Virgo Potens

AT FATIMA . . . the principal request of Our Lady was for the sacrifice necessary to fulfillment of daily duty. This mission is THE FAITHFUL FULFILLMENT OF DAILY DUTY AS REQUIRED BY OUR STATE IN LIFE . . . If the faithful fulfillment of it can untie the knot of evil strangling the world, would it not be reasonable to say that man’s abandonment of daily duty was, in the last analysis, the cause of his drift from God, since this drift is always preceded by apathy which in turn is preceded by abandonment of daily duty? In this light daily duty is not mundane. It is profound. Fatima and the “Way of Divine Love” (Pamphlet)

Month of the Precious Blood ~ July 10th The Mystery of the Precious Blood Why are our hearts so cold? Why is our love so faithless, and our faith so unloving? We try, and still we do not love as we wish to love. We try again, and love more; and yet it is sadly short of the love we ought to have. We strive and strive, and still we only languish when we ought to burn. He longs for our love, sweet covetous lover of souls as He is. He longs for our love; and we long for nothing so much as to love Him. Surely there must be a time and a place, when both He and we shall be satisfied: but the place will be heaven, and the time nothing else than the great timeless eternity. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Precious Blood: or, The Price of Our Salvation (1860)

Month of the Precious Blood ~ July 9th The Mystery of the Precious Blood What depths there are in Jesus, and how wonderfully He lights them up with the splendours of His eternal love! Do we not feel every day more and more strongly, that we must be more for Jesus than we are, that of all growing things divine love is the most growing, that all idea of a limit to our love of Jesus, or of moderation in our service of Him, is a folly as well as a disloyalty? He was the brightness of innumerable lives and the sweetness of innumerable sorrows, when He was but the expectation of longing Israel. What must He be now, when He has come, when He has lived, and shed His Blood, and died, and risen, and ascended, and then come back again in all the unutterable endearments of the Blessed Sacrament? ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Precious Blood: or, The Price of Our Salvation (1860)

(July 8th, Continued) We can think calmly of no change except from little love to much love, and from much love to more love. The right of Jesus to our love, to our best love, to all our love, is becoming plainer and plainer to us. His exceeding loveliness is growing more and more attractive, because it is revealing itself to us every day like a new revelation. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Precious Blood: or, The Price of Our Salvation (1860)

Month of the Precious Blood ~ July 8th The Mystery of the Precious Blood But we claim no share in any foolish happiness of sin. We are on God's side. We belong to Jesus. Sin is our great enemy, as well as our great evil. We desire to break with it altogether. We are ashamed of our past subjection to it. We are uneasy under our present imperfect separation from it. Our uppermost thought, no! not merely our uppermost thought, our only thought is our salvation. We care for no science, but the science of redeeming grace. The cross of Christ is our single wisdom. Once we wished for many things, and aimed at many things. But we are changed now. Our lives are amazingly simplified, simplified by the fear of sin and by the love of God. Our anxiety now is, that all this may remain. We fear another change, especially a change back again. (Continued below)

AUGUST QUEEN OF HEAVEN A slightly different version. AUGUST QUEEN of HEAVEN, sovereign Mistress of the Angels, who didst receive from the beginning the mission and the power to crush the Serpent’s head, we beseech thee to send thy holy Angels, that under thy command and by thy power, they may pursue the evil spirits, encounter them on every side, resist their bold attacks, and drive them hence into the abyss of woe. Most holy Mother, send thy Angels to defend us and to drive the cruel enemy from us. All ye holy Angels and Archangels help and defend us. Amen O good and tender Mother, thou shalt ever be our love and our hope. Holy angels and archangels, keep and defend us. Amen.

AUGUST QUEEN of HEAVEN PRAYER On January 13, 1863, Venerable Father Louis-Édouard Cestac (1801-1868), founder of the Congregation of the Servants of Mary, had a vision in which he saw demons spread over the earth, wreaking havoc. At the same time, Our Lady told him that the time had come to pray to her as "Queen of Angels", asking that she send the heavenly legions to fight and defeat the powers of hell. She said that “Prayer is a condition established by God Himself for obtaining graces,” and that she could not send the legions without being asked. Upon his asking Our Lady to teach him how to pray for this aid, she taught him the "August Queen of Heaven” prayer which was indulgenced by Saint Pius X on July 8, 1908. In 1846 at La Salette, Our Lady had said, “In the year 1864 Lucifer, together with a great number of demons, will be loosed from Hell; they will put an end to faith little by little, even in those dedicated to God.” This prayer was apparently given to mankind as a remedy. Various versions exist; the translation posted at Defende nos in proelio (https://t.me/Defende_nos) is of the version bearing the Imprimatur of the [local] Bishop of Bayonne, Leo Albertus, dated 1945. Fr. Cestac was declared Servant of God by Pope Pius X on April 8, 1908, and later declared Venerable.

July 7th~ Ss. Cyril and Methodius Celebrated on this date from 1887 to 1969 St. Cyril and St. Methodius were brothers, born in Thessalonika in the Byzantine Empire, now Greece, to a devout Christian family in the ninth century. Cyril (born Constantine) was a philosopher, studied in Constantinople and was ordained a priest. Methodius was the governor of a Slavic region of the empire for five years and became a monk. In 861, the brothers went as missionaries to Russia, and in 863, they were sent to Moravia, in Eastern Europe. For their work evangelizing the Slavs, they are known as the "Apostles to the Slavs". They translated the Bible into the language later known as Old Church Slavonic, or Old Bulgarian, and invented the Galgolitic alphabet, based on Greek characters, that in its final Cyrillic form is still in use for modern Russian and a number of Slavonic languages. Venerated as saints in the Eastern Orthodox Church, their feast was added to the Roman Catholic calendar by Pope Leo XIII in 1880.

The Broad and Narrow Way Month of the Precious Blood ~ July 7th The Mystery of the Precious Blood But there are some who do not feel that sin is such a horror or captivity. They say it lays no weight upon their hearts. They say their lives are full of sunshine and that time flows with them, as the merry rivulet runs in summer, with a soothing brawl over its coloured stones, and its waters glancing in the sun. . . Yet even if the sinner could go through life with the gay indifference to which he pretends, he is not to be envied. It is only a sleep, a lethargy, or a madness, one or other of these according to his natural disposition. For there must be an awakening at last; and when and where will it be? What if the sinner’s awakening should be from the first touch of the fire that burns beyond the grave? ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Precious Blood: or, The Price of Our Salvation (1860)

Month of the Precious Blood ~ July 6th The Mystery of the Precious Blood How hideous the difference of that first moment after death, if we had not been saved! It turns us cold to think of it. But oh joy of joys! We have seen the Face of Jesus; and the light in His eyes, and the smile upon His Face, and the words upon His lips, were salvation. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Precious Blood: or, The Price of Our Salvation (1860)

Month of the Precious Blood ~ July 5th The first moment after death is a moment which must infallibly come to every one of us. Earth lies behind us, silently wheeling its obedient way through the black-tinted space. The measureless spaces of eternity lie outstretched before us. The words of our sentence have scarcely floated away into silence. It is a sentence of salvation. The great risk has been run, and we are saved. God's power is holding our soul lest it should die of gladness. It cannot take in the whole of its eternity. The least accidental joy is a world of beatitude in itself. The blaze of the Vision is overwhelming. Then the truth that eternity is eternal, —this is so hard to master. Yet all this is only what we mean when we pronounce the word salvation. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Precious Blood: or, The Price of Our Salvation (1860)

Month of the Precious Blood ~ July 4th Is hope sweet where despair had almost begun to reign? Is it a joy to be emancipated from a shameful slavery, or set free from a noxious dungeon? Is it gladness to be raised as if by miracle from a bed of feebleness and suffering, to sudden health and instantaneous vigour? Then what a gladness must salvation be! For, as there is no earthly misery like sin, so is there no deliverance like that with which Jesus makes us free. Words will not tell it. Thought only can think it, and it must be thought out of an enlightened mind and a burning heart, dwelt on for a long, long while. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Precious Blood: or, The Price of Our Salvation (1860)

(Continued from above) Not to the crowned queen of God’s creation, the glorious and the sinless Mary; for even her holiness cannot satisfy for sin, nor the whiteness of her purity take out its deadly stain. Neither may we look for deliverance direct from the patience and compassion of God Himself; for in the abyss of His wisdom it has been decreed, that without shedding of blood there shall be no remission of sin. It is from the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ alone that our salvation comes. Out of the immensity of its merits, out of the inexhaustible treasures of its satisfactions, because of the resistless power of its beauty over the justice and the wrath of God, because of that dear combination of its priceless worth and its benignant prodigality, we miserable sinners are raised out of the depths of our wretchedness, and restored to the peace and favour of our Heavenly Father. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Precious Blood: or, The Price of Our Salvation (1860)

Month of the Precious Blood ~ July 3rd What then must a life of such sin be? What must be a death in sin? What the irrevocable eternity of unrestricted sin? From all this horror whither shall we look for deliverance? Not to ourselves; for we know the practical infinity of our weakness, and the incorrigible vitality of our corruption. Not to any earthly power; for it has no jurisdiction here. Not to philosophy, literature, or science; for in this case they are but sorry and unhelpful matters. Not to any saint however holy, nor to any angel, however mighty; for the least sin is a bigger mountain than they have faculties to move. (Continued below)

July 2nd ~ The Visitation of Our Blessed Lady  46 And Mary said: My soul doth magnify the Lord.  47 And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.  48 Because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid; for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.  49 Because he that is mighty, hath done great things to me; and holy is his name.  50 And his mercy is from generation unto generations, to them that fear him.  51 He hath shewed might in his arm: he hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.  52 He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble.  53 He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.  54 He hath received Israel his servant, being mindful of his mercy:  55 As he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed for ever.  56 And Mary abode with her about three months; and she returned to her own house. Douay-Rheims Bible, Luke 1: 46- 56

"Thou shalt call His name Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins." Who else but Jesus can do this, and what else even from Him do we require but this; for in this lies all things which we can desire? Of all miseries the bondage of sin is the most miserable. It is worse than sorrow, worse than pain. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Precious Blood: or, The Price of Our Salvation (1860)

Sang précieux de notre Rédempteur, c’est par vous que nos àmes seront sauvées Precious Blood of our Saviour, it is through thee that our souls will be saved It is from the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ alone that our salvation comes. Out of the immensity of its merits, out of the inexhaustible treasures of its satisfactions, because of the resistless power of its beauty over the justice and the wrath of God, because of that dear combination of its priceless worth and its benignant prodigality, we miserable sinners are raised out of the depths of our wretchedness, and restored to the peace and favour of our Heavenly Father. ~ Frederick William Faber, D.D., The Precious Blood: or, The Price of Our Salvation (1860)

June 30th ~ Commemoration of St. Paul O God, Who by the preaching of Blessed Paul the Apostle, didst teach the multitude of the Gentiles, grant, we beseech Thee, that we, who venerate His heavenly birthday, may also enjoy his patronage with Thee. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen. ~ (Collect, June 30, Commemoration of St. Paul) (St. Joseph Daily Missal, 1956)