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ALL
SAINTS DAY (NOVEMBER 1)
In
the Church's calendar there are recorded for everyday
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.
And so that we might remember these, as well, as the chosen
few above mentioned, the Church observes on November l
the Festival of All Saints. Think then tonight, dear friends,
of all the holy bishops---who from the time of the blessed
Apostles---have ruled the flock of Christ, and so many
of them, like the Good Shepherd himself, have laid down
their lives for the sheep. Think of the holy priests,
who day after day have stood at the altars of the Lord
and offered the adorable Sacrifice of the Mass for living
and dead, who have gone about among the people as Jesus
went to and fro, preaching the gospel to the poor, binding
up the broken hearted, lifting up the fallen, ministering
to the sick, hearing the confession of the penitent and
doing good to all.
Think of the holy monks and nuns, who leaving the busy
haunts of men, have gone into the solitary places of the
earth, like John the Baptist, that they might worship
God night and day, keeping their vigils and fasts and,
lifting up their hands in prayer, have interceded night
and day for God to have mercy on all men and save the
souls of the redeemed from the everlasting fires of hell.
Think of the Sisters of Charity who have watched by the
dying in some plague-stricken city, or bent over the wounded
soldier prostrate on the battlefield, or sought the lost
in the dark alleyways of the metropolis, or became a mother
to the motherless little ones in some orphanage, built
for the love of God. Think of the holy friars or Christian
Brothers who have given their lives to teaching children
the Catholic Faith, or nursed the lepers like Father Damien
at Molokai, or shed their blood as martyrs of Christ in
non-Christian lands.
Think of the countless hosts 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 have 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.
Think of the sons and daughters, who for love of Christ,
have gladly sacrificed their young lives to provide for
"the old folks at home," to support a widowed
mother, or to fill with sunshine the last days on earth
of a gray-haired father, helpless almost as a little child.
Think of the Christian heroes in every walk of life and
in every age, who have made a good confession and been
"the choice vessels of divine grace in their several
generations."
And lastly, think of the innumerable multitude of the
holy innocents, the baptized babes of Christ, the little
children, the fairest that ever the sun shone on, whom
through all the Christian centuries the good God has been
plucking from the gardens of the earth that they might
bloom forever in the fadeless bowers of Paradise, for
it is written of the Holy City, "And Jerusalem shall
be full of boys and girls, playing in the streets thereof."
[Zc 8:5]
And now, my dear people, what of us, who are now passing
the time of our sojourn on the earth---are our names,
yours and mine, written in golden letters on the Lamb's
Book of Life? [See Rev.13:8] St. Paul says we are all
“ called to be saints.” [Rom.1:7] Are we fulfilling
our vocation? Are we living as the holy saints of old
lived? If our summons to depart out of this world should
sound in our ears tonight, would the gates of heaven open
at once to receive us? Would the great assembly of the
Saints on high rejoice at our death and welcome us with
shouts of gladness to their glorious, happy fellowship?
In a little cemetery, not many miles from Graymoor, I
remember years ago to have seen this inscription carved
in letters of red and black upon a monument of the dead,
"Make them, O Lord, to be numbered among the Saints
in glory everlasting." I have never forgotten it---that
prayer, not only for myself, but for you and all those
whom I love--is often on my lips. It is in letters of
blood inscribed upon the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Come, dear people, let us live from this night forward
so that at death, God may make us "to be numbered
with his Saints in glory everlasting." And now, farewell,
and the Lord give you peace! (Fr. Paul Sermon undated)
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ALL
SOULS DAY (NOVEMBER 2)
November
is fast approaching, the month of the seared and yellow
leaf, when all nature reminds us of death, and which our
Mother, the Catholic Church, has very fittingly dedicated
to the memory of the departed, but more especially the
suffering souls in Purgatory. Millions of Catholics, who
at other times scarcely give a passing thought to their
dead, during the month of November make generous provision
for their release from Purgatory. Our priests are requested
to say more Masses for poor souls than they are able to
discharge. (The Lamp Oct. 1929 p.297)
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ST.
ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY, QUEEN (NOVEMBER 17)
Saint Elizabeth is a pattern and example to you. Although
you are not called to the cloistered life, you are called
to the active life of God and that means a devotion to
the people that he redeemed and ministered to—his
poor. We have surely an inspiring example of this in St.
Elizabeth. While she was up in the palace surrounded by
wealth and feasting sumptuously every day, she did not
forget the poor down in the village, nor the sick. She
went out among them as a queen and they hailed her with
true devotion as a mother and called her so. When there
was a famine among the people, she drained the storehouses
of corn in order to feed the poor so that reproaches and
complaints were made against her, and when her royal husband
met her, supposing that she had her lap full of bread
to feed the poor, in place of it, he beheld roses and
recognized thereby how pleasing her act was to the will
of God. She even went and ministered to the lepers and
kissed their sores as she bathed them out of love and
charity. (Fr. Paul Sermon , Nov. 19, 1928)
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CHRIST
THE KING FEAST (NOVEMBER 22)
His
Holiness, Pope Pius XI, has assigned for the General Intention
of the Apostleship of Prayer for January 1930, and also
for the Mission Intention:" That all may be one,"
[Jn.17:21] words taken from the prayer which Our Lord
made in the upper room at Jerusalem, just after eating
the Pasch with his disciples and instituting the Blessed
Sacrament. By this action the Holy Father has given evidence
of his own personal interest in the Church Unity Octave.
[Now week of Prayer for Christian unity.]
In 1925 Pope Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the
King as the most signal and crowning act of the Holy Year.
What could more fittingly climax the Holy Father's own
Jubilee than the institution of a period of eight days
of prayer to be observed by everyone---from the highest
dignitary to the humblest layman---that all who confess
themselves to be Christians might be one in order that
the world might believe and hail Jesus as King. Surely
an Octave of Prayer for Catholic unity follows as the
logical sequence the institution of the Feast of Christ
the King, because Our Lord himself plainly revealed that
the unity of his disciples in the one Church, which he
founded upon Peter, must first be accomplished before
his universal reign as Christ the King could come to pass.
(The Lamp Nov. 1929 pp.323)
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BLESSED
MIGUEL AGUSTIN PRO, S.J. (NOVEMBER 23)
Do
you realize, dear readers of The Lamp, that more Catholic
priests have been shot by the order of Plutarco Elias
Calles, Bolshevist Dictator of Mexico, than were hung,
drawn and quartered by Queen Elizabeth in the drastic
efforts of her Royal Majesty to stamp out utterly the
Catholic religion in Great Britain? You must have read
at least about the execution of the saintly Father Pro,
the Jesuit, who was falsely accused of having thrown a
bomb at the carriage of General Obregon with intent to
kill. Even Obregon himself tried to save Father Pro's
life but such is the fiendish hatred of Calles for Catholic
priests, and most of all for Jesuit priests, that he rushed
his execution. (The Lamp June 1928 p.161)
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THANKSGIVING
DAY (NOVEMBER 26)
The
more that we cultivate that spirit of gratitude and thanksgiving,
the more we make an atonement for the neglect and ingratitude
and coldness of the world. The more we please God, the
more we promote in the eyes of God our own advancement,
because it is natural that if you have a benefactor and
you show that benefactor your immense appreciation of
everything that he does for you, he will continue to bestow
these favors, probably increasing them; whereas if you
do not show your appreciation and gratitude, the wealthy
benefactor will finally get tired of giving the gifts,
and even God will reject the ungrateful in the end.
We had a human illustration of that only this morning.
I got a letter from a lady in New York City saying that
I might expect on the Mount of the Atonement a young man,
one she had tried to help, but she had become discouraged
by his ingratitude and by his unwillingness to help himself.
As a last resort she was going to send him up to Graymoor.
Well, he arrived yesterday and first of all he began to
complain and find fault with the room that was given to
him, and this morning, when he was introduced into my
presence, he began to complain of his benefactress, informing
me at the same time that he had spent about $360.00 of
her money last month. Finally she told him to go and get
a job. In fact, she had given him that money to go look
for a job and warned him that that was the end of it.
But he has not found a job. And now he was finding fault
with the high-toned way which this lady treated him instead
of talking to him kindly and encouraging him. I said to
him,
| Well,
we will give you a chance here. You say that you have
been studying a year. We have some plain painting
to do around here, and if you do a little painting
and show that you are in some degree appreciative
of the hospitality we extend to you, we will give
you a letter to go down to New York and get a job. |
But,
no, he did not want to do anything. He said, “Won’t
you give me money to purchase a ticket to get back to
New York?” I said, “With the greatest pleasure,
for we do not keep people here against their will.”
This was a case of one who was probably originally brought
up in the lap of luxury and wanted to continue doing nothing
for the rest of his days.
And so the Almighty in looking down upon humanity, sooner
or later arrives at the same conclusion as the lady that
I have jut mentioned. If we do not cultivate ourselves
in appreciation, whether we be individuals or whether
we be nations, sooner or later we will get our deserts.
The children of Israel, when they forgot God and turned
away in their ingratitude and followed after the idols
of the Canaanites, God chastised them and drove them into
the mountain fastnesses, and only when they were brought
to extreme suffering did they remember God and then they
began to pray and turned to God and asked his forgiveness.
He forgave them and restored them to his favor, but when
they displayed that spirit of ingratitude again they got
their deserts.
So it is very important, if we want our nation to go on
and be the most prosperous---the nation upon which the
divine favor shines---we must not only as individuals,
but as a nation, express our gratitude in the praise and
adoration of the Almighty, or later on we will probably
get the same kind of treatment that some of the nations
of the Old World have gotten for the same reason.
So let us cultivate more and more this spirit of thanksgiving
and praise and gratitude to God, thank him not only for
his benefits, but even for the adversities. The Irish
people are a very grateful people and someone says that
it was a custom in the Old Country to thank God for everything.
Sometimes when they say, “This is a very bad and
gloomy and wet day,” the response is “Thanks
be to God.” (Fr. Paul Sermon on Thanksgiving Day,
Nov. 25, 1926)
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BEGINNING
OF ADVENT (NOVEMBER 29)
“Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his
paths.” [Matt.3:3] It can hardly be appreciated by
the faithful living in the world how carefully and wonderfully
our Mother, the Church, prepares the way for the feast
of Our Lord’s Nativity. The whole season of Advent
is set aside for that purpose, and in religious houses
there are, besides the Mass, the special Offices and references
from the prophets up to the coming of Christ. But there
is one great outstanding purpose of the Church which ought
to come home to the faithful everywhere, no matter how
much they are occupied in the affairs of this world, and
that is, to prepare themselves to worthily receive Christ
as their Lord and King and Master and God in Holy Communion
on the Feast of the Nativity. A Catholic who does not
respond to that call is very remiss in his obligations
and his sense of duty and obedience to that God and Savior,
who came at so much cost and sacrifice to himself, first
by being made incarnate at Christmastime and then on Good
Friday being offered as a sacrifice for our salvation.
And
so we hear the voice of Saint John the Baptist echoing
through the Christian centuries coming to us today with
that ancient message, which is ever new, that we should
do penance and prepare the way of the Lord.
In ancient times when kings made visits to certain cities,
or certain parts of their great kingdoms, there were those
who were sent ahead to prepare the roads which they should
travel. They had no railroads in those days, no means
of rapid transit, but the king moved along in great state
and pomp, accompanied by his satellites, carriages and
horses and the vast retinue of those that brought the
commissary department along for the feasting of the king
and his court and the maintenance of the cavalcade. And
it was necessary that the roads should be made as convenient,
commodious and smooth as possible. Oftentimes immense
sums of money were expended and vast multitudes of people
were engaged in building and constructing those roads.
Now, John the Baptist said, “ Prepare ye the way
of the Lord, make straight his paths,” to bring home
to the people how they should prepare the King’s
highway in their own soul, for, my dear people, one soul
in the eyes of God is of more importance than all the
highways in the world, or all the automobiles that travel
over the face of the earth. We should consider the significance
of this exhortation.
Do your realize that your soul is more complex and more
important and more difficult to manage than a highway?
This whole world is under the absolute command of God.
He called it into being and existence by a word of his
mouth. The earth obeys the law of God and has been traveling
on its course for thousands of years and has never been
known to be a minute out of time, just because God has
put laws on it which it has got to obey.
There is something about you more dignified and more important
than the insignificant road that has been constructed
along Storm King Mountain on the other side of the Hudson,
with an expenditure of millions of dollars or the Bear
Mountain Bridge, thrown across the Hudson, that costs
several million dollars. Your soul is more dignified than
that. Why? Because you were made in the image of God.
When God put your soul into being, He gave it a will---
the power of choice. (Fr. Paul Sermon, Dec. 20, 1925)
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ST.
ANDREW, APOSTLE
When St. Andrew was led to the place of his execution
and saw the cross from afar, he exclaimed:
| Hail,
O cross, sacred to the body of Christ; and by his
limbs adorned as with pearls. Before our Lord ascended
you, O blessed cross, you were an object of earthly
fear, but now, gaining heavenly love, you are accepted
as an answer to prayer. Ever have I loved you and
desired to embrace you, O good cross. Receive me from
men and restore me to my Master, that by you he may
receive me, who by you redeemed me. |
Thus
by a supernatural faith the saints and faithful servants
of God have venerated the cross and embraced it fervently,
because thereby dying to the world, they lived for God.
It is, therefore, only the man, whose eyes the god of
this world has blinded, who will deliberately turn away
from the cross, which our Saviour himself lays upon our
shoulders or lovingly invites us to assume. (The Lamp
Mar. 1910 p.362)
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ONE
& TWO LINERS OF FR. PAUL
On
the Mission of the Society of the Atonement:
No Society within the Catholic Church could have a nobler
and more inspiring object to work for, namely, the unity
of Christendom around the Apostolic See and the conversion
of the world to Christ, or to put it tersely Church unity
and Catholic missions. (The Lamp July 1918 p.389)
To People in Need:
I am in receipt to your letter of Sept. 16th and I promise
to pray in union with yourself and your husband that Divine
Providence will come to your relief and that you will
be able to meet your bill for rental. (Fr. Paul to J.K.,
Sept. 19, 1935)
Gratitude
for Shaving Kit:
I
still use the shaving outfit which you gave me on the
occasion of my visit to Monaca, and I am often reminded
of you. (Fr. Paul to Rev. John Conora, Monaca, Penn.,
no date)
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