St. Elizabeth Queen of Portugal, Widow, A.D. 1336
by VP
Posted on Monday July 08, 2024 at 12:00AM in Saints
"THIS saint was queen of Portugal; and in the several states of virgin, wife, and widow, was a religious example of humility, charity, piety, and mortification. She was of a most sweet and mild disposition; and from her tender years had no relish for anything, but what was conducive to piety and devotion. Esteeming virtue her only advantage and delight, she abhorred romances and idle entertainments, and was an enemy to all the vanities of the world. Being married to the king of Portugal, she found no temptation to pride in the dazzling splendour of a crown. She was abstemious in her diet, mean in her attire, humble, meek, affable in conversation, and wholly bent upon the service of God in all her actions. Charity to the poor was a distinguishing part of her character. She visited the sick, served them, and dressed their most loathsome sores. She made it her principal study to pay to her husband the most dutiful respect, love, and obedience; and bore his injuries with invincible meekness and patience. After his death, St. Elizabeth consecrated herself to the divine service in the third order of St. Francis; and continued to support a great number of poor people by her alms and protection. In her last sickness, she received the Holy Viaticum on her knees, and shortly after, Extreme Unction; from which time she continued in fervent prayer, often invoking the Blessed Virgin. She appeared overflowing with heavenly joy, and gave up her happy soul to God in the year 1336, of her age sixty-five.
Consider her life, and you will find it the reproach of your own. If you cannot submit to those humiliations which she sought; if you think happiness to be in such vanities as she despised; if you spend in these, what she distributed to the poor;
if her solitude, frequent prayer and fasting seem an aggrievance; you
have reason to blush at yourself, pray for grace and amend." The Catholic Year by Fr. John Gother
Saint Anthony Maria Zaccaria, Confessor
by VP
Posted on Friday July 05, 2024 at 12:00AM in Saints
Forum Catholique St. Anthony Zaccaria and the devotion of the forty hours
"Absorbed in meditating on the great Sacrifice and his heart burning with love for God, he went to the foot of the altar. A profound and religious silence prevailed among those present, and all eyes were turned on him, a sign of the great event about to take place. At the solemn moment of consecration, a marvelous light encircled him and a multitude of Angels descended, and surrounding him, assisted reverently at the Mass. This heavenly vision lasted until the end of Communion." Source: Barnabite Fathers
GOD'S FRIENDS AND OURS: ST. ANTHONY VERSUS LUTHER ( The Catholic Transcript, Volume LXIII, Number 9, 30 June 1960)
"In 1528 the apostate priest Martin Luther preached in Wittenberg the three sermons he was later to compile into his two catechisms: The Little Catechism for Children and Simple Folk and The Large Catechism. In the preface of the former, he charged the Church with neglecting the teaching of Christian doctrine to the poor and unlettered masses.
Hundreds of miles from Germany, in the same year, one of the many men whose lives emphatically contradicted Luther's allegation received the power of the priesthood. Today he is venerated as St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria Founder of the Clerks Regular of St. Paul, his feast falls on July 5.
He had been practicing medicine in his native Cremona for some years before he came to the realization, as the editors of Butler's Lives put it, “that his vocation was to heal souls as well as bodies " A few years after ordination, he moved on to Milan, where, in 1530, he organized a new congregation "to regenerate and revive the love of divine worship, and a properly Christian way of life by frequent preaching and faithful ministering of the sacraments." A band of his priests stood ever ready to preach at any time and in any place; in the public square, in the fields, in small chapels, in the very streets of the city. Special care was shown for the poor.
Despite the fullness of his life, Anthony Zaccaria was only thirty-seven years old when he died in 1539. His congregation (popularly called “the Barnabites" from the Church of St. Barnabas, its Milanese center) never achieved widespread fame or grew to large numbers. Like the saint himself, its members still burn out their lives quietly instructing the uninformed and indigent.
ST. Anthony Zaccaria's history provides a dramatic contrast to Martin Luther's. Both men saw the same problem: countless baptized Christians who remained theologically illiterate throughout their lives.
Open Revolution against the Church of Christ was Luther's solution. Reformation within the Church was Anthony's answer.
The Church itself, the latter knew, can never be in error. When abuses exist, they can only arise from the deficiencies or bad faith of its members. Christ guaranteed that Peter's bark is the only sure bark to salvation. But He did not guarantee that the captain, crew and passengers would necessarily avoid all personal mistakes and scandals.
O Almighty and Merciful God, who moved by Thine infinite goodness,hast deigned to call Thy servant Father [N] to the ministry of Thy altar, listen graciously to our humble prayer, that, sustained by Thy grace, he may become daily less unworthy of his holy vocation, and vouchsafe, we beseech Thee, to bless and sanctify both his words and his works, through Our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, model of the priestly heart, have mercy.
- "St Anthony is also known for popularising and renewing, the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, known as the Forty-hour devotion. He also is said to have originated the ringing of church bells at 3:00 p.m. on Fridays, in recognition of the hour of the crucifixion of Christ." Anaspaul
Devotion of the Forty Hours. Long ago it was a very pious practice to expose the Blessed Sacrament in moments of great danger, in times of great calamity, that the people might receive the especial consolation so necessary. Attracted to the Church by the sight of the Blesed Sacrament, usually hidden in the Tabernacle, throngs of worshipers drew closer to God in the hour of their trial. What was in the beginning an inspiration on the part of the priests in charge of these afflicted parishes grew gradually into a custom.
The Forty Hours adoration was first introduced in Italy in 1556, and was at once approved by the Church. Intended as it was to correspond with the forty hours of darkness and loneliness spent by Jesus in the tomb, the devotion appealed at once to the hearts of the faithful. It is now a universal custom regulated by the Bishop of each diocese, who arranges the hours of adoration in the various churches, throughout the year, in such way as to have continuous devotion, as far as possible.
The Blessed Sacrament, consecrated at a High Mass, which opens the ceremony, is placed on Exposition, following a solemn procession through the Church. The altar of exposition is especially adorned with flowers and lights. The usual custom is to close the exposition towards evening, continue it throughout the following day, and close on the morning of the third day.
It is a time of special devotion in which special favors and graces are granted those who go to Confession and receive Communion. Large crowds are attracted to the Church and the people strive to atone as far as possible to our Blessed Lord for those lonely hours spent in the tomb previous to His resurrection.
Thanks be to God and to His Church for the abundance and the beauty of the Catholic year's array of feasts. Since these feast days constitute a succession of striking reminders telling the Catholic again and again of God and His goodness of the great plan of salvation, of God's Mother, of God's saints, and inviting him over and over to take advantage of God's grace and to serve Him truly by imitating that Mother and those saints who were human even as Himself. The lack of space and time forbid anything like an adequate treatment of the subject.
