October 9 — Saint Dionysius, Bishop and Martyr and Saints Rusticus and Eleutherius, Mm

Ushered in by Bridget the northern prophetess, Dionysius appears as the brightest star in that constellation of mystics, whioh illumines the olose of the oycle with the first glimmers of eternal union. Soon we shall salute Teresa of Jesus, and her guide Peter of Alcantara ; while from the shades of his Obscure nighty John of the cross will rise in glory next month near to the great St. Gertrude.

The Man-God began to do and to teach, gave us first example then doctrine ; so too the Church, in her liturgical year, first sets before us the examples of the saints, and 'afterwards teaches us the rules of sanctity as formulated by these holy ones themselves. Strong in the results she has obtained, she now seems to rest in the security gained by experience; and, as in the proper of the time, of whioh that of the saints is the faithful echo, she yields to her desire of seeing her ohildren able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth. To know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge, that they may be filled unto all the fulness of God. 1 Is not this the good work whioh the apostle prays may be perfeoted in us by that last day, 2 for whioh these weeks after Pentecost are preparing us, viz: perfect justioe, the fruit of love in its full development P But this development of love cannot be without the progress of the soul in all wisdom and spiritual understanding;* and that approving of better things, of whioh St. Paul speaks, can be acquired only by the imitation of the saints or the study of their works. 4

To-day the incomparable teaoher Dionysius presides over the assembly of the faithful. With east and west let us keep silence; for it behoveth the master to speak and teaoh, and it beseemeth the disciple to hold his peace and listen. 5

• Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights. 6 Every emanation of splendour overflowing from the divine goodness upon man, reacts in him as a principle of spiritual simplification and of heavenly union ; and by its own power leads him back towards the sovereign unity and godlike simplicity of the Father. For all things come from God, and return to God.

By the very faot that they exist, inanimate objects partake of God, who, by the sublimity of His Essence,

1 Eph. iii. 18, 19. Epistle of the 16th Sunday after Pentecost.

2 Phil. i. 6-11. Epistle of the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost.

3 Col. i. 9-14. Epistle of the last Sunday after Pentecost. *> Phil. iii. 17. Epistle of the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost.

6 {3. Benedict. Reg. vi T

St. James i. 17.

TIME AFTER PENTECOST is the being of all that is. Living things partake of His vital energy, which is superior to all life. Rational and intellectual creatures partake of His wisdom, whioh surpasses all reason and intelligence. The various beings approaoh nearer to the Divinity, in proportion as they partake of It in more ways.

It is a general law, that divine graces are communicated to the lower orders through the ministry of the higher. 1 The indivisible Trinity, who possesses Divinity by nature, has established the hierarohy for the deification of all beings, whether rational or purely spiritual. For salvation is possible only to deified spirits. 8 As deification is nothing else but the attainment of union with God, and resemblanoe to Him, the aim of the hierarchy is to assimilate and unite to God; 8 first of all by the absolute retrenchment of all that is contrary to His love ; then by the knowledge of saored truths ; by participation in the simplicity of Him who is One, and by the nuptial banauet of the vision. 4

The order of all hierarchy is therefore this: that some should be purified, and others should purify ; that some should be enlightened, and others should enlighten ; that some should be perfected, and others should work that perfection. Every function it imposes, tends to the twofold end of receiving and of giving purity, light, and perfect holiness.

The first hierarchy of blessed spirits receives the first influx of the virtues of Jesus the supreme initiator, and imitates Him in the highest manner. This first hierarchy is obeyed by the second, the second by the third, and the third by the hierarchy of men. And thus, by a divine harmony they rise, one by means of another, towards Him who is the beginning and the end of all beautiful order.

1 DionyB. De caleati hierarchia. i, iv, viii. * De ecclesiastiea kwwtoa. i» 8 fit calnt, hkr, iii. * Jk ml. hier. i.

As eaoh hierarohy inoludes Powers of three different ranks, the same wonderful harmony exists between these several ranks. Moreover, in every intelligence, human or angelic, are to be found faculties corresponding to the three orders of each hierarchy. It is by passing through these successive degrees, that spirits partake, according to their capacity, of purity, light, and unlimited perfection. For nothing is perfect in itself; nothing is incapable of further progress, save Him who is the primitive and infinite perfection. 1

The blessed inhabitants of heaven, who have nothing sensible or corporeal, God attracts and raises to divine things, not by exterior means ; He causes the pure rays and intelligible splendours of His adorable will to shine within them. What is thus imparted to them directly and in unity, is transmitted to us as it were in fragments, under the multiplicity of varied symbols: in the holy Scripture; in the figures wherein our hierarchy, adapting itself to human nature, shrouds for us the mystery of divine regeneration and all the other holy mysteries; 2 and again, in the harmony of the universe, which shows forth the images and footprints of the divine ideas.

Though all things speak of God to man, not one of them speaks aright. God is accessible to the understanding, to reason, to science ; He is discerned by the sensibility, by thought, by the imagination ; in a word, He can be named; nevertheless He is incomprehensible, ineffable, nameless. Everything reveals Him to all men, and yet nothing manifests Him to anyone. Everything may be predicated of Him, as being the universal cause; 8 but as He is

1 De cale8ti hier. iii, vii, x. 2 De eeel, hier. i-vii.

3 De divinia nominibw, i-xiii

TIME AFTER PENTECOST beyond all expression, everything may be more truly denied of Him. 1

Henoe many, in their progress towards God, are not oontent with passing beyond the starting-point of exterior senses neoessary to our nature, out rise beyond the manifold operations of reasoning and argumentation. As the senses are a hindrance, when the soul applies herself to intelligible things by the

C> understanding ; so the intellectual faculty itself mes useless when the divinized soul, sublimely ignorant, forgetful of all things, plunges herself into the abysses of unfathomable wisdom. The simple adhesion of the angelio natures to Him who surpasses all knowledge, has beoome the property of these souls ; emulating the angels, they have attained the aim of all hierarchy, by becoming as entirely as possible united with God. 2

Guide of Christians in saored wisdom, 0 Trinity, sovereignly good, lead us to that height, where all light is outshone by a darkness which ooruscates in brilliant lightnings, and, though it oan be neither seen nor grasped, inundates with the beauty of its fires the blessedly blinded spirits.' 8

Could we presume to add anything P As we have already remarked, 4 the Church herself, at this season whioh prepares the world for the last coming of the Spouse, moderates her voice. Especially ought we to imitate her to-day, when the divinely inspired Areopagite, oppressed with the weight of his own powerlessness, cries out: ' Our language is the more redundant in proportion as it is less pertinent to God. As man rises nearer to heaven, the glance he casts upon the spiritual world beoomes simplified and his speeoh abridged ; nigh to the summit, not only do

1 De mystic a theologia, i-v. 2 Be divinis nominibus, i, iv, vii, xiii. * J>e my it. theol, , * On the Decollation of St. John the Baptist,

SAINT DI0NY8ITT8 AND COMPANIONS MM $73 words grow fewer, but all language, nay thought itself, at length fails. Formerly our disoourse expanded in proportion to the height whenoe it descended; as it asoends, it must equally diminish, until, arrived at the final term, it will altogether oease and be lost in the ineffable.' 1

Meanwhile, Rome will tell us how the revealer of the heavenly hierarchies, coming from Athens into the west, watered with his generous blood the seed he sowed in the future capital of Franoe. Enriohed with his saored body, the humble borough now known as Saint-Denis long surpassed in renown its neighbour Lutetia (Paris). Franoe repaid her apostle's devotedness by the glory wherewith she surrounded him ; it would seem as if, by a chivalrous inspiration, she had undertaken to compensate him for having abandoned his native oountry for her sake. Immense was the ooncourse of people to his holy tomb ; and still greater was the piety of the kings. The martyr's banner, the oriflamme, was their standard, Mountioy St. Denys their battle-cry, in every clime whither viotory led them. As in life they never quitted the kingdom without entrusting it to the proteotor of Franoe in his abbey, so at death they bequeathed to him their mortal remains. In spite of saorilegious profanations, what a sublime spectaole will the holy neoropolis present to the world on the last day, when, before the eyes of Adrian and his prefects, he whom they executed at Montmartre and condemned to infamy, will rise from his tomb escorted by three dynasties of monarohs proud to form, at the resurreotion, the court of him whom they deemed it an honour to surround in death. Thy friends, 0 God, are made exceedingly honourable ! *

The aooount given by Rome of St. Dionysius and

1 De mystica theologia, iii. * Ps. cxxxviii. 17.

TIMH AFTEH PENTECOST his companions, is the same as that in the Meneea of the Greek Church, though the latter keeps their feast on October 3.

Dionysius Atheniensis, unus ex Areopagitis judicibus, vir f uit omni doctrinae genere instructus. Qui cum adhuc in Gentilitatis errore versaretur, eo die quo Christus Dominus cruci affixus est, solem praeter naturam defecisse animadvertens exclamasse traditur: Aut Deus nature patitur, aut mundi machina dissolvetur. Sed cum Paulus apostolus veniens Athenas, et in Areopagum ductus rationem reddidisset ejus doctrinaB quam praedicabat, affirmans Christum Dominum resurrexisse, et mortuos omnes in vitam redituros esse: cum alii multi, turn ipse Dionysius in Christum credidit.

Itaque et baptizatus est ab apostolo et Atheniensium ecclesiae praefectus. Qui cum postea Romam venisset, a Clemente Pontifice missus est in Galliam praedicandi Evangelii causa. Quem Lutetiam usque Parisiorum Rusticus presbyter, et Eleutherius diaconus prosecuti sunt: ubi a Fescennio praefecto, quod multos ad christianam religionem convertisset, ipse cum sociis virgis caesus est: cumque in praedicatione chri- BtianaB fidei constantissime

Dionysius, an Athenian, was one of the judges of the Areopagus, and a man learned in every science. It is related of him that, on the day Christ our Lord was crucified, he, though still a pagan, on perceiving the unnatural eclipse of the sun, cried out: 4 Either the God of nature is suffering, or the world is coming to an end.' Paul the apostle, coming to Athens, was brought before the Areopagus, to give an account of the doctrine he preached. He there proclaimed that Christ our Lord had risen from the tomb, and that the dead would all live again. Many thereupon believed in Christ, and among them Dionysius.

He was baptized by St. Paul, and appointed to govern the Church of Athens. Later on he came to Rome ; whence Pope Clement sent him to preach the Gospel in Gaul ; Rusticus a priest, and Eleutherius a deacon, accompanying him as far as Paris. As he converted many in that town to Christianity, Fescennius the prefect commanded him and his companions to be beaten with rods; but continuing to preach the faith as zealously as before, they were placed on hot gridirons, and perseveraret, in craticulam subjecto igne injicitur, multisque praeterea suppliciis una cum sociis cruciatur.

Sed ea tormentorum genera omnibus f orti ac libenti animo perferentibus, Dionysius annum agens supra centesimum, cum reliquis securi percutitur, septimo Idus octobris. De quo illud memorise proditum est, abscissum suum caput sustulisse, et progressum ad duo millia passuum in manibus gestasse. Libros scripsit admirabiles, ac plane ccelestes, de divinis nominibus, de coelesti et ecclesiastica hierarchia, de mystica theologia, et alios quosdam. suffered several other tortures.

They all endured the torments bravely and joyfully. Finally Dionysius, who was a hundred and one years old, was beheaded with his companions, on the seventh of the Ides of October. It is related of Dionysius, that after his decapitation, he took up his head and carried it in his hands for two miles. He wrote some wonderful and truly heavenly books on the divine names, on the celestial and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, on mystical theology, and several others.

Honour to thee on this day of thy triumph! Honour to the apostle of the G-entiles, who comes to meet thee, as his noble oonquest, on the threshold of eternity. From early youth how thy soul yearned for that unknown God, whom the apostle at length revealed to the longing aspirations of thy grand, upright nature ! To the darkness of polytheism, to the doubts of philosophy, to the vague glimmers of confused traditions, suddenly suooeeded the light of truth ; and its triumph was complete. Thou, 0 Christian Plato, didst enlarge the horizon of philosophy, and didst so rectify its formulas that in them truth could be fittingly clothed. Thou, in thy turn, didst become an apostle; the distinction of Greek and barbarian, that law of the ancient world, was lost in the common origin assigned by St. Paul to all peoples ; to the eyes of thy faith, slaves and freemen were equal in that nobility which makes the human

TIHI A FT BE PENTECOST raoe the raoe of God ; while the charity, whioh overflowed in thy heart, filled it with the immense pity of God Himself for the long ages of ignoranoe in whioh mankind had been plunged.

Thus in thy zeal, obeying the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, thou, like a oloud laden with the blessings of the Lord, didst bring fertility to the far west. The people of Gaul learnt from thee to seek God, to find Him, and to live in Him ; and this new churoh had no reason to envy the earlier ones built on the foundations of prophets and apostles. 0 chosen stone, good for the foundations, so intimately united to the Uorner-Stone that every construction thou upholdest becomes a holy temple of the Lord: the churoh of France built upon thee, is also the house of God.

0 Dionysius, quicken again the divine seed thou didst sow. Eestore to Paris and to Franoe their traditions, now forgotten in the fever of gain and pleasure. Bring baok Athens to the oommunion of Christ's vicar, the indispensable condition of union with our Lord. For every church under heaven obtain suoh pastors as thou didst desoribe in the following lines whioh reveal thyself: * By the holy love whioh draws us to Him, Jesus calms the tempest of distracting cares ; and recalling our souls to the unity of the divine life, He oonfirms us in the permanent fruitf ulness of this noble ministry. Soon, by the exeroise of the sacred functions, we draw nigh to the angels, striving to set ourselves, like them, in the fixed state of unchangeable holiness. Thenoe, fazing upon the divine splendours of the blessed esus, and enriched with the profound knowledge of mystical contemplation, we beoome fitted to be ourselves oonseorated in order that we may conseorate, to reoeive light in order to communicate it, to beoome perfect in order to lead others to perfection/ 1

1 Dionys. D» eccL hier. L

October 10 SAINT FRANCIS BORGIA

CONFESSOR

Vanity of vanities and all is vanity. 1 No argument was needed to impress this truth upon the saint of to-day, when the coffin was opened which oontained all that Spain had admired of youth and loveliness, and death suddenly revealed to him its awful reality. 0 ye beauties of all times, death alone never dies ; it invites itself to your dances and pleasures, it assists at all your triumphs, it hears promises said to be eternal: and how quickly it oan scatter your adorers! A few years, a few days, perhaps even less, and all your borrowed sweetness will be decaying in the tomb I

• Enough of vain phantoms; enough of serving mortal kings; awaken, 0 my soul!' Such was Francis Borgia's reply to the teachings of death. The friend of Charles V, the great lord unequalled for nobility, fortune, and brilliant qualities, quitted the oourt as soon as possible. Ignatius, the soldier of the siege of Pampeluna, beheld at his feet the viceroy of Catalonia, begging to be protected against the honours whioh pursued him even under the poor habit of a Jesuit, wnich was now his glory.

The Church relates his life in the following lines.

Franciscus GandisB dux Francis, fourth Duke of Ganquartus, Joanne Borgia et dia, was the son of John Bor~

1 Eccles. i. 2.

TIMS AFTEH PBKTB008T

Joanna Aragonia Ferdinandi Catholici nepte genitus, post puerilem aetatem inter domesticos mira innocentia et pietate transactam, in aula primum Caroli quinti Cffisaris, mox in Catalaunire administratione admirabilior fuit christian ae virtutis et vitas austerioris exemplis. Ad Qranatense sepulchrum Isabellam imperatricem cum detulisset, in ejus vultn foede commutato, mortalium omnium caducitatem relegens, voto se adstrinxit, rebus omnibus, cum primum liceret, abjectis, regum.Begi unice inserviendi. Inde tantum virtutis incrementum fecit, ut inter negotiorum turbas religiosae perfectionis simillimam imaginem referens, miraculum principum appellaretur.

Mortua Eleonora de Castro, conjuge, ingressus est Societatem Jesu, ut in ea lateret securius, et praecluderet dignitatibus aditum, interposita voti religioner dignus, quern et viri principes complures in amplectendo severiori instituto fuerint secuti, et Carolus quintus ipse in abdicando imperio hortatorem sibi, aut ducem exstitisse non diffite- gia and of Joanna of Aragon, grand-daughter of Ferdinand the Catholic. He passed his childhood, in his father's house, in wonderful innocence and piety; but appeared still more admirable when he showed himself a pattern of Christian virtue and austerity, first at the court of the emperor, Charles Y, and afterwards as viceroy of Catalonia. He was charged to convey the body of the empress Isabella to her sepulchre at Granada. Seeing the horrible change in her features, he understood how fleeting are all earthly things, and vowed to renounce everything as soon as possible, and devote himself to the service of the King of / kings. From that day forward he made such progress in virtue, that, in the midst of overwhelming occupations, his life was a faithful copy of religious perfection, so that he was called the miracle of princes.

On the death of his wife Eleanora de Castro, he entered the Society of Jesus, that he might be therein more hidden, on account of the vow which closes the door to ecclesiastical preferment. Many princes followed him in embracing a severe manner of life; and Charles V himself did not hesitate to acknowledge that his advice and example had led him to abdicate