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O Maid conceive without a stain,
O Mother bright and fair,
Come thou within our hearts to reign,
And grace shall triumph there.
Hail, Mary, ever undefiled!
Hail, Queen of purity!
O make thy children chaste and mild,
and turn their hearts to thee.

Thou art far purer than the snow,
Far brighter than the day;
Thy beauty none on earth can know,
No tongue of men can say.
O Mother of all mothers blest,
Who soothest every grief,
In thee the weary find their rest,
And anguished hearts relief.

O then for us, thy children, plead;
Thy pity we implore,
That we, from sin and sorrow freed,
May love thee more and more.
Hail, Mary, ever undefiled!
Hail, Queen of purity!
O make thy children chaste and mild,
and turn their hearts to thee.

Source: Manual of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary 1893

"Mary is the model of all Christian womanhood. Women are endowed by the Creator with fine sensibilities and a most noble love. They are meant to be the inspiration of men. If the ideal of womankind is high, if she is exalted in men's estimation, if she is loved for her virtue, then the opportunity for good that is afforded mankind is tremendously great.

Paganism degraded womanhood and robbed her of her native dignity with which the Creator had endowed her. Mary's advent into the world, bringing the Savior of mankind, changed all that. She is "our tainted nature's solitary boast." But alas, the new days of paganism are with us. This time again, the sad opportunity is afforded women to step down. A changing world in the guise of emancipation offers womankind an opportunity to lower her standards, to degrade her dignity, to debase her prerogatives for childbearing and motherhood.

The Church has through the centuries watched over and guided the noble prerogatives of womankind, not because the Church bestowed these sacred rights, but because she preserves what has been restored through our Lady and the Redemption. When woman is an ideal, man is, strictly speaking, a builder of the spirit. He builds within himself the great edifice of a spiritual character where the Holy Spirit dwells as in a temple. When woman is an ideal, men build homes, and children are received as the hope of a better world. The boy is looked up to so that he will carry on and build again as did his father, and the girl is cherished as the sweet daughter and mirror of the wife whose inward beauty grows more graceful with the passing years.

But the new paganism is threatening again! It is, of course, always in the name of emancipation women are to be freed from the very duties that make them beautiful with a lasting beauty - motherhood and sharing in creation!

Women are meant to be builders, too, in the strictest sense of the term. They are the heart of the home. It is through then that men learn to live and to love great ideals and to build character. It is through the mother, definitely closer to the child than any other living human, that young habits and fine characters are formed. Women are the cornerstone of civilization in this respect. They are the hope of the world! "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world."

Anyone who calls himself a Christian and a follower of Christ must think often of the Mother of Our Blessed Savior who was closest to Him all through the years that led up to Calvary. Anyone who respects women must know that it was Mary's role in Christian history to place women on the high pedestal they now enjoy. Anyone who has forebodings regarding the changes in our modern world will go to Mary and fervently pray that the rights, spiritual rights, of women be preserved, that they become modern Bethlehem's in which Christ comes to dwell and not worldly inns that refuse children's birth.

None of us can live through a social revolution and come out of it unchanged ourselves. The world changing simply means that men and women of our day are changing. We must hold fast to Christian ideals, particularly the ideal of womankind as it come to us from our Savior and from His Blessed Mother. If we loose this ideal, if women degrade themselves, they are not meeting, as we would have them meet the challenge of a pagan world. They are succumbing! They are delivering themselves to the enemies of Christian civilization. They are undoing the work of Redemption. They are despising our Lady. That is unthinkable! Women are the builders of a more secure world, where men may live as brothers because they have a common Father and a Blessed Mother.

Prayer: Our Lady of the hills and the valleys, look down from your throne in heaven an intercede with God in our behalf. As we live in a vale of tears preparing for the day when we may ascend the hill of heaven, pray for us, O Mary, that we may be worthy of the promises of Christ.

Intercede with God, that we may in imitation of you, follow Jesus along the way, though it be sorrowful - via dolorosa - out to the clear blue of the day, all the way up the hill, like you, to Calvary. We are sinners, like Magdalene. Accept us into your company. Few of us are like John, the beloved disciple. None of us is like you. Teach us to love Calvary and to see the sweet wood of the cross upon which hangs the Redeemer and our hope for eternal life."

Source: Spiritual Steps to Christmas by Very Rev. Msgr. Aloysius Coogan 1953

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Prayer for the Bishops

O Jesus, Prince of Pastors, Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, give our bishops  all those virtues, which they need for their sanctification! May they watch over themselves and the entire flock, with which the Holy Spirit has entrusted them! Fill their hearts with Thine own Spirit! Give them faith, charity, wisdom and strength! Send them faithful co-laborers in the great work of saving and guiding souls! Make them shepherds after Thine own heart, living only for their holy office, fearing nobody but Thee, and hoping for nothing but Thee, in order that when Thou shalt come, to judge shepherds and flocks, they may obtain the unfading reward of eternal life! Amen Imprimatur: Most Rev. Vincent S. Waters, D.D. Raleigh, N.C. March 25, 1956

"I fear that the Church has lost its prophetic voice"."Where are the John the Baptists who will confront the Herods of our day?"

My God, I love Thee, not because
I hope for Heaven thereby;
Nor because they who love Thee not,
Must burn eternally.

Thou, O my Jesus, Thou didst me
Upon the Cross embrace;
For me didst bear the nails and spear,
And manifold disgrace;

And griefs and torments numberless,
And sweat of agony;
E'en death itself - and all for one
Who was Thine enemy.

Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ!
Should I not love Thee well?
Not for the sake of winning Heaven;
or of escaping Hell;

Not with the hope of gaining aught,
Nor seeking a reward;
But, as Thyself hast loved me,
O ever-loving Lord!

E'en so I love Thee, and will love,
And in Thy praise will sing;
Solely because Thou art my God,
And my eternal King.

Source: Beautiful Pearls of Catholic Truth, 1897

Type of the priesthood with its Virgin Spouse,
The Immaculate Church, our Mother ever fair!
Since even to me God’s wondrous grace allows
An office more than Seraphim may share,
I kneel to thee, most gentle Saint, and dare
To choose thee patron of the trust. O Make
My evermore fidelity thy care,
And keep me MARY’S – for Her own sweet sake!
Her knight before, and poet, now Her priest
(Not less Her slave: a thousandfold the more),
I glory in a bondage but increased,
and kiss the chain Her dear De Montfort wore,
With “Omnia Per Mariam” mottoed o’er,
Which seals me Her apostle – tho’ the least.

Feast of the Seven Dolors, March 31, 1871

Source: Poems: devotional and occasional. by Edmund of the Heart of Mary, Father, 1842-1916

I sat in the school of sorrow,
The Master was teaching there;
But my eyes were dim with weeping,
And my heart was full of care.

Instead of looking upward,
And seeing His face Divine
So full of the tenderest pity
For weary hearts like mine.

I only thought of the burdens,
The cross that before me lay,
So hard and heavy to carry
That it darkened the light of day.

So, I could not learn my lesson,
And say, Thy will be done;
And the Master came not near me
As the weary hours went on.

At last in my weary sorrow,
I looked from the cross above,
And I saw the Master watching
With a glance of tender love.

He turned to the cross before me,
And I thought I heard Him say:
"My child, thou must bear thy burden
And learn thy task to-day.

I may not tell the reason,
' Tis enough for thee to know
That I, the Master, am teaching,
And give this cup of woe."

So I stooped to that weary sorrow;
One look at that face Divine
Had given me power to trust Him,
And say, " Thy will, not mine."

And thus I learnt my lesson,
Taught by the Master alone;
He only knows the tears I shed,
But He has wept His own.

And from them comes a brightness
Straight from the Home above,
Where the School of Life will be ended,
And the cross will show the love.

(Written for a Sacerdotal Jubilee.)

____________


By Rev. H.T. Henry, Litt.D.

____________


“Thou art a Priest forever,”
To offer bread and wine—
A mystic King of Salem
At great Jehovah’s shrine:
Melchizedek prefigured
Thy Priesthood more divine,
That fills the empty Symbol,
And deifies the Sign!


For God lies on thy Altar
Beneath the veils of Bread;
The Wine thy Chalice lifteth
Is Precious Blood instead;
Thou offerest the Victim,
And lo! from Heaven are shed
God’s graces on the living,
His mercies on the dead.


How oft that Cup was lifted
Thy flock from hell to save!
How oft that Bread of Angels
Thy hand anointed gave!
How oft thy mighty blessing
Released the demon’s slave,
And thy last benediction
Made sweet the dreaded grave!


Who then shall tell the story
The court of Heaven hears?
How oft this wondrous Priesthood
Through five and twenty years
Hath spurred the saintly onward
And calmed their pressing fears,
Or sweetly drawn from sinners
A flood of saving tears?
O mightier thy power

Than earthly kings may claim:
More splendorous thy glory
Than Seer’s or Sage’s name:
Who canst, with lip of human,
God’s word of pardon frame,
That lifts from hopeless sinners
An everlasting shame!


To-day with joy thy people
The silver chaplet see
That crowns an epoch rounded
Of fruitful ministry:
O may the praise they utter
A mystic presage be
Of the unending triumph
In Heaven’s Jubilee—


Where thou, “a Priest forever,”
Shalt see no more the Sign:
The fat of wheaten harvest,
The ferment of the vine;
Shalt see no more the Symbols
Of lowly Bread and Wine,
But face to face the Victim
In the New Salem’s shrine!



Source: Eucharistica
Verse and Prose in Honour of the Hidden God H. T. Henry, Litt.D.
The Dolphin Press (Philadelphia: 1912) pp. 32-33.

Dearest St. Joseph, be the protector and defender of those priests undergoing persecution for being faithful to their Lord and Sovereign Priest, Jesus Christ. See in them the image of thy beloved child, and cherish them with that tender solicitude which God places in Thy paternal heart.

Obtain for them the good graces of thy Queen and Spouse, for such graces of predilection will surely lighten their burdens and render their crosses sweet. Amen.

Source: Cure d'Ars

"There is a passage in the Following of Christ, II., 11, in which a Kempis insists that nothing we can offer to God is acceptable unless we offer ourselves. "If a man give his whole substance, it is nothing. If he do great penance, it is but little. If he attain to all knowledge, he is far off still. If he have great virtue and very fervent devotion, there is still much wanting to him, the one thing which is supremely necessary to him." What is the one thing necessary? "that having given all things else to God he give himself."

Now, man, recognizing the demand of God that we surrender ourselves to Him, boldly retaliates with a demand that God surrender Himself to us. Man says to God, " Thou mayest multiply Thy favors; Thou mayest overwhelm me with gifts, but though Thy gifts, temporal and spiritual, be piled in mountains before me, my heart remains unsatisfied, my soul is discontent. I want not Thy gifts, I want Thee. Pardon, my God, if I speak boldly, I speak as Thou hast made me. Thou hast made me man, but Thou hast given me the cravings of a god. Thou mayest empty Thy treasure-house before my feet. Still I demand more, that Thou give me Thyself. Thou hast made me for Thyself. My heart remains empty until it be filled with Thee."

The answer is the Incarnation and the Blessed Sacrament."

Source: A Thought a Day for Lent, Rev. James M Gilles, C.P.; Paulist Press, 1923.