CAPG's Blog 

Whit Wednesday: The Heart of Jesus Sending us the gift of fortitude

"He hath strengthened them that were fainting in patience." (Ecclus. xvii. 20.)
"Brethren, be strengthened in the Lord, and in the might of His power." (Eph. vi. 10.)

1st Point.-St. Teresa has said that there is nothing the devil dreads so much as a resolute soul. It is but saying, in other words, that there is no gift so advantageous in our combats with him as the gift of fortitude. Oh, how earnestly we should desire and pray for this gift! Weak, irresolute, trembling souls are overcome even by the shadow of danger, while the brave-hearted walk fearlessly on, and scarcely even notice the lion in their path. But there is a natural hardihood, as utterly opposed to this gift as timidity, and most souls are inclined to either one extreme or the other. A few moments' careful examination would show us to which we are most inclined, and consequently how we should act so as to avoid the danger on either side. Perhaps the timid and irresolute are safer than the bold and self-confident.

2nd Point. Consider how the gift of fortitude strengthens us, first to do, and secondly to suffer. There is scarcely an action in the day, especially if we have been consecrated to God in religion, in which we do not require to exercise the gift of fortitude. We need it in the morning, when the summons to rise finds us weary and desirous of a longer rest; we need it at office and meditation, when pleasant fancies or reflections about coming occupations seem almost to insist on occupying our thoughts; we need it when repugnances arise to this employment or to that; we need it when obedience appoints a duty which we do not relish, and when we see another appointed to an office or occupation which we would naturally desire to fulfill; we need it-oh, how often!-in the little daily trials of our calling, in the little temptations more frequently than in the great ones, which all who are striving in earnest after perfection must encounter. Oh, if we had more fortitude, we should not only run but fly in the path of perfection, and we should find the flying easier than the running, although it is this very love of ease which we seek
to gratify, by not exerting ourselves to master the obstacles to this holy flight.

3rd Point. Consider how the gift of fortitude enables us to suffer. There are certain circumstances in which we need fortitude to enable us to suffer, more than fortitude to enable us to act. When a trial has pressed upon us for years, then we need fortitude to bear it bravely and uncomplaining. When we are deprived for a length of time of all spiritual consolation, and we neither enjoy God here or feel as if we should enjoy Him hereafter, then indeed we require fortitude to enable us to walk by faith, as if sight were granted to us. When we are exhausted and wearied by constant labor or bodily infirmity, then we need fortitude to work on through weariness, and in spite of it. Let us consider well how much and how constantly we need this blessed gift, that we may pray for it with an earnestness proportioned to our need.

Aspiration." In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped : let me never be confounded." (Ps. xxx. 1.)

Source: Meditations for Advent and Easter, p 272

Let us pray the Holy Spirit to enlighten our bishop in the choice of worthy candidates for the Holy Priesthood.

"On Ember days we pray and make sacrifices for ourselves, our families, the Church and the world." 

We should never let these seasons pass without adding prayer to our fasts, or it may be compensating fast by prayer. Our prayer should be for the clergy, not only those ordained, though for them especially; but for the Sovereign Pontiff, the cardinals, bishops, parochial clergy, missionaries and religious orders, seminarians; and for the grace of vocation to the priesthood.

Brief Meditations for Pentecost Ember Days

Today is Ember Wednesday of the Summer or Pentecost Embertide. These Ember Days fall during the week after Pentecost (the traditional octave of Pentecost), near the summer solstice. The three focal points for the Ember Days of this period of the year are:

1) to ask God to bless especially the wheat harvest,

2) to thank God for the season of summer, and

3) to ask for special graces for those being ordained as priests during this season.

‘Originally the summer Ember Days served as a time of thanksgiving at the end of the wheat harvest in Mediterranean countries. The present (pre-1969) liturgy, only faintly suggests or alludes to harvest time; rather, wheat and harvest time are used as symbols of supernatural realities. For us wheat is the Eucharistic "Bread of Life", and the harvest is the that of souls reaped by the Holy Ghost. "The floors shall be filled with wheat, and the presses shall be filled with wheat, and the presses shall be filled with oil and wine (Lesson Ember Friday)

. Ember week is a recognized time for spiritual renewal, an occasion to review the past as well as to scan the future. And during these days after Pentecost we can sense more easily the original import and the spirit of joyous gratitude proper to Ember week. Gratitude, not penance, should be the dominant Ember spirit. Even fasting can be an act of thanksgiving! Let us stress positive rather than negative values in our Christian life, cultivate the consciousness of being God's holy children rather than feel ourselves as outcasts and sinners. Wednesday of Ember week is dedicated to Mary, it is a day of interior recollection. Friday is devoted to penance, while Saturday lays greatest stress on thanksgiving. Make a summary review today of the past quarter year. These three months, covering the Lenten and Paschal seasons, were certainly the most important segment of the Church's year of grace. What tremendous graces we received! But how did we use them? Are they producing fruit? Will there be a spiritual harvest?’ (The Church's Year of Grace by Pius Parsch 1953)
Prayers for Ember Days:

Listen, Almighty God, we beseech Thee, to the prayers which Thy universal Church offers to Thee at this time, beseeching Thy blessing on those who are about to be admitted to Thy Holy Service of the Altar, in particular on Deacon Nicolas Rapkoch. Give Thy grace to all who are called to any office and administration amongst Thy clergy, and so replenish them with the truth of Thy doctrine, and indue them with innocence of life, that they may faithfully serve Thee, to the glory of Thy great name and the benefit of Thy Holy Church. Amen

O God, of Whose mercies there is no number, and of Whose goodness the treasure is infinite, we humbly thank Thee for the gifts thou hast bestowed upon us. Continue Thy mercy to us, and give us also so much of Thy temporal blessings as Thou knowest to be for our good.
Grant that the fruits of the earth may, by Thy holy favor, increase and multiply. Defend them from all drought, frosts or tempests, or whatever else may be hurtful to them. It is from Thy hand only that we look for succor, and to Thee we have recourse in all our necessities. Amen.

Source: St. John's Manual 1856, Archbishop of New York John J. Hugues

Hymns, readings and prayers for this Whit Embertide:

Hymns: Veni, Sancte Spiritus (Come, Thou Holy Spiritus, come)

Veni, Creator Spiritus, (Come Holy Spirit, Creator Blest)

Readings: Ember Wednesday: Acts of the Apostles, 2. 14-21;  Acts of the Apostles, 5. 12-16;  St. John, 6. 44-52

Prayers:

An excellent prayer for this purpose is the Litany of the Saints, in which so many bishops, priests, and levites are invoked; or the Rosary may be appropriately said, grouping those for whom we pray into five classes (Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, and Seminarians), corresponding to the five decades.

Source: Ember Days (Cure d'Ars Prayer Group)

Saint Pope John Paul II reintroduced Rogations Days as permitted observations.

Source: Religious Celebrations: An Encyclopedia of Holidays, Festivals ..., Volume 1 By J. Gordon Melton

"Persecuted by her enemies, decimated by the martyrdom of her children, afflicted by numerous apostasies from the Faith, and deprived of every human aid, the Church will know that the terrible chastisement is at hand, for prayer will then be as rare as faith. Let us, therefore,
pray that the day of wrath may be put off, the Christian life regain something of its ancient vigor, and the end of the world be not in our times. There are Catholics in every part of the world, but their number has been visibly decreased by war and persecution. Heresy is in possession
of whole countries that were once faithful to the Church; in others, religious indifference has infected many Catholics whose Catholicity is but a name. Among others, the old honesty and adherence to the teachings of the Church has been weakened by loose ideas and half-formed convictions.
A man is popular in proportion to the concessions he makes in favor of principles condemned by the Church. The sentiments and actions of the saints, the conduct and teaching of the Church, are labeled as exaggeration and decried as being unsuited to our times. The search after comforts has become a serious study; the thirst for earthly goods is a noble passion; independence is an idol to which everything must be sacrificed; submission is a humiliation which must be got rid of, or, where than cannot be, it must bot be publicly acknowledged. Finally, there is sensualism, which, like an impure atmosphere, so impregnates every class of society that it has become evident that there is a league formed to abolish the Cross of Christ from the minds of men.

What miseries must not follow from this systematic setting aside of the conditions imposed by God upon His creatures? If the Gospel be the Word of Infinite Truth, how can men oppose it without drawing upon themselves the severest chastisements? Would that these chastisements might work the salvation of them that have provoked them! Let us humble ourselves before the sovereign holiness of God, and confess our own guilt. The sins of men are increasing both in number and in enormity. The picture we have just drawn is sad enough. What would it have been, had we added such abominations as downright impiety, corrupt doctrines which are being actively propagated throughout the world? dealings with Satan, which threaten to degrade our age to the level of pagan times? The conspiracy organized against order, justice, and religion by secret societies and their agents? Oh,let us unite our prayer with that of Holy Church, and say to God: From Thy wrath,deliver us, O Lord!

Besides this purpose of averting the Divine anger, the Rogation Days were instituted to beg our Heavenly Father to bless the fruits of the earth. We must beseech Him with all earthnestness of public prayer to "give us our daily bread." "The eyes of all," say the Psalmist, "hope in
Thee, O Lord; and Thou givest them food in due season. Thou openest Thy hand and fillest with blessing every living creature." (Ps. 144: 15,16). In accordance with the consoling doctrine conveyed by these words, the Church prays to God that He would this year give to all living
creatures on earth the food they stand in need of. She acknowledges that we are not worthy of the favor, for we are sinners. Let us unite with her in this humble confession, but at the same time let us join her in beseeching Our Lord to make mercy triumph over justice.

How easily could God frustrate the self-conceited hopes and the clever systems of men! They own that all depends on the weather; but on whom does that depend? They cannot do without God. True, they seldom speak of Him, and He permits Himself to be forgotten by them; but He "neither sleepeth not slumbereth, that keepeth Israel" (Ps. 120:4). He has but to withhold His blessing, and all progress in agricultural science, whereby men boast to have made famine an impossibility, is of no effect. Some unknown disease comes upon a vegetable; it causes distress among the people, and endangers the social order of the world that has secularized itself from the Christian law and would at once perish but for the mercy of God, which it affects to ignore.

If, then our Heavenly Father deign, this year, to bless the fruits of the earth, we may say, in all truth, that He gives food to them that forget and blaspheme Him, as well as to those that make Him the great object of their thoughts and of their service. Men of no religion will profit by
this blessing, but they will not acknowledge it to be His; they will proclaim more loudly than ever that nature's laws are now so well regulated by modern science that she cannot help going on well. God will be silent, and will feed the men who thus insult Him.

But why does He not speak? Why does He not make His wrath felt? Because His Church has prayed; because He has found the ten just men (Gen. 18:32), that is, the few for whose sake He mercifully consents to spare the world. he therefore permits these learned economists, whom He could so easily disconcert, to go on talking and writing. Thanks to His patience, some of them will grow tired of their impious
absurdity; and unexpected circumstance will open their eyes to the truth, and they will one day join us both in faith and in prayer. Others will go deeper and deeper into blasphemy; they will go on to the last, defying God's justice, and fulfilling in themselves that terrible saying of Holy Scripture: "The Lord hath made all things for Himself; the wicked also for the evil day" (Prov. 16:4)

We, who glory in the simplicity of our faith, who acknowledge that we have all from God and nothing from ourselves, who confess that we are sinners and undeserving of His gifts, will ask Him, during these three days, to give us the food we require. We will say to Him with Mother Church: That Thou vouchsafe to five and preserve the fruits of the earth, We beseech Thee, hear us! May He have pity on us in our necessities! Next year, we will return to Him with the same earnest request. We will march, under the standard of the Cross, through the same ways, making the air resound with all the greater confidence at the thought that our Mother is marshaling her children in every part
of Christendom in this solemn and suppliant procession.

For thirteen hundred years our God has been accustomed to receive the petitions of His faithful people at this season of the year. He shall have the same homage from us, ans we will endeavor, by the fervor of our prayer, to make amends for the indifference and ignorance which are combining to do away with old Catholic customs, which our forefathers prized and loved."

Source:  The Liturgical Year Abbot Gueranger OSB (The Tabernacle and Purgatory, Benedictine Nuns 1959)

Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, St. Anthony of Padua, NC

O Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament, glory of the Christian people, joy of the universal Church, salvation of the world, pray for us, and awaken anew among the faithful the devotion toward the Most Holy Eucharist, so that they may be rendered worthy to receive It daily.

"Devotion to Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament

We invoke the Immaculate Virgin, Mother of Jesus, and our tender Mother, under the title of Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament, because she is the Mother of the Savior, Who lives in the Eucharist, and because it is from her that he takes the flesh and blood with which He nourishes us; because, moreover, she is the sovereign dispenser of all grace, and consequently of those graces contained in the august Sacrament; and, finally, because she was the first to practice the duties of the Eucharistic life, showing us by her example how to assist becomingly at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, how to communicate worthily, and to visit the Most Blessed Sacrament frequently and with piety.

The Cardinal-Vicar has graciously granted leave to the Sons of the Venerable Père Eymard- the Fathers of the Blessed Sacrament- to erect in their church of San Claudio, Rome, a chapel and an altar in honor of Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament, and to have her picture publicly exposed to the veneration of the faithful. May this example be followed in America; let us hope that ere long many new altars and shrines shall be dedicated to Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament. ( From Emmanuel, May, 1910.)

Public domain

.
Prayer to Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament

O MARY, Sweet Mother of Jesus and our own tender mother, we love to call you Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament, because you were the first tabernacle of the Most High and the first adorer of Our Lord and Savior. You have, indeed, given us the Blessed Eucharist. It was your "fiat," your acquiescence in the Incarnation of the Son of God the Divine Word - that began the great mystery of the union with us which Jesus accomplished during His mortal life, and which He continues in the Holy Eucharist. And after Our Lord's ascension into heaven, you became the model and mother of all adorers of Jesus in the Tabernacle by adoring and serving Him with loving assiduity.

Pray for us who have recourse to you, that we may love Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist ever more and more with a love like that which inflamed your own immaculate Heart, O Mary, so that we may seek in all things His pleasure and His glory, and may daily grow more like to Him, and thus be able to exclaim with the burning heart of the great apostle, St. Paul: I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.

It is your mission, dear Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament, to form Jesus in His adorers. Dying for love of us, He, in His agony on the cross, bequeathed you to us as our mother, and confided us to your maternal care; help us, then, to be more devoted to Him in the sacrament of His love; help us to show our love for Him by striving to draw others to the love of His sacred Heart, and by our constant efforts to imitate His meekness, humility, and patience, His poverty, obedience, and purity, His boundless and all-embracing charity, and, indeed, all those virtues which He taught us in His mortal life from Bethlehem to Calvary, and of which He continues to give us an example in His Eucharistic life upon the Altar. May His Kingdom be established in the whole world; may He live and rule in all hearts. Blessed and praised every moment be the most holy and divine Sacrament. Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament, pray for us pray that we who now adore and love Jesus here below under the veil of the sacred species, may one day have the joy to behold Him in His unveiled beauty in the realms above, and to sing His praises with the angels and the saints, and above all with you, dear Mother, in eternal tabernacles. Amen." With God: A Book of Prayers and Reflections Father Lasance

Devotion to the Holy Face: Carmelites, Buffalo NY

The principal object of the devotion to the Holy Face is to offer respectful love and homage to the Adorable Face of Jesus disfigured in the Passion; to make reparation for blasphemy and the neglect of Holy Days, which outrages Him afresh; and, lastly, to obtain of God the conversion of sinners and profaners of the Holy Days:

Eternal Father, we offer You the Holy Face of Jesus, covered with blood, sweat, dust, and spittle, in reparation for the crimes of communists, blasphemers, and for the profaners of the Holy Name and of the Holy Day of Sunday.

Offering of the Holy Face by St. John Vianney, the Cure of Ars:

    Oh, my beautiful Immaculate Mother Mary, Queen of Sorrows, I beg of you, by the inexpressible agony you did endure at the foot of the Cross, to offer to the Eternal Father, in my stead, the Holy Face of your Divine Son, my Jesus, covered with Blood, wounds, and other indignities heaped upon Him during His Sacred Passion, and beg of Him to grant … (Here mention the grace or favor you desire). Amen.

The Divine Praises in Reparation for Blasphemies

    Blessed be God.
    Blessed be His Holy Name.
    Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.
    Blessed be the Name of Jesus.
    Blessed be His Most Sacred Heart.
    Blessed be His Most Precious Blood.
    Blessed be Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
    Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
    Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
    Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
    Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
    Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother,
    Blessed be St. Joseph, her most chaste Spouse.
    Blessed be God in His Angels and in His Saints.

I salute, adore, and love Thee, O Jesus, my Savior, covered anew with outrages by blasphemers, and I offer Thee, through the heart of Thy blessed Mother, the worship of all the Angels and Saints, as an incense and a perfume of sweet odor, most humbly beseeching Thee, by the virtue of Thy Sacred Face, to repair and renew in me and in all men Thy image disfigured by sin. Amen

A Prayer for the Church

O God, by Thy Holy Name have pity on us, protect us, and save us.
O good Jesus, in the sweet Name guard our Sovereign Pontiff; breathe into his
soul the spirit of the Comforter.

Jesus, thy Church is menaced with great trials! Holy Father, by the virtue of
thy salutary Name protect the Church of Jesus Christ. This was the last will of
thy Divine Son; it is the holy prayer which love prompted towards the end of his
life. Holy Father, keep in thy Name those thou hast given me (St. John chap. xxxvii. 11)

O most holy and worthy Mother, refuge of the Church, intercede for us and save us by
the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

St. Michael and the Holy Angels, guard the bark of Peter; disperse its enemies
by the Holy Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Source: Sister Saint-Pierre and the Work of Reparation. Manual of the Archconfraternity of the Holy Face, 1887

Prayer to Obtain the Settlement of all Our Needs

    Oh, Eternal Father, since it has pleased our Divine Savior to reveal to mankind in our present century the power residing in His Holy Face, we now avail ourselves of this treasure in our great needs. Since our Savior Himself promised that by offering to You, oh Eternal Father, the Holy Face disfigured in the Passion, we can procure the settlement of all our affairs, and that nothing whatsoever will be refused us, we now come before Your Throne.

    Offering to You, oh God, this adorable Countenance, disfigured with painful bruises and covered with shame and confusion, we beg through the merits of this Holy Face to obtain these, our pressing needs.

    Grant us pardon, Eternal Father, for the worst crimes of our age, which are atheism, blasphemy, and the desecration of Your holy days. May this offering of the Holy Face of our Savior before Your throne obtain for us deliverance from these evils.

    Send us, oh God, many vocations to the priesthood and to the religious life, so that by their prayers, their works, and their sacrifices, they may spread the blessings of Your Church and confound Your enemies. Amen

More resources:

• The Feast of the Holy Face (World Report)
• League of Saint Martin
• Oratoire de la Sainte Face Tours, France
• Video From the Diocese of Tours (In French)