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MONTH
OF MAY: MARY'S MONTH
Today
is Mother's Day—and those of you, who are so fortunate
as to have your mother still in the land of the living,
will be sending to her some message or token of your love,
which is quite as it should be. But we, Children of the
Atonement, should never forget that Lady of glorious beauty,
"the Great Wonder of Heaven," who is described
by St. John in the Apocalypse as seated on a throne of
surpassing magnificence, her vesture the glory of the
sun, her crown consisting of twelve brilliant stars and
the moon constituting her footstool, [Apoc.12:1] for she
is the Mother of us all, whom we invoke at Graymoor under
the title of Our Lady of the Atonement.
Let me this afternoon try to convey to you a finer conception
of what the Motherhood of Mary is in relationship to yourself
and of your own glorious dignity and destiny as a child
of Mary. You will remember that when the Blessed Virgin
gave birth to Our Saviour at Bethlehem, the Evangelist
states that she, "brought forth her firstborn son
and laid him in a manger.” [Lk.2:7]
By the travail of her soul united with the death agony
of her son Jesus on the cross, the Holy Spirit still being
her Spouse, she became the new Eve, the mother of the
Children of the Atonement, the race of the redeemed, who
in union with Christ, her firstborn son, should be the
heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven and of Christ’s eternal
glory.
This is very important for us to understand. We are not
the children of the Blessed Virgin just because she has
adopted us, but intrinsically because through the Sacrament
of Holy Baptism we were regenerated by the Holy Spirit,
given a new birth and incorporated into the Mystical Body
of Christ, becoming as St. Paul says “bone of his
bone, and flesh of his flesh.” [Eph.5:30] Now the
bone and the flesh of Jesus was derived from his mother
while he slept within her womb. Therefore, it is a blood
relationship. You know, once in a while, when two people
are married, they are not blessed with any children and
they go to the foundling hospital and get a babe and adopt
the little one. But though they lavish much love upon
the child, they will never forget that the child is not
theirs by blood relationship. We must understand by virtue
of our new birth into the Kingdom of God that the Blessed
Virgin is our real mother and not merely a mother that
has just adopted us. By Baptism we are incorporated into
the Mystical Body of Christ and by that process of incorporation
we are also brought into relationship with the Blessed
Virgin, which is intrinsically similar to the relationship
which Christ has to the Blessed Virgin as his mother.
Don’t you see how tremendously important that is
and how, when we realize it, the greater love and affection
we should have for our Mother in Heaven?
Sometimes on the earth the wife dies and the husband marries
again and brings another mother into the family, but the
children of the first mother cannot forget that this new
mother is only a stepmother, no matter how kind she may
be. She may be very lovely, but she is a stepmother at
the best. The Blessed Virgin is not our stepmother. She
is our real Mother as far as we are the sons and daughters
of the Atonement and members of the Mystical Body of Christ.
(The Lamp May 1939 p.188 and Miraculous Medal Hour May
10, 1939)
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ST.
JOSEPH THE WORKER (MAY 1)
In
the Church's calendar there are recorded for every day
in the year the name of one or more saints, who distinguished
themselves above others for their wonderful holiness and
love of God. But besides these there are an innumerable
multitude of holy men and women and little children, who
once lived on earth but now reign with Jesus Christ in
Heaven.
Think of the countless host of Christian mothers who,
following the example of the Holy Mother of God in the
carpenter's home at Nazareth, have watched and prayed
and toiled and sacrificed and loved God and their children
unto death and won in Heaven a crown of endless life.
Think of the Christian husbands and fathers, who without
number have patterned their lives after the model set
them by St. Joseph and have worked so hard at their trade
and been so good to their wives and little ones at home,
and have done all things with the fear of God before their
eyes and kept His holy laws and gone to their confessions
and fed upon the most holy Body of Christ in many a Holy
Communion and seen the vision of beautiful of angels and
saints, and gone to join the heavenly hosts, with songs
of thanksgiving at the close of earth's little day. (Fr.
Paul’s Sermon on saints, no date)
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WORLD
DAY OF PRAYER FOR VOCATIONS(MAY 3)
Never since the nations of the world began to be, have
men given such a demonstration of patriotic devotion as
millions upon millions are doing in Europe, Asia, Africa
and America at the present time. [World War I] We have
witnessed a call to the national colors which has been
responded to by almost the whole male population in several
of the largest nations of the world; and armies far vaster
than were ever before mustered together under any flag
are opposing each other in a series of battlefields which
practically girdle the globe. Already millions of men
have poured out their blood like water, and the sacrifice
of human life is considered as nothing by those who have
accounted it a joy and a privilege to suffer every hardship
and to die for their country. Nation has grappled with
nation in the struggle for the mastery; and the rest of
the world has stood aghast at the spectacle of what courage,
heroism and wholesale sacrifice men have displayed in
the name of patriotism, so that one is constrained to
ask, Which is the mightier passion in the human breast–the
love of country or the love of God?
Will men sacrifice their lives more readily to increase
the territory over which their country’s flag waves
in bloody conquest than they will to extend the Empire
of the Cross, and to hasten the day when the kingdoms
of this world shall become the Kingdom of God the Father
Almighty and Jesus Christ, His Only-begotten Son? After
all, which fatherland inspires within our breast the most
burning loyalty and the supremest fealty – the piece
of human soil which we call our native land, or that heavenly
Jerusalem which a crucified Saviour has purchased for
us as an eternal possession, and whose citizens are immune
from pain and sorrow and death, and enjoy through eternity
the vision of God, and an unlimited happiness?
Some earthly king or potentate or president has but to
issue a call to the colors of the nation, and hundreds
of thousands–the flower of the nation’s youth
– flock to the standard, ready to take up arms and
rush to the battlefront to shoot down the so-called enemy,
and to invite their own death in the process. But what
about the call of Jesus Christ, addressed to our young
men to rally to the standard of the cross – to the
blood-red banner of the Atonement and to gird on spiritual
armor to do glorious battle against the gates of hell
and the enemies of man’s salvation, and to win an
imperishable crown in that glorious Kingdom of the Almighty,
of which there shall be no end?
The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams afar,
Who follows in His train?
One of the recruiting stations which the great Prince
of the Atonement has set up in the twentieth century,
where youths shall be trained and equipped for service
in the army of the King of Kings, is Graymoor. Upon the
summit of the Mount of the Atonement the standard of the
cross has been erected, and from it streams the blood-red
banner of the Lord of heaven and earth.
This editorial is intended to be a call to the colors
of a crucified God – a call to the flag of Christ
and of his atoning Blood. Happy and blessed beyond all
human understanding will be those young men who, hearing
the call, will respond with all their heart to the summons.
They that have the grace of perseverance and shall be
found faithful unto death will be crowned by God Himself,
and their place of honor in the highest heaven will never
be taken away from them through all eternity. The kind
of recruits who are called to enlist at Graymoor are they
Who best can drink His cup of woe,
Triumphant over pain.
Who patient bears his cross below,
He follows in His train.
(The
Lamp July 1916 pp.291-292)
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MOTHER'S
DAY (MAY 10)
Sacrificial
motive is something that God has revealed as one of the
essential elements of love. Love is the supreme thing.
God is love and He teaches His creatures, practices and
trains them, those that are dear to Him, in that life
of sacrifice and love. The choicest products have been
made in the school of a sacrificial love.
I often think of my own childhood days and of my mother’s
life of sacrifice. I had only one sister, but my father
and mother resolved that she should have a good education
and they sent her away to a fashionable boarding school.
Of course, being a parson's daughter, she had a reduction,
but even so, my father's salary was only $600 a year,
out of which he had to take care of himself and his family.
About $300 went towards the school, and the rest had to
get along on what was left. My mother was up early in
the morning working, and when we went to bed she sometimes
was burning the midnight oil making children's clothes.
She made not only her children's clothes, but she made
my father's clothes as well.
There was not any bit of personal sacrifice or self-denial
that she was not ready to make out of that great mother's
love she had for her children, and especially for this
daughter, that she night have all these advantages.
Now that is characteristic of mother love. Mother love
is one of the beautiful things that God has created, especially
when it is a Christian mother's love, sanctified by grace.
(Fr. Paul’s Retreat Conference Aug. 4, 1925)
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ASCENSION
OF OUR LORD (MAY 21)
| Set
your affection on heavenly things and not on the things
on the earth, for you have died and your life is hidden
with Christ in God.[Col. 3:1] |
The
feast of the Ascension, the great event which it celebrates
ought to have the effect upon us of fulfilling this exhortation
of Saint Paul, to set our affection on the things above
and not on the things on the earth. Saint Paul says of
Our Lord Himself: "He endured the Cross, despising
the shame, for the joy that was set before Him.”
[Heb. 12:2] That joy was the anticipation of the life
with his saints in heavenly glory after he had passed
through this vale of sorrows and taken his place at the
right hand of God the Father.
Among the promises made by the Holy Spirit in the message
to the Church as given by Saint John in the Apocalypse
is this one, "He that overcomes shall sit with me
on my throne as I have sat down with my Father on his
throne." [Apoc.3:22] He consoled his Apostles when
they were troubled on the eve of his Passion and he was
about to leave them, saying, "Let not your heart
be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In
my Father's house there are many mansions. I go to prepare
a place for you, that where I am you also may be."
[Jn.14:2] Instead of setting our affections on the transitory
things of this world, we should seek the things that are
above.
"He
that shall seek to save his life shall lose it, and he
that loses his life shall keep it to life eternal."
[Jn.12:25] There are many people who spend their lives
seeking the material things of this world, seeking the
things they think will add to their happiness. They give
all their time and ambition to business transactions,
seeking that which they regard as the summum bonum, but
we have the experience of all generations past to reveal
to us the vanity of these pursuits. King Solomon used
the wisdom God gave him to accumulate the wealth of earth,
but he wrote afterwards, "Vanity of vanities, and
all is vanity." [Ecce.1:2]
I remember a conversation many years ago with one of the
richest men of Kingston [N.Y.]. He owned almost all of
Kingston. You could not get into Kingston without riding
on his ferry boat; you could not go about Kingston without
riding in one of his cars. He was telling me about rich
men, how they are envied because of their wealth, but
people do not realize how many troubles and sorrows and
disappointments a rich man has. Here was the confession
of a rich man.
Under the best circumstances “man is born to sorrow,
as the sparks fly upward,”[Job 5:7] and when one
goes abroad and sees the tribulations of the world, the
groanings of the people, it makes one realize that we
cannot look forward to any great amount of happiness in
this world, and, therefore, it would be well for us always
to have before us the vision of heavenly glory and heavenly
joy, the beatific vision, the face of God, unalloyed happiness,
as did the servants of God, like our Holy Father Saint
Francis. Some of them were raised from the ground in ecstasy,
like Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Ávila.
May God give us the grace requested in the prayer of the
Ascension Feast. (Fr. Paul’s Sermon May 30, 1935)
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PENTECOST
(MAY 23)
When
one looks over the Acts of the Apostles, one is impressed
with the promise of the Holy Spirit running all through
that account of the first thirty years of the missionary
propagation of the Church of God, first in Saint Peter,
then comes the conversion of Saint Paul, who goes out
on his missionary labors. And, taking up the major portion
of the Acts of the Apostles as it was written by Saint
Luke, the amanuensis of Saint Paul, one is impressed how
the Holy Spirit comes down in Peter, speaking through
the Apostle in the various tongues of the multitude. The
Holy Spirit converts 3,000, who are baptized that very
day, the regenerated, brought into the Kingdom of God,
which is the special office of the Holy Spirit in that
Sacrament, and the Holy Spirit confirms the words of the
Apostle and makes effective by signs and works His power.
The sanctity of the Holy Spirit is expressed in those
souls that were converted during the first years of the
labors of the disciples of Christ.
Now we should realize that it is the Holy Spirit that
works through us to fulfill our missionary vocation and
to fulfill also the covenant promise which God has made
with the Society of the Atonement. "Blessing I will
bless you, multiplying I will multiply you," [Heb.
6:14] the Children of the Atonement, [will] become like
the stars in the firmament for multitude and sands by
the sea that cannot be numbered.
You give yourselves up to the Holy Spirit in order that
He, operating through you, may make you prolific children
of the Atonement by a spiritual regeneration. The Apostles
went out and they spoke and they labored. Saint Paul says,
"Paul planted, Apollo watered, but God gave the increase,"
[1Cor.3:6] and so it is still. So, you want to be vessels
of sanctification, full of the Holy Spirit of God, subordinate
to His grace, His will, pure and undefiled, full of His
divine image, uniting yourselves by prayer that God may
accomplish through you not only His promise of a hundred-fold
increase, but also making you wonderful missionaries.
(Fr. Paul’s Retreat Conference Jan. 25, 1930)
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YEAR
OF ST. PAUL (JUNE 28, 2008 - JUNE 29, 2009)
Saint Paul, standing before Agrippa, described his conversion
when the Lord appeared to him and told him that He wished
him to be a vessel of election [See Acts 9:15] and go
forth to preach the Gospel. And he became a servant of
the Holy Spirit, a vessel of service for the Master's
use. So, it ought to be with us. We ought to spend ourselves
in striving to know the Holy Spirit, to love Him and to
serve Him, that He may do with us what He wishes for the
extension of the Kingdom of God.
When I was a boy, ten or eleven years of age, I knew nothing
of the Catholic Church. I lived on an island and there
was not a single Catholic there on the whole island. I
had never seen a Sister. My father, in a casual conversation,
mentioned the Paulists, and I heard an interior voice
within me say, "That is what you will do some day,
found a preaching order like the Paulists." Now suppose
I had turned a deaf ear to that interior voice or put
it out of my mind as the years went by and did not recognize
it as the Holy Spirit, the Society of the Atonement might
have been founded by someone else, but not by me. And
I tell you that there were several times in my life when
I came close to losing that great privilege and joy of
being the founder of the Society of the Atonement.
Now, speaking to prospective Friars of the Atonement,
you are the ones who are to fulfill that voice of the
preaching order. You pray that you may be missionaries
in all lands. You won't do much missionary work, you won't
save many souls, you won't do much to extend the Kingdom
of God unless it be by the power of the Holy Spirit working
in you. Our Lord said:
| You
will stand before kings and governors. Take no thought
of what you shall speak, for it is not you that shall
speak, but the Holy Spirit, and He will give you power
and wisdom which they cannot contradict. [Lk. 21:16] |
We
know how the Apostles were full of fear and were afraid
to go forth to preach until the Holy Spirit came, and
then in a short time they spread the Gospel to the whole
known world. It was the power of the Holy Spirit in them
that made their preaching effective. So it is going to
be with you, but you must be holy men, men who give themselves
to the Holy Spirit, so that He can dominate you and use
you for His service as He did in the case of Saint Paul.
The same with our Sisters, who have their missionary vocation
assigned to them. So also with the faithful. The first
Christians were all missionaries, not only the bishops
and priests; everyone was a missionary. What we need is
lay workers. This is why our Holy Father is promoting
Catholic Action on the part of the faithful, so that every
man and woman may take part in propagating the faith.
(Fr. Paul’s Sermon June 2, 1935)
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ONE
& TWO LINERS OF FR. PAUL
On
Prayer:
If we pray, we are bound to obtain enough material help
to carry on whatever work God gives us to do. No matter
how much money has come to us by means of the Union-That-Nothing-Be-Lost,
it cannot sustain or make successful the Society of the
Atonement without prayer, which is its vital breath. (The
Lamp Nov. 1922 p.348)
Financial
Straits:
I
am sorry to learn that you, along with a multitude of
others, have suffered a shrinkage of
your income due to the bottom falling out of financial
things. It is really a miracle of divine providence that
with our obligations constantly increasing at Graymoor,
the Society of the Atonement has been able to keep its
head financially above the water until now. (Fr. Paul
to Seton Henry, Wash., D.C., Feb. 4, 1932)
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