Ballade to our Lady of Czestochowa by Hilaire Belloc
by VP
Posted on Monday August 26, 2024 at 01:42AM in Poetry
The image of the Holy Virgin of Częstochowa (derivative, after 1714), collection of Radomysl Castle
I
LADY and Queen and Mystery manifold
And very Regent of the untroubled sky,
Whom in a dream St Hilda did behold
And heard a woodland music passing by :
You shall receive me when the clouds are high
With evening and the sheep attain the fold.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.
II
Steep are the seas and savaging and cold
In broken waters terrible to try;
And vast against the winter night the wold,
And harbourless for any sail to lie.
But you shall lead me to the lights, and I
Shall hymn you in a harbour story told.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.
III
Help of the half-defeated, House of gold,
Shrine of the Sword, and Tower of Ivory;
Splendour apart, supreme and aureoled,
The Battler's vision and the World's reply.
You shall restore me, O my last Ally,
To vengeance and the glories of the bold.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.
Envoi
These verses, written in your crumbling sty,
Proclaim the faith that I have held and hold
And publish that in which I mean to die.
Source: Sonnets and Verse by Hilaire Belloc Duckworth, 1923
Saint Zephyrinus (Pope and Martyr)
by VP
Posted on Monday August 26, 2024 at 01:00AM in Saints
"God has always raised up holy pastors, zealous to maintain the sacred deposit of the faith of His Church inviolable, and to watch over the purity of its moral, and the sanctity of its discipline. How many conflicts did they sustain! with what constancy, watchfulness, and courage, did they stand their ground against idolatry, heresy, and the corruption of the World!
We enjoy the greatest advantages of the divine grace through their labors; and we owe to God a tribute of perpetual thanksgiving and immortal praise for all those mercies which He has afforded His Church on earth. We are bound also to recommend most earnestly to Him His own work, praying that He exalt the glory of His divine name, by propagating His holy faith on earth: that He continually raise up in His Church shining examples of all virtue, pastors filled with His spirit, and a people disposed to captivate their understandings to His revealed truths, and subject their hearts to the sweet yoke of His holy love and divine law; watchful to abhor and oppose every profane innovation of doctrine, and all assaults and artifices of vice."
Source: The Lives of the Primitive Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Butler"THIS saint was bishop of Rome in the time of the Emperor Severus; and under the cruel persecution raised by him against the Church, this holy pastor was the support and consolation of the distressed flock of Christ. He filled the pontifical chair seventeen years, and was put to death by the Emperor Antonius Caracalla, in the year 219.
Pray for the present bishop of that holy see. His charge is great; and as all the faithful have a concern in his conduct, so he ought to have a daily share
in their prayers, Pray for all in persecution and trouble, that by
patience and perseverance they may work out their salvation. Let the difficulty which you experience in yourself in all manner of suffering, move you to have compassion on others, and oblige you to be in earnest in soliciting heaven in their behalf. Be ever watchful against all the attempts of impatience and anger; that so your temporal evils may be a means of obtaining
eternal goods. How much might you have advanced towards heaven, by a
Christian submission to your troubles now past! But you have lost the opportunity. Make a better use of such occasions as are yet to come. Be careful not to permit your heart to be seized with prejudice or passion. These are evils which indispose your mind against all the force of reason, truth, justice, religion, and even against the evidence of miracles; and who must answer for all the train of ill consequences which follow upon them? Be upon your guard against ill temper. To be always on the fret, and make all unhappy who live under the same roof with you, is a temper scarcely tolerable in a Christian. It is too apt to make those under you careless of everything
that is said to them, and to judge all reproof to be nothing but
humour; it is not consistent with discretion, and therefore ought to be amended. Few are exempt from some degree of this ill temper: observe yourself, and while you honour the martyrs, doing good to all by their patience, pray for grace to follow their example." The Catholic Year by Fr. John Gother.
