæ providentiæ consilio deducta est in oram maritimam Scotiae. Ibi cum ex matris imperio Malcholmo Tertio Scotorum regi, egregiis ejus dotibus capto, nupsisset, sanctimoniæ et pietatis operibus, triginta quibus regnavit annis, toti regno mirifice profuit.
Inter regales delicias corpus afllictationibus ac vigiliis macerans, magnam noctis partem piis precationibus extrahebat. Præter alia jejunia quæ identidem usurpabat, integros quadraginta dies ante natalitia festa tanta cum seventate jejunare consuevit, ut ne in gravissimis quidem doloribus intermiserit. Divino cultui addictissima, tempia plurima et cœnobia partim ex integro excitavit, partim resarcivit, et sacra suppellectili ac largo censu ditavit. Regem conjugem ad meliorem frugem et ad similia suis exercitationibus opera saluberrimo exemplo traduxit, liberosque omnes tam sancte et feliciter educavit, ut eorum plerique, quemadmodum et Agatha mater et Christina soror, sanctissimum vitæ genus amplexi sint. Universi demum regni felicitati consulens, a vitiis omnibus quæ furtim irrepserant populos expurgavit, eisque mores Christiana pietate dignosrestituit.
Nihil tamen æque in illa mirabile fuit ac flagrantissima caritas erga proximos, præsertim egenos, quorum numerosis gregibus non modo stipem affatim suppeditare, verum etiam trecentis quotidie materna benignitate dapes præbere, flexis genibus in morem ancillæ ministrare, regiis manibus pedes abluere, et pressis etiam osculis ulcera fovere, solemne habuit. His porro aliisque piis sumptibus non regias tantum vestes et pretiosa monilia distraxit, sed ipsum non semel exhausit ærarium. Toleratis demum ad patientiæ miraculum acerbissimis doloribus, animam semestri corporis ægrotatione purgatam Auctori suo quarto Idus Junii reddidit. Quo temporis momento facies ejus diuturni morbi macie ac pallore fœdata, insolita quadam venustate refloruit. Miris etiam post mortem prodigiis clara, et Clementis Decimi auctoritate in Scotiæ patronam accepta, ubique terrarum religiosissime colitur.
Margaret, Queen of Scots, was most noble by birth, uniting in herself from her father the blood of the kings of England, and from her mother the blood of the Cæsars; but her greatest nobility was in her brave Christian life. She was born in Hungary, where her father was then an exile; and she had passed a highly religious childhood, when her uncle Edward, the holy King of England, recalled her father to the royal prerogatives of his ancestors, and she came to England with him. A few years afterwards, upon the ruin of her family, she was escaping from England by sea, when the violence of the weather, or, to speak more truly, the Providence of God, caused the ship to be driven upon the coast of Scotland. There her extraordinary graces of mind and of body so attracted king Malcolm III that, at the wish of her mother, she became his wife; and of Scotland she deserved exceedingly well, during the thirty years of her reign, by the holiness of her life and the abundance of her works of mercy.
In the midst of regal delicacies, she afflicted her body with hardships and watchings, being used to spend great part of the night in earnest prayer. Besides other fasts which she imposed upon herself, it was her custom to observe one of forty days before Christmas; concerning which fast she was so rigid, that she would not relax it even under sharp suffering. She took great delight in the public worship of God, and founded or renewed a number of churches and convents which she enriched at great cost with sacred furniture. Her example drew the king, her husband, to habits of Christian virtue and to the imitation of her good works. She educated all her children in so holy a manner, and with such happy success, that several of them, like her own mother Agatha and her sister Christina, embraced a most holy course of life. The happiness of the whole kingdom was the object for which she constantly strove, and she successfully rooted out all the vices which had stealthily crept in, and established among the people a standard of life worthy of Christians.
The most remarkable feature of her life was the tenderness of her charity towards her neighbour, especially the needy. Of these she would not only order crowds to be relieved, but was accustomed to give dinner to three hundred of them every day, treating them with the tenderness of a mother, holding it a sacred privilege to wait upon them on her knees like a handmaid; washing their feet with her own royal hands, and even pressing her lips to their sores with tender kisses. To meet the expenses of her charity, she sold not only her queenly raiment and her precious jewels, but more than once wholly exhausted her treasury. Purified by grievous suffering, which she bore with marvellous patience during an illness of six months, she resigned her soul into the hands of her Creator upon the fourth of the Ides of June. At the moment of death, the bystanders saw her face, till then pale and worn with long sickness, flush again with its former beauty. After her death she became illustrious on account of great signs and prodigies. By the authority of Pope Clement X she was chosen patroness of Scotland, and she is honoured most religiously throughout the whole world.
We hail thee, O Queen, truly worthy of the praises lavished upon thee by posterity, among the most illustrious of sovereigns! Power, in thy hands, became an instrument of rescue for an entire population. Thine earthly passage marks the meridian of true light for Scotland. Yesterday, holy Church commemorated in her martyrology him who was thy precursor in this far-off land, Columba, who, leaving Ireland in the sixth century, had borne the faith thither. But Christianity, crippled in its soarings by divers combined circumstances, could produce scarcely any of its civilizing effects on the inhabitants of the land at that period. Only a mother could perfect the supernatural education of the nation. The Holy Ghost, who had chosen thee, O Margaret, for the task, prepared thy maternity in the midst of tribulation and anxiety; thus had he acted in the case of Clotilde; thus does he ever act in the case of mothers. How mysterious and hidden did the ways of eternal Wisdom seem, as realized in thy person! Thy birth in exile, far from the land of thy sires; thy return home; then fresh misfortunes; then the tempest at sea; and at last thy being cast, despoiled of everything, upon the crags of an unknown coast: what a list of disasters! And who among the worldly-wise would ever have dreamed that herein was the direct course of a merciful Providence, to make the combined violence of men and the elements serve the sweet purposes of his designs in thy regard? Yet so it was; and this is the way thou wast moulded into the valiant woman,[1] raised in all thy loftiness above the deceits of this present life, and wholly fixed on God, the one supreme Good, alone untouched by earth's revolutions.
Far from becoming either soured or dried up by suffering, thy heart, firmly anchored beyond the influence of this world's ebb and flow on unshaken and eternal love, was ever up to the mark in foresight and in devotedness, such as was needed to hold thee always at the height of the mission destined for thee. Wherefore thou wast indeed that treasure worthy of being sought from the uttermost coasts; that merchant-ship bringing bread from afar, and all good things to the favoured shore on which she is cast.[2]Yea, fortunate indeed were thy land of adoption, had she never forgotten thy teaching and example! Happy thy descendants, had they ever remembered that the blood of saints flowed in their veins! Yet worthy of thee in death was at least the last queen of Scots, as she bowed beneath the headsman's axe a brow faithful to her Baptism up to her last breath. But alas! the unworthy son of Mary Stuart, by a policy as false as it was sacrilegious, abandoned at once both the Church and his own mother. Thenceforth heresy blighted the noble stem whence so many kings had sprung; and this at the very moment when England and Scotland were first united under one sceptre's sway! Nor may the treason of a James I be redeemed by the fidelity of a second James to the faith of his fathers! O Margaret, thy throne is firmly fixed for ever in the eternal kingdom; but abandon not thine own England, the land of thy sires, nor Scotland, still more thine own, of which holy Church has declared thee patroness. The apostle Andrew shares with thee the rights of patronage: in concert with him, preserve those who have been steadfast in fidelity, multiply converts to the ancient faith, and prepare the way for the speedy gathering of the whole flock into the fold of the one Shepherd.[3]
[1] Prov. xxxi 10-31. [2] Ibid. [3] St John x 16.
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