Friday in Passion Week the Seven Dolours of the Blessed Virgin

The Station, at Rome, is in the churoh of Saint Stephen on Monte Oelio. By a sort of prophetic presentiment, this church of the great proto-martyr was chosen as the place where the faithful were to assemble on the Friday of Passion-week, which was to be, at a future time, the feast consecrated to the Queen of martyrs.

COLLECT

Cordibus nostris, qusesumus, Domine, gratiam tuam benignus infunde; ut peccata nostra castigatione voluntaria cohibentes, temporaliter potius maceremur, quam stippliciis deputemur aeternis. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

Mercifully, 0 Lord, we beseech thee, pour forth thy grace into our hearts; that repressing our sins by voluntary mortifications, we may rather suffer for them in this life, than be condemned to eternal torments for them in the next. Through Christ our Lord. iei

EPISTLE

Lesson from Jeremias the Prophet. Ch. ocvii. In those days, Jeremias said: 0 Lord, all that forsake thee shall be confounded: they that depart from thee, shall be written in the earth, ( as on sand, from which their names shall soon be effaced,) because they have forsaken the Lord, the vein of living waters. Heal me, 0 Lord, and I shall be healed, save me and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise. Behold they say to me: where is the word of the Lord? let it come. And I am not troubled, following thee for my pastor, and I have not desired the day of man, thou knowest. That which went out of my lips, hath been right in thy sight. Be not thou a terror unto me; thou art my hope in the day of affliction. Let them be confounded that persecute me, and let not me be confounded: let them be afraid, and let not me be afraid: bring upon them the day of affliction, and with a double destruction destroy them, 0 Lord our God.

Jereinias is one of the most striking figures of the Messias persecuted by the Jews. It is on this aooount, that the Church selects from this prophet so many of her lessons during these two weeks that are sacred to the Passion. In the passage chosen for to-day's Epistle, we have the complaint addressed to God by u

Lectio Jeremias Prophetre.

Cap. xvii. In diebus illis, dixit Jeremias: Domine, omnes qui te derelinquunt, confundentur: recedentes a te in terra scribentur: quoniam dereliquerunt venam aquarum viventium, Dnminum. Sana me, Domine, et sanabor: salvum me fac, et salvus ero: quoniam laus mea tu es. Ecce ipsi dicunt ad me: Ubi est verbum Domini? veniat. Et ego non sum turbatus, te Pastorem sequens: et diem hominis non desideravi, tu scis. Quod egressum est de labiiB mei, rectum in conspectu tuo fuit. Non sis tu mini formidini; spes mea tu in die afflictionis. Confundantur qui me perse - quuntur, et non confundar ego: paveant illi, et non paveam ego: indue super 60s diem afflictionis, et duplici contritione contere eos, Domine Dens noster. this just man against those that persecute him ; and it is in the name of Christ that he speaks. He says: They have forsaken the Lord, the vein of living waters. How forcibly do these words desoribe the malice, both of the Jews that cruoified, and of sinners that still cruoify, Jesus our Lord ! As to the Jews, they had forgotten the rook, whenoe came to them the living water whioh quenohed their thirst in the. desert ; or, if they have not forgotten the history of this mysterious rock, they refuse to take it as a type of the Messias.

And yet, they hear this Jesus crying out to them in the streets of Jerusalem, and saying: * If any man thirst, let him come to Me, and drink. 1 His virtues, His teachings, His miracles, the prophecies that are fulfilled in His person, all claim their confidence in Him ; they should believe every word He says. But they are deaf to His invitation ; and how many Christians imitate them in their obduraoy! How many there are, who once drank at the vein of living waters, and afterwards turned away, to seek to quench their thirst in the muddy waters of the world, whioh can only make them thirst the more! Let them tremble at the punishment that oame upon the Jews ; for, unless they return to the Lord their God, they must fall into those devouring and eternal flames, where even a drop of water is refused. Jesus, by the mouth of His prophet, tells the Jews that the day of affliction shall overtake them; and when, later on, He comes to them Himself, He forewarns them, that the tribulation which is to fall on Jerusalem, in punishment for her deioide, shall be so great that such hath not been from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall be. But if God so rigorously avenged the Blood of His Son against a oity

1 St. John vii. 37. * St. Matt. xxiv. 21. tfBIDA* IN PASSION WEEfc that was so long a place of the habitation of His glory, and against a people that He had preferred to all others, will He spare the sinner who, in spite of the Church's entreaties, continues obstinate in his evil ways ? Jerusalem had filled up the measure of her iniquities ; we, also, have a measure of sin, beyond which the justice of God will not permit us to go. Let us sin no more: let us fill up that other measure, the measure of good works. Let us pray for those sinners who are to pass these days of grace without being converted ; let us pray that this divine Blood, which is to be so generously given to them, but which they are about again to trample upon, may again spare them.

GOSPEL

Sequentia sancti Evangelii secundum Joannem.

Cap. xi.

In illo tempore: Collegerunt pontifices et pharisaei concilium adversus Jesum, et dicebant: Quid facimus, quia hie homo multa signa facit ? Si dimittimus eum sic, omnes credent in eum ; et venient Bomani, et tollent nostrum locum et gentem. Unus autem ex ipsis, Caiphas nomine, cum esset pontifex anni illius, dixit eis: Vos nescitis quidquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit Tobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo, et non tota gens pereat. Hoc autem a semetipso non dixit ; sed cum esset pontifex anni illius prophetavit, quod Je-

Sequel of the holy Gospel according to John. Ch. xi.

At that time: The chief priests and pharisees gathered a council against Jesus, and said: What do we, for this man doth many miracles? If we let him alone so, all men will believe in him; and the Romans will come, and take away our place and nation. But one of them, named Caiphas, being the high-priest that year, said to them : You know nothing, neither do you consider that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. And this he spoke not of himself ; but being the high -priest of that year, he prophesied that Jesus should sus moriturus erat pro gen- die for the nation; and not te; et non tantum pro gente only for the nation, bnt to sed ut filios Dei, qui erant gather together in one the dispersi, congregaret in children of God, that were dis- unum. Ab illo ergo die persed. From that day there- cogitaverunt ut interficerent fore they devised to put him eum. Jesus ergo jam non to death. Wherefore Jesus in palam ambulabat apud walked no more openly among

JudaBos, sed abiit in regio- the Jews, but he went into a nem juxta desertum, in civi- country near the desert, unto tatem quae dicitur Ephrem, a city that is called Ephrem, et ibi morabatur cum disci- and there he abode with his pulis suis. disciples.

Jesus is more than ever in danger of losing His life ! The council of the nation assembles to devise a plan for His destruction. Listen to these men, slaves of that vilest of passions, jealousy. They do not deny the miracles of Jesus ; therefore they are in a condition to pass judgment upon Him, and the judgment ought to be favourable. But they have not assembled to examine if He be or be not the Messias ; it is to discuss the best plan for putting Him to death. And what argument will they bring forward to palliate the evident murder they contemplate? Political interests— their country's good. They argue thus: 'If Jesus be longer allowed to appear in public and work miracles, Judea will rise up in rebellion against the Romans, who now govern us, and will proclaim Jesus to be King; Rome will never allow us, the weakest of her tributaries, to insult her with impunity, and, in in order to avenge the outrage offered to the Capitol, her armies will come and exterminate us. ' Senseless counsellors! If Jesus had come that He might be King after this world's fashion, all the powers of the earth could not have prevented it. Again — how is it that these ohief priests and pharisees, who know the Scriptures by heart, never once think of that propheoy of Daniel, which foretells that, in seventy weeks of

FRIDAY IN PASSION WEEK

J ears after the going forth of the deoree for the reuilding of the temple, the Christ shall be slain, and the people that shall deny Him shall oease to be His: moreover, that, after this crime, a people led on by a commander shall oome and destroy Jerusalem; the abomination of desolation shall enter the holy place, the temple shall be destroyed, and the desolation shall last even to the end. How oomes it, that this prophecy is lost sight of? Surely, if they thought of it, they would not put Christ to death ; for, by putting Him to death, they ruin their oountry.

But to return to the oouncil. The high-priest, who governed the Synagogue during the last days of the Mosaic Law, is a worthless man, by name Caiphas ; he presides over the counoil. He puts on the sacred ephod, and he prophesies ; his prophecy is from God, and is true. Let us not be astonished : the veil of the temple is not yet rent asunder ; the covenant between God and Juda is not yet broken. Caiphas is a blood-thirsty man, a coward, a saorilegious wretch ; still, he is high-priest, and God speaks by his mouth. Let us hearken to this seoond Balaam: Jesus shall die for the nation, and not only for the nation, but to gather in one the children of Ood, that were dispersed. Thus, the Synagogue is near her end, and is oompelled to prophesy the birth of the Churoh, and that this birth is to be by the shedding of Jesus' Blood. Here and there throughout the world, there are children of Ood who serve Him among the Gentiles, as did the centurion Cornelius ; but there is no visible bond of union among them. The time is at hand, when the great and only city of God is to appear on the mountain, and all nations shall flow unto it. As soon as the Blood of the new Testament shall have been shed, and the Conqueror of death shall have

• Pan. ix, 25-27. * Is. ii. 2, risen from the grave, the day of Pentecost will oonvoke, not the Jews to the temple of Jerusalem, but all nations to the Churoh of Jesus Christ. By that time, Caiphas will have forgotten the prophecy he uttered ; he will have ordered his servants to piece together the veil of the Holy of holies, whioh was torn in two at the moment of Jesus' death ; but this veil will serve no purpose, for the Holy of holies will be no longer there: a clean oblation will be offered up in every place, the Sacrifice of the new Law ; 1 and scarcely shall the avengers of Jesus' death have appeared on Mount Olivet, than a voice will be heard in the sanctuary of the repudiated temple, saying: ' Let us go out from this place ! '

Humiliate capita vestra Deo.

Concede, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus, ut qui protections tuae gratiam quaerimus, liberati a malis omnibus, secura tibi mente serviamus. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

Bow down your heads to God.

Grant, we beseech thee, 0 almighty God, that we who seek the honour of thy protection, may be delivered from all evil, and serve thee with a secure mind. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

THE SEVEN DOLOURS OP OUR LADY

This Friday of Passion-week is consecrated in a special manner, to the sufferings whioh the holy Mother of God endured at the foot of the cross. The whole of next week is fully taken up with the celebration of the mysteries of Jesus' Passion ; and although the remembrance of Mary's share in those sufferings is often brought before the faithful during