Antony María Claret, was born at Sallent in Spain, of pious and respectable parents. As a youth he practiced the weaver's trade, but later became priest. After some time in the parochial ministry, he went to Rome, hoping that the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith would send him to the foreign missions. But God disposed otherwise, and he returned to Spain, where he traveled throughout Catalonia and the Canary Islands as an apostolic missionary. Besides writing many worthwhile books, he founded the Congregation of the Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Having been appointed archbishop of Santiago in Cuba, he was conspicuous for the virtues of a zealous shepherd. He restored the seminary, promoted the teaching and the discipline of the clergy, started projects for social welfare, and founded the teaching Sisters of Mary Immaculate for the Christian education of girls. At length having been summoned to Madrid, to become confessor to the Queen of Spain and her adviser in the most serious affairs of the Church, he gave an outstanding example of austerity and of all virtues. At the Vatican Council he strenuously defended the infallibility of the Pope. He was responsible for a remarkable spread of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and her Rosary. Finally he died in exile at Fontfroide in France in the year 1870. Renowned for his miracles, he was beatified by Pope Pius XI and canonized by Pius XII.
Absolutely nothing is known about Saint Mary Salome except the little that is mentioned of her in the New Testament. Mary Salome was the wife of Zebedee and the mother of Saint James the Great (unknown-44) and Saint John the Apostle (c. 6-c. 100). She is first mention, though not by name, in Matthew 20: 20-22 when the "mother of the sons of Zebedee" comes to Jesus and asks "Command that these two sons of mine sit, one at your right and the other at your left, in your kingdom". This saint was present at the foot of the Cross and is named with the women listed in Mark 15:40: "Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of the younger James (Saint James the Less) and of Joses, and Salome". Saint Mary Salome was also one of the women who visited the tomb of Jesus on the morning of Easter Sunday. "When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James [the younger], and Salome brought spices so that they might go and anoint Him" (Mark 16:1). Saint Mary Salome is not mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles and there is no further historical record of her. There is a tradition that, after the Resurrection of Jesus, Mary Salome went to Veroli, Italy where she preached the Gospel and miraculously avoided persecution. She is sometimes referred to as one of the Three Marys. The Three Marys is a historical term for the three women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Salome, who brought herbs and spices to the tomb of Jesus. Interestingly, the verses about the mother of James and John is mentioned are the only times when the name "Salome" is mentioned in the Bible. The Salome who demanded the head of Saint John the Baptist is mentioned only as the "daughter of Herodias" (Matthew 14:6 and Mark 6:22). She is named only in a history written by Josephus (37-c. 100). Saint Mary Salome is considered the patron saint of Veroli, Italy. She is venerated by both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. In the latter, her feast day is October 22. FIRST DAY—A long, long, long time ago God was up in heaven as happy as could be ... so happy in Himself that He needed absolutely nothing to increase His happiness. But to show His GOODNESS, He decided to make the earth. "Let the earth be made," He said, and FROM NOTHING THE EARTH WAS CREATED. (Draw Fig. 1 — First God in heaven, then darkness, then earth.) SECOND DAY—Then God said: "Let the land and the sea be separated." And immediately the waters went back, and THE LAND WAS MADE. (Draw Fig. 2.) THIRD DAY—Then God said: "Let the earth bring forth the green HERB ... and the FRUIT TREE. . . ."—Gen. 1, 11. (Draw Fig. 3, adding trees and bushes to Fig. 2.) FOURTH DAY— Then God said: "Let there be LIGHTS made in the firmament of heaven, to DIVIDE THE DAY AND THE NIGHT, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years, to shine in the firmament of heaven, and to give light upon the earth. . . . And God made TWO GREAT LIGHTS: a greater light to rule the day; and a lesser one to rule the night; and the STARS. And He set them in ... heaven to shine upon the earth; and to rule the day and the night."—Gen. 1, 14. (Draw Fig. 4, adding sun, moon, stars to Fig. 3.) FIFTH DAY—Then God said: "Let the waters bring forth the CREEPING CREATURE having life, and the FOWL that may FLY over the earth. . . . And God created the GREAT WHALES. . . ."—-Gen. 1, 20. (Draw Fig. 5, adding birds and fish to Fig. 4.) SIXTH DAY—Then God said: "Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, CATTLE and CREEPING THINGS, and BEASTS of the earth. ..." God also said: "Let us make MAN to our own image and likeness; and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth. . . ."—Gen. 1, 24. (Draw Fig. 6, adding animals and MAN to Fig. 5.) So it was man . . . ourselves . . . who was to be the RULER of all the animals, the sea, the land, and the air. But why should we be the chosen ones to rule the whole world? BECAUSE GOD LOVED US! Can WE think of ever committing sin against so good a God? Let us show our love to Him and thank Him by keeping His commandments. SEVENTH DAY—"So the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the furniture of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and HE RESTED ON THE SEVENTH DAY
And He blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it. . . ."—Gen. 2, 1. Hilarion was born of heathens at Tabatha in Palestine. He was sent to study at Alexandria, where he bore a fair name for life and wit. There he embraced the religion of Jesus Christ, and made wonderful headway in faith and love. He went oftentimes to Church, was careful in fasting and prayer, and set no price upon the pleasures and lusts of the world. When the name of Anthony became famous in Egypt, Hilarion made a journey into the desert on purpose to see him. There he dwelt with him two months, to the end that he might learn all his way of life, and then returned home. After the death of his father and mother, he gave all that he had to the poor. Before he had completed the fifteenth year of his age, he went into the desert, and built there a little house, scarcely big enough to hold him, and wherein he was used to sleep on the ground. The piece of sackcloth wherewith alone he clad himself he never washed and never changed saying that haircloth was a thing not worth the trouble of cleanliness. He took great interest in reading and meditating on the Holy Scriptures. His food was a few figs and some porridge of vegetables, and this he ate not before set of sun. His self-control and lowliness were beyond belief. By these and other arms he overcame divers and fearful attacks of the devil, and drave out countless evil spirits from the bodies of men in many parts of the world. He had built many monasteries, and was famous for miracles, when, in the eightieth year of his age, he fell sick. When he was gasping for his last breath, he said: Go out, what art thou afraid of? Go out, my soul, wherefore shrinkest thou? Thou hast served Christ hard on seventy years, and art thou afraid of death? And so with these words he gave up the Ghost. A DIVINE PERSON II It can be wondered today if there are any real Catholics left among those who call themselves Catholic, because everyone finds it natural to speak of freedom of religion and the liberty of worship. Yet that cannot be conceded, because it is contrary to the dignity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. They will accuse you of being intolerant. How many Catholics think the same thing, even in our own Catholic families? If you affirm there is only one true religion, the religion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and all the others come from the devil, that they are of the Antichrist because they deny the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, they will accuse you of being intolerant. "So, you want to go back to the Middle Ages," they will sneer. No, we only want to restore what is: Our Lord is King. The day when He comes suddenly in majesty upon the clouds of heaven they will say, "Ah, indeed, He is King; we did not believe it was possible." Yes, Our Lord is King, and He will be the only one, there shall be none beside Him. People are not able to convince themselves of it. They are infected by liberalism, by the secularism that affects many. Our Lord Jesus Christ is no longer ascribed his true place. His reign must be established on the earth as in heaven. It is He himself who said so in the prayer that He taught us, the Our Father: Adveniat regnum tuum, fiat voluntas tua sicut in caelo et in terra. And this must be the object of our prayers, the intention of our sufferings, and the purpose of our life. We must have no rest until our Lord's reign is established. A Catholic whose heart is not animated by this profound desire is not a Catholic. He is not one of the faithful of our Lord Jesus Christ. It suffices to reread these lines: Now at last in these times he has spoken to us, with a Son to speak for him; a Son, whom he has appointed to inherit all things, just as it was through him that he created this world of time (Heb. 1:2). It is Jesus Christ, God by whom all things were created. The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are together the Creator of the world.10 It is by the Word that the Father created the world in the Holy Ghost. It is not necessary to have recourse to apologetics or to cite exhaustively all the proofs of the divinity and the humanity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. What we need most of all for our spiritual life is to affirm our Faith and not prove it, because it reposes upon the authority of God, on the words of our Lord. We have perhaps too much of a tendency to rationalize our Faith, to find proofs. Undoubtedly, our Faith is reasonable, and there are valid motives for believing; but we have the Faith, it is by Faith that we believe in God Our Lord, and we must affirm this Faith. 10 "Et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum...per quern omniafacta sunt—And through Him all things were made" (Nicene Creed). Extracts from The Mystery of Jesus, by Archbishop Lefebvre, Angelus Press 2000 At that time: The Pharisees went and took counsel how they might entangle Jesus in his talk. St. Hilary the Bishop The Pharisees had oftentimes been put to confusion, and were not able to find any ground to accuse him out of anything that he had hitherto said or done. His words and works are, of necessity, faultless; but still, from spite, they set themselves to seek in every direction for some cause to accuse him. He was calling all to turn away from the corruptions of the world, and the superstitious practices of devotion invented by men, and to fix their hopes upon the kingdom of heaven. They therefore arranged a question calculated to entrap him into an offence against civil government, namely: Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar or not? But Jesus perceived their wickedness: for in sooth there is nothing hidden in the heart of man, but what God seeth it; and so he said: Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? shew me the tribute-money. And they brought unto him a penny. And he saith unto them: Whose is this image and superscription? They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. How wonderful is this answer! How perfect the fulfilment of the Divine Law herein prescribed! So beautifully doth he here strike the balance between caring not for the things of the world, on the one hand, and the offence of injuring Caesar, on the other, that he proveth the perfect freedom of minds, however devoted to God, to discharge all human cases and duties, by commanding them to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's. If we have nothing which is Caesar's, then we have nothing which we are bound to render unto him. But if we are concerned with the things which are his, if we are entrusted by him with the use of delegated power, if we are subject to him as paid servants to take care of property which is not our own, there can be no dispute but that it is our duty to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's. But unto God all of us are bound always to render the things that are God's, that is to say, our body, soul, and will. These are things which we hold from him, and whereof he is the Author and Maker. This is therefore no more than mere justice―that they, who acknowledge that they owe to him their being and creation, should render to him all that they are. JESUS CHRIST CONSUBSTANTIAL WITH THE FATHER We must love to think over the whole life of our Lord in order better to grasp the great mystery which is our Lord and which unites in Him the three grand mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Redemption. The Creed is a nourishing spiritual food. There is no need to look for a difficult and complicated topic for our meditation; the Creed offers us a very fruitful one, and initiates us into the great mysteries which are to be our consolation here below and our joy in heaven. The Symbol of Nicea is even more explicit: I believe in one God, the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things, visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. And born of the Father, before all ages. God of God: Light of Light: true God of true God. Begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father... Here it is a question of the Divine nature of Our Lord, by whom all things were made. Then comes His Incarnation: Who, for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven. And became incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary: and was made man. He was crucified also for us, suffered under Pontius Pilate, and was buried. And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures. And ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, of whose kingdom there shall be no end.... All the clauses of these sentences take on considerable importance. The Credo is short, quickly read or recited, but it is the very thing that men should know and meditate all their life long. After all, knowing what God has done for us is the most essential thing. It is clearly affirmed that God is the Creator of all things: our Lord who is God is our Creator. He is the Word of God by whom all was made, hence He is both our Beginning and our End. He desired to make Himself our way which leads to the end; and not only our way, but also our nourishment, and also to be our brother and to communicate to us the divine life. It is an admirable history. Our Lord is the measure of the worth of persons and things. To the degree that the one and the other are nearer our Lord they have real worth, true worth. Clearly, then, it is the most Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph who hold the first places. In spirituality, there is a tendency to minimize the place and the role of St. Joseph; yet he held an extraordinary place in the economy of the Incarnation and the Redemption. To him were confided the Mother of Jesus, and Jesus himself, thus God Himself. He certainly received very special graces of light on the mystery of the Incarnation. In the measure that men are close to Our Lord, they become transformed in our Lord, they live in our Lord. This is seen in the history of the Church: it is around our Lord that families, communities, villages and towns are constituted. Literally, all live around our Lord. Even professional associations had their patron saints and feastdays within the profession, within society. In the family, the entire atmosphere was imbued with the presence of our Lord. We must try to restore this ambiance, and introduce the presence of our Lord once again into our daily lives, and His royalty into the course of everyday public life. We must become truly Christian once again. We must dwell upon the mystery of our Lord Jesus Christ, and believe in His Divinity, for He is God. The Nicene Creed continues: I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. Together with the Father and the Son he is adored and glorified; he it was who spoke through the prophets. I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. I profess one baptism for the remission of sins. And I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen. Notice that the Symbol of Nicea begins with this sentence: "I believe in one God"; hence, there are not several Gods. When the highest authority of the Church and the bishops go so far as to say: "We have the same God," in speaking of the Moslems, it is incredible. For they do not believe in the Blessed Trinity, and they do not have the same Faith as we do. The god they adore will give them, so they think, a hundredfold of the material goods they enjoy on earth. The richer one is, the richer one will be; the more concubines one has, the more one "will have in the figment they paint for themselves of heaven....Such is the god of the Moslems, whom we are told is He whom we adore! Such statements are senseless and blasphemous. This John was the son of godly and respectable parents named Stanislaus and Anne, and was born in the year of our Lord 1397, in the town of Kenty, a place in the diocese of Crakow in Poland, from which he took the Latin name of Cantius. By his gentleness, innocency, and seriousness he gave great hopes even from his childhood. He studied Philosophy and Theology in the University of Crakow, wherein he rose step by step to be a Professor and teacher of those sciences wherein he lectured many years, not only enlightening the minds of his hearers, but stirring up in them all godliness, instructing them by ensample as well as by word. Having taken Priests' orders, he ceased not to busy himself with letters, but added thereto the striving after Christian perfection. He grieved exceedingly that God should be offended on all hands, and offered up to Him, day by day, not without many tears, the Unbloody Sacrifice for a propitiation for himself and for his people. He was for some years a faithful Parish Priest at Ilkusi, but after a while gave it up for fear of the danger of souls, and accepted the call of the University to take up again his Professorship. What time was left him over from his work, he gave up partly to the profit of his neighbour, more especially in preaching, and partly in prayer, wherein he is said sometimes to have had heavenly visions and messages. The sufferings of Christ took such hold upon him, that he sometimes passed whole nights without sleep in thinking thereon, and that he might more keenly realize them, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. There he was seized with such a passionate longing to be a martyr, that he preached Christ crucified even to the Turks. He went four times to Rome to the thresholds of the Apostles, on foot, and laden with a wallet, partly to do honour to the Apostolic See, for which he had a great reverence, and partly (to use his own expression) that he might clear off the pains of his own purgatory by use of the Pardons for sin which are there daily offered. In one of these journeys he was set upon by highway robbers, who plundered him, and having asked him if he had any more, whereto he answered, Nay, left him and fled. Then he remembered that he had some gold pieces sewn up in his clothes. So he ran after the robbers with shouts, and offered them these also, but they were so amazed at the simplicity and charity of the holy man, that they gave him back even that which they had already taken. To hinder scandal-mongering, he wrote up upon the walls, after the ensample of holy Austin, certain texts, to be an unceasing warning to himself and others. He gave his own bread to the hungry, and clothed the naked, not with bought raiment only, but by stripping himself of his own garments and shoes, himself meanwhile letting down his own cloak to trail upon the ground, lest any should see that he returned home barefoot. He slept very little, and that upon the ground; his clothing was enough only to clothe his nakedness, and his food to keep him alive. He kept his virgin purity guarded like a lily among thorns by rough hair-cloth, scourging, and fasting. For about thirty-five years before his death he never tasted flesh- meat. At length, when he was full of days and good works, he felt that death was near, and made himself ready to meet it by a long and careful preparation, and to be the freer, he gave to the poor everything that was left in his house. Strengthened by the Sacraments of the Church, and having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, he took flight to heaven upon the 24th day of December, (in the year of our Lord 1473.) He was famous for miracles both before and after his death. His body was carried into the University Church of St Anne, hard by his dwelling, and there honourably buried. The popular reverence and the crowds around his sepulchre grew greater day by day, till he hath come to be held in honour as one of the chiefest holy defenders of Poland and Lithuania. At the glory of more wonders, Pope Clement XIII., upon the 16th day of July, in the year 1767, with solemn pomp, enrolled his name among those of the Saints. The Lesson is taken from the Book on Ecclesiastical Writers, written by St. Jerome the Priest Luke was a physician of Antioch, who, as appeareth from his writings, knew the Greek language. He was a follower of the Apostle Paul, and his fellow-traveller in all his wanderings. He wrote a Gospel, whereof the same Paul saith: We have sent with him the brother, whose praise is in the Gospel throughout all the Churches. Of him, he writeth unto the Colossians, Luke, the beloved physician greeteth you. And again, unto Timothy, Only Luke is with me. He also published another excellent book entitled The Acts of the Apostles, wherein the history is brought down to Paul's two-years sojourn at Rome, that is to say, until the fourth year of Nero, from which we gather that it was at Rome that the said book was composed. The silence of Luke is one of the reasons why we reckon among Apocryphal books The Acts of Paul and Thecla, and the whole story about the baptism of Leo. For why should the fellow-traveller of the Apostle, who knew other things, be ignorant only of this? At the same time there is against these documents the statement of Tertullian, almost a contemporary writer, that the Apostle John convicted a certain Priest in Asia, who was a great admirer of the Apostle Paul, of having written them, and that the said Priest owned that he had been induced to compose them through his admiration for Paul, and that he was deposed in consequence. There are some persons who suspect that when Paul in his Epistles useth the phrase, According to my Gospel, he meaneth the Gospel written by Luke. Howbeit, Luke learned his Gospel not from the Apostle Paul only, who had not companied with the Lord in the flesh, but also from other Apostles, as himself declareth at the beginning of his work, where he saith: They delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word. According to what he had heard, therefore, did he write his Gospel. As to the Acts of the Apostles, he composed them from his own personal knowledge. He was never married. He lived eighty-four years. He is buried at Constantinople, whither his bones were brought from Achaia in the twentieth year of Constantine, together with the relics of the Apostle Andrew. Peter was born at Alcántara in Spain, to parents of good extraction. The holiness of his life was foreshadowed from his earliest years. In the sixteenth year of his age he entered the Order of Friars Minor, wherein he shewed himself a pattern to all. He undertook the work of preaching in obedience to his Superiors, and thereby brought many to turn away from sin to true repentance. He conceived a great desire to bring back the observance of the Rule of St. Francis to the uttermost straitness of old times, and to that end, supported by God's help, and armed with the approval of the Apostolic See, he founded a new stern and poor house near Pedroso, from which the harder way of life, therein happily begun, spread marvellously through divers Provinces of Spain even to the Indies. He was an helper to holy Teresa, with whom he was like-minded, in bringing about the Reformation of the Carmelites. She was taught of God that no one should ask anything in the name of Peter without being heard, and was used to ask him to pray for her, and to call him a Saint while as he was yet alive. He humbly excused himself from accepting the courtesies of princes, by whom his advice was sought as that of an oracle, and declined to become the Confessor of the Emperor Charles V. He was a very careful keeper to poverty, and contented himself with a single tunic than which none was worse. Purity he carried to such a point that when he was lying sick of his last illness, he would not allow the brother who ministered to him to touch him, how lightly soever. He brought his body into bondage by unceasing watching, fasting, scourging, cold, nakedness, and all manner of hardships, having made it a promise never to allow it any rest in this world. The love of God and his neighbour, which was shed abroad in his heart, somewhiles burnt so that he was fain to run from his cell into the open air to cool himself. It was marvellous how his thoughts became altogether rapt in God, so that somewhiles it befell that he neither ate nor drank for the space of several days. He was oftentimes seen to rise into the air, shining with an unearthly glory. He passed dry-shod over torrents. When his brethren were in the last state of need, he fed them with food from heaven. A staff which he fixed in the earth grew presently into a green fig-tree. Once while he was travelling by night in the midst of an heavy snowstorm, and took refuge in a ruined and roofless house, then the falling snow made a roof over him lest he should be overwhelmed. Holy Teresa beareth witness that he had the gift of prophecy and of the discerning of spirits. At length, in the 63rd year of his own age, at the hour which he had himself foretold, he passed away to be for ever with the Lord, cheered in his last moments by a wonderful vision and by the presence of Saints. At the instant of his death, blessed Teresa, then afar off, saw him carried to heaven. He appeared to her afterwards, and said: O what happy penance, to have won for me such glory! After his death he became famous for very many miracles, and Clement IX inscribed his name among those of the Saints. |
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