St. Pantaleon, Martyr, A.D. 303.
by VP
Posted on Sunday July 27, 2025 at 12:00AM in Prayers
"He was physician to the Emperor Galerius Maximianus ; who being converted to the Christian faith, extended his profession to the care of souls as well as of bodies. He fell, however, by a temptation, which is sometimes more dangerous than the fiercest torment; for bad example, if not shunned, insensibly weakens, and at length destroys the strongest virtue. Pantaleon in the midst of an impious and idolatrous court, and deceived by often hearing the false maxims of the world applauded, was unhappily seduced into an apostacy from the faith. But a zealous Christian called Hermolaus, by his prudent admonitions, awakened his conscience to a sense of his guilt, and brought him again into the fold of the Church. The penitent ardently wished to expiate his crime by martyrdom; and to prepare himself for the conflict, when the cruel persecution of Dioclesian broke out at Nicomedia in 303, he distributed all his possessions among the poor. Not long after this action, he was taken up, and after suffering many torments with wonderful constancy, he was at length beheaded under Dioclesian, in the year 303.
Pray for all in persecution and trouble; and beseech God to give you patience in all your trials. What are your trials if compared to those of the martyrs? Why then are you so easily disturbed? Lament your weakness, and beg for strength. Humble yourself, and pray for divine grace. Learn too, that all states are capable of doing good to their neighbour, in helping him into the way of salvation. Be zealous and charitable in this, as far as your circumstances will permit. How often have you given scandal to others by words; and by your bad example discouraged them from seeking the truth? What other reparation can you make, than by edifying them by your zeal, and by seasonable discourses exciting them to the love of virtue and truth?" The Catholic Year by Fr. John Gother
"Lord, he whom Thou lovest is sick."
Prayer to St. Pantaleon for the sick and afflicted (priests): O fortunate penitent! sighing to prove your perfect contrition and love by the heroic shedding of your heart's blood for Him whom your sins had crucified! O happy martyr! I offer my heartfelt thanks to God for the great favors bestowed upon you, and upon all who lovingly drink the chalice of the Lord, and bear His Cross. I now humble come before you to invoke your special prayers on my behalf, and on behalf of those for whom I have been inspired to pray. Oh! prove to us now that the prayers of us, poor exiles, are not despised in the blessed mansions above. As all good Samaritans invoke your aid and blessing, look compassionately on me, and on those sufferers for whom I invoke your aid. O obtain the grant of our humble petitions, and ask them for us in the sacred Name of Jesus. N.N.We likewise invoke your patronage for the spiritual physicians of all erring and afflicted souls, and for all those whom Providence has called to the vocation of the "Good Samaritan". As for the poor "patients", who now undergo the ordeal of spiritual, corporal, or mental infirmities, I earnestly ask relief or perfect cure, and whatever will be most conducive towards securing their eternal salvation, and a higher degree of glory for them in Heaven. If it be God's blessed Will that their trials continues, obtain for them a great spirit of prayer, interior penance, patience, longanimity, and holy joy in embracing every pain, privation, or humiliation that may befall them, for the pure love of Jesus Crucified; and though not actually martyrs for their holy faith and religion, pray, O illustrious penitent, that they may be the happy martyrs of Divine Love by their perfect meekness and conformity to the Will of their heavenly Father, who chastises them in mercy by the penalties for sin, of sickness, desolation, and death. Amen
Source: The Fervent Adorer, Or, Practice of Perpetual Adoration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus 1867
THE PROMISE OF SALVATION
by VP
Posted on Sunday July 27, 2025 at 12:00AM in Sunday Sermons
"The grace of God, life everlasting." -Rom. vi. 23.
1. The value of a promise.
2. What is this promise ?
3. It has been made to us by God.
4. Can we not promise in return to merit its fulfilment ?
A PROMISE made to us is an attraction that enkindles hope and leads us to make endeavour. But how often have we been promised and have been disappointed! Or again, promises have been made, but the conditions have not been fulfilled, and there is no result. So a promise on which we can build our hopes, and which may urge us on to do our utmost, must be made by one whom we can trust, by one who has power to fulfil it; and it must be a promise of something well worth gaining. The greater the good that is offered, the more the promise is to be prized. And finally, the condition or the conditions imposed must be within our power of fulfilment.
Then what is the promise that the text alludes to ? Life everlasting! We have it plain and unequivocal in Holy Writ: "And this is the promise which God hath promised us--life everlasting" (I John ii. 25). Test this promise, and see how wholeheartedly we can trust to it. First, it is the promise of one in whom we may confide--the God of Truth. Again, it is the promise of one who has the power to fulfil it--the Almighty. And it is a promise of infinite value, that will last for all eternity, without fail or change-life everlasting, which is the blessed vision of God and the participation in His glory and beatitude.
And how is this promise to be fulfilled? By our divine Saviour, Jesus Christ. Witness the inspired words of God in the Scriptures: "According to the promise of life, which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. i. 1); and again, "God according to His promise hath raised up to Israel a Saviour, Jesus" (Acts xiii. 23). For all the promises of God are in Him" (2 Cor. i. 20).
The Son of God, Jesus Christ, became Man and lived amongst us, showed us by example and taught us the way of salvation; He redeemed us by His sacred Passion and Death; He instituted His Church to be our guide and our safeguard, and made it infallible and imperishable by the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. He instituted the Sacraments, and specially the Holy Eucharist, through which we might receive grace and nourishment and strength. All this to prove to us that the promise was efficacious and alive with power. Moreover, that the promise might always be before our minds, illuminating, filling them with hope, inflaming our souls to venture all, to do their utmost, His divine Presence dwells amongst us. In every church He has made His abode to dwell amidst the children of men.
All this is held out to us, and given to us by the promise of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Can it be that this gracious and glorious promise has really been made to us? Look around: does mankind seem to believe it and understand it? That life everlasting is promised, is guaranteed to them? Is it their one thought, engrossing all their attention, inspiring their actions, their zeal? If life everlasting is promised us, can it be possible that the desire of money, position, comfort, or anything in this fleeting world can occupy our attention, can preoccupy our thoughts so entirely that we utterly disregard and forget this promise of Almighty God?
Perhaps the condition to be fulfilled to gain the reward of the promise is entirely beyond our powers and our hopes. Can we believe for a moment that the just and faithful God would treat us so? No; according to His promise He has raised up a Saviour; so it is through Him, our Saviour Himself, that we can surely fulfil the conditions to make the promise effective. He is ready and longing to give us both the will and the power to do His blessed Will; for that is the condition--we must obey Him and do His holy Will, then there is eternal life for our reward. The Church prays: " O Almighty and eternal God, grant us an increase of faith, hope, and charity, and that we may deserve to obtain what Thou promisest, make us love what Thou commandest." It is because we have not the faith or hope in our hearts to cling to His promise that we have not the love to venture all in striving to gain "life everlasting."
God has promised us so much; cannot we find in our hearts to promise Him in return our obedience, our loyalty, our love? Let us not be smitten by the glamour of the vain promises of the world, so as to give our time, our activity, our souls to seek to gain them. Rather with the faith of St. Peter, let us cry out: "Lord, Thou hast the words of life to whom shall we go?" Aye, indeed, to whom shall we go, when we feel that this short life is drawing to a close, when death is drawing nigh? What promises will avail us then, except the one divine promise of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord ?
Everything will slip from our grasp then; we shall have to leave and part from all. What consolation will it then be, that we have trusted in the promise of God -the faithful God- Who will give us life everlasting through His Son, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ! ( Short Sermons on the Epistles & Gospels of the Sundays of the Year By Fr. Francis Paulinus Hickey O.S.B. 7th Sunday after Pentecost)
Tu Es Sacerdos in Aeternum
by VP
Posted on Sunday July 27, 2025 at 12:00AM in Poetry
(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.
Novena for Priests to St. John Vianney Day 2
by VP
Posted on Sunday July 27, 2025 at 12:00AM in Prayers
St. John Vianney, Full of Zeal for Souls O holy Priest of Ars, you
taught men to pray daily: O my God,
come to me, so that You may dwell in me and I may dwell in You. Your
life was the very living out of
this prayer. The divine life of grace abided in you. Your zeal for the
salvation of souls was manifested
by your total self-surrender to God, which was expressed in your
selfless service to others. You gave of yourself unreservedly in the
confessional, at the altar, in the classroom, in fact, in every action
you performed.
O great St. John Vianney, obtain for Father ___
the realization that God also dwells in him when he is free of sin.
Remind him that the salvation of his soul is the fulfillment of his
existence. Awaken in him a sense of self-giving for the salvation of
souls. Obtain for Father ___ , by your intercession, a zeal for souls
like your zeal. May he see that God dwells in him and in his fellow men.
Obtain for him from our Lord the grace to lead all men to salvation.
Let your prayer be his: If you really love God, you will greatly desire
to see Him loved by all the world.
Novena Prayer:
O holy Priest of Ars, St. John Marie Vianney, you loved God and served
Him faithfully as
His Priest. Now you see God face to face in heaven. You never despaired
but persevered in your faith
until you died. Remember now the dangers, fears and anxieties that
surround Father ___ and intercede for him in all his needs and troubles
especially console him in his most difficult moments, grant him serenity
in the midst of crisis, and protect him from evil. O St. John Vianney, I
have confidence in your intercession.
Pray for Father ___ in a special way during this novena.
