The Lesson is taken from a Sermon by St. Leo the Pope

Dearly beloved: Unto us is born this day a Saviour.  Therefore let us rejoice.  Sadness should find no place amongst those who keep the Birthday of Life.  For as of this day Life came unto us dying creatures, to take away the sting of death, and to bring the bright promise of joy eternal.  And no one is excluded from sharing in this our gladness.  For all mankind hath one and the same cause thereof, to wit, that our Lord, the Destroyer of sin and death, because he findeth no one free from condemnation, is come to set everyone free.  Rejoice, O saint, for thou drawest nearer thy crown!  Rejoice, O sinner, for thy Saviour offereth thee pardon!  Rejoice, O Jew, for Messiah is come.  Rejoice, O Gentile, for God calleth thee to life!  Now is come the fullness of time, fixed by the unsearchable counsel of God, when the Son of God took upon him the nature of man, that he might reconcile it to its Maker.  Now is come the time when the devil, the inventor of death, is met and beaten in that very flesh which hath been the field of his victory.

When the Almighty Lord entered this field of battle against the devil, he did so in great and wondrous fairness.  For against our cruel enemy he opposed not the armament of his uncreate Majesty, but the lowliness of our flesh.  He brought against him the very shape and the very nature of our mortality, with this difference only, that he was without sin.  For his birth is not like that of the ordinary run of men, of whom there is the saying: No one is clean from stain, not even the day-old babe.  In this birth alone no desires of the flesh had place.  In this birth alone no consequence of sin had part.  A Virgin of the kingly lineage of David was chosen to be the Mother who grew heavy with the sacred Child.  She was chosen to conceive this divine and human offspring in her body because already she had conceived him in her soul.  And that the unwonted events ordained by the counsel of God might cause her no alarm, she was taught them beforehand when the Angel announced that what was to be wrought in her was of the Holy Ghost, and that to become the Mother of God was not to forego her virgin modesty.

Wherefore, dearly beloved, let us give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Ghost: who for his great love, wherewith he loved us, hath had mercy on us; and even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, that in him we might be a new creature, and a new workmanship.  Let us then put off the old man with his deeds.  And, having obtained a share in the Son-ship of Christ, let us renounce the deeds of the flesh.  Acknowledge, O Christian, thine own dignity, who hast been made partaker of the divine nature, and change not back my misdoing into thy former baseness.  Bethink thee whose Body it is whereof thou art made a member, and who is its Head.  Be mindful that he hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and translated us into God's light and God's kingdom.

At that time: There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

Sermon of St. Gregory Pope

By God's mercy we are to say three Masses today.  Hence there is not much time left for preaching on this passage of the Gospel.  Nonetheless the Feast of the Lord's Birthday constraineth me to speak a few words.  I will begin at once by asking why this numbering for taxation took place at the Lord's Birth, and why all the world was enrolled?  Was it not to make us mindful that one had now appeared in the flesh who would enroll his elect in the book of life?  And note, on the other hand, how the Prophet saith of the reprobate: Let them be wiped out of the book of the living, and not be written among the righteous.  Note also that the Lord was born in Bethlehem, which same signifieth the House of Bread, and thus was meetly the birthplace of him who hath said: I am the Living Bread which came down from heaven.  The place, then, where our Lord was born was already called the House of Bread because therein was he to appear who would feed the souls of the the faithful unto life eternal.  Not in his Mother's house was he born, but away from home.  And this should make us mindful that our mortality, in which he was born, was not the home of him who is begotten of the Father before all worlds.

Beautiful Roman noblewoman. Sister of Saint Anatolia. The two sisters were set for arranged marriages to noble Roman pagans, and were hesitant. Victoria argued that it would be all right as the patriarchs in the Old Testament had been married; but Anatolia cited other examples to prove that for the holiest lives, they should devote themselves to God and stay single. Victoria was convinced, sold her jewelry, gave the money to the poor, and refused to go through with the wedding to a fellow named Eugenius.

The two suitors insisted on the weddings, and the sisters refused. The young men denouced the women as Christians, but obtained authority to imprison them their estates, in hopes of breaking their faith and changing their minds. The women converted their servants and guards sent to watch them. Anatolia’s suitor, Titus Aurelius, soon gave up, and handed her back to the authorities. Eugenius stayed at it for years, alternating between good and harsh treatment of Victoria, but eventually even he gave up, and returned her to the authorities. She was martyred by order of Julian, prefect of the Capitol and count of the temples. Died stabbed through the heart in 250 by the executioner Liliarcus at Tabulana, Italy.

Legend says her murderer was immediately struck with leprosy, and died six days later, eaten by worms

Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea.

Sermon of Pope, St Gregory

John said unto the multitude, that came forth to be baptized of him: O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  The wrath to come in one sense signifieth the great vengeance of the Latter Day: the sinner that repenteth not of his sin now, will have no mean whereby to flee from punishment then.  Let us remark that addressing evil children copying the example of evil parents, the Baptist calleth them a generation of vipers: in that they were envious at the righteous, and persecuted them; that they repaid evil for evil; that they hunted out ways of harming their neighbours,―in all these things following the pattern of carnal parents, the prophet likeneth them to a venomous brood hatched from a venomous stock.

We also have sinned, we have fallen into wicked habits.  What must we do, if we would flee from the wrath to come?  Let us hear John.  Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance.  In which words let us remark that the Friend of the Bridegroom demandeth not only fruits of repentance, but fruits worthy of repentance.  The former are one thing, and the latter another.  In considering then what are fruits worthy of repentance, we may remark that if we had done nothing unlawful we might have had free use of things which are lawful, and been able to sanctify ourselves without abstaining from indulgence in the things of the world.

But if any one, for example, hath fallen into fornication, or perhaps, into what is much worse, adultery, he ought to make up for his lawless pleasure by abstaining in some degree from lawful enjoyments.  He that hath sinned less is not bound to mortify himself as much as he that hath sinned more, nor he that is innocent like him that is guilty.  Let every one hearing these words: Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance, proceed to judge himself by his own conscience, and the more he perceiveth that he hath sinned, the greater penance let him do.

The Apostle Thomas, called Didymus, or the Twin, was a Galilean.  After the descent of the Holy Ghost, he went into many provinces to preach Christ's Gospel.  He gave knowledge of the rules of Christian faith and life to the Parthians, Medes, Persians, Hyrcanians, and Bactrians.  He went last to the East Indies.  Here he provoked the anger of one of the idolatrous kings, because the holiness of his life and teaching, and the number of his miracles, drew many after him, and brought them to the love of Christ Jesus.  He was therefore condemned, and slain with lances.  He crowned the dignity of the Apostleship with the glory of martyrdom, on the Coromandel coast, not far from Madras.

The Lesson is taken from a Sermon
by St. Gregory the Pope

It is written: By his Spirit the Lord hath garnished the heavens.  Now the garniture of the heavens are the godly powers of preachers, and this garniture, what it is, Paul teacheth us thus:  To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another gifts of healing by the same Spirit; to another working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues; but all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.

So much power then as have preachers, so much garniture have the heavens.  Wherefore again it is written:  By the word of the Lord were the heavens made.  For the Word of the Lord is the Son of the Father.  But, to the end that all the Holy Trinity may be made manifest as the Maker of the heavens (that is, of the Apostles), it is straightway added touching God the Holy Ghost: and all the host of them by the Breath of his mouth.  Therefore the might of the same heavens is the might of the Spirit, for they had not braved the powers of this world, unless the strength of the Holy Ghost had comforted them.  For we know what manner of men the Teachers of the Holy Church were before the coming of this Spirit: and since he came we see in whose strength they are made strong.

St. Gregory of Tours (Glor. Mart.), before 590, reports that Theodore, a pilgrim who had gone to Gaul, told him that in that part of India where the corpus (bones) of Thomas the Apostle had first rested (Mylapur on the east or the Coromandel Coast of India) there stood a monastery and a church of striking dimensions and elaboratedly adorned, adding: "After a long interval of time these remains had been removed thence to the city of Edessa." The location of the first tomb of the Apostle in India is proof both of his martyrdom and of its Apostolate in India. The evidence of Theodore is that of an eyewitness who had visited both tombs — the first in India, while the second was at Edessa. The primitive Christians, therefore, found on both coasts, east and west, witness to and locate the tomb at Mylapur, "St. Thomas", a little to the south of Madras; no other place in India lays any claim to possess the tomb, nor does any other country. On these facts is based their claim to be known as St. Thomas Christians.

BILLOT I

For years I have been giving a conference on the Seven Ages of the Church, based on the Venerable Bartholomew Holzhauser’s Commentary on the book of the Apocalypse. Holzhauser, a German priest of the first half of the 1600’s, said that he wrote it under inspiration. The conference has been popular, especially because it fits the craziness of our age into a harmonious pattern of the history of the Church. What I had not realized, however, is that Holzhauser’s vision is shared by a famous classical theologian, making it more difficult to dismiss Holzhauser as a mere visionary or “apparitionist”.

It is in an Epilogue to the first volume of his classic Treatise on the Church of Christ that Cardinal Louis Billot (1846-1931) lays out in some detail the correspondence affirmed by Holzhauser between seven main periods of Church history and the seven Letters to the seven churches of Asia that make up Chapters II and III of the book of the Apocalypse. Billot’s Epilogue never mentions Holzhauser, but it is difficult to imagine that there is no connection. However, Billot takes care to start out the correspondence not from any vision or inspiration, but from the Greek names of the seven churches. The suitability of these names to the Church’s evolving history is either a remarkable coincidence, or more likely a trace of Providence at work – God, the Master of History !

Thus Billot says that Ephesus (Apoc. II, 1-7) signifies in Greek a “starting out”, obviously suitable to the Apostolic Age (33-70 AD) with which the Church began. Smyrna (Apoc.II, 8-11) names the second church and means “myrrh”, corresponding to the passion and sufferings of the Church’s Second Age (70-313 AD), that of the Martyrs. Pergamus (Apoc. II, 12-17) was a city famous for literature, so that “pergamum” came to mean material on which to write, corresponding to the cluster of great Church writers belonging to the Church’s Third Age, that of the Doctors (313-800). Thyatira names the next church (Apoc. II, 18-29), and means “splendour of triumph”, corresponding to the 1,000-year triumph of the Catholic Church, reaching from Charlemagne (742-814) to the French Revolution (1789).

These thousand years might also be reckoned from around the conversion of Clovis (496) to the outbreak of Protestantism (1517). But whether one marks the decline of Christendom from the Reformation or the Revolution, in any case Sardis, naming the fifth church (Apoc. III, 1-6), was the city of Croesus, a fabulously rich man, evoking an abundance of money, material prosperity and spiritual decadence, such as characterize modern times. Indeed the warnings to the church of Sardis correspond perfectly to our own age today, as we shall see with Billot in further “Comments”.

We move clearly into the future with the sixth church, that of Philadelphia (Apoc.III, 7-13), meaning “love” (Phil-) of “brotherhood” (- adelphia). Cardinal Billot has this name correspond to a last great triumph of the Church, marked notably by the conversion of the Jews as prophesied by St Paul (Rom.XI, 12), and by their reconciliation with the Gentiles, brothers at last in Christ (Eph.II, 14-16).

But the church of Philadelphia is warned that tribulation is coming (Apoc.III, 10), which corresponds to the seventh and last Age of the Church, that of Laodicea (Apoc. III, 14-22), named from judgment (dike) of the peoples (laon). It will be the Age of the last and most terrible trial of the Church, the persecution of the Antichrist, followed by the General Judgment of all souls that will ever have lived, and so of all peoples.

Kyrie eleison.

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