September
From Dom Guéranger's The Liturgical Year.
Let Us make man to Our image and likeness.[1] ‘And God made man; He modelled him,' says Tertullian, ‘to the image of God, i.e. of Christ. Wonderful deed, to fashion this slime of the earth! God seems to be absorbed in it; He makes it the work of His hand and of His heart; counsel, wisdom, providence, and above all love, trace the lines. As He forms each lineament of this clay, He has in mind Christ who is to become man. This slime of the earth, stamped with the image of the Christ to come, is not only God’s work, it is also His pledge.’[2]
These words were spoken concerning our first parent, Adam; but how much more truly do they apply to the Mother of the Man-God, during these days when He who is to be born of her watches over her growth! As God, He now places in her provisionally what He wills to take from her hereafter. For, as Man, He will receive from her, together with His sacred Body, everything that children naturally inherit from their parents: such dispositions and qualities as arise from the physical complexion; features, ways, habits acquired by imitation or by early education. Such is the ineffable condescension of Him who, knowing all things by infused science, condescends to pass like us through the apprenticeship of life. Jesus is to have no earthly father; He will therefore receive more from His Mother than could any other son. In return, no creature could be so like to Jesus in the order of grace, as she whom He thus deigns to resemble in the order of nature; and our heavenly Father loves every creature in proportion to the degree of that creature’s conformity to the image of His divine Son. How exceedingly, then, O Mary, art thou loved! Already in thy sweet features we discern the nobility of the King’s daughter, whose glory is from within, hidden beneath the golden fringes and variety of ornaments that deck her; for the manifold gifts of the holy Spirit enhance the grace and beauty that crown thee in thy very cradle. Together with Andrew of Crete, speaking on this day, we thus salute thee: 'Hail, mediatrix of the law of grace; seal of the ancient and of the new Alliance; luminous fulfilment of all prophecy; summary of revealed truth; living, immaculate book of God the Word, wherein, without writing or characters, the Word God its Author may be daily read! Hail, first-fruits of our regeneration; term of the divine promises and predictions; sanctuary promised by God to His own glory; liberatrix foretold to the nations!’[3]
The Greeks make to-day a special commemoration of our Lady’s holy parents. Already yesterday the Menæa repeated in a thousand ways the gratitude all creatures owe to them. We select the following passages from among many.
Mensis Septembris, die VIII
Exsultet cœlum, lætetur terra; quippe Dei cœlum, sponsa Dei, partu in terra edita est. Sterilis infantem Mariam ex repromissione lactat, gaudetque pro partu Joachim: Mihi, inquiens, virga nata est, ex qua germinavit flos Christus ex radice David.
Exaudisti, Domine, preces meas, Anna dicat, mihi hodie fructum eam præbens, quæ ex cunctis generationibus atque feminis præfinita est intemerata Mater tua.
Eva hodie damnatione absoluta est, Adam item absolutus ab antiqua maledictione, clamans in tua nativitate, immaculata: In te sumus a morte redempti.
Audio David tibi concinentem: Adducentur virgines post te, adducentur in templum Regis; ipseque, conserta cum eo voce, Regis filiam celebro canticis.
Steriles, animæ infecundæ, adeste festinanter; nam Anna multa nunc prole gaudet. Matres, choros ducite cum Matre Dei.
Res stupenda: fons vitæ de sterili nascitur. Gaude, Joachim: non enim tui similis inter patres, per quem data est nobis virgo Deum suscipiens, tabernaculum divinitatis, mons sanctus.
Exsultate, populi: lucis thalamus e ventre prodiit; porta orientalis, hodie genita, ingressum magni præstolatur sacerdotis, ad salutem animarum nostrarum.
Let heaven exult and earth rejoice, for God’s own heaven, his bride, is this day born on earth. According to promise, the barren mother suckles her infant Mary; Joachim rejoices in his daughter, saying: Mine is the branch whereon is to blossom Christ the flower, of the root of David.
Now may Anne say: Thou hast heard, O Lord, my prayer, giving me this day as fruit, the Virgin chosen among all women and of all generations to be thy spotless Mother.
Eve’s sentence is cancelled to-day; and Adam, released from the ancient curse, cries out at thy birth, O immaculate one: In thee we are redeemed from death.
I hear David singing to thee: Virgins shall be brought after thee, they shall be brought into the temple of the King. And I, uniting my voice with his, celebrate thee in my songs, O daughter of the King!
Come, hasten, all ye barren and fruitless souls; for Anne is now the joyful mother of many children. And ye mothers lead the choirs with the Mother of God.
O prodigy! the fount of life springs from one that was sterile. Rejoice, O Joachim, for among all fathers there is none like unto thee, by whom was given to us the Virgin Mother of God, the tabernacle of the Divinity, the holy mountain.
Exalt, O ye people: the nuptial chamber of the light has come forth from her mother’s womb; to-day is born the eastern gate which will soon give entrance to the great High-Priest, for the salvation of our souls.
[1] Gen. i. 26.
[2] Tertull. De resurrect. carnis vi.
[3] Andr. Cret. In Nativit. Deiparæ, Oratio iv.
From Dom Guéranger's The Liturgical Year.
After the Collect of the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, a commemoration is made of a holy martyr, whom the Church associates in the honours paid to our Lady on the second day of her earthly life. Gorgonius was chamberlain of the emperor Diocletian. The ‘saints of Cæsar’s household,' whose greetings St. Paul sent to the Philippians, had, ever since then, been increasing in numbers. Eusebius shows that before the last persecution they were in great favour with the emperors; such preference was shown them, that they were exempted from all participation in public rites in order that they might accept the government of the provinces.[1] In the palace, their wives, children, and servants, were allowed full liberty to practise and profess their faith; so much so, that the court of Nicomedia formed as it were a little church around the empress Prisca and her daughter Valeria, who were then Christians, but who, unhappily, did not persevere.[2]
It required all the craft of Galerius to make Diocletian publish the bloody edicts of the year 303 against the religion of such devoted men, whom he loved, says Eusebius, as his own sons. But once the gate of martyrdom was opened, and Cæsar had become Nero once more, the officers of the palace surpassed in glory all the other heroes of Christ illustrioue for their courage throughout the empire, and even beyond its limits. Chief among these valiant men, the historian mentions Peter, Dorotheus, and Gorgonius. The relics of the last-named were afterwards translated to Rome; it is on this account that he has a place in the Roman calendar, where he has the honour of being in the cortège of the Mother of God.
Commemoration of St. Gorgonius Martyr
Ant. Iste sanctus pro lege Dei sui certavit usque ad mortem, et a verbis impiorum non timuit: fundatus enim erat supra firmam petram.
℣. Gloria et honore coronasti eum, Domine.
℟. Et constituisti eum super opera manuum tuarum.
Ant. This saint fought, even to death, for the law of his God, and feared not the words of the wicked; for he was founded upon a firm rock.
℣. Thou hast crowned him with glory and honour, O Lord.
℟. And hast set him over the works of thy hands.
[1] Euseb. Hist. eccl. viii, 1.
[2] Laetant. De mort. persecut. xv.
From Dom Guéranger's The Liturgical Year.
To-day the infant Mary smiles upon the lily offered her in her cradle by the representative of a great Order. The hermits of St. Augustine were being grouped and organized by the Vicar of Christ, when Nicholas was admitted into their family, of which he was soon to become the thaumaturgus. When he died, in 1305, the Roman Pontiffs were beginning their exile at Avignon; and his canonization, deferred for nearly a century and a half through the troubles of the period, marked the close of the lamentable dissensions which followed that exile.
Peace so long lost; peace, of which even the wisest despaired—such was the ardent prayer, the solemn adjuration of Eugenius IV, when, towards the close of his laborious pontificate, he committed the cause of the Church to the humble servant of God placed by him upon her altars. According to the testimony of Sixtus V, the obtaining of this peace was the greatest of Nicholas’s miracles; a miracle which moved the latter Pontiff to order the celebration of the saint’s feast as a double, at a time when days of that rank were much rarer on the calendar than now.
Let us read the legend, which is as simple as the saint’s life itself.
Nicolaus, Tolentinas, a diuturno illius acivitatis domicilio appellatus, in oppido sancti Angeli in Piceno est natus piis parentibus: qui liberorum desiderio Barium voti causa profecti, ibique a sancto Nicolao de futura prole confirmati, quem susceperunt filium de illius nomine appellarunt. Is ab infantia multarum virtutum, sed abstinentiæ in primis specimen dedit. Nam anno vix septimo, beatum ipsum Nicolaum imitatus, complures hebdomadædies jejunare cœpit, eamque postea consuetudinem retinuit, solo pane contentus.
Adulta ætate jam clericali militiæ adscriptus, et canonicus factus, cum quodam die concionatorem Ordinis Eremitarum sancti Augustini de mundi contemptu dicentem audisset, eo sermone inflammatus, statim eumdem Ordinem est ingressus. In quo tam exactam religiosæ vitæ rationem coluit, ut aspero vestitu, verberibus et ferrea catena corpus domans, atque a carne et omni fere obsonio abstinens, cantate, humilitate, patientia, ceterisque virtutibus aliis præluceret.
Orandi assiduum Studium, quamvis satanæ insidiis variæ vexatus, et flagellis interdum cæsus, non intermittebat. Demum sex ante obitum mensibus, singulis noctibus angelicum concentum audivit, cujus suavitate cum jam paradisi gaudia prægustaret, crebro illud apostoli repetebat: Cupio dissolvi, et esse cum Christo. Denique obitus sui diem fratribus prædixit, qui fuit quarto idus septembris. Miraculis multis etiam post mortem damit, quibus rite et ordine cognitis, ab Eugenio Papa quarto in sanctorum numerum est relatus.
Nicholas, called of Tolentino as he lived a long time in that city, was born at the town of St. Angelo in the Marches of Ancona. His pious parents, desirous of having children, went to Bari in fulfilment of a vow. There they were assured by St. Nicholas that they should have a son; whom they therefore called by that saint’s name. From his infancy he was admirable for his virtues, especially for his abstinence; for, when only seven years old he began, in imitation of St. Nicholas, to fast several days a week; which custom he afterwards kept up, contenting himself with bread and water.
While still young he was enrolled in the ranks of the clergy and made a canon; but one day, hearing a sermon on contempt of the world preached by one the hermits of Saint Augustine, he was so struck by it that he immediately joined that Order. As a religious he led a perfect life; subduing his body by rough garments, disciplines, and iron chains; abstaining from meat and almost every kind of nourishment; and showing a bright example to others by his charity, humility, patience, and other virtues.
Very great was his love of prayer, in which he never relaxed, although satan troubled him in various ways and at times scourged him severely. For six months before his death he heard every night the songs of the angels: a foretaste of heavenly delights which caused him frequently to repeat that saying of the apostle: I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ. He foretold to his brethren the day of his death, which was the fourth of the Ides of September. Both before and after death he was famous for miracles; which having been duly proved, he was enrolled among the saints by Pope Eugenius IV.
Good and faithful servant, thou hast entered into the joy of thy Lord. He has broken thy bonds; and from heaven, where thou art now reigning, thou repeatest to us those words which determined the sanctity of thy life on earth: ‘Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world. For the world passeth away, and the concupiscence thereof.’[1] How much a man thus forgetful of earth can do for his fellow-men, is evinced by the gift thou didst receive of solacing all the miseries around thee, and succouring the souls in purgatory. The successor of St. Peter was not deceived, when, in ranking thee among the saints, he counted on thy power in heaven to bring back society from its long continued state of disturbance to the paths of peace. May that word of the beloved disciple which thou hast just echoed to us, sink into our souls as a seed of salvation, and there yield the fruits that it produced in thee: detachment from all temporal things and a longing for eternal realities; that humble simplicity of the soul’s eye which makes life a peaceful journey towards God; and lastly, that purity, which made thee the friend of angels and the favourite of Mary.
[1] St. John, ii. 15, 17.
From Dom Guéranger's The Liturgical Year.
‘Dimitte me, jam enim ascendit aurora; let me go for it is break of day;’[1] such were the words which put an end to the struggle between the angel and the patriarch on the banks of the torrent. Blessed dawn which triumphed over God Himself! How long had been that night, during which the human race had been struggling by its supplications and tears![2] Ever since the fall, the angel of justice had been guarding the entrance to the true land of promise; at every turn he was to be found, resisting in his inexorable vengeance poor, wandering, outcast man. How is it, then, that the inflexible has now yielded? That spiritual being, so superior to our weak, halting nature, why is he the first to speak of closing the struggle, and to own himself vanquished? It is because, as with God so with the angel, light is strength. Now our earth, hitherto buried in deepest night, has suddenly reflected back to heaven brighter splendours than ever Cherubim shed down upon the Dominations and Virtues and Powers and Principalities, beside whom, a while ago, man was so very little. It is because at length in the glimmering dawn, which already subdues him, the angel of justice foresees the Sun Himself, the Sun of justice, who, rising from the bosom of the human race, is to make Himself answerable for it. Man is no longer a pariah compared with the angel; he is Israel, ‘the strong against God.’ To come to terms with him is no longer derogatory to the angelic dignity; to yield to him is no humiliation: the day is breaking.
Blessed be thou, whose radiant innocence thus raises up to the throne of God our proscribed race. With the angels for allies instead of adversaries, we are henceforth one great army, of which thou art the Queen.
The abbey of St. Gall in the tenth century furnishes us with the following ancient sequence in honour of Mary’s birth.
Sequence
Ecce solemnis diei canamus festa,
Qua sæculo processit gemma potens et nobilis Maria.
Regalibus exorta parentelis theotochos inclita.
Hæc egressura de germine Jesse tempore prisco prædicta est virgula.
Et flos ex ejus radice procedens turbida mundi absolveret crimina.
Istam venturam veterum parentum linguæ prophetiis pienæ testabantur cœlitus ac præcinuerant alma oracula.
Quæ virgo manens paritura foret unico more filium spiritualiter conceptum, qui contraderet mundo remedia.
Quæ Davidis genita stirpe clara generosi nominis fert insignia.
Salomonis creditur hæc propinqua, sed majore prædita sapientia.
Hæc de regibus generis clari sumpsit primordia.
Et hæc eadem regis æterni mater castissima.
Ejus qui ante tempora fuerat atque sæcula.
Qui angelos et homines junxerat pace placida.
lllius nobis adesse cuncti precemur auxilia,
Per quem tam gravis destructa paci concessit discordia.
lllius hæc nobis acquirat Genitrix sanctam quam sonant gaudia.
Atque suum nobis placatum faciat natum per cuncta sæcula.
Ille nobis cuncta ut demittat pleniter delieta,
Et æterne clemens tribuat omarier corona.
O nunc cœlorum domina, famulorum vocibus mota, quæ deposcunt aure suscipe benigna,
Et nos tuo munimine tuearis sedule, donec nosmet regna dones scandere superna.
Let us hail with song the festivity of this solemn day
Which ushered into the world the noble, queenly pearl, Mary.
The illustrious Mother of God, born of a royal stock.
In ancient times it was foretold that this little branch should spring from the rod of Jesse,
And that the Flower proceeding from its root should put an end to the darksome crimes of earth.
The prophetic tongues of her remote ancestors testified in heaven’s name to her future coming, and propitious oracles sang her praises of old.
Alone of all women she was to remain ever a virgin, whilst bringing forth a Son spiritually conceived, who was to heal the world.
She is honoured with a noble name, being sprung of the illustrious race of David.
She is descended from Solomon, but she far surpasses him in wisdom.
Born of the glorious lineage of kings,
She is herself the most pure Mother of the eternal King,
Who was before all times and ages;
Who had united angels and men in tranquil peace.
Then let us all implore him to come to our assistance;
Through whom such terrible discord was destroyed and gave place to peace.
May his Mother obtain this for us, whom our joyous songs proclaim holy.
And may she render her Son for ever propitious to us;
So that he may grant us full remission of our sins,
And give us in his mercy to be adorned with the eternal crown.
O thou who now art heaven’s Queen, touched by the prayers of thy servants, receive their petitions with a kindly ear,
And assiduously shield us with thy protection, until thou bringest us too into the heavenly kingdom.
[1] Gen. xxx, 26.
[2] Cf. Osee, xii, 4.
From Dom Guéranger's The Liturgical Year.
Our Lady shares her honours to-day with two brothers, whose martyrdom, under Valerian, raised them from servile condition to the highest rank of heaven’s nobility. Their bodies were first laid in the cemetery of St. Hermes: but Protus had already been honoured within the walls of the eternal city for more than a thousand years, when, in 1845, the discovery of Hyacinth’s bones in his primitive tomb, opened a new era in the history of the catacombs and of Christian archæology.
Prayer
Beatorum martyrum tuorum Proti et Hyacinthi nos, Domine, foveat pretiosa Confessio, et pia jugiter intercessio tueatur. Per Dominum.
May the precious confession of thy blessed martyrs Protus and Hyacinth animate us, O Lord, and may their pious intercession ever defend us. Through our Lord.