|
The
Month of May and Mary (Mother's Day is May 11)
(The
Lamp May 1933 p.148)
This
is Mary's Month. Only a few weeks ago we were celebrating
the nineteenth anniversary of the Crucifixion. In spirit
we stood with Mary at the foot of the cross and we heard
from the dying Saviour's lips His fateful words, "Woman,
behold your son; son, behold your Mother."
Henceforth, Mary is to be the New Eve. The Mother of the
regenerate; all those who live to God in Christ Jesus;
the Sons and Daughters of the Atonement. Vast as has the
number of those children become, they are not sufficient
to satisfy the maternal heart of Mary. She will not be
satisfied until all the children of Eve, dwelling upon
the face of the earth in all parts of the world, have
been born again into the Kingdom of Heaven and numbered
among the elect children of the Atonement. To increase
and multiply the sons and daughters of the New Eve is
a primary purpose for which the Society of the Atonement
exists.
Ours, you know is a missionary institute and to save souls
redeemed by the Blood of Christ is its main business.
One of the mottoes of the Society from the very beginning
has been, "Omnia pro Christo et Salute Hominum,"
i.e., "All things for Christ and the salvation of
all people."
The young men who enter the First Congregation of the
S. A., as well as the Sisters of the Atonement are taught
to offer themselves to God to be used by the Holy Spirit
in saving the greatest number of souls He possibly can
through such human instruments.
It must be obvious to all that the greater number of consecrated
subjects the Society shall embrace within its Three Congregations
the greater work it will be able to accomplish in the
salvation of souls, HENCE, WE NEED MORE FRIARS AND MORE
SISTERS.
Will you not then make your own, the desire of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of our Atonement
Mother in looking out for vocations for Graymoor?
A mother in the West in sending one of her sons to study
for the priesthood in St. John's Preparatory College at
Graymoor declared it to be her ambition to give also a
daughter to God in Holy Religion.
Suppose that every mother who belongs to the Rosary League
of Our Lady of the Atonement, should have a similar ambition,
what a multitude of young men and maidens would be flocking
to Graymoor in a very short time to test their vocation
for our Holy Institute, and as a consequence under the
blessing of the Almighty and the fostering hand of the
Holy Spirit, in a few years the Friars and Sisters of
the Atonement would be planting their mission houses in
many parts of our own great country and in the non-Christian
lands beyond the sea. And this is just what we confidently
expect to come to pass increasingly through your co-operation
with us in the growing Family of the Atonement.
For
a printable version of this article click
here.
Pentecost
Sunday (May 11)
(Sermon given in St. John the Baptist Church, Graymoor,
on May 31, 1925,
the day after Fr. Paul returned from Rome.)
Today's Mass gives an account of the coming of the Holy
Spirit, found in the Acts of the Apostles, second chapter:
| When
the days of the Pentecost were accomplished, they
were all together in one place; and suddenly there
came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming,
and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.
And there appeared to them parted tongues as it were
of fire, and it sat upon every one of them; and they
were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began
to speak with diverse tongues, according as the Holy
Spirit gave them to speak.... |
Prefacing
the sermon, I will say that while kneeling at the feet
of the Holy Father [this month], I received his blessing
for you, which at the end of Mass will be given and after
which will be sung the Te Deum.
It is with great emotion and interior joy that I stand
once more in this little church and greet you all in the
name of God. I have been, by His providence, at the very
fountain source of the light and power of the Holy Spirit
in the Church of the Living God upon earth. I saw in front
of the greatest church in the world, Saint Peter's at
Rome, two wonderful fountains that send up into the air,
day and night, great jets of water which in the sunlight
dance with wonderful brightness like a multitude of diamonds;
and those two fountains before Saint Peter's are the outward
and visible expression of the gifts of the Holy Spirit,
the living waters that we are taught should spring up
in those who believe in Him.
We are celebrating today not merely an event that occurred
nearly nineteen hundred years ago, but one that has its
consequences down through the ages, because when the Holy
Spirit came with the sound of the rushing, mighty wind
and rested upon the Apostles in that upper room at Jerusalem
in the form of tongues of flame, it was not for them alone,
but it was for all generations, for "the gifts of
God are without repentance." That is to say, they
are not given and then recalled unless they are rejected.
When Our Lord promised the Holy Spirit, he promised Him
not only for the Apostles, but for all that should come
after, even unto the end of the world, for He said, "I
will give you another Paraclete and He shall abide with
you forever." So today we rejoice in the sense and
consciousness that that wonderful coming of the Paraclete
has carried down through the ages, and that we today ourselves
are temples of this same Holy Spirit. And if we have not
grieved Him and cast Him out by sin and turned our ears
away from the voice that calls ever within us to keep
the Commandments of God, then we know what it is to have
the Holy Spirit within us and to have the eyes of our
understanding enlightened in the Catholic Faith, to know
the truth, to know the mysteries of life, to know the
temptations of men, and amidst the changes of this life
to have our hearts fixed where true joys are found.
I have been in the city of the Holy Spirit, and there
in that great city of Rome we have preserved the bodies
of some of the original Apostles, particularly the two
great Apostles SS. Peter and Paul, who founded the Catholic
Church in Rome and we have the witness of thousands and
thousands of these glorious servants of God down through
all the Christian centuries even to today. There is a
saying of Our Lord concerning one who is instructed in
the Kingdom of God. He says: "He is like the man
who brings out of his treasure things both new and old."
In the city of Rome we see that illustrated, the Church,
the great household of God constantly brings out of her
treasury and displays before the pilgrims who have come
into that city by tens of thousands, both the things old
and the new. And the things both old and new proclaim
the truth of God, ever old and new.
The special work of the Holy Spirit is to make Saints,
and there in Rome we see a city full of saints. We knelt
at the threshold of the Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul
and venerated a relic of St. Andrew, the first Christian
missionary, who brought his brother Saint Peter to Christ,
who went out and was crucified at last on a cross like
his Master. One week ago last Sunday I was in Saint Peter's
at a magnificent demonstration of the power of the living
Church when the Pope proclaimed the latest of Saints,
Saint Theresa of the Child Jesus. On down through the
centuries the Holy Spirit has been gathering out of the
gardens of earth these beautiful flowers and transporting
them to the gardens of Paradise, where, with a fragrance
that shall never fail, they bloom forever before the throne
of God.
Oh, it is a wonderful thing to go through a city that
has so many evidences of the great power of the Holy Spirit,
in this world that is full of selfish hearts, that is
full of hearts that have forgotten the true fountains
of eternal life and go seeking at the broken cisterns
of this world's pleasure for their happiness and who in
consequence go down in disappointment to the grave. It
is, I say, a wonderful thing to behold with your eyes
the very evidence of the Holy Spirit transforming the
hearts of men into furnaces of divine love, love so great
that they have been willing to go through all kinds of
hardships, all kinds of suffering, and then at last to
lie down, some of them, on beds of fire and of pain as
though they were resting on a couch of roses.
Oh, it is a wonderful thing to go to the center of Christianity
and see the thousands upon thousands of pilgrims marching
from one of the great basilicas to another; to stand in
Saint Peter's and see from England a body of hundreds
of men, four abreast, marching through that great Basilica,
chanting the Litany of the Saints, to see at the same
time another company in the same Basilica from Germany,
praising God but in another tongue; and in another part
of Saint Peter's a large concourse of people from another
part of the world; and all these, evidences of that supernatural
faith which God infuses into all of us so that we understand
one another when we meet no matter what our language or
what our nationality.
We have the common faith, the common vision of God, the
common love of the Sacred Heart and the common spirit
that only the Holy Spirit can infuse into the souls of
men.
For
a printable version of this article click
here.
Our
Lady of Fatima Feast (May 13)
(The
Lamp Nov. 1934 p.338)
Beloved
Sons and Daughters of the Atonement:
It is our pleasure to publish, probably almost for the
first time in America, a translation of the Pastoral of
the Bishop of Leiria, Portugal, concerning the apparitions
of the Blessed Virgin to three little shepherd children
of the parish of Fatima in the said Diocese, as far back
as the year 1917, when the World War was still in progress.
We are sure that our Rosarians will read this Pastoral
with lively interest. It will be noticed that, in her
appearances, Our Lady holds a rosary suspended from her
hands folded upon her breast. And not only does she give
this outward and visible sign of her wish and desire that
the rosary should be used, but she especially recommends
its use together with the practice of penance, as a means
by which the World War was to be ended, declaring that
God was much angered on account of the sins of men and
above all the sins of the flesh. One year after the apparitions,
the War was over, but owing to the continued sins of the
people since, the distress of the nations did not cease
with the signing of the Armistice, but has continued through
the sixteen years that have elapsed since then. The world
still is in a very bad way; society afflicted with diverse
diseases; revolutions of one kind or another are constantly
occurring or threatening in the nations of both hemispheres,
war clouds appear along the horizons of Europe, Asia and
South America and no one can tell what a day may bring
forth.
Let us be diligent in our prayers, particularly in the
use of the rosary, seasoning our supplications with penitential
exercises that God may turn away His wrath and visit Christendom
again with the smile of the Divine Favor.
For
a printable version of this article click
here.
|
