October 9 — Saint Francis Borgia

retur. In eo arctioris vitas studio Francisous jejuniis, catenis ferreis, asperrimo cilicio, cruentis longisque verberationibus, somno brevissimo, corpus ad extremam usque maciem redegit: nullis proterea parcens laboribus ad sui victoriam et ad salutem animarum. Tot itaque instructus virtutibus, a sancto Ignatio primum generalis commissarius in Hispaniis, nec multo post praepositus generalis tertius a Societate universa, licet invitus, eligitur. Quoinmunereprincipibus ac summis Pontificibus prudentia ac morum sanctitate apprime cams, praeter complura vel condita vel aucta ubique domicilia, socios in regnum Poloniae, in insulas Oceani, in Mexicanam et Peruanam provincias invexit: missis quoque in alias regiones apostolicis viris, qui praedicatione, sudoribus, sanguine, fidem catholicam Romanam propagarunt.

De se ita demisse sentiebat, ut peccatoris nomen sibi proprium f aceret. Romanam purpuram, a summis Pontificibus saepius oblatam, invicta humilitatis constantia recusavit. Verrere sordes, emendicare vie turn ostiatim, aBgris ministrare in nosocomiis, mundi ac sui contemptor, in deliciis habuit. Singulis diebus multas the throne. Francis devoted himself to the exercises of a penitential life, and macerated his body by fasting, iron chains, a rough hair-shirt, long and bloody disciplines, allowing himself very little sleep; while at the same time he spared no effort to conquer himself and to gain souls. His great virtue caused St. Ignatius to appoint him commissary general for Spain; and soon afterwards, against his will, he was chosen by the whole Society third General of the Order. In this position his prudence and holiness endeared him both to Popes and to temporal rulers. He founded and enlarged many houses of his Order, and introduced the Society into Poland, the islands of the Atlantic, Mexico, and Peru, and sent apostolic men into other regions who spread the Catholic, Roman faith by their preaching, their labours, and their blood.

He had a most lowly opinion of himself, always calling himself the sinner. This humility led him to persistently refuse the Roman purple, which was more than once offered him by the Pope. Filled with contempt for himself and the world, he delighted in sweeping away dirt, begging alms from door to door, and serving the sick in the hospitals.

TIME AFTER PBNTECOflT continenter horns, frequenter octo, quandoque decern dabat eoelestium contemplatiooL Centies quotidie de genu Deum adorabat. Numquam a sacrificando abstinuit, prodebatque sese divinus ardor, ejus vultu sacram Hostiam oif erentis, aut concionantifl interdum radiante. Sanctis8imum Christi corpus in Eucharistia latens, ubi asservaretur, instinctu coelesti sentiebat. Cardinali Alexandrino, ad conjungendos contra T ureas christi anos principes, legato comes additus a beato Pio quinto, arduum iter, f ractis jam pene viribus, suscepit ex obedientia, in qua et vitas cursum Romas, ut optarat, feliciter consummavit, anno aetatis suae sexagesimo secundo, salutis vero millesimo quingentesimo septuagesimo secundo. A sancta Teresia, quae ejus utebatur consiliis, vir sanctus, a Gregorio decimo tertio fidelis administer appellatus ; demum a Clemente decimo, pluribus magnisque clarus miraculis, in sanctorum numerum est adscriptus.

He devoted many hours every day to heavenly contemplation, spending sometimes eight or even ten hours in prayer, and genuflecting in adoration a hundred times in the day. He never omitted saying Mass. While he was offering the divine Victim, or preaching, the heavenly ardour which consumed him betrayed itself by the radiance of his countenance. He knew by a heavenly instinct where the most holy Body of Christ, hidden in the Eucharist, was kept. Saint Pius V appointed Francis companion to Cardinal Alessandrino, in an embassy for uniting the Christian princes against the Turks. Although his strength was almost exhausted, he undertook this journey in obedience; but on the way he happily closed his life, as he had wished, at Rome, in the sixty-second year of his age, and in the year of salvation 1572. By St. Teresa, who had often sought his advice, he was called a saint, and by Gregory XIII, a faithful servant of God. Finally, after many great miracles, he was canonized by Clement X.

• 0 Lord Jesus Christ, the pattern and reward of true humility, we beseeeh Thee, that as Thou didst make blessed Francis a glorious follower of Thee in the contempt of worldly honour, so Thou wouldst grant us to be partakers of the same imitation and by Google

SAINT FRANCIS BORGIA glory.' 1 Such is the prayer the Church offers through thee to her divine Spouse. She knows that the saints always have great power with God ; but especially when they would obtain for their devout olients the virtues they themselves more particularly cultivated when on earth.

How precious is this prerogative in thy oase, 0 Francis, for it oonoerns the virtue whioh attracts God's grace in this life, and wins such glory hereafter ! Sinoe pride has hurled Luoif er into the abyss, and the self-abasement of the Son of God has led to His exaltation above the heavens, humility, whatever men may now say, has lost nothing of its inestimable value; it is still the indispensable foundation of every durable edifice, whether spiritual or sooial ; the basis, without whioh the other virtues, and even oharity the queen of them all, could not subsist a single day. Therefore, 0 Francis, obtain for us this humility ; thoroughly oonvinoe us of the vanity of this world's honours and false pleasures. May the holy Sooiety, which thou after St. Ignatius didst render still more valuable to the Churoh, oherish this spirit of thine, so that it may deserve more and more the esteem of heaven and the gratitude of earth.

1 Collect of the day.

TIME AFTER PENTECOST

October 13 SAINT EDWARD THE CONFESSOR

KING OF ENGLAND

This glorious saint was like a beautiful lily, crowning the anoient branoh of the kings of Wessex. The times had progressed sinoe that sixth century, when the pagan Oerdio and other pirate chiefs from the North Sea scattered with ruins the island of saints. Having accomplished their mission of wrath, the Anglo-Saxons became instruments of grace to the land they had conquered. Evangelized by Rome, even as the Britons they had just ohastised, they remembered, better than the latter, whenoe their salvation had come; a spring-tide blossoming of sanctity showed the pleasure God took once more in Albion, for the constant fidelity of the princes and rple of the heptarchy towards the See of Peter, the year of our Lord 800, Egbert, a descendant of Cerdic, had gone onpilgrimage to Rome, when a deputation from the West Saxons offered him the crown, beside the tomb of the Prinoe of the apostles, at whose feet Charlemagne, at that very time, was restoring the empire. As Egbert united under one sceptre the power of the seven kingdoms, so Saint Edward, his last descendant, represents to-day in his own person the glorious holiness of them all.

Nephew to St. Edward the martyr, our holy king is known to God and man by the beautiful title of the Confessor. The Churoh, in her account of his life, sets forth more particularly the virtues which woi*

SAINT EDWAJLD him so glorious an appellation ; but we must remember moreover that his reign of twenty-four years was one of the happiest England has ever known. Alfred the Great had no more illustrious imitator. The Danes, so long masters, now entirely subjugated within the kingdom, and without, held at bay by the noble attitude of the prinoe ; Maobeth, the usurper of the Sootoh throne, vanquished in a campaign that Shakespeare has immortalized ; St. Edward 9 8 Laws, which remain to this day the basis of the British constitution ; the saint's munificence towards all noble enterprises, while at the same time he diminished the taxes: all this proves with sufficient clearness, that the sweetness of virtue, whioh made him the intimate friend of St. John the beloved disciple, is not incompatible with the greatness of a monarch.

Eduardus, cognomento Connepos sancti Ed- fessor, uardi regis et martyris, Anglo-Saxonum regum ultimus, quern futurum regem Brithualdo viro sanctissimo in mentis excessu Dominus a demonstravit, decennis a Danis Angliam vastantibus dequaesitusad necem: exsulare vastating cogitur apud avunculum, Normanniae ducem: ubi in mediis vitiorum illecebris talem se exhibuit integritate dy. vitsB, morumque innocentia, tations ut omnibus admirationi esset. Eluxit in eo vel mint pietas in Deum ac res divinas, fuitque ingenio mi- q tissimo, atque ab omni minandi cupiditate alieno.- Cujug ea vox fertur, malle a

Edward, surnamed the Confessor, nephew to St. Edward king and martyr, was the last king of the Anglo-Saxon race, Our Lord had revealed that he would one day be king, to holy man named Brithwald. When Edward was ten years old, the Danes, who were England, sought his life; he was therefore obliged to go into exile, to the court of his uncle the duke of Norman- Amid the vices and tempof the Norman court, he grew up pure and innocent, turn- a subject of admiration to all. His pious devotion towards God and holy things was most do- 9 remarkable. He was of a very gentle disposition, and so great stranger to ambition that he

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■6 regno oarers, quod sine cede et sanguine obtineri non possit.

Exstinctis mox tyrannia, qui fratribua auis vitam et regnum eripuerant, revocatur in patriam: ubi summis omnium votis et gratulatione regno potitus, ad hostilium irarum delenda vestigia totum se convertit, a sacria exorsus ac Divorum templis: quorum alia a fundamentis erexit, alia ref ecit, auxitque redditibus ac privilegiis; in earn curam potissimum intentus, ut refloresceret collapsa religio. Ab aula proceribus compulsum ad nuptias, constans est assertio scriptorum, cum virgine sponsa virginitatem in matrimonio servasse. Tantus in eo fuit in Christum amor et fides, ut ilium aliquando inter Missarum solemnia videre meruerit blando vultu et divina luce fulgentem. Ob profusam caritatem, orphanorum et egenorum pater passim dicebatur, numquam laetior, quam cum regios thesauros exhausisset in pauperes.

Prophetic dono illustris, de Angliae futuro statu multa coelitus praavidit: et illud in primis memorabile quod Sweyni Danorum regis in mare demersi mortem, dum was wont to say he would rather forgo the kingdom than take possession of it by violence and bloodshed.

On the death of the tyrants who had murdered his brothers and seized their kingdom, he was recalled to his country, and ascended the throne to the greatest satisfaction and joy of all his subjects. He then applied himself to remove all traces of the havoc wrought by the enemy. To begin at the sanctuary, he built many churches, and restored others, endowing them with rents and privileges; for he was very anxious to see religion, which had been neglected, flourishing again. All writers assert that, though compelled by his nobles to marry, both he and his bride preserved their virginity intact. Such were his love of Christ and his faith, that he was one day permitted to see our Lord in the Mass, shining with heavenly light and smiling upon him. His lavish charity won him the name of the fother of orphans and of the poor; and he was never so happy as when he had exhausted the royal treasury on their behalf.

He was honoured with the gift of prophecy, and foresaw much of England's future history. A remarkable instance is, that when Sweyn, king of Denmark, was drowned in the

SAINT BDWARB very act of embarking on Us fleet to invade England, Edward was supernaturally aware of the event the very moment it happened. He had a special devotion to St. John the evangelist, and was accustomed never to refuse anything asked in his name. One day St. John appeared to him as a poor man begging an alms in this manner ; the king, having no money about him, took off his ring and gave it to him. Soon afterwards the saint sent the ring back to Edward, with a message that his death was at hand. The king then ordered prayers to be said for himself ; and died most piously on the day foretold by St. John, the Nones of January, in the year of salvation 1066. In the following century Pope Alexander III enrolled him, famous for miracles, among the saints. Innocent XI ordered his memory to be celebrated by the whole Church with a public Office, on the day of his Translation, which took place thirty-six years after his death, his body being found incorrupt and exhaling a sweet fragrance.

Thou representest on the sacred oycle the nation which Gregory the Great foresaw would rival the angels ; so many holy kings, illustrious virgins, grand bishops, and great monks, who were its glory, now form thy brilUant court. "Where are now the unwise

Angtiam Invadendi animo classem conscenderet, eodem quo accidit momenta, divinitus intellexit. Joannem evangelistam mirifice coluit, nihil cuiquam, quod ejus nomine peteretur, negare solitus. Cui olim sub lacera veste suo nomine stipem roganti, cum nummi deessent, detractum ex digito annulum porrexit, quern Divus non ita multo post Eduardo remisit, una cum nuntio secuturo mortis. Quare rex, indictis pro se precibus, ipso ab evangelista praedicto die, piissime obiit nonis videlicet Januarii, anno salutis millesimo sexagesimo sexto. Quern, sequenti sreculo, Alexander Papa tertius miraculis clarum sanctorum fastis adscripsit. At ejus memoriam Innocentius undecimus Officio publico per universam Ecclesiam eo die celebrari procepit, quo annis ab obitu sex et triginta translatum ejus corpus incorruptum, et suavem spirans odorem, repertum est.

TIME AFTER PBHTECOST in whose flight thou and thy race seemed to dieP 1 History must be judged in the light of heaven. While thou and thine reign there eternally, judging nations and ruling oyer peoples ;* the dynasties of thy suooessors on earth, ever jealous of the Churoh, and long wandering in schism and heresy, have become extinot one after another, sterilized by God's wrath, and haying none but that vain renown whereof no trace is found in the book of life. How muoh more noble and more durable, 0 Edward, were the fruits of thy holy virginity ! Teach us to look upon the present world as a preparation for another, an everlasting world; and to value human events by their eternal results. Our admiring worship seeks and finds thee in thy royal abbey of Westminster ; aud we love to contemplate, by anticipation, thy glorious resurrection on the day of judgment, when all around thee so many false grandeurs will acknowledge their shame and their nothingness. Bless us, prostrate in spirit or in reality beside thy tomb, where heresy, fearful of the result, would fain forbid our prayer. Offer to God the supplications rising to-day from all parts of the world, for the wandering sheep, whom the Shepherd's voioe is now so earnestly oalling back to the one fold !

1 Wisd. iii. 2. * Ibid. iii. 8.

October 14

SAINT CALLTXTUB I

POPB AND MARTYR

Hr was a sign of oontradiotion in Israel. In his own time, Christians were ranged either around him or against him. The trouble excited by his mere name sixteen hundred years ago, was renewed in the middle of the nineteenth century by the discovery of a famous book, which gave an occasion to the sectaries of our own days to stand with those of old against Callixtus and the Church. The book, entitled Philosophumena or refutation of heresies, was composed in the third century ; it represented Callixtus, whose life and character were painted in the darkest colours, as one of the worst corruptors of doctrine.

In that third century, however, the author of the Philosophumena, attacking the Pontiff he wished to supplant, and setting up in Rome, as he himself acknowledges, Chair against Chair, did but publish to the Church his own shame, by ranging himself among those very dissenters of whom his book professed to be the refutation and the history. The name of this first antipope has not come down to us. But behold his punishment ! The work of his envious pen, despised by his contemporaries, was to reappear at the right moment to awaken the slumbering attention of a far-off posterity. The impartial oritioism of these latter ages, setting aside the insinuations, took up the facts brought forward by the accuser ;

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TIME AFTER PENTECOST and with the aid of soienoe, disentangling the truth from among his falsehoods, rendered the most unexpected testimony to his hated rival. Thus once more iniquity lied to itself; 1 and this word of to-day's Gospel was verified: Nothing is covered that shall not be revealed ; nor hid that shall not be known. 5

Let us listen to the greatest of Christian archaeologists, whose mind, so sure and so reserved, was overcome with enthusiasm on finding so much light springing from such a souroe. 4 All this,' said the Commandant de Rossi on studying the odious document, 'gives me clearly to understand why the accuser said ironically of Callixtus that he was reputed most admirable ; why, though all knowledge of his acts was lost, his name has come down to us with such great veneration ; and lastly, why, in the third and fourth oenturies when the memory of his government was still fresh, he was honoured more than any of his predecessors, or of his successors, sinoe the ages of persecution. Callixtus ruled the Churoh when she was at the term of the first stage in her career, and was marching forward to new and greater triumphs. The Christian faith, hitherto emoraoed only by individuals, had then become the faith of families ; and fathers made profession of it in their own and their children's name. These families already formed almost the majority in every town ; the religion of Christ was on the eve of becoming the public religion of the nation and the empire. How many new problems concerning Christian social rights, eoclesiastioal law, and moral discipline, must have daily arisen in the Churoh, considering the greatness of her situation at the time, and the still greater future that was opening before her! Callixtus solved all these doubts ; he drew up regulations

1 Psalm xxyi. 12. * St. Matt. x. 26,

SAtNT CALLIXTTT8 eonoeming the deposition of olerics ; took the necessary measures against the deterring of oateohumens from Baptism, and of sinners from repentanoe ; and defined the notion of the Churoh, whioh St. Augustine was afterwards to develop. 1 In opposition to the civil laws, he asserted the Christian's right over his own conscience, and the Churoh's authority with regard to the marriage of the faithful. He knew no distinction of slave and freeman, great and lowly, noble and plebeian, in that spiritual brotherhood that was undermining Roman society, and softening its inhuman manners. For this reason, his name is so great at the present day ; for this reason, the voioe of the envious, or of those who measured the times by the narrowness of their own proud mind, was lost in the cries of admiration, and was utterly despised.'*

We have not space to develop, as it deserves, this masterly exposition. We have already seen how, when the virgin martyr Cseoilia yielded to the Popes the place of her first sepulture, Callixtus, then deacon of Zephyrinus, arranged the catacomb of the CsBoilii for its new destiny. Venerable orypt, in whioh the State for the first time recognized the Churoh's right to earthly possessions ; sanctuary, no less than necropolis, wherein, before the triumph of the cross, Christian Borne laid up her treasures for the resurrection-day. Our great martyr- Pontiff was deemed the most worthy to give bis name to this the principal cemetery, although Providence had disposed that he should never rest in it. Under the benevolent reign

1 Quo referendum aiebat apostoli verbum : ' Tu quis es qui judical servum alienum ? 1 Atque etiam lolii parabolam, ' Sinite zizania ere- •cere cum tritico,' id est, sinite peccatores in Eeclesia manere. Dicebat etiam Eeclesia instar arcam Noefuisse, qua canes, lupi, corvi, aliaque omnia pura et impura animantia comprehendebantur ; oportere autem item esse de Eeclesia. Philosophumena, lib. iz. de Callisto.

• De Rossi, Zullettino, 1866, n. I, 2, 5, 6.

TIMS APTBR PENTECOST of Alexander Severus, he met his death in the Trastevere, in a sedition raised against him by the pagans. The cause of the tumult appears to have been his having obtained possession of the famous Taberna meritoria, from the floor of whioh, in the days of Augustus, a fountain of oil had sprung up and had flowed for a whole day. The Pontiff built a ohuroh on the spot, and dedioated it to the Mother of God ; it is the basilioa of St. Mary in Trastevere. Its ownership was contended for; and the oase was referred to the emperor, who deoided in favour of the Christians. 1 We may attribute to the vengeance of his adversaries the saint's violent death, whioh took place close to the edifice his firmness had secured to the Church. The mob threw him into a well, whioh is still to be seen in the ohurch of St. Callixtus, a few paces from St. Mary's basilioa. For fear of the sedition, the martyr's body was not carried to the Appian Way ; but was laid in a oemetery already opened on the Aurelian Way, where his tomb originated a new historio oentre of subterranean Borne. 2

The following brief history was drawn up at a period, when the history of Callixtus was less known than at present.

Callistus Romanus prae- Callixtus, a Roman by birth, f uit EcclesiaB Antonino He- ruled the Church in the time liogabalo imperatore. Con- of the emperor Antoninus He- stituitquatuoranni tempora, liogabalus. He instituted the quibus jejunium ex aposto- Ember days, on which four

Hca traditione acceptum ab times in the year, fasting, accor- omnibus servaretur. ^Edifi- ding to apostolic tradition, cavitbasilicamsanctaeMariae should be observed by all.