Surrexit Christus spes mea
by VP
Posted on Sunday April 20, 2025 at 12:00AM in Tradition
Peter and John Running to the Tomb Eugène Burnand (1850 – 1921)
Christians, to the Paschal victim
offer your thankful praises!
A lamb the sheep redeemeth:
Christ, who only is sinless,
reconcileth sinners to the Father.
Death and life have contended
in that combat stupendous:
the Prince of life, who died,
reigns immortal.
Speak, Mary, declaring
what you saw, wayfaring:
"The tomb of Christ, who is living,
the glory of Jesus' resurrection;
"Bright angels attesting,
the shroud and napkin resting.
"Yea, Christ my hope is arisen;
to Galilee he will go before you."
Christ indeed from death is risen,
our new life obtaining;
have mercy, victor King, ever reigning!
Amen! Alleluia!
St. Theotimus, Bishop and Confessor, A.D. about 400.
by VP
Posted on Sunday April 20, 2025 at 12:00AM in Saints
"He was bishop of Tomes in Scythia, in the fifth century. He had been brought up to a monastic life, and lived with great frugality, eating only when necessity required it. The Huns in the vicinity of the Danube so much admired his virtue, that they called him the God of the Romans. He was a man of so great sanctity and wonderful meekness, that he seemed fitted by heaven to deal with barbarous people, like the Huns, who often gave him disturbance, and with his own flock, whose natural roughness made his charge difficult enough. He was several times assaulted, and as often miraculously delivered; God manifested the sanctity of his servant by his particular protection of him. One day as he was walking in the territory of the Huns, he met some of them, who were going by the same road to Tomes, where he resided. His companions began to cry out, and give themselves up for lost: but he dismounted from his horse, and betook himself to prayer. The barbarians passed by without even seeing him, his attendants, or their horses. As they ill-treated the Scythian by their frequent incursions, he softened their barbarous nature by giving them food and making them presents. This made one of the barbarians imagine that he was rich. He sought to take him prisoner, and having prepared a rope with a slip-knot, he leaned upon his shield, and raising his arm to throw the noose over the saint, his hand remained stretched out in the air, nor could he move it till the holy man had prayed for him.
Easter Sunday: The Joy of Penance
by VP
Posted on Sunday April 20, 2025 at 12:00AM in Sunday Sermons
Touch me not by Jacques Tissot
"I WISH all of you, my brethren, the joys of this day. It is the day of our Lord's victory over death and hell. Many of you have received Him in Holy Communion either this morning or during the preceding week. To such He has found a way to communicate something of the vast ocean of love and joy which inundates His own soul. A good Communion, following a humble confession of sin, is indeed the nearest way to that tomb, riven and empty, and streaming with the light of heavenly joy, about which the Church gathers her children this morning. How well chosen is Eastertime for the annual Communion of all good Christians. "I have seen the tomb of Christ, who has risen from the dead," may we well say with Mary Magdalen. God grant that not one of you all may pass beyond Trinity Sunday without attending to what is so appropriately called the Easter duty.
It seems to me that this feast is a great day for sinners - meaning, of course, repentant sinners. For look at the facts? Who is the saint of the Resurrection by excellence? Certainly dear Mary Magdalen, the type of all the penitent. She stood beneath the Cross when Jesus died, comforting Him and His Mother in that dreadful hour of His doom and of that Mother's woe. And when the dead corpse was lowered down, Mary Magdalen pressed His limbs and feet and hands to her bosom while our sorrowful Mother clasped His heart to her own and kissed His pallid face a thousand times. Mary Magdalen helped to lay Him in His grave. She watched then; when driven away by the soldiers she bought spices and came again to embalm Him. And whose words are those repeated to-day all round the world as the dawn greets the watching glances of the faithful. "They have taken away my Lord! I know not where they have laid Him"; and again the amazed and ecstatic exclamation when she saw Him in the garden: "Rabboni! Master."
What a great store of love, says St. Gregory the Great, was in that woman's heart, who, when even His disciples were gone away, could not tear herself from the grave of the Lord!
See, then, my brethren, the reward of the love which is in true sorrow for sin; it is given a singular kind of pre-eminence; it is selected above that of innocence and placed on guard at the post of honor to receive the first public greeting from the Immortal King of Glory, triumphant over sin for ever. I say public greeting, for doubtless Jesus visited and greeted His Mother in private first of all; but this is not written down for our edification, and Mary Magdalen's privilege is. Sinners need encouragement, and certainly they get it today in the honor paid to their glorious patron, to the woman who had many sins forgiven her because she loved much.
I say again that sinners need encouragement. In truth, there is no shame so deadly as that which conscious guilt brings to the human soul. There is no degradation like vice - in fact, there is none other but vice. Hence many sinners are met with who do not turn to God and who hold back from confession and communion because they are ashamed and afraid. It is not so much love of sin as want of confidence that now hinders them. They have felt the force of passion as the slave feels the whip of the slave-driver; or they have repented before and fallen again, and this fills them with distrust in themselves; or their surroundings are a constant source of temptation; or they have been so long away that the very process of reconciliation to God, the very practice of the simplest acts of religion, have grown strange to them. These, and other reasons, varying from mere timidity to utter despair, show the need of a strong word of encouragement to sinners. This is the day for giving sinners courage to repent. Oh! let every man and woman partake of Christ's courage today. All who are sinners, let them loath and detest their sins, and let them feel that if our Lord is with them they can conquer any passion, resist any temptation, and persevere to the end.
It is a singular thing that not only the first recorded words of our Lord after His resurrection were addressed to His favorite child, the great penitent woman of the Gospel, but that the first interview He had with His disciples was begun by the institution of the Sacrament of Penance, the open door of that city of refuge our Lord's Sacred Heart. Now is the time, therefore, most appropriate for the return to God of all sinners among us. May our risen Savior give you that joy if you have it not, and if you have it, may He confirm it to you for ever! Amen." Five minutes sermons by the Paulist Fathers
Day 46. Lent with the Cure d'Ars: Do you want to be happy?
by VP
Posted on Saturday April 19, 2025 at 12:00AM in Lenten Sermons
"Why, my dear brethren, are our lives full of so many miseries? If we consider the life of man carefully, it is nothing other than a succession of evils: the illnesses, the disappointments, the persecutions, and indeed the losses of goods fall unceasingly upon us so that whatever side the worldly man turns to or examines, he finds only crosses and afflictions. Go and ask anyone, from the humblest to the greatest, and they will all tell you the same thing. Indeed, my dear brethren, man on earth, unless he turns to the side of God, cannot be other than unhappy. Do you know why my friends? No, you tell me. Well, here is the real reason. It is that God, having put us into this world as into a place of exile and of banishment, wishes to force us, by so many evils, not to attach our hearts to it but to aspire to greater, purer, and more lasting joys than those we can find in this life. To make us appreciate more keenly the necessity to turn our eyes to eternal blessings, God has filled our hearts with desires so vast and so magnificent that nothing in creation is capable of satisfying them. Thus it is that in the hope of finding some pleasure, we attach ourselves to created objects and that we have no sooner possessed and sampled that which we have so ardently desired than we turn to something else, hoping to find what we wanted. We are, then, through our own experience, constrained to admit that it is but useless for us to want to derive our happiness here below from transient things.
If we hope to have any consolation in this world, it will only be by despising the things which are passing and which have no lasting value and in striving towards the noble and happy end for which God has created us.
Do you want to be happy, my friends? Fix your eyes on Heaven; it is there that your hearts will find that which will satisfy them completely. All the evils which you experience are the real means of leading you there. That is what I am going to show you, in as clear and brilliant way as shines the noon-day sun.
First of all, I am going to tell you that Jesus Christ, by His sufferings and His death, has made all our actions meritorious, so that for the good Christian there is no motion of our hearts or of our bodies which will not be rewarded if we perform them for Him. Perhaps you are already thinking: "That is not so very clear." Very well! If that will not do you, let us put it more simply. Follow me for a moment and you will know the way in which to make all your actions meritorious for eternal life without changing anything in your way of behaving. All you have to do is to have in view the object of pleasing God in everything you do, and I will add that instead of making your actions more difficult by doing them for God, you will make them, on the contrary, much more pleasant and less arduous. In the morning, when you awake, think at once of God and quickly make the Sign of the Cross, saying to Him: "My God, I give you my heart, and since You are so good as to give me another day, give me the grace that everything I do will be for Your honor and for the salvation of my soul."
Source: The Sermons of the Cure d'Ars
Prayer for Lent: O Lord who, for our sake, didst fast forty days and forty nights; give us grace to use such abstinence that, our flesh being subdued to the spirit, we may worthily lament and acknowledge our wretchedness, and may obtain perfect remission and forgiveness of Thee, the God of all mercy, who livest and reignest with the Father and Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen
Source: Lent with the Cure d'Ars Compiled by the CAPGHoly Saturday: "He descended into hell, the third day he rose again from the dead.”
by VP
Posted on Saturday April 19, 2025 at 12:00AM in Tradition
James Tissot - Holy Saturday
"The Savior of the world, having expired on the cross, and by His death paid the ransom due to the divine justice for the sins of men, descended into Limbo, to deliver thence those just souls who were waiting for their Redeemer, and were prepared to enter with Him into glory. Inexpressible was the joy of those holy souls at the presence of their Redeemer, who having conquered death and hell, came down in the happy character of a deliverer, and demanded them from their long confinement, to take part in his triumphs. It was the Messias whom they expected; and He being come, they think all the time of their banishment to have been as nothing, beginning now to enjoy Him, whom they had so long desired, and whom no time can ever more take from them. The same will be the happiness of every one that dies well. Whether the evils of life have been great or inconsiderable, long or short, they all disappear at the hour of a happy death, and are lost in eternity.
Our Blessed Redeemer was pleased to be taken down from the cross, and laid in a sepulchre, so to confirm to all generations the truth of His death for us, and of His resurrection from the dead. Pray that by a firm faith of what He has suffered for us, you may plentifully partake of His mercies, and daily increase in that hope and love, which are to bring you to the possession of Him. From His sacred body being laid in the sepulchre, you may learn the mystery which is taught you this day, that you also ought to be buried together with Him; that you are not only to labour that in the likeness of His death the old man may die in you, but that he may be buried also; so that he be altogether hidden from the world, and that nothing may appear in us but the new man, who is renewed in us by his death.
What happy fruit of Christ's passion would it be to us, could we obtain this mercy! We are convinced of the folly of sin, and the vanity of all that pleases for a moment; we are tired of our corruption; but who will deliver us from the body
of this death? None can do this but Jesus. Wherefore apply yourself to Him: sit at His sepulchre, and by His sacred passion beseech Him to have
compassion on you, to help you in the relief of your necessities, and give you the victory which you desire." The Catholic Year by Rev. Fr. John Gother
St. Alphege, Bishop and Martyr A.D. 1012.
by VP
Posted on Saturday April 19, 2025 at 12:00AM in Saints
"He was born of noble and virtuous parents; but renounced the world whilst he was yet very young. He served God first in the monastery of Derhurste in Gloucestershire; but after some years, he built himself a cell in a desert place of the abbey of Bath, where he shut himself up, unknown to men, but well known to God, for whose love he made himself a voluntary martyr of penance. His eminent virtues invited many to be his followers. But some of them falling from their first fervour, contented themselves with deceiving their superior with pretended exactness, while out of his sight they took very scandalous liberties, particularly in sitting up in the night to feast and drink, and fasting in the day with the rigour of the strictest hermits. But though they imposed upon this good man; yet God's justice soon discovered their hypocrisy in the punishment of it. St. Elphege in a short time reclaimed them; and God, by the sudden death of one, opened the eyes of all the rest. See that you imitate not these unhappy men, but observe discipline exactly. It is the practice of too many to transgress it, and their glory is to deceive those under whose care they are, by unduly going abroad, and unseasonable meetings at home. Break off all such customs: for there is so much folly, injustice, and deceit in them, that they cannot fail of proving your scourge in bringing mischief upon you.
The see of Winchester
falling vacant, St. Dunstan was admonished in a vision to oblige St.
Elphege to receive episcopal consecration. After he had governed the see of Winchester twenty-two years, he was chosen archbishop of Canterbury. The Danes landing in England took the city of Canterbury, seized the holy
prelate, laid him in irons, and confined him for several months in a
filthy dungeon. He was then released, but soon after cruelly martyred in
the year 1012.
Pray for all the bishops of Christ's Church;
and in particular for him, under whose charge you are. Pray for this
nation, that God would in His mercy preserve it from atheism and
infidelity; and not let these be the punishment of its vice, but make it zealous for virtue, justice and truth." The Catholic Year by Fr. John Gother
St. Apollonius, MARTYR, A.D. 186.
by VP
Posted on Friday April 18, 2025 at 12:00AM in Saints
"The Emperor Marcus Aurelius had persecuted the Christians from principle, being a bigoted Pagan: but his son Commodus, who succeeded him in the empire, after some time, shewed himself favorable to them. During this calm, the number of the faithful exceedingly increased, and many persons of the first rank enlisted under the banner of the cross. Of this number was Apollonius, a Roman senator. He was very well versed both in philosophy and the Holy Scriptures. In the midst of the peace, which the Church enjoyed, he was publicly accused of Christianity by one of his own slaves, named Severus. St. Apollonius was ordered to renounce his religion, as he valued his life and fortune; for though Commodus had forbidden any one to accuse the Christians, he had not repealed the former laws against them. The saint courageously rejected such terms, and obtained leave to give an account of his faith in full senate. This he did in an excellent discourse, which has not come down to our times. But it not being in the power of his brethren to overrule the law, he was beheaded; and thus sealed the truth with his blood.
Day 45. Lent with the Cure d'Ars: Last Judgment
by VP
Posted on Friday April 18, 2025 at 12:00AM in Lenten Sermons
"Our catechism tells us, my children, that all men will undergo a particular judgment on the day of their death. No sooner shall we have breathed our last sigh than our soul, without leaving the place where it has expired, will be presented before the tribunal of God. Wherever we may die, God is there to exercise His justice. The good God, my children, has measured out our years, and of those years that He has resolved to leave us on this earth, He has marked out one which shall be our last; one day which we shall not see succeeded by other days; one hour after which there will be for us no more time. What distance is there between that moment and this - the space of an instant. Life, my children, is a smoke, a light vapour; it disappears more quickly than a bird that darts through the air, or a ship that sails on the sea, and leaves no trace of its course!
When shall we die? Alas! will it be in a year, in a month? Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps today! May not that happen to us which happens to so many others? It may be that at a moment when you are thinking of nothing but amusing yourself, you may be summoned to the judgment of God, like the impious Baltassar. What will then be the astonishment of that soul entering on its eternity? Surprised, bewildered, separated thenceforth from its relations and friends, and, as it were, surrounded with Divine light, it will find in its Creator no longer a merciful Father, but an inflexible Judge. Imagine to yourselves, my children, a soul at its departure from this life. It is going to appear before the tribunal of its Judge, alone with God; there is Heaven on one side, Hell on the other. What object presents itself before it? The picture of its whole life! All its thoughts, all its words, all its actions, are examined.
This examination will be terrible, my children, because nothing is hidden from God. His infinite wisdom knows our most inmost thoughts; it penetrates to the bottom of our hearts, and lays open their innermost folds. In vain sinners avoid the light of day that they may sin more freely; they spare themselves a little shame in the eyes of men, but it will be of no advantage to them at the day of judgment; God will make light the darkness under cover of which they thought to sin with impunity. The Holy Ghost, my children, says that we shall be examined on our words, our thoughts, our actions; we shall be examined even on the good we ought to have done, and have not done, on the sins of others of which we have been the cause. Alas! so many thoughts to which we abandon ourselves - to which the mind gives itself up; how many in one day! in a week! in a month! in a year! How many in the whole course of our life! Not one of this infinite number will escape the knowledge of our Judge.
The proud man must give an account of all his thoughts of presumption, of vanity, of ambition; the impure of all his evil thoughts, and of the criminal desires with which he has fed his imagination. Those young people who are incessantly occupied with their dress, who are seeking to please, to distinguish themselves, to attract attention and praise, and who dare not make themselves known in the tribunal of Penance, will they be able still to hide themselves at the day of the judgment of God? No, no! They will appear there such as they have been during their life, before Him who makes known all that is most secret in the heart of man.
We shall give an account, my children, of our oaths, of our imprecations, of our curses. God hears our slanders, our calumnies, our free conversations, our worldly and licentious songs; He hears also the discourse of the impious. This is not all, my children; God will also examine our actions. He will bring to light all our unfaithfulness in His service, our forgetfulness of His Commandments, our transgression of His law, the profanation of His churches, the attachment to the world, the ill-regulated love of pleasure and of the perishable goods of earth. All, my children, will be unveiled; those thefts, that injustice, that usury, that intemperance, that anger, those disputes, that tyranny, that revenge, those criminal liberties, those abominations that cannot be named without blushes...."
Source: The Sermons of the Cure d'Ars 1960
Prayer for Lent: O Lord who, for our sake, didst fast forty days and forty nights; give us grace to use such abstinence that, our flesh being subdued to the spirit, we may worthily lament and acknowledge our wretchedness, and may obtain perfect remission and forgiveness of Thee, the God of all mercy, who livest and reignest with the Father and Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen
Source: Lent with the Cure d'Ars Compiled by the CAPGGood Friday
by VP
Posted on Friday April 18, 2025 at 12:00AM in Meditations
Mother of Mercy, Washington NC.
"On this solemn and sacred day, consider your Blessed Redeemer on Mount Calvary. Being arrived at the holy mount, Jesus is forthwith stretched out upon the cross. His hands and feet are pierced with nails, and with them fastened to the wood: and thus, with shouts and cries of the insulting multitude, He is raised up into the air, and in this manner He offers Himself a bleeding sacrifice to the eternal Father, a propitiation for our sins, and those of the whole world. Who can comprehend what He suffered here, in having His wasted, torn and tormented Body now stretched out upon a cross, His hands and feet fastened to it with nails; and then raised up with shouts into the air between two thieves, with the weight of his whole body now resting only on His wounds? Who will give us a heart to adore our Redeemer, and tears to lament His sufferings, and our sins, which are the occasion of them, and are the very nails, which have bored His sacred hands and feet, and nailed him to the cross?
The first words which our Blessed Saviour uttered, when raised up upon the cross, were: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do". Adore the charity of your crucified Redeemer. He prayed for those who treated Him with the utmost cruelty. This shows that it was an excess of love, that brought Him to this ignominious death, since He offered His blood for those who shed it. Beg of Him to open your breast to that divine charity, of which He has here given you so great an example, and to teach you the practice of forgiving all injuries, and even the worst of enemies.
They that passed by reviled Him and mocked Him. But He was pleased to suffer even to His last breath. We are sensible how great a trial it is to be despised in time of affliction; and yet contempts and insults are His entertainment in His greatest humiliation. Bless the humility and patience of your Saviour, who suffered all this for your sake from the hands of sinners. Pray that being His disciple, you may inherit some portion of His spirit, and then remember what is your duty when you are in affliction, or under contempt.
That the Scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said:"I thirst". How great must our Saviour's thirst have been, when He complained of that, after going through so many torments without opening His mouth! Bless your Redeemer for whatever He suffered in this His last hour, and beg that this His thirst may be the expiation of your intemperance, as likewise of all your niceness and self-love. Beseech Him on this day of mercy to give you a better spirit; that by the merit of His adorable thirst, all self-love may be moderated in you, and such a change be wrought, that you may no more thirst after the false goods of the world, nor be distracted with those vain desires, which have so often wasted your spirit, and taken your heart from the solicitude of more substantial goods.
About the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice: "My God my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" How great must His suffering have been, for Him thus to cry out ! This is the complaint of nature, which thus expresses its uneasiness under the cross, which the spirit had chosen. It is rather an instruction from the sacred mouth of our Redeemer, to put us in mind of the greatness of His torments, of the rigour of His divine justice, and of the cause for which He is exposed to this extremity. It is to lead us to consider and ask why He suffers all this. It is for the redemption of man: for us poor worms, wretched sinners, enemies of God, captives of hell. Blessed be this His mercy for ever!
And Jesus crying again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. Thus all is accomplished; the great sacrifice is offered for the sins of the world, in the death of Jesus on the cross on this day. Let it be a memorial to you; a memorial of the humiliations
of Jesus, of His torments, and of His death. Let it be a day of
thanksgiving, a day of humiliation, of patience, of contrition, and
penance. On this day, lament your Saviour's sufferings, and your own
sins; and do nothing on it, but what may be agreeable to the spirit
of an humble penitent and if anything painful happens, bear it with
patience, after His example. And let this be your method in proportion,
on every Friday through the whole course of the year." The Catholic Year by Rev. Fr. John Gother
Day 44. Lent with the Cure d'Ars: The Beloved Crosses
by VP
Posted on Thursday April 17, 2025 at 12:00AM in Lenten Sermons
"The saints, my dear brethren, all loved the Cross and found in it their strength and their consolation. But, you will say to me, is it necessary, then, always to have something to suffer? .... Now sickness or poverty, or again scandal or calumny, or possibly loss of money or an infirmity? Have you been calumniated, my friends? Have you been loaded with insults? Have you been wronged? So much the better! That is a good sign; do not worry; you are on the road that leads to Heaven.
Do you know when you ought to be really upset? I do not know if you understand it, but it should be precisely for the opposite reason -- when you have nothing to endure, when everyone esteems and respects you. Then you should feel envious of those who have the happiness of passing their lives in suffering, or contempt, or poverty.
Are you forgetting, then, that at your Baptism you accepted the Cross, which you must never abandon until death, and that it is the key that you will use to open the door of Heaven? Are you forgetting the words of our Savior: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." Not for a day, not for a week, not for a year, but all our lives.
The saints had a great fear of passing any time without suffering, for they looked upon it as time lost. According to St. Teresa, man is only in this world to suffer, and when he ceases to suffer, he should cease to live. St. John of the Cross asks God, with tears, to give him the grace to suffer more as a reward for all his labors.
What should we conclude, my dear children, from all that? Just this: Let us make a resolution to have a great respect for all the crosses, which are blessed, and which represent to us in a small way all that our God suffered for us. Let us recall that from the Cross flow all the graces that are bestowed upon us and that as a consequence, a cross which is blessed is a source of blessings, that we should often make the sign of the Cross on ourselves and always with great respect, and, finally, that our houses should never remain without this symbol of salvation.
Fill your children, my dear brethren, with the greatest respect for the Cross, and always have a blessed cross on yourselves; it will protect you against the Devil, from the vengeance of Heaven, and from all danger. This is what I desire for you."
Source: The Sermons of the Cure d'Ars 1960
Prayer for Lent: O Lord who, for our sake, didst fast forty days and forty nights; give us grace to use such abstinence that, our flesh being subdued to the spirit, we may worthily lament and acknowledge our wretchedness, and may obtain perfect remission and forgiveness of Thee, the God of all mercy, who livest and reignest with the Father and Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen
Source: Lent with the Cure d'Ars Compiled by the CAPG