Virgo Potens

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 6th and hence the spirit of Corpus Christi is not a sense of sin, of forgiveness of sin, or of exile, but of triumph, though ending in the soul at last, as we shall see, in a devotion of the most plaintive and pensive description. But true it is, that whatsoever in devotion is of a joyous sort, brave, persisting, trying great things and accomplishing them, quick-sighted, instantaneous, venturesome, and trustful, is of faith, and is chiefly introduced and maintained by the worship of the Blessed Sacrament. This is the secret of the fortitude of the saints. Then again there are feasts and ceremonies expressing the past mysteries of Jesus and Mary, the gracious acts, joyful, sorrowful or glorious, which belong to the mystery of the Incarnation. These feasts are commemorative, historical, monumental, while they also keep reviving in the Church the peculiar graces and exercises of virtue, and the heroisms of the spiritual life which they recall. They all belong to one class, because they express past events, and those events mysteries of the Incarnation; yet each one of them has a peculiar and separate spirit of its own; each has a speciality to further some particular grace in the soul and to give some cognizable shape to its interior life, or to become the dominant genius of some religious congregation. One star differs from another star in glory; and every action of our Blessed Lord is so fertile and exuberant, so powerful to produce its like in others, so full of divine energy and signification, that it is in itself a creative word, and calls forth in our souls a perfect little world of mystical and spiritual beauty and consistency. The same may be said of each of those several and successive adornments of grace and power, with which the munificence of the Most Holy Trinity arrayed the elect Mother of God. Thus a knowledge of the mysteries to which they are specially devoted will often reveal the whole spiritual history of a pious soul, and will enable us to discern the purposes of God upon it. Corpus Christi does not fall under this class of feasts, while Holy Thursday evidently does; and who is there who does not perceive at once the great dif ference between these two processions of the Blessed Sacrament. While the one is simple triumph and holy jubilation, the other is pensive and pathetic. The Sepulchre is there, a visible monument of what we are commemorating, and the Vexilla regis is the key-note of the whole, and our last effort to be joyful has passed away with the closing music of the Gloria. If we compare Holy Thursday and Corpus Christi we shall see wht very distinctive spirits two similar feasts can have; and these different spirits represent realities and actual operations of grace in the soul. I seem to be wasting a great many words on a very simple truth. But if it is true, as St. Philip tells us, that it is a bad sign if we do not experience a notable fervour and sweetness at great feasts, is it not also true that in order to draw the fire and to suck the sweetness out of each feast, it is important to apprehend its real and peculiar spirit ? I say then that Corpus Christi is essentially a feast of triumph. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 6th This threefold sense of sin, of sin’s forgiveness, and of exile, gives us a clear insight into the spirit of Catholic devotion. It is not exactly a spirit of sadness, but of pathos, mournful, humble, graceful, pining; if it murmurs, it is in songs and hymns unto the Lord, or if it seem impatient, it is because its holy desires are for the moment beyond control. It is not forward, but it is firm. It is not loudly confident, but it is in secret peace and tranquil surety. It is the gentle bravery of continued suffering, not the defiant valour of momentary martyrdom. It is all this, because it is made up of hope and charity more sensibly than of faith; whereas it is chiefly the element of faith in devotion which is represented to us by the worship of the Blessed Sacrament : (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 5th When the Church assembles her children on Ash-Wednesday and marks them on the brow with the memento of their mortality, which is the punishment of sin, or when she suspends her Gloria in Advent and in Lent, or when she extinguishes one by one her mystic candles amid the grave chants of her doleful Tenebrae, or when she strips her altars, as if the end of the world or the persecution of Antichrist were come and there was to be no more daily Sacrifice, all these are so many expressions of the sense of sin and of the mournfulness of our estrangement from God. How deeply by this show of grief does she instil into our minds a hatred of sin and a sense of its tremendous guilt, exciting in us in the mysterious ceremonies of Holy Week almost more of humbling shame than of happy love ! But when she uncovers the Crucifix to the faithful and invites them to prostrate themselves and kiss the feet of their Saviour’s image, or when she celebrates the Feast of the Most Holy Redeemer, or the reparatory Feast of the Sacred Heart, that day of reparation which our Lord Himself revealed, then it is rather the sense of forgiveness which is expressed than a sense of sin, and yet still in the humble spirit of consciously unworthy penitents. Again, when she calls us to celebrate the Feasts of the Angels and of the Saints, especially that abundant Feast of strong and unusual and redoubled graces, All Saints Day, or to join in the Candlemas procession, it seems as if the sense of exile rather than anything else weighed heavy on her spirit. It is but another form of that beautiful cry of hers from out the deep places of her banishment, whether fresh for the day’s work at cockcrow when lauds are sung, or weary with so much bootless toil as the last soul-soothing notes of vespers are dying away, when for so great a portion of the year she turns from her Spouse to His Mother, almost in envy or in reproach, “To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, weeping and mourning in this vale of tears.” So too how touching is that word ‘patria’ at the end of O Salutaris, as if the very nearness of Jesus, the very privilege of the passing moment, only deepened the sense of exile, and rendered it the more intolerable, and as if the echo of our hearts to the sight of Him in His Sacramental veils could only be that word, “country,” patria, so sweet to an exile’s ear, so sad to an exile’s mouth. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 5th II. Triumph then is the character of the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament. Its spirit is a spirit of triumph. Let us get a clear idea of this; for triumph is not a common spirit in devotion, and we should know exactly what it means for it has much to do both with the freshness and vigour of our faith, and also with that liberty of spirit without which there is no evangelical perfection. There is a great and edifying variety in the liturgical and ritual expressions of the Church, as we might expect from the fulness of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within her. Yet most of them have to do either with a sense of sin, or with a sense of forgiveness, or with a sense of exile : and this fact reveals to us very much of the peculiar character of Catholic devotion. (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 4th The same millions made their thanksgiving, and what a choir of praise was there. How many aged men will the evening find less worldly than the morning saw them. In how many souls of children has not faith started and grown, strong, supple, juicy shoots, more than a whole year’s growth in one brief day : and what a glorious thing is each growth of faith in a childish soul, seeing there comes along with it such a glorious promise for eternity ! And what shall I say of those deeper depths, the souls of mortified interior men ? I suppose that the mere exercise of faith, to say nothing of love, in a saint is something so deep and high, so far-reaching and full of union with Christ, that we common Christians can know nothing of it. And how many real saints, how many hereafter to be raised on the altars of the Church, have been in rapture, in extasy, in transcendent communion with God this day, through the stirring of the life-giving mystery in their souls. The silent cloister has sent up thousands of sweet perfumes from espoused souls throughout the day; acts of faith enough to win grace for unconverted tribes, acts of love sufficient to expiate a sea of blasphemies and a world of sacrilege, acts of union which have strengthened and invigorated the whole Church and quickened all its pulses in places far remote from the cells, where the acts were perfected in solitude and prayer and austere concealment. Who can tell the vocations begun or achieved to-day, the conversions suggested or effected, the first blows given to a sinful habit or the crowning virtue to a devout resolve, the sins remitted or the sinful purposes abandoned, the death-beds illuminated or the souls liberated from purgatory through the quickened charity of earth ? There has been a vast and busy and populous empire of interior acts open to the eye of God to-day, so beautiful, so glorious, so religious, so acceptable, that the feast of the outer world has been the poorest possible expression of the inner feast of the world of spirit. And what is it all but triumph, the triumph of our hidden Lord ? ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 4th A single supernatural act — how much dearer is it to God than a thousand sins are hateful; for the odour of Christ and the unction of His grace and the ornament of His Blood and the seal of His merits are on that single act. Grace grows active as great feasts grow nigh ; and its preludes bring many souls to the feet of their spiritual physicians. Crowds that were in sin yesterday now for the love of Jesus have made to-day’s sun to rise upon their penance; and over each one all heaven’s angels rejoiced, more than over a newly-created world. Millions have made their preparation for Communion, and the least fervent of them all did something for God he would not else have done. The same millions communicated; and think of all that Jesus did in them, and with them, and for them, while the sacramental union lasted ! (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 3rd The world over, the summer air is filled with the voice of song. The gardens are shorn of their fairest blossoms to be flung beneath the feet of the Sacramental God. The steeples are reeling with the clang of bells; the cannon are booming in the gorges of the Andes and the Apennines; the ships of the harbours are painting the bays of the sea with their show of gaudy flags; the pomp of royal or republican armies salutes the King of kings. The Pope on his throne and the school-girl in her village, cloistered nuns and sequestered hermits, bishops and dignitaries and preachers, emperors and kings and princes, all are engrossed to-day with the Blessed Sacrament. Cities are illuminated; the dwellings of men are alive with exultation. Joy so abounds that men rejoice they know not why, and their joy overflows on sad hearts, and on the poor and the imprisoned and the wandering and the orphaned, and the homesick exiles. All the millions of souls that belong to the royal family and spiritual lineage of St. Peter are to-day engaged more or less with the Blessed Sacrament : so that the whole Church Militant is thrilling with glad emotion, like the tremulous rocking of the mighty sea. Sin seems forgotten; tears even are of rapture rather than of penance. It is like the soul’s first day in heaven or as if earth itself were passing into heaven, as it well might do, for sheer joy of the Blessed Sacrament. But all this represents and reveals an interior world of deep worship and of countless supernatural operations of the Holy Ghost, and of the exuberant activity and inexhaustible energy of the Precious blood. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 3rd How many glorious processions, with the sun upon their banners, are now winding their way round the squares of mighty cities, through the flower-strewn streets of Christian villages, through the antique cloisters of the glorious cathedral or through the grounds of the devout seminary where the various colours of the faces and the different languages of the people are only so many fresh tokens of the unity of that faith, which they are all exultingly professing in the single voice of the magnificent ritual of Rome! Upon how many altars of various architecture, amid sweet flowers and starry lights, amid clouds of humble incense and the tumult of thrilling song, before thousands of prostrate worshippers, is the Blessed Sacrament raised for exposition, or taken down for benediction ! And how many blessed acts of faith and love, of triumph and of reparation, do not each of these things surely represent ! (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 2nd But somehow our very disappointment causes us to feel more touchingly the gift of faith, and the sense of our own unworthiness which makes it such a wonder that God should have elected us to so great a gift. O sweet Sacrament of Love ! we belong to Thee, for Thou art our Living Love Himself. Thou art our well of life, for in Thee is the Divine Life Himself, immeasurable, compassionate, eternal. To-day is Thy day, and on it there shall not be a single thought, a single hope, a single wish, which shall not be all for Thee ! Now the first thing we have to do is to get the spirit of the Feast into us. When this is once accomplished we shall be better able to sound some of the depths of this salutary mystery. Nay, the whole theology of the grand dogma of the Eucharist is nothing less than angelic music made audible to mortal ears and when our souls are attuned to it we shall the better understand the sweet secrets which it reveals to our delighted minds. But we must go far away in order to catch the spirit of the Feast. We must put before ourselves, as on a map, the aspect which the whole Church is presenting to the Eye of God to-day. Our great city is deafened with her noise; she cannot hear. She is blinded with her own dazzle; she cannot see. We must not mind her : we must put the thought of her away, with sadness if it were any other day than this, but to-day, because it is to-day, with complete indifference. O the joy of the immense glory the Church is sending up to God this hour : verily ! as if the world was all unfallen still ! We think, and as we think, the thoughts are like so many successive tide-waves filling our whole souls with the fulness of delight, of all the thousands of masses which are being said or sung the whole world over, and all rising with one note of blissful acclamation from grateful creatures to the Majesty of our merciful Creator. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 2nd Let us suppose it to be the Feast of Corpus Christi. We have risen with one glad thought uppermost in our minds. It gives a colour to everything round about us. It is health to us even if we are not well, and sunshine though the skies be dull. At first there is something of disappointment to us, when we see our dear country wearing the same toilsome look of common-place labour and of ordinary traffic. We feel there is something wrong, something out of harmony in this. Poor London! if it knew God, and could keep holy-days for God, how it might rejoice on such a day, letting the chains of work fall from off its countless slaves of Mammon, and giving one whole sun to the deep childlike joy in a mystery which is the triumph of faith over sight, of spirit over matter, of grace over nature, and of the Church over the world. (continued below)

2 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 1st Mother Church will give us her hand in traversing these mysterious regions of Divine Truth. She will set holy doctors round about our path, like so many guardian angels, to keep us from going astray, and to tell us the right thoughts to think and the right words to use while she herself, by many a touching ceremony, and many a deep wise rubric, will fill us full of sacred fear and of that awe-stricken reverence which befits the enquiry into so deep a mystery. The voice of her great son St. Thomas Aquinas still lives in her office, now with a single antiphon unlocking whole abysses of Scripture, and now in almost supernatural hymns uniting the strictness of dogma with a sweetness and a melody more like echoes of heaven than mere poetry of earth. Jesus Veiled ! let us kneel down before Him in adoring awe, while our Mother teaches us His beauty, and His sweetness, and His goodness, and His nearness. When we think we know Him we shall not know the half, and when we speak of Him we shall stammer as children do, and when our hearts are hot with love of Him, they will be cold in comparison of the love which is His due. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Blessed Sacrament, or The Works and the Ways of God (1855)

1 of 2 Month of the Holy Eucharist ~ April 1st PROLOGUE TRIUMPH I. JESUS VEILED, in His own great mystery of love, offered by our priests, dwelling on our altars, feeding our souls,— this is the sacred and venerable truth which we are now about to consider. The wisdom of the Cherubim cannot fathom the depths of this adorable Sacrament, neither can the burning love of the Seraphim adequately praise the inventions of compassion which are contained therein. Nevertheless it is our duty as well as our privilege to look into this mystery. It is our daily Sacrifice, and our perpetual Food, and our constant adoration: and the more we know of it the greater will be our love of that most dear Lord whose veiled Presence we possess therein and to know Jesus a little more and then to love Him a little more, let the little be ever so little,— is it not worth a long life of sadness and of care? (continued below)

REGINA CÆLI- Latin Said during Eastertide instead of The Angelus ℣  Regína cæli, lætáre, allelúia: ℟  Quia quem meruísti portáre, allelúia. ℣ Resurréxit, sicut dixit, allelúia. ℟  Ora pro nobis Deum, allelúia. ℣  Gaude et lætáre, Virgo María, allelúia. ℟  Quia surréxit Dóminus vere, allelúia. Orémus. Deus, qui per resurrectiónem Fílii tui, Dómini nostri Iesu Christi, mundum lætificáre dignátus es: præsta, quǽsumus, ut per eius Genetrícem Vírginem Maríam perpétuæ capiámus gáudia vitæ. Per eúndem Christum Dóminum nostrum. Amen (Brevario Romano). (The Raccolta, 1943)

REGINA CÆLI - English Said during Eastertide instead of The Angelus ℣  Queen of Heaven, rejoice, alleluia: ℟  For He Whom thou didst merit to bear, alleluia, ℣  Hath risen, as He said, alleluia. ℟  Pray for us to God, alleluia. ℣  Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, alleluia, ℟  Because the Lord is truly risen, alleluia. Let us pray. O God, Who by the Resurrection of Thy Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, hast vouchsafed to make glad the whole world: grant, we beseech Thee, that, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, His Mother, we may lay hold of the joys of eternal life. Through the same Christ Our Lord.   Amen (Roman Breviary). (The Raccolta, 1943)

This is the day which the Lord hath made: Let us be glad and rejoice therein. The earth trembled and was still, when God arose in judgment. Blessed and Happy Easter to you all! 💗 Virgo Potens, Defende nos in prœlio and Chantbird’s Garden of Song

Invocation Grant O holy Joseph, that ever secure under thy protection, we may pass our lives without guilt. Fac nos innócuam Ioseph, decúrrere vitam, sitque tuo semper tuta patrocínio. 300 days, once a day. Leo XII, March 18, 1882. (The Raccolta, 1910)

❀•°❀°•❀•°❀°•❀ Temporal Miseries are to be Borne with Patience, after the Example of Jesus Christ Imitation of Christ ~ Book III, Chapter 29 CHRIST SON, I came down from Heaven for thy salvation. I took upon Me thy miseries, not of necessity, but moved thereto by charity, that thou mightest learn patience and mightest bear without repining the miseries of this life. For from the hour of My Incarnation till My expiring on the Cross, I was never without suffering. I underwent a great want of temporal things; I frequently heard many complaints against Me; I meekly bore with confusions and reproaches; for My benefits I received ingratitude; for My miracles, blasphemies; and for My heavenly doc­trine, reproaches. DISCIPLE 2. Lord, because Thou wast patient in Thy lifetime, in thus chiefly fulfilling the command­ment of Thy Father, it is fitting that I, a wretched sinner, should, according to Thy will, take all with patience and, as long as pleaseth Thee, support the burden of this corruptible life, in order to my salvation. (2 Mach. 6:25). For though this present life be burdensome, yet it is now become, through Thy grace, very meritorious and, by the help of Thine example and the footsteps of Thy saints, more supportable to the weak and more lightsome. It is also much more consoling than it was formerly under the Old Law, when the gate of Heaven remained shut and the way to it seemed more obscure, when so few concerned them­selves to seek the Kingdom of Heaven. Neither could they, who were then just and to be saved, enter into Thy heavenly Kingdom, before Thy Passion and the payment of our debt by Thy sacred death. Oh, what great thanks am I obliged to re­turn to Thee for having vouchsafed to show to me and to all the faithful a right and good way to an everlasting Kingdom. For Thy life is our way, and by holy patience we walk on to Thee, Who art our crown. (John 14:6). If Thou hadst not gone before and instructed us who would have cared to follow? Alas, how many would have stayed afar off and a great way behind, if they had not before their eyes Thine excellent example? Behold we are still tepid, notwithstanding all Thy miracles and the instructions we have heard: what then would it have been if we had not this great light to follow Thee. ~ Thomas á Kempis, The Imitation of Christ. Translated by the Right Rev. Richard Challoner, D.D. ❀•°❀°•❀•°❀°•❀

2 of 2 Month of St. Joseph ~ March 31st Affections and Resolutions.— Beg of St. Joseph to enable you to seek your happiness and joy in Christ alone, to look for Him, and to find Him in prayer and holiness of heart. Colloquy with St. Joseph. Spiritual Reading.— “Imitation of Christ” Book III., Chapter 29. ~ Rev. Joseph McDonnell, S.J., St. Joseph, A Novena of Meditations and Prayers (1926)