Ä f r j 611 S~ 

DIGEST 
O F T H E 

LITURGICAL 
SEASONS 

from the works of 

Dont Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B. 

by 

Bernard Beck, O.S.B., S.T.D. 

A G r a i l P u b l i c a t i o n 

St. Meinrad Indiana 





D I G E S T 

of the 

L I T U R G I C A L S E A S O N S 

from the works of 

Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B. 

by 

Bernard Beck, O.S.B., S.T.D. 

Price twenty-five cents 

A G r a i l P u b l i c a t i o n 

St. Meinrad Indiana 



Imprimi potest: 
4« Ignatius Esser, O.S.B. 

Abbot of St. Meinrad's Abbey 

Nihil obstat: 
Reverend Cyril Gaul, O.S.B. 

Censor librorum 

Imprimatur: 
4« Joseph E. Ritter, D.D. 

Archbishop of Indianapolis 

Feast of All Saints 

Note: Reprinted from THE MASS YEAR for 191*3. 
Copyrighted by St. Meinratfa Abbey, Inc. 1942. All 
rights reserved. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Advent - • 

Christmas 11 

Epiphany - 21 

Lent - - 31 

Paschal Time 47 

Pentecost -----



D v a s A l o x \n S v o C v u w 

A t e D I V M I T E R 4 4 A M W T 

C K v i l P O T S r t S 

S £ R / * \ O T v V S 

" D O A A I / S E 

T > £ C A E J J ^ 

V J E / S I T - h 
Out o/ tfce darknees of the night of sin, Christ, the Word-

Made-Flesh cornea to the Virgin Mary to give Himself to the 
world for its salvation. 



A D V E N T 

History of Advent 

© 
HE N A M E Advent (from the Latin word 
adventus, which signifies a coming) is ap-
plied to that period of the year during 
which the Church requires the faithful to 

prepare for the celebration of the feast of 
Christmas, the anniversary of the birth of Jesus 
Christ. The mystery of that great day has every 
right to the honor of being prepared for by 
prayer and works of penance. We do not know 
with certainty when this season of preparation 
was first instituted. Still it would seem that its 
observance first began in the Western Church, 
because the Church of Rome kept the feast of 
Christmas on December 25 at a much earlier 
time than did the Eastern Church, which ob-
served Christmas on December 25 only towards 
the close of the fourth century. 

Advent is a time of preparation for the birth 
of our Savior by works of penance. We find, as 
far back as the fifth century in the Western 
Church, the custom of giving exhortations to the 
people in order to prepare them for the feast of 
Christmas. It was likened to the time of Lent, 
the period of preparation for Easter. Although 
not'so strictly consecrated to penance as Lent, 
still in various places we see that the faithful 
were expected to fast three days a week, Mon-
days, Wednesdays, and Fridays from the feast of 
St. Martin (Nov. 11) until Christmas, a period 
of forty-three days. This interval was commonly 



2 Advent 

called St. Martin's Lent. Later on (some time 
after the year 800) the practice of fasting dur-
ing Advent, which had the force of sacred law, 
began to be relaxed so that only abstinence was 
observed. As time went on, even abstinence was 
no longer observed. The length of the period, 
moreover, was shortened to four weeks. 

The Eastern Churches still continue to observe 
the fast of Advent, though with much less vigor 
than that of Lent. It consists of forty days, 
beginning with November 14, the day on which 
the fast of the Apostle St. Philip is kept. Fast-
ing, hi its strict sense, is binding only on seven 
out of the forty days, while the whole period 
goes under the name of St. Philip's Lent. 

But if the exterior practices of penance which 
formerly sanctified the season of Advent have 
been, in the Western Church, so gradually re-
laxed as to have become quite obsolete except in 
monasteries, the general character of the liturgy 
of this holy time has not changed; and it is by 
their zeal m following its spirit, that the faithful 
will prove their earnestness in preparing for 
Christmas. 

The liturgical form of Advent as it now ex-
ists in the Roman Church has gone through 
certain modifications. St. Gregory the Great (+ 
604) seems to have been the first to draw up 
the office for this season, which originally in-
cluded five Sundays. He it is who probably 
originated the ecclesiastical precept of Advent, 
although the custom of devoting a longer or 
shorter period to a preparation for Christmas 



Advent 3 

had been observed from the earliest times, and 
the abstinence and fast of this holy season first 
began in France. St. Gregory therefore fixed for 
the churches of the Latin rite the form of the 
Office for this Lent-like season, and sanctioned 
the fast which had already been established, 
granting a certain latitude to the several church-
es as to the manner of its observance. 

It is remarkable that the five Sundays of Ad-
vent of ancient times were counted inversely, 
that is, the nearest to Christmas was called the 
first Sunday, and so on with the rest. So far 
back as the ninth and tenth centuries, these 
Sundays were reduced to four. From that time, 
the Roman Church has always observed this 
arrangement of Advent, which gives it four 
weeks, the four being that in which Christmas 
days falls, .unless December 25 be a Sunday. We 
may therefore consider the present discipline of 
the observance of Advent as having lasted a 
thousand years, at least as far as the Church 
of Rome is concerned; for some of the churches 
in France kept up the number of five Sundays as 
late as the thirteenth century, while the Ambro-
sian liturgy, even to this day, has six weeks of 
Advent. 

The Eastern Churches have no proper office 
for Advent, neither do they celebrate during this 
time the Mass of the Presanctified, as they do 
in Lent. In the offices for the saints whose 
feasts occur between November 14 and the 
Sunday nearest Christmas, there are frequent 
allusions to the birth of the Savior, to the mater-
nity of Mary, to the <?ave <?f Bethlehem, etc. On 



4 Advent 

this Sunday preceding Christmas, in order to 
celebrate the expected coming of the Messias, 
they keep what they call the feast of the holy 
fathers, that is, the commemoration of the saints 

.of the Old Law. They give the name of Ante-
Feast of the Nativity to December 20, 21 22 
and 23: and although they say the office of 
several saints on these four days, yet the mystery 
oi the birth of Jesus pervades the whole liturgy. 
The Mystery of Advent 

Having described the characteristics which 
distinguish Advent from the rest of the year 
let us look into the profound mystery which is 
signified by the liturgy. We find that the coming 
or Advent of Jesus is at once simple and three-
told; simple because it is always the Son of God 
Who comes, threefold because He comes at three 
different times, and in three different ways. 

The three comings of the Son of God are, the 
first in His own flesh, the second into the souls 
of men and the third at the judgment. The first 
was His birth into this world as man. Holy 
Church therefore, during Advent awaits in tears 
and with ardor the arrival of Jesus in His first 
coming. For this she borrows the fervid ex-
pressions of the prophets, to which she joins her 
own supphcations. These longings for the Mes-
sias expressed by the Church are not a mere 
commemoration of the desires of the ancient 
Jewish people. The have a reality and efficacy of 
their own. The prayers the Church offers now 
for the coming of the Savior were foreseen by 
Almighty God before He sent the Messias in the 
flesh, and together with the prayers of the Jew-



Advent 5 

ish people of old ascended to the hearing of 
God and called down the Son of God. 

The second coming of Christ is His coming 
into the souls of men. It is the visit of the 
Bridegroom to the bride. This coming takes 
place each year at the feast of Christmas, when 
the new birth of the Son of God delivers the 
faithful from the yoke of bondage under which 
the enemy would oppress them. The expressions 
of the liturgy which the Church makes use of to 
ask for this loving and invisible coming into the 
souls of- her children, good and bad, and also of 
infidels, are those which she employs when beg-
ging for the coming of Jesus in the flesh; for 
the two visits are for the same object. When 
the Son of God came into this world to save 
mankind, He came also to bring His grace into 
the soul of each one of us. 

The Church looks forward to the third com-
ing of Christ, namely in the general judgment. 
She is impatient to be loosed from her present 
temporal state; she longs for the number of the 
elect to be filled up, and to see, in the clouds of 
heaven, the sign of her deliverer. The day of 
this last coming will be a day of terror. The 
Church does not fear for herself, for she is the 
Bride of Christ and her crown is secure. But 
she is troubled at the thought that many of her 
children will stand condemned by the Judge. 
Consequently the liturgy of Advent often repre-
sents the coming of Christ as something terrible, 
to awaken a salutary fear in the mind of those 
who are sleeping the sleep of sin. 



6 Advent 

In order to express to the faithful these senti-
ments of the threefold coming of Christ, the 
Church has assembled the liturgical prayers and 
passages from the Bible found in the Advent 
Liturgy and has surrounded them with external 
rites peculiar to this holy time. The four weeks 
of Advent recall the four thousand years of 
preparation for the coming of Christ on the first 
Christmas day. As in Lent, so likewise during 
Advent marriage may not be solemnized lest 
worldly joy should distract Christians from the 
serious thoughts inspired by the expected com-
ing of the sovereign judge. The sacred ministers 
of the altar wear the somber color of violet to 
remind us of the sadness which fills the heart of 
the Church. Formerly it was the custom in some 
places to wear black. The angelic canticle 
"Gloria in excelsis" and the hymn of jubilation 
"Te Deum laudamus" are suppressed; "Bene-
dicamus Domino" is sung at the end of Mass to 
indicate to us the importance of uninterrupted 
prayer in preparation for the coming of the 
Savior. Only the joyful Alleluia goes on un-
interruptedly, a vestige of joy blended with the 
holy mournfulness of the Church, because she 
knows that although she is praying for the com-
ing of the Emmanuel with the Jewish people of 
old, still He is already come to her and is 
with us. 

Practice During Advent 

The spirit of Advent is that of watchful ex-
pectation in penance and prayer for the coming 



Advent 7 

of the Lord. "Let your loins be girt, and lamps 
burning in your hands, and you yourselves be 
like unto men waiting for their master's return 
from the wedding" (Luke 12:35), Our first 
duty, then, during Advent is with the saints of 
the Old Testament to suppliantly beg in prayer 
for the first coming of the Messias, namely into 
this world. Christians should reflect on the dark-
ness and sin in which the world lay buried for 
four thousand years before our Savior's coming. 
Our hearts should be filled with lively gratitude 
towards him who saved man from death, and 
who came down from heaven that He himself 
might know our miseries by experiencing all of 
them, except sin. Let us cry to Him with con-
fidence' from the depths of our misery; for al-
though He has already redeemed us, He still 
wishes us to beseech Him to save us. Our de-
sires and our confidence should have their free 
utterance in the ardent supplications of the 
ancient prophets, which the Church puts on our 
lips during these days of expectation in the Mass 
and the Divine Office; let us give our closest 
attention to the sentiments which they* express. 
Thus do we await the Savior's first coming. 

To prepare ourselves for His second coming, 
namely into our souls, we must remember tha;t 
we are pleasing to the heavenly Father only 
inasmuch as He sees in us His Son Jesus Christ. 
Hence, if we will but consent, our loving Savior 
will come to us, give us of His life, and trans-
form us into himself. This is the one grand aim 
of the Christian religion, to make man divine in 
Jesus Christ. We are to live with the divine life 



8 Advent 

and grow into its fulness. During the season of 
Advent our Lord stands at the door of men's 
hearts and knocks. Make ready, then, by prayer 
and penance to receive Him that He may bestow 
greater light and strength on you, His faithful 
ones, living in His life and shaping your 
thoughts and works on the model of His. He 
will, renew all things within you. 

The spirit of the fear of God must take hold 
of our souls to prepare them for the third com-
ing of Christ, that is, at the last day as Judge of 
the living and dead. Both sinners and just need 
to fear, the former because they are the enemies 
of God, the latter because no one is clean in the 
sight of God. A holy and salutary fear joi God 
awakens even in the heart of the just man a 
keener sense of his own misery and of the un-
merited mercy of His Redeemer. Nay, our holy 
Mother the Church herself, though so beloved by 
God, prays to Him to give her this fear: "Pierce 
my flesh with Thy fear." 

Advent, then, is a season specially devoted to 
the purification of the soul. This is implied by 
the words of St. John: "Make ready the way 
of the Lord" (Matt. 3:3). All, therefore, should 
strive earnestly to make straight the path by 
which Jesus will enter into their souls. The just 
shall labor to acquire new merit. Let sinners at 
once break the chains which now enslave them 
and give up those bad habits which they con-
tracted; they should now weaken the flesh, and 
enter upon the hard work of subjecting it to the 
spirit. Let them, above all, pray with the Church. 



Advent 
m 
9 

And when our Lord comes, they may hope that 
He will not pass them by, but that He will enter 
and dwell within them, for He spoke of all when 
He said: "Behold I stand at the door and knock. 
If any man listens to my voice and opens the 
door to Me, I will come in to him" (Apoc. 3:20). 



Gavcet chorv? 
CCELE^TIVAV 
E T A A K & J J 

CA/1V/ST 
D E O + 

O v r 

i T P A T B R I B V S 

" R A S T O R , 
C R E A T O R 
C V A M I V A N + 

Christ the Shepherd of souls comes to lead and teach His 
flock the way to Heaven. 



C H R I S T M A S 

History of Christmas 

© 
HE CHRISTMAS season is the name ap-
plied to the forty days which begin with 
the Nativity of Our Lord, December 25, 
and end with the Purification of the 

Blessed Virgin, February 2. It is a period which 
forms a distinct portion of the Liturgical Year, 
as distinct, by its own special spirit, from every 
other, as are Advent, Lent, Easter, and Pente-
cost. One same mystery is celebrated and kept 
in view during the whole forty days. Neither 
the feasts of the saints nor the mournful season 
of Septuagésima, which often begins before 
Christmastide is over, are allowed to break in 
upon the joy which pervades the Church during 
this season. 

The custom of celebrating the Solemnity of 
our Savior's Nativity by a commemoration of 
forty days' duration is founded on the Gospel 
itself. For it was forty days after the birth of 
Jesus that Mary took Him to the temple to offer 
Him to the Lord according to the Law. The 
feast of Mary's Purification is, therefore, part of 
that of the commemoration of Jesus' birth. The 
custom of keeping this holy period of forty days 
as one continued festival has every appearance 
of being an ancient one in the Roman Church. 
The Western Churches kept the feast of Christ-
mas on December 25 from the early days of 
Christianity while the Eastern Churches began 
only in the fourth century to keep it in Decem-
ber as a separate feast. Up to that period they 
had kept it usually on January 6 and united it 



12 Christmas 

with the feast of the Epiphany, that is, the 
Manifestation of our Savior made to the Magi, 
and in them to the Gentiles. The feast of our 
Lady's Purification, with which the forty days of 
Christmas close, is, like Christmas, of very an-
cient date in the Latin Church, but the Oriental 
Churches did not observe it until the sixth 
century. 

Christmas in the Latin liturgy has a twofold 
characteristic: first, joy, which the whole Church 
feels at the coming of the Divine Word in the 
flesh, and secondly, admiration of the glorious 
Virgin who was made the Mother of God. There 
is scarcely a prayer or a rite in the liturgy of 
this glad season which does not imply these two. 
grand mysteries: an Infant-God, and a Virgin-
Mother. 

The Mystery of Christmas 

Everything is mystery in this holy season. 
The Word of God, Whose generation is before 
the creation of the world, is born in time, a Child 
is God, a Virgin becomes a mother and remains 
a Virgin, things divine are commingled with 
those that are human, and the sublime and un-
speakable antithesis expressed by St. John in 
his Gospel, The Word Was Made Flesh, is re-
peated in a thousand different ways in all the 
prayers of the Church. And rightly so, for it 
admirably embodies the whole of the great 
marvel which unites in one Person the nature 
of man and the nature of God. 

While the splendor of this mystery dazzles the 
understanding, it fills the heart with joy. The 



Christ-mas 13 

birth of our Savior is the completion of the 
designs of God in time. It is the endless subject 
of admiration and wonder to the angels and 
saints; nay, it is the source and cause of their 
blessed state in heaven. 

The Church offers this great mystery to her 
children, carried out in the splendor of the 
liturgy. After the four weeks of Advent, we 
arrive at the long awaited day of joy, Christmas 
Day. Unlike Easter and all the feasts that de-
pend on it, the whole of which cycle varies in 
date from year to year, Christmas always falls 
on the same date, December 25. The holy doctor, 
St. Augustine (430), gives the reason. We sol-
emnize, he explains, the day of our Savior's 
birth in order that we may honor that Birth 
which was for our salvation; but the precise 
day of the week on which He was born is void 
of any mystical signification. Sunday, on the 
contrary, the day of our Lord's resurrection, is 
the day marked in the Creator's designs to ex-
press a mystery which was to be commemorated 
for all ages. 

Now what is that mystery of which St. 
Augustine, and other writers after him speak, 
and which is commemorated by the celebration 
of Easter on Sunday? According to a sacred 
tradition, the creation of man took place on a 
Friday. Further, Christ died on a Friday for 
the redemption of man. The resurrection of 
the Redeemer took place on the third day after 
His death, that is, on a Sunday. Since it was 
on the third day after His death, it coincided 
with the third day of creation when God created 



14 Christmas 

light. The two solemnities then of Jesus's Pas-
sion and Resurrection remind us of those two 
works of creation, as they do of other holy and 
mysterious things. 

The fact that the feast of Jesus's birth is fixed 
by the liturgy to a certain day of the month, 
December 25, also expresses a sacred mystery. 
According to this plan the Feast of Christmas 
is kept by turns on each of the days of the week 
that thus its holiness may cleanse and rid them 
of the curse which Adam's sin had put upon 
them. Secondly, the great mystery of December 
25, being the Feast of Our Savior's Birth, has 
reference, not to the division of time marked out 
by God Himself, which is called the Week, but 
to the course of the Sun, the great luminary 
which gives life to the world because it gives it 
light and warmth. Jesus, Our Savior, the Light 
of the World (John 8:12) was born when the 
night of idolatry and crime was at its darkest. 
Now the day of His birth, December 25, is that 
on which the material Sun begins to gain his 
ascendancy over the reign of gloomy night, and 
to show to the world his triumph of brightness. 

The diminution of the physical light of the 
sun during the weeks of Advent may be con-
sidered as emblematic of those dismal times 
which preceded the Incarnation. At that time 
we joined our prayers with those of the people 
of the Old Testament, and with Our Holy Mother 
the Church we cried out to the Divine Orient, 
the Sun of Justice, that He would come and de-
liver us from the twofold death of body and soul. 
God has heard our prayers. It is on the day of 



Christ-mas 15 

the Winter Solstice—which the pagans of old 
made memorable by their fears and rejoicings— 
that He gives us both the increase of the natural 
light, and Him who is the Light of our souls. 
The great mystery of Jesus, the Light of the 
world, is frequently alluded to during this season 
of Christmas. 

St. Augustine -exclaims in the joy of his 
meditation on the great mystery of Jesus' birth: 
"He chose this day whereon to be born, as He 
chose the mother of whom to be born, and He 
made both the day and the mother. The day 
He chose was that on which the light begins 
to increase, and it typifies the works of Christ, 
who renews our interior man day by day. For 
the eternal Creator having willed to be born in 
time, His birthday would necessarily be in har-
mony with the rest of His creation" (Sermon on 
the Nativity of our Lord, 3). St. John the Bap-
tist, the Precursor of our Lord, said: "He must, 
increase, but I must decrease" (John, 3:30), 
that is, the Baptist's mission was at its close, 
because Jesus' was entering upon His. Now 
St. John was born on June 24, during that season 
of the year when the length and light of the day 
decreases, and Jesus was born on December 25, 
during the season of the year when the length 
and light of the day increases. Thus, there is 
mystery both in the rising of that glorious Star, 
the Baptist, at the summer solstice, and in the 
rising of the Divine Sun in the dark season of 
winter. 

There is, too, a mystery of the place where 
Jesus was born, Bethlehem. A prophecy of 



16 Christmas 

Micheas (5:2) foretold the place of His birth: 
"Out of Bethlehem shall He come forth that is to 
be the ruler in Israel." Why was this insig-
nificant town chosen in preference to every other 
to be the birth-place of Jesus? Bethlehem, the 
City of David, signifies the House of Bread. 
Therefore did He, who is the living Bread come 
down from heaven (John 6:41), choose it for 
His first visible home. The ancient Hebrews ate 
manna, the bread rained down from heaven in 
the desert, but they died; while here is the 
Bread of angels, the Son of the incomparable 
Virgin Mary given by God through her to us for 
the nourishment of our souls, and which will 
transform us, making us partakers of the divine 
nature, and making us live forever. 

Jesus would give Himself into our hearts at 
Christmas time. Unto this end He becomes our 
Bread, our spiritual nourishment. His coming 
into the souls of men at this mystic season has 
no other aim than this union. This divine lover 
of our souls will not be satisfied, therefore, until 
He has substituted himself in our place so that 
we may live not by ourselves, but He in us. 

From Christmas Day itself until the end of the 
season at Our Lady's Purification there is in the 
calendar an extraordinary richness of Saints' 
Feasts, doing homage to the master feast of 
Bethlehem and clustering in adoring love found 
the crib of the Infant God. The choirs of 
apostles, martyrs, pontiffs, doctors, confessors, 
and of holy virgins all stand about the crib of 
Jesus singing their thanksgiving to the Savior 



Christ-mas 17 

of their souls. Christmastide is a glorious festive 
season. 

The meaning of the colors used by the Church 
during this season may be briefly summed up as 
follows. White, which her ministers wear from 
Christmas until the end of the Octave of 
Epiphany expresses the gladness to which the 
Angels invited tBe world, the beauty of our 
Divine Sun that has risen in Bethlehem, the 
spotless purity of the Virgin-Mother, and the 
clean-heartedness which they should have who 
come to worship at the mystic Crib. Green is 
the color used on the Sundays that follow 
Epiphany. This color is used to teach us that in 
the birth of Jesus, who is the flower of the fields, 
we first received the hope of salvation, and that 
after the bleak winter of heathendom and the 
Synagogue, there opened the verdant spring-time 
of grace. 

Practice during the Christmas Season 

The time has now come, after the penitential 
efforts of the faithful soul to prepare itself dur-
ing Advent for the coming of Jesus, that the 
Lamb of God should come to it to take possession 
of it as His spouse. What garments, then, shall 
we put on to go and meet the Bridegroom? What 
must we do to make this meeting as worthy as 
possible of the sublime visit of the Son of God 
to our souls? 

The Church offers to the Infant-God during 
this holy season the tribute of her profound 
adoration, the enthusiasm of her exceeding joy, 
the return of her unbounded gratitude, and the 



18 Christmas 

fondness of her intense love. These four offer-
ings of adoration, joy, gratitude, and love must 
also be those of every Christian to Jesus, the 
Emmanuel, the Babe of Bethlehem. 

Adoration is religion's first act. If the angels 
and saints in heaven are forever prostrating 
themselves before the throne of the Lamb, what 
shall we poor sinners do, now that this same 
great God shows Himself to us, humbled for our 
sakes, and stripped of all His glory, now that the 
Creator Himself takes upon Himself the duties 
of the creature to his Creator, that is, of adora-
tion, now that the eternal Son of God made flesh 
bows down not only before the sovereign majesty 
of the Godhead, but even before sinful man his 
creature ? 

Because God is with her, the Church is full 
of joy. The coming of the angels that first 
Christmas night was a prelude to it. She there-
fore studies to imitate the fleet-footed shep-
herds who ran for joy to Bethlehem, and to 
imitate the glad Magi who were filled with 
delight when on quitting Jerusalem the star 
again appeared and led them to the cave where 
the Child was. Joy at Christmas is a Christian 
mstict. This is not the season for sighing or 
weeping We must rejoice and be glad because 
Christ the Savior is born. Heaven sends us a 
present of its own joy. We need joy, and forty 
days are not too many for us to get it well into 
our hearts. The Scripture tells us that a secure 
mind is like a continual feast (Prov. 15:15) and 
a secure mind can only be where there is peace-
now it is Peace which these blessed days brin^ 



Christ-mas 19 

to the earth; "Peace," say the angels, "to men 

of good will!" . 
Then we owe gratitude to Him who deigned to 

be born one of us and to have a stable for His 
birth-place. God so loved the world that He gave 
His only-begotten Son for it (John 3:16). How 
shall we be able to repay God for this unspeak-
able gift by suitable gratitude? Only by love 
which, though finite, gives itself without 
measure, and may grow forever in intensity. 
The shepherds offered Jesus their simple gifts; 
the Magi brought Him their rich presents. We 
shall offer Him our hearts full of love. It was to 
receive our love that He came down from Heaven. 

Jesus is not only born into this world at 
Christmas time; He is also born in our hearts. 
This is another important aspect of the Christ-
mas mystery. We become sons of God with 
Jesus as the center of our spiritual life. We 
begin a new life with Jesus born in our souls. 

If Jesus is to be born and to live within us, 
we must endeavor to imitate Him; wef must be 
made like to the image of God's Son. The imita-
tion of Jesus is a sign of eternal salvation. It is 
a sign that we are among the elect. We must 
with the shepherds go over to Bethlehem. The 
sign of recognition given to them was a child 
wrapped in swaddling-clothes, .and laid in a 
manger (Luke 2:12). So must we become chil-
dren. We must not disdain to enter upon the 
safe path of spiritual childhood, for unless we 
become as little children, that is, practice the 
virtues of a child, lowliness and simplicity, we 
shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. 



S t e l l a 7 * T \ *TV«T 
I V X I T / \ B A P T I I A R E 

A W | O y / I X V 0 1 V I T 

EXAQVA 

TL J Z ' I nV f ™ Celebrated «" * Epiphany,' 

the first miracle of Christ, the changing of the water into M 



E P I P H A N Y 

The History of Epiphany 

HE F E A S T of the Epiphany is the con-
tinuation of the mystery of Christmas, 
but it appears on the calendar of the 
Church with its own special character. Its 

very name, which signifies Manifestation, implies 
that it celebrates the apparition of God to His 
creatures. 

For several centuries the Nativity of our Lord 
was kept on this day; and when in the year 376 
the decree of the Holy See obliged all churches 
to keep the Nativity on December 25, as Rome 
did, the Feast of January 6 was not robbed of all 
its ancient glory. It was still to be called the 
Epiphany, and the Baptism of our Lord Jesus 
Christ was also commemorated on this same 
Feast, which Tradition had marked as the day 
on which that Baptism took place. 

The Greek Church gives this Feast the vener-
able and mysterious names of Theophania, which 
is of such frequent recurrence in the early Fa-
thers, as signifying a divine Apparition. In the 
liturgical books of the Melchite Church the Feast 
goes under no other name. 

The Orientals call this solemnity also the Holy 
Lights, because it was the day on which baptism 
was administered; for, as we have just men-
tioned, our Lord was baptized on this same day. 
Baptism is called Illumination by the holy Fa-
thers, and they who received it Illuminated. 

Then, in many countries, this feast is called 
King's Feast. This, of course, is an allusion to 



22 Epiphany 

the Magi, whose journey to Bethlehem is so 
continually mentioned in the office of the day.. 

The Epiphany shares with the feasts of 
Christmas, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost the 
honor of being called, in the Canon of the Mass, 
a Day most Holy. It is also one of the cardinal 
feasts, that is, one of those on which the ar-
rangement of the Christian Year is based. A s 
we have Sundays after Easter, and Sundays 
after Pentecost, so also we count six Sundays 
after the Epiphany. 

The Mystery of Epiphany 

The Epiphany is indeed a great Feast, and the 
joy caused by the birth of Jesus, must be re-
newed on it, for as though it were a second 
Christmas Day, it shows us the Incarnate God 
in a new light. It leaves us all the sweetness 
of the Babe of Bethlehem, who has appeared to 
us already in love; but to this it adds its own 
grand manifestation of the divinity of Jesus. 
A t Christmas it was a few shepherds that were 
invited by the angels to go and recognize the 
Word made flesh. But now, at the Epiphany, 
the voice of God Himself calls the whole world 
to adore this Jesus and hear Him. 

The mystery of the Epiphany brings upon us 
three magnificent rays of the Sun of Justice, 
our Savior. In the calendar of pagan Rome, this 
Sixth day of January was devoted to the cele-
bration of a triple triumph of Augustus, the 
founder of the Roman Empire. But when Jesus, 
the Prince of Peace, whose empire knows no 



Epiphany 23 

limits, had secured victory to His Church by the 
blood of the martyrs, then did this His Church 
decree that a triple triumph of the Immortal 
King should be substituted, in the Christian 
calendar, for those other three triumphs which 
had been won by the adopted son of Caesar. 

The Sixth of January, therefore, restored the 
celebration of our Lord's birth to the twenty-
fifth of December; but in return, there were 
united in the one same Epiphany three manifes-
tations of Jesus's glory: the mystery of the 
Magi coming from the East, under the guidance 
of a star, and adoring the Infant of Bethlehem 
as the divine King; the mystery of the baptism 
of Christ, who, whilst standing in the waters of 
the Jordan, was proclaimed by the Eternal Fa-
ther as the divine power of this same Jesus, 
when He changed the water into wine at the 
marriage feast of Cana. 

The question may be asked: did these three 
mysteries reaUy take place on this day? Is the 
Sixth of January the real anniversary of these 
great events? A great host of church historians 
assert that the adoration of the Magi happened 
on this very day. That the baptism of our Lord 
also happened on January 6 is admitted by the 
severest historical critics. The precise day of 
the miracle at the feast of Cana is far from 
being as certain as the other two mysteries. 
For us, the children, of the Church, it is suffi-
cient that our holy Mother has assigned the 
commemoration of these three manifestations 
for this feast. We need nothing more to make 



24 Epiphany 

us rejoice in the triple triumph of the Son of 
Mary. 

If we now come to consider these three 
mysteries of the Feast of the Epiphany separate-
ly, we shall find that the Church of Rome, in 
her office and Mass of this day, is more intent 
on the adoration of the Magi than on the other 
two. That the mystery of the calling of the 
Gentiles should be made thus prominent by the 
Church of Rome is not to be wondered at; for 
by that heavenly vocation which, in the three 
Magi, called all nations to the admirable light 
of faith, Rome, which till then had been the 
head of the Gentile world, was made the head 
of the Christian Church and of the whole human 
race. 

The Greek Church, on the contrary, makes no 
special mention, in her Office of today, of the 
adoration of the Magi, for she unites it with 
the mystery of our Savior's birth in her cele-
bration of Christmas Day. The Baptism of 
Christ absorbs all her thoughts &nd praises on 
the solemnity of the Epiphany. 

In the Latin Church this second mystery of 
the feast, namely, the baptism of Christ, is cele-
brated, unitedly with the other two, on Janu-
ary 6, and mention is made of it several times 
in the Office. But as the coming of the Magi 
to the crib of our new-born Kings absorbs the 
attention of Christian Rome on this day, the 
mystery of Christ's baptism and of the sancti-
cation of the waters was to be commemorated 
on a day apart. The day chosen by the Western 



Epiphany 25 

Church for paying special honor to the baptism 
of our Savior is the Octave of the Epiphany. 

The third mystery of the Epiphany, that of the 
miracle of water and wine at the marriage feast 
of Cana, being also kept in the background by 
the prominence given to the first (though allu-
sion is several times made to it in the Office of 
the Feast), a special day has been appointed for 
its due celebration; and that day is the second 
Sunday after the Epiphany. 

This great Feast, which brings us to the crib 
of the Prince of Peace, has been marked by two 
great events of the first ages of the Church. It 
was on the Sixth of January in the year 361, 
that Julian, who in heart was already an apos-
tate, happened to be at Vienne in Gaul. He was 
soon to ascend the imperial throne, which would 
be left vacant by the death of Constantius, and 
he felt the need he had of the support of the 
Christian Church in which it is said that he had 
received the order of Lector, and which, never-
theless, he was preparing to attack with all cun-
ning and cruelty. Like Herod, he too would fain 
go on this Feast of the Epiphany, and adore the 
new-born King. History relates of him that this 
crowned philosopher, who had been seen just 
before, coming out of the pagan temple, where 
he had been consulting the soothsayers, made 
his way through the porticoes of the church, 
and standing in the midst of the faithful people, 
offered to the God of the Christians his sacri-
legious homage. 

Eleven years later, in the year 372, another 
emperor found his way into the Church, on the 



26 Epiphany 

same feast of the Epiphany. It was Valens, a 
Christian like Julian, by baptism, but a per-
secutor in the name of Arianism, of that same 
Church which Julian persecuted in the name of 
his philosophy and still vainer gods. As Julian 
felt himself necessitated by motives of worldly 
policy to bow down, on this day, before the 
divinity of the Galilean, so on this same day the 
courage of the holy bishop, St. Basil, made 
Valens prostrate himself at the feet of Jesus, the 
King of kings. 

Valens had come to Caesarea, and with his 
soul defiled with the Arain heresy, he entered 
the basilica, when St. Basil was celebrating with 
his people the glorious Theophany. The chanting 
of the psalms echoed through the holy place like 
the rumbling of thunder. The people filled the 
house of God. Such was the order and pomp in 
and about the sanctuary that it looked more like 
heaven than earth. Basil himself stood erect 
before the people, his body and eyes and soul 
motionless, as though nothing strange had taken 
place. His whole being was fastened to his God 
and the holy altar. The sacred ministers, who 
surrounded the pontiff, were in deep recollected-
ness and reverence. The emperor heard and saw 
all this. He had never before witnessed a spec-
tacle so imposing. He was overpowered. 

Jesus, the true king, had conquered. Valens 
was disarmed; his resolution of using violence 
against the holy bishop was gone. If heresy kept 
him from at once adoring the Word of God, he 
at least united his exterior worship with that 
which Basil's flock was paying to the Incarnate 



Epiphany 27 

God. When the Offertory came, he advanced 
towards the sanctuary, and presented his g i f ts 
to Christ in the person of his holy priest. 

Thus has the kingship of our new-born Savior 
been acknowledged by the great ones of this 
world. The Royal Psalmist has sung this proph-
ecy—the kings of the earth shall serve Him, and 
His enemies 'shall lick the ground under His 
feet (Ps. 71 :9 ,11) . 

Many great and holy monarchs have bent their 
knee before the Babe of Bethlehem and offered 
Him the homage of orthodox faith and devoted 
hearts. Theodosius, Charlemagne, Alfred the 
Great, Edward the Confessor, Stephen of Hun-
gary, the Emperor Henry II, Ferdinand of 
Castile, Louis IX of France, are some of the 
Kings who had a special devotion to the Feast 
of the Epiphany. Their desire was to go in 
company with the Magi to the feet of the Divine 
Infant, and offer Him their gifts. 

Practice during the time of Epiphany 

In the Middle Ages, the faithful used to pre-
sent on the Epiphany gold, frankincense, and 
myrrh to be blessed by the priest. These tokens 
of their devotedness to Jesus were kept as 
pledges of God's bleessing upon their houses and 
families. There was another custom which 
originated in the Ages of Faith. In honor of 
the Three Kings who came from the East to 
adore the Babe of Bethlehem, each family chose 
one of its members to be King. The choice was 
made in the following manner. The family kept 



28 Epiphany 

a feast, which was an allusion to the third of 
the Epiphany mysteries—the Feast of Cana in 
Galilee—a cake was served and he who took the 
piece which had a certain secret mark was pro-
claimed the king of the day. Two portions of 
the cake were reserved for the poor in whom 
honor was paid to the Infant Jesus and His 
Blessed Mother; for on this day of the triumph 
of Him, Who though king, was humble and poor, 
it was fitting that the poor should have a share 
in the general joy. The happiness of home was 
here, as in so many other instances, blended 
with the sacredness of religion. 

For at least three hundred years a puritanical 
zeal has decried these simple customs, wherein 
the seriousness of religion and the home enjoy-
ment of certain festivals were blended together. 
The traditions of Christian family rejoicing have 
been discarded under the pretexts of abuses, as 
though a recreation in which religion had no 
share and no influence were less open to in-
temperance and sin! Even though, as some have 
said, the above mentioned custom is but a mere 
imitation of a pagan feast (which it is not), we 
would answer that many of the old pagan cus-
toms have undergone a Christian transformation, 
and no one thinks of refusing, to accept them 
thus purified. All this mistaken zeal has pro-
duced the sad effect of divorcing the Church 
from family life and customs, or excluding every 
religious manifestation from our traditions, and 
of bringing about what is so pompously called 
(though the word is expressive enough) the 
secularization of society. 



Epiphany 29 

Epiphany then is the triumph of our Savior 
and King. His magnificence is manifested to us 
so brightly on this Feast. We should imitate 
the faith and obedience of the Magi; and let 
us adore with the holy Baptist the divine Lamb 
at the Jordan, over Whom the heavens open; 
and take our place at the mystic feast of Cana, 
where our King is present, thrice manifested, 
thrice glorified. In the last two mysteries, let 
us not lose sight of the Babe of Bethlehem; in 
the Babe of Bethlel^m let us not cease to recog-
nize the Great God, in Whom the Father was 
well pleased, and the Supreme Ruler and Creator 
of all things. 





L E N T 

History of Lent 

yETl HE F O R T Y days' fast which we call Lent 
^ ^ is the Church's preparation for Easter, 
m n and was instituted at the very commence-
EE&J ment of Christianity. Our Blessed Lord 
Himself sanctioned it by fasting forty days and 
forty nights in the desert; and though He would 
not impose it on the world by an express com-
mandment, yet He showed plainly enough, by 
His own example, that fasting, which God had 
so frequently ordered in the Old Law, was to be 
practiced also by the children of the New. 

The disciples of St. John the Baptist came one 
day to Jesus and said to Him: "Why do we and 
the Pharisees often fast, whereas Thy disciples 
do not f a s t ? " And Jesus said to them: "Can 
the wedding guests mourn as long as the Bride-
groom is with them? But the days will come 
when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from 
them, and then they will fas t" (Matt. 9: 14,15). 

Hence we find it mentioned, in the Acts of 
the Apostles, how the disciples of our Lord after 
the foundation of the Church applied themselves 
to fasting. In their epistles also they recom-
mended it to the faithful. Nor could it be other-
wise. Though the divine mysteries whereby our 
Savior wrought our redemption have been con-
summated, yet are we still sinners; and where 
there is sin, there must be expiation. 

The apostles, therefore, instituted at the very 
commencement of the Christian Church that the 
solemnity of Easter should be preceded by a uni-
versal fast. It was only natural that they should 



32 Lent 

have made this period of penance to consist of 
forty days, seeing our Divine Master had con-
secrated that number by His own fast. In the 
beginning there was no uniform way of observ-
ing this period of penance. 

The Orientals begin their Lent much earlier 
than the Latins, owing to their custom of never 
fasting on Saturdays. They are consequently 
obliged in order to make up the forty days to 
begin the Lenten fast some days before Ash 
Wednesday. The Latin Church as late as the 
sixth century kept only thirty-six days of fast, 
beginning with the Monday after the first Sun-
day of Lent. Sunday was never kept by the 
Church as a fast-day. Later on, however, the 
four days preceding the first Sunday of Lent 
were added to raise the number of fast-days to 
forty. 

Lent, then, is a time consecrated in an especial 
manner to penance ; and this penance is mainly 
practiced by fasting. Fasting is an abstinence 
which man voluntarily imposes upon himself as 
an expiation for sin, and which during Lent is 
practiced in obedience to the law of the Church. 
The fast of Lent is not more rigorous than that 
prescribed for the vigils of certain feasts and 
for the Ember Days. But it is kept up for forty 
successive days, with the single interruption of 
the intervening Sundays. 

The importance and advantages of fasting are 
evident from the frequent praises of this holy 
practice found in the Holy Scriptures of both 
the Old and New Testament. The traditions of 
every nation and people and religion in the world, 



Lent 33 

no matter how much soever it may have lost the 
purity of primitive traditions, reveal the con-
viction that man may appease God by subject-
ing his body to penance. The command given 
our first parents in Paradise was one of absti-
nence, namely, from the fruit of a certain tree. 
By their not exercising this virtue of abstinence 
they brought every kind of evil upon themselves 
and upon their children. Because man would 
not keep this easy law of abstinence in Paradise. 
God put a heavier law of privation and penance 
upon him. 

Anciently the Jews did not take the one full 
meal allowed them on fasting days until sunset, 
that is, evening. The Christian Church adopted 
the same custom. This practice did not suffer 
any relaxation until about the ninth century. 
From that time on it was gradually permitted 
that this full meal be taken about the middle of 
the afternoon. Later on the hour for this repast 
was moved up to midday. Then 'some refresh-
ment became necessary in the evening. This was 
allowed and called a collation. It has always 
been understood that this is never to become a 
second full meal. For many centuries, too, no 
flesh-meat or products of animals was allowed 
during Lent. This regulation has been aban-
doned with the exception of the prohibition of 
flesh-meat on certain days. Thus has the more 
severe observance of Lent in former times been 
tempered to meet requirements of our own day 
—for better or for worse. 

Lent, in all its long history, has already been 
a season during which all amusements and theat-



34 Lent 

rical entertainments were forbidden. For many 
centuries even the law-courts were closed. Hunt-
ing was prohibited during this holy season as 
being too exciting and noisy a sport to be in 
harmony with the sacredness of the time. The 
Church took advantage of Lent to forbid her 
children to make war during the whole time. 
Thus she succeeded in preventing much blood-
shed among many of the more warlike Christian 
peoples. 

The influence of this forty days' penance was 
greatly felt, too, by the individual. It renewed 
man's energies, gave him fresh vigor in battling 
with his animal instincts, and by the restraint 
it put upon sensuality, ennobled the soul. There 
was restraint everywhere; and the present dis-
cipline of the Church, which forbids the sol-
emnization of marriage during Lent, reminds 
Christians of that holy continency, which for 
many ages was observed during the whole forty 
days as a precept. 

Besides the Lent preparatory to the feast of 
Easter, the Greeks keep three others in the year: 
that which is called "of the apostles," which 
lasts from the octave of Pentecost to the feast 
of SS. Peter and Paul; that "of the Virgin 
Mary," which begins on the first of August and 
ends with the vigil of the Assumption; and 
lastly, the Lent of preparation for Christmas, 
which consists of forty days. The fasting and 
abstinence of these three Lents are not quite 
so severe as those observed during the great 
Lent. 



Lent 35 

The Mystery of Lent 

We may be sure that a season so sacred as 
this of Lent is rich in mysteries. The Church 
has made it a time of recollection and penance, 
in preparation for the greatest of all her feasts. 
She would, therefore, bring into it everything 
that could excite the faith of her children and 
encourage them to go through the arduous work 
of atonement for their sins. 

The number " for ty" is a number, as St. 
Jerome observes, which denotes punishment and 
affliction. There are the forty days and forty 
nights of the deluge sent by God in His anger, 
when He repented that He had made man, and 
destroyed the whole human race with the excep-
tion of the one family. The Hebrew people, in 
punishment for their ingratitude, wandered forty 
years in the desert, before they were permitted 
to enter the promised land. God commanded the 
prophet Ezechiel to lie forty days on his right 
side, as a figure of the siege which was to bring 
destruction on Jerusalem. 

There are two persons in the Old Testament 
who represent the two manifestations of God: 
Moses, who typifies the L a w ; and Elias, who is 
the figure of the Prophets. Both of these are 
permitted to approach God: the first on Sinai, 
the second on Horeb; but both of them have to 
prepare for the great favor by an expiatory fast 
of forty days. 

It is not, then, surprising to find our Lord 
Himself at the beginning of His public life 
spending forty days in fasting. The institution 



36 Lent 

of Lent is thus brought before us with every-
thing that can impress the mind with its solemn 
character, and with its power of appeasing God 
and purifying our souls. We should, therefore, 
look beyond the little world which surrounds us, 
and see how the whole Christian universe is at 
this very time offering this forty days' penance 
as a sacrifice of propitiation to the offended 
majesty of God; we hope that, as in the case 
of the Ninivites, He will mercifully accept this 
year's offering of our atonement, and pardon us 
our sins. 

The Church considers her children during 
Lent as an immense army, fighting day and night 
against their spiritual enemies. She calls Lent a 
Christian warfare. In order that we may have 
newness of spiritual life we must conquer our 
three enemies: the devil, the flesh, and the 
world. We are fellow combatants with Jesus, 
for He, too, submits to the triple temptation 
suggested to him by Satan in person. There-
fore, we must have on our armor and watch 
unceasingly. And whereas it is of the utmost 
importance that our hearts be spirited and brave, 
the Church puts into our mouth certain prayers, 
and in particular the ninetieth psalm, that they 
might inspire us with hope of victory and con-
fidence in God's help. But the Church does not 
only wish to animate us to the contest with our 
enemies. She would also have our minds en-
grossed with thoughts of deepest import. For 
this end she puts before us three great subjects, 
which she will gradually unfold to us between 
now and the great Easter solemnity. 



Lent 37 

First there is the conspiracy of the Jews 
against our Redeemer. It will be brought before 
us in its whole history, from its first formation 
to its final consummation on Good Friday, when 
we behold the Son of God hanging on the cross. 
Each day some passages of the Gospel, revealing 
the infamous workings of the Synagogue, will 
be presented to us that we may be able to follow 
the plot, meditate upon it, and be inflamed with 
love for the august Victim. 

The second of the subjects offered to us for 
our instruction is the feast of Easter as the day 
of the new birth of our catechumens; in the early 
ages of the Church, Lent was the immediate 
and solemn preparation given to the candidates 
for baptism. The holy liturgy of the season 
retains much of the instruction she used to give 
to the catechumens. This preparation was called 
their initiation. 

Thirdly we must remember how formerly the 
public penitents, who had been separated on Ash 
Wednesday from the assembly of the faithful, 
were the object of the Church's maternal solici-
tude during the whole forty days of Lent, and 
were to be admitted to reconciliation on Maun-
day Thursday, if their repentance were such as 
to merit this public forgiveness. We shall have 
the admirable course of instructions, which were 
originally designed for those penitents and which 
the liturgy still retains for our sake. 

In order to keep up the character of mourn-
fulness and austerity which is so well suited to 
Lent, the Church has very few feasts in this 
portion of the ecclesiastical year, inasmuch as 



38 Lent 

there is always joy where there is even a spirit-
ual feast. The Western Church is less strict 
than the Eastern Church on this point, because 
the Christians of the West have never looked 
upon the celebration of a feast as incompatible 
with fasting. The Orientals, on the contrary,, 
believe that the two are irreconcilable, and as a 
consequence of this principle, never observe Sat-
urday as a day of fast, because they always keep 
it a solemnity, though they make Holy Saturday 
an exception and fast upon it. For the same 
reason they do not fast on the Annunciation, the 
only feast celebrated by the Eastern Church 
during Lent. 

This idea gave rise, in or about the seventh 
century, to a custom which is peculiar to the 
Greek Church. It is called the Mass of the Pre-
sanctified, that is to say, consecrated in a pre-
vious sacrifice. On each Sunday of Lent, the 
priest consecrates six hosts, one of which he 
receives in that Mass; but the remaining five 
are reserved for a simple Communion, which 
is made on each of the five following days, with-
out the Holy Sacrifice being offered. The Latin 
Church practices this rite only once in the year, 
that is, on Good Friday. 

The Greeks felt that the celebration of the 
Holy Sacrifice was incompatible with fasting, in 
that the Communion of the Body and Blood of 
our Lord was supposed to break the Lenten fast. 
This gave rise to the Mass of the Presanctified. 
The Greeks celebrate this rite in the evening 
after Vespers, and the priest alone communicates, 
as is done now in the Roman liturgy on Good 



Lent 39 

Friday. But for many centuries they have made 
an exception for the Annunciation; they inter-
rupt the Lenten fast on this feast, they celebrate 
Mass, and the faithful are allowed to receive 
Holy Communion. 

In the celebration of the liturgy of Lent the 
Church suspends those rites which are in a 
special way expressions of joy. Thus the AUe-
luia, Gloria in Excelsis, and Te Deum are laid 
aside. The sacred ministers lay aside all but 
violet vestments. A penitential attitude of 
prayer, namely kneeling, is adopted more often. 
Toward the end of Lent the crucifixes and holy 
images are covered with a violet cloth to excite 
in the faithful a livelier sense of penance. 

Practice During Lent 

Because we have sinned we must be ready to 
do penance. Sin offends the justice and holiness 
of God, and punishment awaits the impenitent 
soul. We bid farewell, then, to the vain joys and 
baubles of the world. Our pride is humbled by 
the prophecy, that these bodies will soon be like 
the ashes that wrote the memento of death upon 
our foreheads. 

During the long forty days of penance we shall 
take courage in the remembrance of the company 
of Jesus. He, like us, wears the semblance of a 
sinner, trembling and humbling Himself before 
the sovereign Majesty of His Father whom we 
have offended, and to whom He now offers Him-
self as the victim of propitiation. He loves us 
with a brother's love, and seeing that the season 



40 Lent 

for doing penance has begun, He comes to cheer 
us on by His presence and His own example. 

Our Savior goes on before us on the holy path 
of Lent. During His forty days of fasting in the 
desert, He has borne all the fatigues and hard-
ships of Lent. This He has done that we, when 
called upon to tread the narrow way of our lenten 
penance, might have His example wherewith to 
silence the excuses, the sophisms, and repug-
nances of self-love and pride. The lesson of the 
Savior's fast in the desert is too plainly given 
not to be understood. The law of doing penance 
for sin is too clearly shown there, and we cannot 
plead ignorance. Let us honestly accept the 
teaching and practise it. Jesus leaves the desert, 
where He has spent the forty days, and begins 
His preaching with these words: "Repent, for 
the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt. 4:17). 
Let us not harden our hearts to this invitation, 
lest there be fulfilled in us the terrible threat 
contained in those other words of our Redeemer: 
"Unless you repent, you will all perish" (Luke 
13:3). 

Now penance consists in contrition of the soul 
and mortification of the body; these two parts 
are essential to it. The soul has willed the sin; 
the body has frequently co-operated in its com-
mission. Moreover, man is composed of both 
body and soul; both, then, should pay homage 
to their Creator. The body is to share with the 
soul either the delights of heaven or the tor-
ments of hell. There cannot, therefore, be any 
thorough Christian life, or any earnest penance, 



Lent 41 

where the body does not take part in both with 
the soul. 

It is the soul which gives reality to penance. 
It must be resolved to give up every sin; it 
must heartily grieve over those it has committed; 
it must hate sin; it must shun the occasions of 
sin. The Holy Scripture calls this inward dis-
position of the soul, conversion. While this con-
version of heart is necessary and essential to the 
Lenten exercises, it is not sufficient without the 
mortification of the body. The Church, therefore, 
tells us that the repentance of the heart will not 
be accepted by God unless it be accompanied by 
fasting and abstinence. 

That Christian is the subject of an illusion 
who forgets his past sins, even though they be 
confessed, and fails to do penance for them. 
Such, being satisfied with themselves, think that 
the life they have led since that time is a suf-
ficient proof of their solid piety. Why should 
any one speak to them of the justice of God and 
mortification? Accordingly, as soon as Lent ap-
proaches, they must be dispensed from fasting. 
"Abstinence is an inconvenience to them. Fasting 
has a bad effect on their health; it is such a 
change from their ordinary way of living. Be-
sides, there are so many people who are better 
than themselves, and yet who never fast or ab-
stain. To these persons, after dispensing them-
selves, it never occurs to supply other penitential 
exercises for the penances prescribed by the 
Church. They are interested only in relieving 
themselves of all inconvenience. Such as these 
gradually and unsuspectingly lose the Christian 



42 Lent 

spirit. They force the Church to relax her dis-
cipline. They never think of judging their lives 
by the lives of Jesus and His saints, but only 
by their own wishes and whims. 

Such is the indifference wherewith this non-
observance of Lent is treated, that it never ex-
cites the slightest trouble or remorse of con-
science. Here in life they have all kinds of ways 
to excuse themselves. But what will they say on 
the day of judgment? The very persons, who 
will go through incomparably greater fatigues 
for the sake of temporal gain or worldly enjoy-
ment, will not lift a finger to keep the Lenten 
fast, nay, even its spirit. They complain of 
feeling the fast and observance of Lent. But do 
they forget that the very aim of fasting and 
abstinence is to make their bodies of sin suffer 
and feel? The observance of Lent is an essen-
tial mark of Catholicity. 

Those to whom a dispensation from fasting is 
really necessary, and to whom it is granted, 
should endeavor to supply by other works of 
penance those which their health does not allow 
them to observe. Such ought rather to be grieved 
than relieved, because they cannot fast, for they 
miss the opportunity of making satisfaction for 
their many sins. They should pray that God may 
accept the little penances they actually under-
take, in order to share in the merits of their 
fellow-Christians. 

The children of the Church then should 
courageously observe the lenten practices of pen-
ance. Peace of conscience is essential to Chris-
tian life; and yet it is promised to none but 



Lent 43 

truly penitent souls. Lost innocence is to be 
regained by the humble confession of sin; but 
let the faithful be on their guard against the 
dangerous error which would persuade them that 
they have nothing to do when once pardoned: 
"Be not without fear about sin forgiven!" 
(Ecclus. 5:5). Our confdence of our having 
been forgiven should be in proportion to the 
change of conversion of our heart; the greater 
our present detestation of our past sins and the 
more earnest our desire to do penance for them 
for the rest of our lives, the better founded is 
our confidence that they have been pardoned. 
"Man knoweth not whether he be worthy of love 
or hatred" (Ecclese. 9:1). But he that keeps up 
within him the spirit of penance has every 
reason to hope that God loves him. 

"Hie courageous observance of the Church's 
precept of fasting and abstaining during Lent 
must be accompanied by those two other emi-
nently good works to which God so frequently 
urges us in the Scripture, namely, prayer and 
almsdeeds. Just as under the term "fasting" 
the Church includes all kinds of mortification, so 
under the word "prayer" she includes all those 
exercises of piety whereby the soul holds inter-
course with her God. More frequent attendance 
at the services of the Church, assisting daily at 
Mass, spiritual reading, meditation upon the 
eternal truths and the Passion of Christ, hearing 
sermons, and above all, approaching the Sacra-
ments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist—these 
are the chief means whereby the faithful should 
to the dignity of acts of religion, which have God 



44 Lent 

for their direct object, and have the power of 
appeasing His divine justice. The Archangel 
offer to God the homage of prayer during this 
holy season. 

Almsgiving comprises all the works of mercy 
to our neighbor. They are the necessary com-
plement of fasting and prayer during Lent. God 
has made it a law, to which He has graciously 
bound Himself, that charity shown towards our 
fellow-creatures shall be rewarded as though it 
were done to Himself. This shows us vividly the 
reality and sacredness of the tie which He would 
have to exist between all men. Hence it is that 
almsdeeds, done with this intention, are not 
merely acts of human kindness, but are raised 
Raphael said to Tobias when he was on the point 
of taking leave of his holy family: "Prayer is 
good with fasting and alms, more than to lay up 
treasures of gold, for alms delivereth from death, 
and the same is that which purgeth away sins, 
and maketh to find mercy and life everlasting" 
(Tob. 12:8,9). 

There is one means more whereby we are to 
secure to ourselves the great graces of Lent; it 
is the spirit of retirement and separation from 
the world. Our life during Lent should be dif-
ferent. The Christian ought during Lent to for-
bid himself all the vain amusements, entertain-
ments, and parties of the world he lives in. The 
world has thrown off all external indications of 
mourning and penance. It goes on just the same 
during Lent as at other times. It is entirely 
secularized from religion and God. While this 
may make it more difficult for the Christian to 



Lent 45 

detach himself from its ways during Lent, his 
obligation to appease God's justice will prompt 
him to take a very definite stand against all 
forms of vain amusements. 

Thus does the Church expect us to observe the 
forty days of preparation for the great feast of 
Easter. The faithful member of the Church will 
enter wholeheartedly into this season with its 
burden of penance and mortification. But like 
the true lover of Christ, Who goes before him 
leading the way, he takes up his cross and dieS 
with Christ to the old man with his sins and 
concupiscences that he may rise with Christ on 
Easter to a new life. Remembering his sins, 
he will not falsely spare himself, that he may go 
forward to his judgment with greater security 
and meet his Judge, Whom he did not fail to 
accompany along the bitter way of the cross. 

The wages of tin it death. 
By the grace of Ood we may gain eternal life. 



Christ, the mystical Phoenix, consumed by the flame of love 
dies upon the cross only to rise to a new life. "Have con-
fidence! I have overcome the world V* 



^PASCHAL TIME 

History of Paschal Time 

HE N A M E of Paschal Time is given to 
^ ^ the period between Easter Sunday and the 

Saturday following Pentecost Sunday. It 
is the most sacred portion of the liturgical 

year, and the one towards which the whole cycle 
converges. We shall easily understand how this 
is, if we reflect upon the greatness of Easter, 
which is called the feast of feasts, and the sol-
emnity of solemnities, in the same manner as 
the most sacred part of the temple was called 
the Holy of holies. It is on this day that the 
mission of the Word Incarnate attains the ob-
ject towards which it has hitherto been tending, 
namely, man is raised up from his fall and 
regains what he had lost by Adam's sin. 

Christmas gives us a Man-God; Good Friday 
presents Him as the victim of sin, shedding 
His precious Blood for us; while Easter shows 
Jesus as a conqueror who destroys death, the 
child of sin, and who proclaims the life which 
He has purchased for us. The humiliation of his 
swaddling bands, the sufferings of His agony 
and cross are all passed; all is now glory—glory 
for Himself, and glory also for us. On Easter 
day God regains by the resurrection of the God-
Man His creation such as He made it at the 
beginning. Jesus has not risen to eternal life 
alone; the whole human race also has risen to 
immortality together with Him. 

The anniversary of this resurrection is, there-
fore, the great day of joy to which the whole 



48 Paschal Time 

year looks forward in expectation. Because it 
is the holiest of all days we were well prepared 
for it by the bodily mortification and compunc-
tion of heart of Lent. Now the Easter sun has 
risen upon us and fills our hearts with joy. 
Jesus, our Light, has risen from the darkness 
of the tomb. It was on the first day of the 
week that God created light. This day received 
a second consecration by the resurrection 01 
Jesus on it, so that from that time forward 
Sunday was to be the Lord's Day instead of 
Saturday. The early Church also broke awa> 
from the date of the Jewish Pasch which could 
be celebrated on any day of the week, and de-
cided that Easter, the Christian Pasch, should 
always be celebrated on Sunday. 

In deference to the great solemnity of Easter, 
decrees were passed by the early Christian em-
perors which forbade all law proceedings from 
Palm Sunday to White Sunday. St. Augustine, 
in a sermon he preached on the octave of Easter, 
exhorts the faithful to extend to the whole year 
this suspension of lawsuits, disputes, and enmi-
ties, which the civil law forbade during these 
fifteen days. 

The Church imposes upon her children the 
obligation of receiving Holy Communion at 
Easter. In early ages Communion was frequent, 
even daily. By degrees the fervor of the faithful 
grew cold towards this august mystery. In the 
sixth century the faithful were required to re-
ceive Holy Communion at least at Christmas, 
Easter, and Pentecost. In the thirteenth century 
the Church, seeing the ever-growing indiiference 



49 Paschal Time 

of her children, decreed with regret that Chris-
tians should be strictly bound to Holy Commun-
ion only once a year, and that at Easter time. 

The fifty days between Easter and Pentecost 
have ever been considered by the Church as most 
holy. The first week, which is more expressly 
devoted to celebrating Our Lord's Resurrection, 
is kept as one continued feast ; but the remain-
der of the fifty days is also marked with special 
honors. To say nothing of the joy which is the 
characteristic of this period of the year, and of 
which the Alleluia is the expression, Christian 
tradition has assigned to Eastertide two prac-
tices, which distinguish it from every other 
season. The first is that fasting is not pre-
scribed during the entire interval. It is an ex-
tension of the ancient precept of never fasting 
on a Sunday, and the whole of Eastertide is con-
sidered as one long Sunday. This practice, which 
would seem to have come down from the time of 
the Apostles, was accepted by the Religious 
Rules of both East and West, even by the 
severest. The second consists in not kneeling 
at the Divine Office from Easter to Peentecost. 
Inasmuch as the faithful seldom assist at the 
canonical hours, this practice is little known to 
them. 

The Mystery of Paschal Time 

Of all the seasons of the liturgical year 
Eastertide is by far the richest in mystery. One 
might even say that Easter is the summit of the 
Mystery of the sacred liturgy. The Christian 



50 Paschal Time 

who is happy enough to enter with his whole 
mind and heart into the knowledge and love of 
the Paschal Mystery has reached the very center 
of the supernatural life. Hence it is that the 
Church uses every effort in order to effect this. 
What she has hitherto done was all intended as 
a preparation for Easter. The holy longings of 
Advent, the sweet joys of Christmas, the severe 
truths of Septuagésima, the contrition and pen-
ance of Lent, the heart-rending sight of the 
Passion—all were given us as preliminaries, as 
paths, to the substance and glorious Pasch, 
which is now ours. 

God prepared for the Christian Easter and 
Pentecost by those of the Jewish law—a thou-
sand five hundred years of typical beauty pre-
figured the reality. During the Paschal season, 
then, we have brought before us the two great 
manifestations of God's goodness towards man-
kind, the Pasch of Israel and the Christian 
Pasch, the Pentecost of Sinai and the Pente-
cost of the Church. The figures of the Old Law 
were fulfilled in the realities of the new Easter 
and Pentecost, and the twilight of the Mosaic 
Law made way for the full daylight of the 
Gospel. 

Eternity in heaven is the true Pasch. Hence, 
our Pasch here on earth is the feast of feasts, 
the solemnity of solemnities. The human race 
was dead; it was the victim of that sentence 
whereby it was condemned to lie, mere dust, in 
the tomb; the gates of life were shut against 
it. But the Son of God rises from His grave 
and takes possession of eternal life. Since, aa 



51 Paschal Time 

St. Paul says, "He is the first-born from the 
dead," (Coloss. 1:18), that is, we shall rise as 
Christ has risen, the Church would have us 
consider ourselves as having already risen with 
Jesus and as having already taken possession of 
eternal life. The holy Fathers bid us look on 
these fifty days of Easter as the image of our 
eternal happiness. They are days devoted ex-
clusively to joy; every sort of sadness is for-
bidden; and the Church cannot speak to her 
divine Spouse without the glorious cry of heav-
en, the Alleluia. 

Our Lord chose Sunday for His resurrection. 
It was on this favored day of the week that He 
had, four thousand years previously, created 
light. By selecting it now for the commencement 
of the new life which He graciously imparts to 
man, He would show us that Easter is the re-
newal of the entire creation. Not only is the 
anniversary of His glorious resurrection to be 
henceforth the greatest of days, but every Sun-
day throughout the year is to be a sort of Easter, 
a holy and sacred day. Now that she is illumined 
with the brightness of the resurrection, she de-
votes to the contemplation of His work, the first 
day of the week. It is the day of light, for on 
it He called forth material light (which was the 
first manifestation of life upon chaos) and on the 
same, He that is the "Brightness of his glory" 
(Heb. 1:3) and the "Light of the world" (John 
8:12) rose from the darkness of the tomb. 

Let, then, the week with its Sabbath pass by; 
what we Christians want is the eighth day, the 
day that is beyond the measure of time, the day 



52 Paschal Time 

of eternity, the day whose light is not intermit-
tent or partial, but endless and unlimited. Thus 
speak the holy Fathers when explaining the sub-
stitution of the Sunday for the Saturday. The 
ancient Sabbath was a memorial of the visible 
creation. But our Sabbath has been transferred 
from the seventh to the eighth day, and the 
eighth is the first. And rightly was the seventh 
changed into the eighth, because we Christians 
put our joy in a better work than the creation of 
the world. This is no less than the salvation of 
the world. 

The mystery of the seventh followed by an 
eighth day, as the holy one, is again brought 
before us by the number of weeks which form 
Eastertide. These weeks are seven; they form 
a week of weeks, and their morrow is again a 
Sunday, the glorious feast of Pentecost. These 
mysterious numbers—which God Himself fixed 
when He instituted the first Pentecost after the 
first Pasch—were adopted by the Apostles when 
they regulated the Christian Easter, as we 
learn from all the ancient interpreters of the 
mysteries of the holy liturgy. 

The whole season of Easter, then, is marked 
with the mystery expressed by each Sunday of 
the year. Sunday is to us the great day of 
our week, because it is beautified with the 
splendor of our Lord's resurrection, of which 
the creation of material light was but a type. 
The Christian Paschal Time was prefigured in 
the Old Law. Their Pentecost fell on the fiftieth 
day after the Pasch; it was the morrow of the 
seven weeks. Another figure of our Eastertide 



53 Paschal Time 

was the year of Jubilee, which God bade Moses 
to prescribe to His people. Each fiftieth year 
the houses and lands that had been alienated dur-
ing the preceding forty-nine years returned to 
their original owners; and those Israelites who 
had been compelled by poverty to sell themselves 
as slaves recovered their liberty. This year, 
which was properly called the sabbatical year, 
was the sequel of the preceding seven weeks of 
years, and was thus the image of our eighth 
day, whereon the Son of Mary, by His Resur-
rection, redeemed us from the slavery of the 
tomb and restored us to the inheritance of our 
immortality. 

The rites peculiar to Eastertide are two: the 
unceasing repetition of the Alleluia, and the color 
of the vestments used for its two great solemni-
ties: white for the first, Easter; and red for 
the second, Pentecost. White is appropriate to 
the resurrection, for it is the mystery of eternal 
light, which knows neither spot nor shadow; it 
is the mystery that produces in a faithful soul 
the sentiment of purity and joy. Pentecost, 
which gives us the Holy Spirit, the "consuming 
fire" (Heb. 12:29), is symbolized by the red 
vestments, which express the mystery of the 
divine Paraclete coming down in the form of 
fiery tongues upon them that were assembled in 
the Cenacle. 

Practice During Paschal Time 

The practice for this holy season mainly con-
sists in the spiritual joy which it should produce 



54 Paschal Time 

in every soul that is risen with Jesus. This 
joy is a foretaste of eternal happiness, and the 
Christian ought to consider it a duty to keep it 
up within him by ardently seeking after that 
life which is in our divine Head, and by care-
fully shunning sin which causes death. During 
the last nine weeks we have mourned for our 
sins and done penance for them; we have fol-
lowed "Jesus to Calvary; but now our Holy 
Mother the Church is urgent in bidding us, re-
joice. She herself has laid aside all sorrow. The 
voice of her weeping is changed into the song 
of a delighted Spouse. 

Among the children of the Church there are 
two classes, the strong and spiritual minded and 
the weak and carnal minded. In order that she 
might impart the Paschal joy to all her children, 
the Church has taken their weakness into ac-
count. While she requires a strict fast of forty 
days in preparation for the feast of the resur-
rection, she holds out at the same time the bright 
promise of the gladness, light, life, joy, and 
peace of Easter when the restraint of the Lenten 
mortification comes to an end. Thus does she 
produce in those of her children who have no 
elevation of soul sentiments in harmony with 
the great feast, such as the most perfect feel. 
By this means all, both fervent and tepid, unite 
their voices in one same hymn of praise to the 
risen Lord. 

The reason why many people are not much 
affected by Easter lies in this that a love of ease 
and a false conscience lead so many Christians 
to treat the law of Lent with as much indiffer-



55 Paschal Time 

ence as if there were no such law existing. 
Hence, Easter comes upon them as a feast—it 
may be as a great feast—but that is all; they 
experience little of that thrilling joy which fills 
the heart of the Church during this season, and 
which she evinces in everything she does. And 
if this be their case even on the glorious day 
itself, how can it be expected that they should 
keep up, for the whole fifty days, the spirit of 
gladness which is the very essence of Easter? 
They have not observed the fast or the absti-
nence of Lent. Even the mitigated form in which 
the Church now presents them to her children, 
in consideration of their weakness, wa? too 
severe for them. They sought, or took, a total 
dispensation from this law of Lenten mortifica-
tion, and without regret or remorse. Easter 
comes with its Alieluia, and it finds no response 
in their soul. How could it? Penance has not 
done its work of purification; it has not spirit-
ualized them; how then could they follow their 
risen Jesus, whose life is henceforth more of 
heaven than of earth? 

To her faithful children the Church holds out 
her Easter joy, from which, now, nothing can 
distract them. "Can the wedding guests mourn, 
as long as the Bridegroom is with them?" (Matt. 
9:15). Jesus is to be with us for forty days; 
He is to suffer no more and die no more; let 
our feelings be in keeping with His now endless 
glory and bliss. True, He is to leave us, He is 
to ascend to the right hand of His Father, but 
He will not leave us orphans. He will send us 
the Divine Comforter, who will abide with us 



56 Easter 

forever (John 14:16-18). The consoling words 
just quoted above must be our Eastertide text. 
They are the key to the whole liturgy of this 
holy season. We must have them before us, and 
we shall find by experience that the joy of 
Eastertide is as salutary as the contrition and 
penance of Lent. 

Easter 

This is the day which the Lord hath made; 
let us be glad and rejoice therein! This is 
the glad day on which Jesus rose triumphant 
from the tomb. A t its dawn Mary, the 
Mother of Sorrows, is waiting in hope and 
patience for the blissful moment of her Son's 
return from the grave and death. Magdalen and 
the other holy women are preparing to start 
for the sepulchre to anoint the body of Jesus. 
In limbo the soul of our crucified Lord is about to 
give the glad word of departure to the myriads 
of long-imprisoned holy souls who surround Him 
in adoring love. Death is still holding silent 
sway over the sepulchre, where rests the body 
of Jesus. Never has Death held in his grasp a 
prey so noble as this that now lies in the tomb 
near Calvary; but, too, never has Death re-
ceived such a defeat as the one about to take 
place. The Victim of Calvary is to conquer him 
forever, for this is He of whom it is written in 
the prophecy: " 0 Death! I will be thy death!" 
(Osee 13:14) . 

Divine Justice could not allow the body that 
was united to the Word of God to see corruption. 
So neither could it permit the dominion of death 



Easter 57 

to be long over such a Victim. The sign of Jonas 
the prophet is about to be given to the world. 
Three days in the tomb—the afternoon and 
night of Friday, the whole of Saturday, and a 
few hours of the Sunday—were enough to satis-
f y divine justice, enough to certify the death of 
the Crucified, enough to complete the martyrdom 
of the Queen of Sorrows. 

As the dawn of Sunday struggles with the 
gloom of night, the soul of Jesus darts from the 
prison of limbo, followed by the whole multitude 
of the holy souls that are around Him. It 
reaches and enters the sepulchre, where it re-
unites itself with its body. The sacred body re-
turns to life, raises itself up and throws aside 
the winding-sheet, the spices, and the bands. The 
bruises have disappeared, the blood has been 
brought back to the veins, and from those limbs 
that had been torn by the scourging, from that 
head that had been mangled by the thorns, from 
those hands and feet that had been pierced with 
nails, there darts forth a dazzling light that 
fills the'tomb. The holy angels had clustered 
round the stable and adored the Babe of Beth-
lehem; they are now around the sepulchre 
adoring the conqueror of death. 

Quicker than a ray of light Jesus passed 
through the stone that closed the entrance to the 
tomb. Unmoved was the stone and untouched 
the seal of Pilate upon it, and yet Jesus was 
free. Thus, as the Holy Fathers teach us, was 
it at His birth. He appeared to the gaze of Mary 
without having offered the slightest violence to 
her maternal womb. The birth and the resurrec-



58 Easter 

tion bear on them the seal of resemblance: in 
the first, it is a Virgin Mother; in the last, it is 
a sealed tomb giving forth its captive God. 

As at the death of Jesus, so at His resurrec-
tion an earthquake shakes the foundations of the 
world. The stone is rolled back by an angel. 
His presence struck the guards with fear and 
terror. Recovering from their shock they rush 
to the city and relate what they have seen. 

Jesus, however, not yet seen by mortal eye, 
speeds to His holy Mother. She stood near Him 
to the last. She had united the sacrifice of her 
mother's heart with that He made upon the 
cross. It is just, therefore, that she should be 
the first to partake of the joy of His resurrec-
tion. The gospel does not speak of it. The reason 
why it mentions other appearances of Jesus and 
not this one is that the former were intended as 
proofs of the resurrection, while this visit to 
His Mother was made by Jesus because of the 
tender love of His sacred heart for her. Both 
nature and grace required that this first visit 
should be to such a mother, and Christian hearts 
dwell with delight on the meditation of the 
mystery. What must have been the rapture of 
the soul of Mary during the visit of her Divine 
Son? Certainly the joy of it must have made 
her forget all the sorrow she had endured and 
bathed her soul in consolation. 

After this first manifestation of Jesus to His 
holy mother, He leaves her to show Himself to 
others, that so the glory of His resurrection may 
be made known to the world. His next mani-
festation is again to a woman, Mary Magdalen, 



Easter 59 

to whom much had been forgiven because she 
had loved much. Neither death nor the tomb 
has shaken her faith in Jesus or her love for 
Him. She is one of the holy women who go, 
before the sun is risen, to embalm the body of 
Jesus. After their disappointment at the tomb 
in not finding the body of Jesus and when they 
are taught by the angels to believe in the resur-
rection of Jesus, they are commissioned to "go, 
tell His disciples and Peter, that He goes before 
you into Qalilee" (Mark 16:7). 

The holy women faithfully and joyfully deliver 
their message, but it is all set down as womanish 
excitement. Magdalen hastens once more to the 
tomb of her dear Master. A soul like hers, ever 
earnest, and now tormented with anxiety, cannot 
endure to rest. Where is the body of Jesus? 
Suddenly she sees a man standing before her, 
but she does not recognize him. Her love dis-
tracts her, for it is not guided by faith. Her 
desire to find Him as she thinks Him to be, that 
is, dead, blinds her from seeing Him as He really 
is, living and near her. A single word from Him, 
however, is enough to make her understand. 
Jesus says to her in the tone of voice she so 
well understands: "Mary." "Master," exclaims 
the delighted and humble Magdalen. All is now 
clear; she believes. 

Jesus does not allow a demonstration of her 
affection by allowing her to kiss His sacred feet 
as on the happy day when she received her 
pardon in the house of the pharisee. Instead, He 
sends her, the first witness of His resurrection, 
to publish the great mystery -to His apostles. 



60 Easter 

She becomes, as the Fathers express it, the 
Apostle of the very apostles. 

The second apparition of Jesus, then, is to 
Mary Magdalen; it is the first in testimony of 
His resurrection, for the one to His Blessed 
Mother was for another reason. We see in the 
apparition to Magdalen the infinite goodness of 
the Redeemer, Who, before seeking to fix the 
faith of His resurrection in them that are to 
preach it to all nations, deigns to recompense 
the love of this woman, who followed Him even 
to the cross, was faithful to Him after His death, 
and loved Him most, because most forgiven. By 
thus showing Himself to Magdalen, Jesus teaches 
us that He is more anxious to satisfy the love 
He bears His faithful creature than to provide 
for His own glory. 

The third apparition of Jesus is again td 
women, to Salome and Mary, the mother of 
James, the companions of Magdalen in the early 
morning. They are going back to the city of 
Jerusalem when Jesus meets and greets them. 
Overcome with joy, they fall down and adore 
Him and kiss His sacred feet. These two favored 
women are permitted to do what was denied the 
more favored and fervent Magdalen. Before the 
day is over, Jesus will show Himself to them 
whom He has chosen as the heralds of His glory. 
But He first wishes to honor these generous 
women who, braving every danger, and triumph-
ing over the weakness of their sex, were more 
faithful to Him in His passion than the men 
He had so highly honored as to make them 
His Apostles. 



Easter 61 

For His first worshippers at Bethlehem, Jesus 
chose a few simple-minded shepherds, whose 
power to herald the great event was confined to 
their own village. And yet the birthday of this 
little Child is now the era of every civilized 
nation. For the first witnesses of His resurrec-
tion, He chose three weak women, and yet the 
whole earth now celebrates the anniversary of 
His resurrection. God's thoughts are not our 
thoughts, and His ways not our ways. He does 
not need the apparently great ones of this world 
to advance His cause, but He uses the humble 
and lowly in order that proud man may learn to 
know the power of God and be constrained to 
exclaim with Moses at the crossing of the Red 
Sea: "Who, 0 Lord, is like unto Thee among 
the strong?" (Exod. 15:1) . 

The day is fast advancing and Jesus has not 
yet shown Himself to His disciples. They have 
heard of His resurrection through the holy 
women, but being disappointed in their Master, 
they will not believe. Although Jesus has often 
spoken of His resurrection to them, this does 
not recur to their minds. They are still carnal-
minded men. To these men, however, who are to 
preach His divinity to the farthest ends of the 
world, Jesus must now show Himself. He must 
now provide for His own honor and glory. But 
again He sets that aside to show the generosity 
of His heart. Peter, the head of the apostolic 
college, had denied Him. Touched by the look of 
reproach and pardon of his Master, he had done 
nothing since then, save shed tears. Jesus would 
how console the humble penitent, tell him with 



62 Easter 

His own lips that He has pardoned him, and 
confirm him by this mark of His divine predilec-
tion in his high office. Jesus appears suddenly 
before him, the conqueror, the glorious Messias. 
Yet, what most affects the apostle is the unspeak-
able goodness of his Lord who comes to console 
him. Who shall describe this interview between 
the penitent Peter and his offended but forgiving 
Master? What joy must have filled the apostle's 
heart? This was the fourth of Jesus's mani-
festations. 

The Sunday is slowly drawing to its end. Still 
Jesus does not make His apostles the witnesses 
of His next manifestation. He would first con-
sole two hearts that are grieving on His account, 
though their grief comes from their want of 
faith. These are the two disciples who went to 
Emmaus on that first Easter Day. So absorbed 
are they in their sorrow that they do not recog-
nize Jesus as He overtakes and walks with them. 
Their hearts burn to hear Him talk £hd they 
take Him into their house at Emmaus. But as 
yet they do not recognize Him. We are like these 
disciples when we allow ourselves to be influenced 
by human thoughts and feelings. Jesus is near 
us, He speaks to us, He instructs us, He con-
soles us; and yet, oftentimes, it is long before 
we recognize Him. 

At length they recognize Him in the breaking 
of bread. They would throw themselves at His 
feet, but He is gone, leaving them mute with 
surprise, and yet transported with exceeding joy. 
It is the fifth apparition. The two disciples 
cannot wait. They hurry back to Jerusalem to 



Easter 63 

inform the rest of their grand experience. The 
apostles have just been informed by Peter that 
he had seen Jesus. Yes, they are convinced now 
that the Lord is risen. 

But how fearful they are. They are all to-
gether in one house behind bolted doors. The 
people, believing the story of grave-robbing as 
told by the soldiers, might attempt to use vio-
lence against them. As the ten of them, for 
Thomas had gone into the city under cover of 
darkness, were discussing the great events of 
this day, lo! Jesus stands before them. That 
well-known voice and figure and face!—yes, it is 
Jesus! "Peace be to you." But they are afraid. 
They firmly believe Jesus to be risen, but might 
not this be a phantom? Therefore Jesus invites 
them to touch Him, and He eats in their pres-
ence. This loving familiarity of their Master 
makes them weep with joy, and when Thomas 
returns to them, they express their delight in 
these simple words: "We have seen the Lord" 
(John 20:25). It is the sixth apparition of Jesus 
on the day of His resurrection. Thus did Jesus 
give abundant proof of His victory over death. 
He appeared six times on that first glorious 
Easter Day to content His own love and confirm 
our faith. Lord Jesus, may we so live as to merit 
to enjoy the eternal Easter with Thee in heaven. 

The Ascension of Our Lord 

A f t e r His glorious resurrection Jesus spent 
forty days with His dear ones on earth before 
taking possession of His eternal glory at the 



64 Easter 

right hand of His Father. The angelic choirs 
are preparing to receive Jesus, their promised 
King, into heaven. The holy souls that were 
liberated from limbo on the morning of the 
resurrection are waiting for the happy moment 
when they will enter heaven's gate in company 
with their Redeemer. 

Meanwhile Jesus has to visit His disciples and 
bid them farewell, for they are to be left for 
some years longer in this vale of tears. They 
are in the cenacle impatiently awaiting His com-
ing. Suddenly He appears in their midst. His 
mother is carried away with joy. His disciples 
and the holy women fall down and affectionately 
adore the Master, Who has come to take His 
leave of them. He sits down to table with them 
and this celebrated company eats its last repast 
with Jesus. Their ears are attuned to hear Him 
speak, for His parting words will be highly 
treasured. His language is not all affection. He 
begins by chiding them for their incredulity, 
wherewith they heard of His resurrection. He 
is going to entrust His apostles with the most 
sublime mission ever given to man. He would, 
therefore, prepare them for it by humbling them. 

Then assuming a tone of authority, He says to 
them: "Go into the whole world, and preach the 
gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:14). They 
are to accomplish their mission by miracles. 
These grand signs are to be the foundation of 
His Church just as He had made them the ar-
gument of His own divine mission. Here, then, 
we have men unknown to the world and devoid 
of every human means, and yet commissioned 



Easter 65 

to conquer the earth and make it acknowledge 
Jesus as its King. The world ignores their very 
existence. But they will be strengthened for 
their great expedition. "But wait here in the 
city," says Jesus, "until you are clothed with 
power from on high" (Luke" 24:19). The armor 
that they are to put on consists in this that "you 
shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many 
days hence" (Acts 1:4-5). 

But now the hour of separation is come. Jesus 
rises; His Blessed Mother and the hundred and 
twenty persons assembled there prepare to follow 
Him. The holy group makes its way to the 
Mount of Olives. It is the last time Jesus walks 
through the faithless city. He is invisible to the 
eyes of people who denied Him, but visible to 
His disciples, and goes before them, as hereto-
fore the pillar of fire led on the Israelites. How 
beautiful and imposing a sight! Mary, the dis-
ciples, and the holy women accompanying Jesus 
in His heavenward journey, which is to lead Him 
to the right hand of His eternal Father! It was 
commemorated in the Middle Ages by a solemn 
procession before the Mass of Ascension Day. 
What religious times were those, when Chris-
tians took delight in honoring every action of 
our Redeemer! They could not be satisfied as 
we are with a few vague notions which can 
produce nothing but an equally vague devotion. 

Jesus proceeded to the very place, the Mount 
of Olives, where He had begun His passion, 
to begin His life in heaven. The path to humilia-
tion aiid death becomes the path to triumph and 
glory. As the holy group stands on the elevation 



66 Easter 

overlooking the city of Jerusalem, the apostles, 
still dreaming their vain dreams of an earthly 
kingdom, venture to ask the Master: "Lord, wilt 
thous at this time restore the kingdom to 
Israel?" (Acts 1:6). Something great is about 
to happen, and their carnal thoughts can con-
jecture only a material future. To their query 
Jesus answers in a tone of severity that it is 
not for them to know the times or days appoint-
ed by the Father. Their task, and this ought to 
be uppermost in the minds of the disciples, is 
the conversion of the pagan world, the establish-
ment of the Church. Jesus reminds them of 
the mission He has just given to them: "You 
shall receive," He says, "power when the Holy 
Spirit comes upon you; and you shall be witness-
es for me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and 
Samaria, and even to the very ends of the 
earth" (Acts 1:8). 

According to a tradition which has been hand-
ed down from the earliest ages of Christianity, 
it is midday, the same hour at which He was 
raised up when nailed to His cross. Giving His 
blessed mother a look of filial affection, and an-
other of fond farewell to the rest of the group 
that stand around Him, Jesus raises up His 
hands and blesses them all. While thus blessing 
them, He is raised up from the ground whereon 
He stands, and ascends into heaven. Their eyes 
follow Him until a cloud comes and receives Him 
out of their sight. 

The Master is gone! For four thousand years 
the world had waited for its Redeemer. He came 
and spent thirty-three years with us, the God-



Easter 67 

Man, the Emmanuel, to show us the path to 
heaven and to redeem us. After His resurrection 
He spends forty days more manifesting Himself 
to-His loved ones that they might bear the testi-
mony of this fact to the ends of the world. We 
believe in Him; we love Him. But to us as to 
His mother and disciples Jesus says: "If you 
loved me, you would indeed rejoice that I am 
going to the Father (John 14:28). Therefore, 
today we rejoice that Jesus goes to heaven, be-
cause He thereby enters into His eternal glory. 

The disciples are still steadfastly looking up 
towards heaven when two angels clad in white 
robes appear and promise them that Jesus will 
return some day. He has ascended a Savior; He 
is to return a Judge. Between these two events 
is comprised the whole life of the Church on 
earth. Now we live under the reign of Jesus the 
Savior. The apostles must invite all men to live 
under the gentle sway of so gentle a king. 

The spirit of the feast of the Ascension is that 
of joy and triumph. This solemnity is the com-
pletion of the mysteries of our redemption; it 
is one that was instituted by the very apostles. 
It has impressed a character of sacredness on the 
Thursday of each week, the day already so 
highly honored by the institution of the 
Eucharist. 



+ < C £ L £ S T I + 

+ * P O N S O + 

+ I V W C I A S S T + 

4 - E « J _ E * > I A + 

Christ's union with the Church is consummated through the 
union of the Holy Spirit with His Spouse, the Church. 



P E N T E C O S T 

©HE F E A S T of Pentecost is the feast of the reign of the Holy Spirit. We have 
frequently been told, while following the 
mysteries of the liturgical year, of the 

action of the Third Person of the Blessed 
Trinity. Our respectful attention was turned 
towards this divine Spirit, Who seemed to be 
shrouded in mystery, the time for Him to be 
made manifest not having yet arrived. But the 
workings of God in His creatures, while not 
coming all at orice, that is, coming in slow suc-
cession, will most certainly come. 

Now the Holy Spirit's visible reign on earth 
was deferred until the Man-God should be en-
throned on the Father's right hand. He was not, 
however, inactive before that time. Allusion is 
made again and again to Him in the Old Testa-
ment. It was through His divine operation that 
the Word of God was made flesh in the womb of 
the Immaculate Virgin Mary. The earth was to 
catch the first glimpse of Him as He manifested 
Himself on the day of Jesus's baptism. Even 
then, to the bystanders, John excepted, He did 
not deign to reveal His eternal secrets. 

When Jesus returned to heaven, He sent the 
Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, to reign over the 
Church He had founded. These middle ages, 
that is, between Christ's ascension and His com-
ing again as Judge, are under the reign of the 
Holy Spirit. "It is expedient for you that I 
depart," said Jesus, "for if I do not, the Advo-
cate will not come to you" (John 16:7). This 
new sovereign is not to become man or redeem 



70 Pentecost 

the world. He is to come among men with an 
immensurable love. To Him Jesus entrusts His 
bride, the Church, that He may perpetuate His 
work and direct it in her. 

We, who were once nothingness, are destined 
to become, by the operation of the Word and the 
Spirit, children of the heavenly Father. And if 
we would know what preparation we should make 
for the visit of the Paraclete, let us return in 
thought to the cenacle, where we left the dis-
ciples assembled, persevering with one mind in 
prayer, and waiting, as their Master had com-
manded them, for the power of the Most High 
to descend upon them and arm them for their 
future combat. 

The first we find there is Mary, the Mother of 
Jesus, the masterpiece of the Holy Ghost, the 
Church of the living God, from whom is to be 
born, by the action of the same divine Spirit, 
the Church militant. The apostles are gathered 
around this temple of the Holy Ghost. They are 
to be the pillars and foundations of the true 
Church of Jesus, of which He Himself, and Peter 
with and in Him, is the chief cornerstone. Mat-
thias, elected to fill the place of Judas, and many 
other disciples and the holy women are all 
present. A hundred and twenty souls are gath-
ered in recollectedness to receive the Holy Spirit 
and become His first-fruits. 

The great day which consummates the work 
that God has undertaken for the human race has 
at last dawned. We have had seven weeks since 
the Pasch and now comes the day that opens the 
mysterious number Qf fifty. It is to bring us 



Pentecost 71 

to the fulness of God. The Pentecost (or fiftieth 
day after the Pasch, or deliverance of the Jew-
ish people from Egypt) in the Old Law was the 
day on which God promulgated the Ten Com-
mandments ; and every following year the 
Israelites celebrated the great event by a solemn 
festival. But their Pentecost was figurative, 
like their Pasch; there was to be a second 
Pentecost for all people, as there was to be a 
second Pasch for the redemption of the whole 
world. The Pasch with all its triumphant joys, 
belongs to the Son of God, the conqueror of 
death; Pentecost belongs to the Holy Spirit, for 
it is the day whereon He began His mission into 
this world, which henceforward was to be under 
His law. 

Jerusalem is filled with pilgrims who have 
flocked thither from every country in the Gentile 
world. They are Jews or converts to Judaism. 
This influx of strangers gives the city a Babel-
like appearance, for each nation has its own 
language. It is the middle of the morning. Sud-
denly is heard, coming from heaven, the sound 
of a violent wind. It startles the people in the 
city; it fills the cenacle with its mighty breath. 
A crowd is soon round the house that stands 
on Mount Sion. Within, a silent shower, a show-
er of fire, falls on all present, a fire that burns 
not but enlightens, consumes not but shines. 
Flakes of fire, in the shape of tongues, rest on 
the heads of the hundred and twenty disciples; 
it is the Holy Spirit taking possession of all and 
each. The Church is now not only in Mary, but 
also in these hundred and twenty disciples. All 



72 Pentecost 

belong now to the Spirit that has descended upon 
them: His kingdom is begun, it is manifested, 
its conquests will be speedy and glorious. 

The Holy Spirit, who appeared on the occasion 
of Jesus's baptism in the Jordan under the en-
dearing form of a dove, now appears under that 
of fire. He is the Spirit of love; and love is 
not only gentle and tender but is also ardent as 
fire. Now, therefore, that the world is under the 
influence of the Holy Spirit, it must needs be on 
fire, and the fire shall not be checked. And why 
this form of tongues ? To show that the heaven-
ly fire is to spread by the word, by speech. 
The words of these hundred and twenty will find 
thousands to believe and welcome it. Those that 
receive it shall be united in one faith; they shall 
be called the Catholic Church, that is, universal, 
existing in all places and times. The tongue and 
the fire are now given to these first disciples, who 
by the assistance of the Holy Spirit will transmit 
them to others. So will it be to the end of time. 
The workings of the Holy Spirit were wondrous 
in the souls that received Him. First of all, 
Mary is now more than ever full of grace. After 
all the grace Jesus has already given her we 
should think that heaven had nothing more in 
store for her. But no. Here is a new mission 
opened for Mary. The Church is born; she is 
born of Mary. New duties fall upon the mother 
of the Church, the mother of the Bride of her 
Son. She is left upon earth to nurse the infant 
Church. For this office she received the Holy 
Spirit at Pentecost. Therefore she received the 
richest portion of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. 



Pentecost 73 

She is become the mother of the Christian peo-
ple. The Spirit of love now fulfils the intention 
expressed by our Redeemer when dying on the 
cross: "Woman, behold thy son." For this 
Pentecost day she acts as mother of the infant 
Church; and when at length the Church no 
longer needs her visible presence, this mother 
quits the earth for heaven, where she is crowned 
Queen; but there, too, she exercises her glorious 
title and office of Mother of Men. 

The apostles receive the next richest portion 
of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost 
Day. The frequent instructions they have been 
receiving from their Lord during the forty days 
after His resurrection have changed them into 
quite other men, but now that they have received 
the Holy Spirit, the change and conversion is 
complete. They are filled with the enthusiasm of 
faith; their souls are on fire with divine love; 
the ̂ conquest of the whole world is their ambi-
tion, and they know it is their mission. All that 
their beloved Master has taught them is now 
clear to them. They understood it all. Far from 
suffering any fear, they are ready and even long 
to suffer persecution in the discharge of the 
office entrusted to them by Jesus, that of preach-
ing His name and His glory unto all nations. 

The disciples, too, and the holy women, though 
in a less degree than the apostles, are sharers of 
the divine gift. They too are to go forth and 
preach the resurrection. The love the holy 
women showed at the foot of the cross and at the 
tomb is now redoubled. Their words will pro-
duce a hundredfold of fruit. 



74 Pentecost 

The apostles immediately begin their great 
work of preaching. So full of unction were they, 
and so powerfully did the Holy Spirit make His 
presence and influence felt in the hearts of their 
hearers, that three thousand, filled with the 
simple and full faith in Christ, are baptized. 
How admirable is the early progress of the 
Church of Christ! How wonderful is the first 
reception of the divine Spirit by the multitude of 
disciples. Truly is Pentecost the birthday of the 
Church of Jesus Christ under the reign of His 
divine and Holy Spirit. 

The mystery of Pentecost holds so important 
a place in the Christian dispensation that the 
Church ranks it in her liturgy on an equality 
with the Paschal solemnity. The Pasch is the 
redemption of man by the victory of Christ. 
Pentecost is the Holy Spirit taking possession 
of man redeemed. The Ascension is the inter-
mediate mystery; it consummates the Pasch by 
placing the Man-God at the right hand of the 
Father; it prepares the mission of the Holy 
Spirit to our earth. This mission could not take 
place until Jesus had been glorified. This divine 
mission was not to be given to the Third Person 
until men were deprived of the visible presence 
of Jesus. The hearts of the faithful were hence-
forward to follow their absent Redeemer by a 
purer and wholly spiritual love. Now who was 
to bring us this new love if not He who is the 
link of the eternal love of the Father and of the 
Son ? This Holy Spirit of love and union- is 
called in the sacred Scripture the "Gift of 
God"; and it is on the day of Pentecost that the 



Pentecost 75 

Father and the Son send us this ineffable Gift. 
From this day forward He inundates the whole 
earth with His fire, He gives spiritual life to all, 
He makes His influence felt in every place. We 

I know the Gift of God; we have but to open our hearts to receive Him, as did the three thousand i who became members of the Church on the first 
Pentecost Day. 



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