BLESSED VIRGIN MARY, MOTHER OF GOD (JANUARY 1)

The Blessed Virgin Mary’s first opportunity to share in the Atonement came when the Angel Gabriel appeared to her and offered her the sublime destiny of becoming the Mother of God. God's choice of her and his foreknowledge of what she would do made her acceptance inevitable; yet Mary's will was left free, she was not forced to say, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord." (Luke 1 :38) She could have refused, for God does not compel his rational creatures to do his will. She could by a word have prevented the Atonement since God made it to depend on her consent. Indeed the fate of all mankind was being decided in the moment following the Angel's message. "In the annunciation, the virgin's consent was sought in lieu of that of the entire human nature," says St. Thomas (ST III, 50, 1). St. Bernard too expressed the same though even more strikingly, "The Angel awaits your reply "he says, "and behold the price of salvation is offered to you: if you consent, we are made free at once." (Sermon on the Mass, 4. 8) Mary's part in the Atonement would have been great if she had been chosen to be the Mother of God without her consent being asked; but when it was requested and received, her part was magnified many times; she then shared in the Atonement with her will as well as with her body.

When Mary, following on yielding to God's desire to make her the mother of the Messiah, brought forth her son into the world, she became the mother of God and attained her closest connection with the Atonement. If her consent had opened a way for the Atonement, her becoming the divine mother put her whole being as perfectly in harmony with it as was possible for a creature. Her will, her body, her mind, all her actions cooperated most completely with her divine son and what he came into the world to do. Mary's divine motherhood has been compared to the action of a priest of the Old Law preparing a victim for sacrifice; but even such a comparison does not express how fully Mary shared in the preparation of the divine victim, who was sacrificed on the cross. (Fr. Paul Wattson’s words, no date nor place)

WORLD DAY OF PRAYER FOR PEACE (JANUARY 1)

Was there ever a time since the day of Pentecost when all Christians of every name had more need to pray for peace and unity among the disciples of our one Lord and Master Jesus Christ than at the present hour, for if these be not the days of antichrist it is the nearest approach this old battle-scarred world of ours has ever made to the description of those days given by Daniel and Paul and John and the son of God himself. What has become of that sacred legacy which Christ on the night of his betrayal gave to his disciples, saying, “A new Commandment I give you, that you love one another, as much as I have loved you”? (John 13:34.) Behold on the other side of the globe how millions of Christians are engaged in a war [WW I] of mutual extermination on a scale so vast and so bloody that the greatest wars of past ages shrivel by comparison.

Nor is hell-hate and hell-murder let loose in Europe alone. Right across our own borders the seat of antichrist has been set up in the very temples of God, and the desolation of abomination [Dan.11:31] reigns worse in Mexico than it did under Antiochus Epiphanes in Jerusalem. In Tampico the “ Constitutionalist” governor “profaned the Cathedral and did on the altar what decency does not allow me to name”; “in the chapel of the Jesuit college at Puebla a ball was given and a nude woman put on the altar where had stood a statue of Our Lord” (London Universe); tabernacles containing the Blessed Sacrament have been riddled with bullets and the consecrated hosts fed to dumb beasts; priests have been tortured and murdered and scores and scores of the virgins of Christ have been violated in a manner worse than death. Meanwhile, our own beloved America has been deluged by a flood of dirty water issuing from the mouth of the Old Dragon in vilification of everything Catholic, for in this way Satan seeks to pave the way for a reign of blood-lust, obscenity and sacrilege in the rest of the Western world as bad as that which has been hounding bishops, priests and religious of every kind out of the ancient land of the Aztecs.

If there is not provocation enough on the face of the earth at the present hour to impel all Catholics to unite in the observance of an Octave of Prayer, already hallowed by the blessing of our late Holy Father, Pope Pius X of holy memory, and endorsed by Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops, then for our own self-preservation we need to take up the agonizing cry of Christ on the eve of his crucifixion that his disciples might be one, “That all may be one.” [Jn.17:21], and echo it back to the throne of the Omnipotent as the prayer of a multitude which no man can number.

By way of practical suggestion we earnestly recommend to our readers the daily recitation of the Rosary with special intention for the return of all Christians to communion with the Chair of Peter, which is the divinely established centre of Catholic Unity, and when this prayer is answered the conversion of the whole world to Christ will soon follow. Let every one receive Holy Communion on Sunday, January 24th, with this two-fold intention and as many as can do so approach the altar daily during the Octave. (The Lamp Jan. 1915 p.3)

NEW YEAR'S DAY (JANUARY 1)

Beloved sons and daughters of the Atonement:

I wish a very happy New Year to you all; a New Year which will prove an argosy freighted with richest graces and benefits, its sails filled with propitious breezes impelling it onward towards the harbor of the city of God.

This is the Jubilee Year of Rome, where the Holy Father of Christendom, as vicar of Christ and successor of St. Peter, will keep open house, and welcome his children, flocking as pilgrims to the “threshold of the Apostles” from every nation under heaven. It is the Holy Year of the Catholic Church. The treasury of divine graces, the keys of which Our Lord entrusted to St. Peter and his successors, will be unlocked by the hand of the sovereign pontiff that the faithful everywhere may receive more abundantly of those divine favors which make men “rich towards God.”

Zacharias, one of the Old Testament prophets, foretells the time when “the Lord shall be king over all the earth. “In that day,” he says “there shall be one Lord, and his name shall be one. In that day, that which is upon the bridle of the horse shall be holy to the Lord, and the caldrons in the house of the Lord shall be as the phials of incense before the altar, and every caldron in Jerusalem and Judah shall be sanctified to the Lord of hosts.” [Zac.14:20-21]

Such a Jubilee Year we shall not be privileged to celebrate in 1925; for, alas, the time proclaimed by the Angel in the Apocalypse when “the kingdoms of this world shall have become the kingdom of Christ, the Lord’s anointed,” [Apoc.11:15] seems still to be far distant.

But there is one section of the earth over which you and I are individual masters. It is a bit of clay less than six feet in length, and two feet in width. But the spirit that inhabits this animated clod of earth is of more value in the sight of God than all the material continents that constitute the bulk of solid land on which we dwell.

As free agents, assisted by divine grace, it is possible for us to sanctify ourselves as vessels made holy for the use of our God. Will not every son and daughter of the Atonement, make 1925 a real holy year as far as we individually are concerned by establishing the reign of Jesus Christ complete and entire over that house of lively dust which God has given us to dwell in, so that as King David ruled from Dan to Beersheba over all Israel, so Christ may reign supreme over the members of our body from the crown of our head to the soles of our feet, and from the center of our heart to our finger tips.

In the words of the same glorious Apostle I pray for you every one: “May the God of peace himself sanctify you in all things; that your whole spirit and soul and body, may be preserved blameless in the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He is faithful who has called you and he will not fail you.” (1 Thess.5:23.) (Fr. Paul, The Lamp Jan. 1925 p.27)

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EPIPHANY OF THE LORD (JANUARY 3)

Friends:

Tomorrow is the Feast of the Epiphany, or as it is sometimes called, the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. The three wise men were the first representatives of the gentile world to come to Christ. After the resurrection from the dead, before he ascended into heaven, Christ commissioned his Apostles to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature and make disciples of all nations. That mission, however, was not confined to the Apostles. Through them it was transmitted to all the faithful disciples of Christ.

This is the 20th century of the Christian era and still the command of Christ has been only partly fulfilled. A thousand million of the human family are still non-Christians, sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death. [Lk.1:79] The Society of the Atonement is a missionary Institute. Our slogan is, “ All things for Christ and the salvation of souls.”

We have founded at Graymoor a missionary association called the Union That Nothing Be Lost, and we invite you to join that society so that you may associate yourselves with the Friars and Sisters of the Atonement in their work of evangelization. Every day both the Friars and the Sisters pray that they may become missionaries in all lands.

Already the houses of our Society of the Atonement are widely scattered, extending as far to the West as California and British Columbia, as far north as Edmonton, Canada, five hundred miles nearer to the North Pole than Montreal, as far south as Galveston, Texas, and as far east as Ireland, Rome and Assisi. Invitations have come to our Sisters to go to Japan, to China and to India, and it is only a matter of time before both the Friars and the Sisters of the Atonement will be laboring in the Far East.

Meanwhile, we are being supported and are able to send assistance to the missionaries in all parts of the Catholic world through the instrumentality of the Union That Nothing Be Lost, and to membership in that Union we invite you that you may be allied with and associated with our Atonement Institute, thereby responding to the command of Christ: “Go into all the world. Preach the Gospel to every creature, and make disciples of all nations.” [Mk.16:15]

Perhaps some of you will want to do more than join the Union That Nothing Be Lost. You may wish to enlist under vows in our First Congregation, the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, or in the Second Congregation, the Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement. If that be so, communicate with us on the subject, addressing your letters simply to Society of the Atonement, Graymoor, Garrison, New York. (Fr. Paul Radio Talk on Miraculous Medal Hour, Jan. 5, 1938)

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BAPTISM OF THE LORD (JANUARY 10)

When I was in Omaha, I had a mission out in a place named Florence, a suburb of Omaha, and there was a lady there who attended the services of the mission. Of course, at that time we were Episcopalians and I had her nearly ready for Confirmation, when there came along a Campbelite, or Christian evangelist. He preached and he laid great stress that in order to be baptized properly you must be immersed. I called on her one day and found her pretty near ready to join the Christian Church, but I was not going to lose her that quickly, and I said, “Of course, the Church teaches that pouring water is sufficient, but if it is a matter of conscience if you want to be immersed that will not stand in the way, I will immerse you.”

So one fine Sunday she came all dressed up in white, and I put on my cassock and surplice and stole and went out to a neighboring lake, and we walked into the water and she was not put under once like the Christians, but we put her under three times and she was thoroughly baptized.

Our Lord bestowed great graces on her. Up to that time, in her married life she had not been blessed with any children, but after that God gave her a good family of children and she followed us when we came to Graymoor, and read The Lamp, and by reading The Lamp she became convinced that the Catholic religion was the true Church. But she could not wait for the Society of the Atonement and made her submission out in Omaha. Now she is a devout member of our holy Society, has lovely children, and it is her desire that some of them might be priests or Sisters.

There was another case when someone in Omaha wanted to be immersed and the only thing I could do was to go and see a Campbelite minister two or three blocks away and ask him if I could use his tank, because I did not want to lose anyone. I also took some out to the Platte River and baptized them. (Fr. Paul Sermon Jan. 31, 1926)

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BIRTH OF FR. PAUL WATTSON, SA (JANUARY 16)

Pardon me for interjecting a little bit of personal experience into this question of large families. I happen to be the last baby born to my mother. I came along about six years after my youngest brother and I proved an unexpected and a very unwelcome arrival, so much so that I am told my mother turned her face to the wall, and my grandmother, who happened to be present at the time, had to intercede on my behalf saying, “Mary, look at the little fellow, he is the nicest one of the lot.”

After years my brothers and my sisters married and had their own family centers in none of which my widowed mother could have lived and been happy. It was the last arrival among her children who was her consolation and her comfort in her old age and ministered by her bedside at her death.

Parents who restrict their off-spring to one or two or three are only laying up sorrow and desolation for themselves in their old age. Far better obey the divine command, “Increase and multiply and replenish” not only the earth but heaven, with your offspring. [Gen. 9:7] (Fr. Paul Radio Address Jan. 7, 1936)

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WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY (JANUARY 18 - 25)

The January issue of The Lamp should reach our readers on the eve of the Church Unity Octave and we cannot too earnestly urge you to observe this Octave in a real and serious spirit of piety and prayer.

Prayer, in its energy and power may be likened to that invisible something in the material world which we call electricity; like the wind, we see its visible effects but the secret of its tremendous influence cannot be fathomed. By prayer we are permitted in the providence of God, to unite ourselves with the great dynamo of divine energy which issues from the mind and will of Him, who is ruler of the universe and the author of all those events that we designate by the term divine providence.

It follows, therefore, that a mighty concert of human wills and hearts attuning themselves to the prayer of the Redeemer of the world, “That they all may be one” [Jn.17:21] and sustaining their concerted intercession through a period of eight days, must of necessity produce a result in the moral and spiritual sphere, commensurate with what we see in the physical world when a multitude of single wires converge their electric currents to a given center, there to be directed by a wise intelligence, toward some predetermined end.

The prayers of a great number of individuals offered to God during the Church Unity Octave for the restoration of Catholic unity to a disordered and divided Christendom, with the end in view of the conversion of the world, consequent upon that unity, cannot fail to produce, in the divine providence, results of the greatest value in the extension of the kingdom of God and the salvation of souls.

Animated, therefore, with this confidence, let all our readers commend themselves to prayer during this Octave and season their orisons with some degree of abstinence or self-denial, attending Mass and receiving Holy Communion as often as possible, in accordance with the intentions of the Octave. The results cannot fail to be permanently satisfactory both to the Sacred Heart of Our Lord, and to us who are the members of his mystical body. (The Lamp Jan.1914 p.4)

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MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY (JANUARY 18)

A Stain on Our Escutcheon

Mr. Theodore Roosevelt richly deserved the applause he got in Carnegie Hall, New York, on the occasion of the reception given to the Russian Mission, when he denounced the outrages committed against the Negro population of East St. Louis by rioting mobs of white men and women on July 2nd. He truly said that we need to set our own house in order, now that America had undertaken to teach the Old World the glories of democracy. With such a huge program before us of emancipating the peoples of other lands from the tyranny of royal autocrats, preaching even at the cannon's mouth to nations that dwell on the other side of the Atlantic the Declaration of American Independence, namely, that all men are born free and equal and that all alike are entitled to number among their inalienable rights " life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," now, more than ever before, it is imperatively demanded by the fair name and honor of America that we live up to our civic professions and practice within our own borders the noble principles we are now so loudly preaching to the whole world.

The War of Fifty Years Ago

A half century ago battle-scarred veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic were marching home from " Dixie" after one of the most sanguinary conflicts in New World history, in which a million white men of the North had counted it their proud privilege and glory to draw the sword and shed their blood to emancipate their black brethren of the Southland from the shackles of slavery and to place in his hand the ballot, the sacred birthright of free-born American citizens. Henceforth, he was to be the equal of the white man before the law and to have an equal chance with every other American citizen to better his condition, to enjoy liberty, and pursue happiness under the protection of the state and her courts of justice.

Have we so soon repented of doing for the colored man what cost the nation such a terrific price in blood and treasure? Are we going to play the hypocrite before the nations of the Old World, making pretense of altruistic devotion to all the oppressed peoples of the entire globe while we allow in our own country lawless mobs to terrorize the black man, to loot and burn his home, to string him up to a tree or a lamppost, to murder his innocent wife and children, and afterwards to deprive the wronged and outraged victims of racial hatred of their so-called " inalienable right" to appeal to the courts for justice? Where, we ask, is the court in all the Southland that will give justice to the Negro and convict his white neighbors of ever doing him any wrong?

White mobs may nag the Negro and drive him to frenzy, until he draws a pistol and shoots some one, and after that in lawless revenge set fire indiscriminately to a thousand Negro homes, brain with iron crowbars little colored children, and murder women that never did any one any harm in all their life. But is there a judge or a jury anywhere just or courageous enough to hang a white man, no matter how deeply stained his hands may be with Negro blood?

Public Opinion Should be Aroused

Again we say that Mr. Roosevelt is be praised for calling upon the American people to arouse themselves once more to enforce the principles of our national Constitution in the case of our colored fellow citizens and, by awakening the national conscience to the outrageous wrong and injustice meted out by Negro-haters to the black man, to take away this damnable reproach from our nation by the sheer force of popular opinion.

We are by no means blind to the faults and weaknesses of the Colored people as a race, but, being reared in the South, we have had ample time to study their characteristics and we know them to be a peaceable folk, affectionate to a degree when kindly and humanely treated, and in no wise inclined to fight unless inflamed with drink. Give the Negro a square deal such as our Constitution guarantees him and treat him as a democrat and a Christian should treat everybody, no matter what the color of his skin, and our colored fellow citizens can be counted upon to offend only in individual cases against the common weal, and surely our courts are competent to punish the individual Negro for his crimes, without the necessity of recourse to lynchings, riots, burnings and the murder of the innocent.

Will not Washington speak and set us right on the Colored Question? (The Lamp Aug. 1917 pp.389-390)

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DAY OF PENANCE FOR VILOATIONS TO THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN PERSON (JANUARY 22)

Prosperity seems to be hiding, “just around the corner.” The vast armies of the unemployed, we are told, are somewhat reduced in numbers. But, alas, until now business conditions do not compare favorably with what they were a year ago, bad as they were then.

During the past six months, Congress voted millions for relief. State legislatures did the same and public philanthropy subscribed generously to supply artificial work or employment to those out of a job. But if next winter the number of the unemployed should be even greater than during the past six months, can the Federal, State and Municipal Governments continue to issue more bonds and borrow more money to feed the needy; and will the wealthy keep on contributing millions of dollars as they did last winter?

Nor is it America alone that has suffered from economic depression. In all parts of the world there is the same story of distress only in forms more tragic.

Is it a question that economic scientists can solve? Is it not a repetition of the chastisement meted out to men by God in his wrath when the measure of their iniquities overflow? Turn back the pages of your Bible until you come to the Book of Judges and of Kings and you will find it written there that when the people “robbed God of tithes and offerings” and, forsaking his worship, turned to the idols of their heathen neighbors and did wickedly in the sight of the Lord, they were chastised and “the land flowing with milk and honey” that God gave them was smitten with the locust and the palmer worm or with mildew and hail and the earth failed to yield its increase or enemies came and laid the land waste and drove the chosen people into the caves and dens of the earth and into the fastness of the mountains until they turned to God in penance and then quickly did God come to their deliverance and once again the land flowed with milk and honey and prosperity and peace flourished until, alas, the same story was repeated.

But we hear some one say: “That was under the Old Dispensation and we are living under the New Testament regime. There is no longer any connection between temporal adversities and the sins of the people.” But is not God the same yesterday, today and forever? Has he ceased to mete out His judgments to the transgressors, even though His mercies have increased and his disposition to pardon has been greater since Christ, his only begotten son, shed his precious blood and died for us on the cross?

Since 1914 the world at large has seen more suffering than during any period in modern times. But nowhere do we see men doing penance.

We have no wish to utter the lamentations of Jeremiah but is there not plenty of ground for anticipating the pouring out upon our beloved America of the vials of the wrath of God unless we do penance turning to him as the people of Europe turned to God after the preaching to them of Saints Francis and Dominic?

The remedy, dear readers, is not to be found in Wall Street or at Washington, or among the professors of economics in our American universities. It is to be found in the old-fashioned remedy of repentance and in keeping the First and great Commandment of the Lord, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your hearts,” and the Second which is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”[Mk.12:31]

God refused to spare Sodom and Gomorrah because not even ten just men could be found in those two cities of the plains. Perhaps God will raise up some great preacher of penance, another Francis or another John the Baptist to go through the length and breadth of our land and call the millions back from the pursuit of worldly pleasure and material gain to the worship of the Most High and to the spiritual fountains set up in our churches.

In the meantime we can do something to help the situation and perhaps to postpone the chastisements of God’s wrath or to mitigate his anger by the holiness of our lives, by consecrating them to good works and by seeking to walk more closely in the footsteps of Jesus, who “went about doing good” and spending himself and all his powers in ministering both to the bodies and the souls of men. (The Lamp May 1931 pp.129-130)

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BIRTH AND DEATH OF JOHN REID (BRO. PHILIP, t.s.a.) (JANUARY 30)

This happens to be the twentieth anniversary of an institute born at Graymoor, an institute which has already made its influence for good felt to the very limits of the earth, and the possibilities of which in the future only God can circumscribe. I refer to the Union That Nothing Be Lost.

Twenty years ago today, when the Father Founder of the Society of the Atonement woke up in his little cell which he still occupies in the Friary on the Mount of the Atonement, while the night was in its state of complete sub-activity and his own consciousness was not in control, by divine intervention, his mind was filled with the words of Christ, “Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost.” [Jn.6:12] And then immediately after this, while I was dressing and preparing to go down to Office, the whole conviction and idea of a missionary society, based on substance, time and opportunity, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, flooded over me and I said to myself:

That is more true today even than it was then, because Catholics have increased greatly in wealth and material possessions.

Let us go a step further. Seven years later, we found ourselves in union with the Rock of Peter, and what we could not do apart from union with the Rock of Peter was now going to become a possibility. It was on the Feast when Our Lord said on the mount: “Be you perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect.” [Mat.5:48] The next day I took the host in my hands before Holy Communion and said, “Lord, I have been thinking about this thing for about seven years now, and if it does not come from you, but from my own ambition, give me practical proof from you.”

Then came that embodiment of the Union That Nothing Be Lost, a man whom God himself had trained and prepared to be the observer of that rule to perfection. He appeared on the scene that day, or the next day. He came in the form of a Brother Christopher, soiled raiment, old clothes, but a gentleman, and he had all the aspects of being very poor. He stayed a day or two and then he came into my cell and said to me, “Well, Father, I have been reading in The Lamp about Mr. Potter in London who has an orphan asylum, and I have written a letter to him, asking him to send two young men over to America and I will educate them for the priesthood.” And I said, “Mr. Reid, we really ought to have a building for that purpose here.” He said, “That being so, charity begins at home. I will send you my check for five thousand dollars to build with.” I said, “Why, Mr. Reid, I thought you were a poor man.” He replied, “I was left a little farm of about 40 acres outside of Waterbury, which I have worked out, and it has been the principle of my life never to waste a penny.

And on St. Thomas’ Day, just exactly seven days after the first conversation, he sent his check for $5,200.00. There you have the five barley loaves represented by the $5,000, and the two fishes by the $200, and here we have the college where we are educating some thirty young men for the priesthood and five priests, four products of that college.

John Reid was the embodiment of the Union That Nothing Be Lost. To all outward appearances he was a miser. When he died in the hospital without anything, because he had given everything away, and we sent two of our Brothers, one of them a priest, to arrange for his funeral, there was not anybody to be a pallbearer for that “miserable old miser.” They actually had to pay somebody to carry his body to the grave, and yet, all the while he did not let his right hand know what his left hand was doing, and he denied himself the actual necessities.

I do not believe he ever in all his life bought a piece of paper, and when he came to Graymoor instead of traveling by train, though he was well able to do it, he traveled all night, although seventy years of age, by trolley cars. When some friends called, he met them with a kerosene lamp instead of turning on the electric light. Could anyone go to a greater limit than that? He beat any miser in the country, but he was a miser for God, and his privations were felt all over the mission field. He would read the missionary newspapers and then send quietly something to help them.

Now God is liable to make him the first saint of the Society of the Atonement, and raise him to the altars of the Church. (Fr. Paul Sermon Dec. 21, 1924)

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ONE & TWO LINERS OF FR. PAUL

Dorothy Day and The Catholic Worker

I have a great admiration for the work of Dorothy Day in the slums of New York and on general principle the The Catholic Worker is true to the teachings of the Holy Father in his encyclical on the Quadragesima. (Fr. Paul to K. B., Brooklyn, N.Y., July 29, 1938)

Generosity during financial depression:

It was very generous of you in these times of depression to send such a large self-denial offering. Thank you ever so much. (Fr. Paul to R. McB. of Dorchester, Mass. on Apr. 13, 1933)

This fleeting world and eternity:

Such reminiscences [of one’s past life] bring home to us the fleeting nature of our pilgrimage here on earth and help to make us mindful of that eternal country beyond the grave. (Fr. Paul to J.H.C. L.of Centreville, Md., Mar. 31, 1939)

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The Franciscan Friars of the Atonement
P.O. Box 300
Garrison, NY 10524-0301
(800) 338-2620
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