Charity

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“What is Charity? A supernatural habit of the mind whereby we love God above all things for His own sake, and ourselves and our neighbor for Him. It is a theological virtue [like Faith and Hope], but higher than they, and the only *eternal* one of the three. Faith and Hope will take us as far as the threshold of eternity, but when we actually enter it, they will have fallen away. Only of Charity St. Paul has said: ‘Charity never falleth away, never dies’; it is eternal, like God Himself, like the Holy Spirit Who pours it into our hearts; and of such surpassing excellence that only the Divine Spirit can infuse it; of a quality that no human force or even the strength of the Seraphim, the spirits of love, can impart to us.” ~Fr. Escribano

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“Even supposing --an impossible supposition, of course-- that every virtue were enshrined in my soul, my whole existence a most fertile soil and limitless source of heroism, if I lack Charity, “nihil mihi prodest, nihil sum”; it would avail me nothing, I should count for nothing (Cor. xiii, 3). Charity is necessary --necessitate medii-- for my justification and salvation. Who does not love God is in sin.... Whoever appears before the Judgment-seat of God without the cloth-of-gold garment of divine love will have his part and lot with the hypocrites in the unquenchable fire.” ~Fr. Escribano

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“O God, let the solemn, imperative, and burning proclamation which accompanied the issuing of the great precept of love on Mount Sinai serve to impel my entry into the Kingdom of those that love Thee: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength and with thy whole mind’ (Deut. vi, 5)... ‘for this is the greatest and the first commandment’ (Matt. xxii, 37).” ~Fr. Escribano

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“The act of least outward significance, for instance, to give someone a drink of water, if done out of supernatural charity is of greater value in the sight of the Supreme Judge than the tortures of a St. Laurence if endured without Charity.” ~Fr. Escribano

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“...Because it is so necessary to love [to have Charity] in man’s life, God has imposed it upon him as a precept... and has placed it at the head of His commandments... and He has even summarized in it all the other (precepts). He who loves, keeps already all the other commandments.” ~Fr. Villar

The Holy Season of Lent

The Holy Seasonof Lent

Condensed from The Liturgical Year by Abbot Guéranger OSB

The History of Lent

The forty days' fast, which we call Lent, is the Church's preparation for Easter, and was instituted at the very commencement of Christianity. In most languages, the name given to this fast expresses the number of days - forty, such as Quadragesima in Latin; the English word Lent signifies the Spring-fast, for Lenten-tide in the ancient Anglo-Saxon language, was the season of Spring. Our Blessed Lord Himself sanctioned this fast by fasting forty days and forty nights in the desert; and though He did not impose it on the world by an express commandment (which, in that case, could not have been open to the power of dispensation), yet He showed plainly enough, by His own example, that fasting, which God had so frequently ordered in the old Law, was to be practiced also by the children of the new.

The disciples of St. John the Baptist came, one day, to Jesus, and said to Him, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Thy disciples do not fast?" And Jesus said to them, "Can the children of the Bridegroom mourn, as long as the Bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then they shall fast." (Matt. 9, 14-15)

Hence we find it mentioned, in the Acts of the Apostles, how the disciples of Our Lord, after the foundation of the Church, applied themselves to fasting. In their Epistles, also, they recommended it to the faithful. Nor could it be otherwise. Though the divine mysteries whereby Our Savior wrought our Redemption have been consummated, yet we are still sinners; and where there is sin, there must be expiation.

The Apostles, therefore, legislated for our weakness by instituting, at the very commencement of the Christian Church, that the solemnity of Easter should be preceded by a universal fast; and it was only natural that they should have made this period of penance to consist of forty days, seeing that Our Divine Master had consecrated that number by His own fast. St. Jerome, St. Leo the Great, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Isidore of Seville, and others of the Fathers of the Church, assure us that Lent was instituted by the Apostles, although, at the beginning, there was no uniform way of observing it.

Thus the Eastern Rites begin Lent much earlier than the Latin, owing to their custom of never fasting on Saturdays. This is the origin of the Latin Rite's Septuagesima, which roughly corresponds to the beginning of the Eastern Lent. We see also that the Latin Rite - which, even as late as the sixth century, kept only thirty-six fasting days during the six weeks of Lent (for the Church has never allowed Sundays to be kept as days of fast) - thought it proper to add, later on, the last four days of Quinquagesima, in order that her Lent, beginning with Ash Wednesday, might contain forty days of fast.

St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome, and St. Gregory the Great, make the remark, that the commandment put upon our first parents was one of abstinence; and that it was by their not exercising this virtue, that they brought every kind of evil upon themselves and upon us their children. The life of privation, which the king of creation, Adam, had thenceforward to lead on this earth (for the earth was to yield him nothing of its natural growth, save thorns and thistles), was the clearest possible exemplification of the law of penance imposed by the anger of God on rebellious man.

When God mercifully shortened man's ordinary life span, that so he might have less time and power for sin, He permitted him to eat the flesh of animals, as an additional nourishment in that state of deteriorating strength. Fasting, then, includes abstinence from such nourishment as this. Its privation is essential to the very notion of fasting.

Fasting also includes the depriving ourselves of some portion of our ordinary food, inasmuch as it allows only one full meal during the day. It was the custom with the Jews, in the old Law, not to take the one meal allowed on fast days, till sunset. The Christian Church adopted the same custom. It was scrupulously practiced for many centuries. But about the ninth century some relaxation began to be introduced in the Latin Church, and the custom, though resisted at first, gradually spread of taking the repast after the hour of None, that is, about three in the afternoon. By the late thirteenth century, even this was considered too severe, and a still further relaxation was deemed necessary - that of breaking the fast after the hour of Sext, or after noon.

But whilst this relaxation of taking the repast so early in the day as noon rendered fasting less difficult in one way, it made it more severe in another - by evening the body had grown exhausted by the labors of the day. It was found necessary to grant some refreshment for the evening, and it was called a collation. The word was taken from the Benedictine rule, which allows wine to be taken in the evening on fast days outside of Lent. It was the custom to read from the Collationes of Cassian during this refreshment; thus the name. Shortly after the death of St. Karl the Great, the Chapter of Aachen extended this indulgence to the Lenten fast. By the fifteenth century, it was permitted to take a morsel of bread with the wine, so the monks would not be obliged to take wine on an empty stomach. These mitigations gradually found their way from the cloister to the world, and eventually a second collation was permitted - so long as the two collations together did not constitute a full meal. Eventually, a variety of foods, besides bread, were permitted at the collations, with the exception of meat. Beverages were permitted between meals.

Thus did the decay of piety, and the general deterioration of bodily strength among the people of the western nations, infringe on the primitive observance of fasting. To make our history of these humiliating changes anything like complete, we must mention further relaxations. For many centuries eggs and dairy foods were not allowed, because they came under the class of animal food. Beginning with the ninth century, dairy foods were gradually permitted, especially in northern Europe. The Churches of France resisted this custom until the seventeenth century.

In earlier ages, even princes had difficulty in obtaining dispensations. Wenceslaus, king of Bohemia, being seized with a malady which rendered it dangerous to his health to take the Lenten diet, applied, in the year 1297, to Pope Boniface VIII, for permission to eat meat. The Pontiff commissioned two Cistercian abbots to inquire into the real state of the prince's health; they were to grant the dispensation if they found it necessary, but only on condition that the king had not taken a vow to observe the fast for life, that he must abstain from meat on Fridays, Saturdays and the vigil of St. Matthias, and that he must not take his meal in the presence of others and was to observe moderation in what he took. But after the fifteenth century, dispensations became increasingly easy to obtain. Eventually eggs and even meat were widely permitted on most of the Lenten fast days. Pope Benedict XIV lamented this general relaxation in an encyclical in 1741, and, in 1745, he renewed the prohibition of eating fish and meat at the same meal - but even this prohibition has been generally relaxed.

How few Christians do we meet who are strict observers of Lent, even in its present mild form! What comparison can be made between the Christians of former times, who, deeply impressed with the fear of God's judgments and with the spirit of penance, happily went through these forty days, and those of modern times, when love of pleasure and self-indulgence are forever lessening man's horror for sin? Where is now that simple and innocent joy at Easter, which our forefathers used to show, when, after their severe fast of Lent, they partook of substantial and savory food? The peace, which long and sharp mortification ever brings to the conscience, gave them the capability, not to say the right, of being light-hearted as they returned to the comforts of life, which they had denied themselves in order to spend forty days in penance, recollection, and retirement from the world.

In the "ages of faith", Lent was a season during which, not only all amusements and theatrical entertainments were forbidden by the civil authority, but even the law courts were closed; and this in order to secure that peace and calm of heart, which is so indispensable for the soul's self-examination and reconciliation with her offended Maker. Hunting, too, was for many ages considered forbidden during Lent. Even war, which is sometimes so necessary for the welfare of a nation, was suspended during this holy season. Indeed, in the eleventh century, the institution called "God's truce" became widespread, which forbade the carrying of arms from Wednesday evening until Monday morning throughout the year. St. Edward the Confessor, King of England, decreed that God's truce should be observed without cessation from the beginning of Advent through the Octave of Easter and from the Ascension through the Octave of Pentecost, as well as on all Ember days and Vigils, beside the days already prescribed.

Thus did the secular world testify its respect for the holy observances of Lent, and borrow some of its wisest institutions from the seasons and feasts of the liturgical year. The influence of this forty days' penance was great, too, on each individual. It renewed man's energies, gave him fresh vigor in battling with his animal instincts, and, by the restraint it put upon sensuality, ennobled the soul. There was restraint everywhere; and the present discipline of the Church, which forbids the solemnization of marriage during Lent, reminds Christians of that holy continency, which, for many ages, was observed during the whole forty days as a precept, and of which the most sacred of the liturgical books, the Missale Romanum, still retains the recommendation. The final rubric of the Nuptial Mass states: Let the priest admonish them, in grave words…to remain chaste during the time of prayer, especially fasts and solemnities…(such as on liturgical vigils and during the penitential seasons of Lent and Advent.)

In closing, we extract from the encyclical of Pope Benedict XIV, cited above: The observance of Lent is the very badge of the Christian warfare. By it we prove ourselves not to be enemies of Christ. By it we avert the scourges of divine justice. By it we gain strength against the princes of darkness, for it shields us with heavenly help. Should mankind grow remiss in their observance of Lent, it would be a detriment to God's glory, a disgrace to the Catholic religion, and a danger to Christian souls. Neither can it be doubted that such negligence would become the source of misery to the world, of public calamity, and of private woe.

More than two hundred years have elapsed since this solemn warning of the Vicar of Christ was given to the world; and during that time, the relaxation he inveighed against has gone on gradually increasing. The result of this ever-growing spirit of immortification has been a general laxity of character, which has led to frightful social disorders. The sad predictions of Pope Benedict XIV are but too truly verified. Every nation among whose people the spirit and practice of penance are extinct, are heaping against themselves the wrath of God, and provoking His justice to destroy them by one or other of these scourges - civil disorder or conquest.

It is sad and humiliating to note that as laxities were introduced by the hierarchy and local churches into the laws of fasting and practices of severe penance, the members of the Church have suffered immeasurable spiritual loss - a loss of at least part of the rigor of those sacred times set apart to cleanse their bodies and souls of imperfections and the corrupting spirit of the world. In our modern times, the spread of permissiveness, liberalism, deterioration of morality and the general practices of purity, have led to a spirit of relaxation and the loss of a general effort, on the part of the faithful, to strive for a life of holiness and of union with God through the practices of self-denial, mortification, piety and renouncement of the spirit of the world - a spirit which is opposed to the spirit of a true Christian life and the very possibility of eternal salvation.

~~Taken from The White Paradise (1952)

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Mortification of the senses by a strict rule of life, mortification of intellect and will by obedience, mortification of the whole man by solitude – these are the ramparts and fosses behind which he entrenches himself, who has been chosen by Grace. The three practices thus briefly indicated make up what is usually called “Carthusian penance.”

 

To be sorry for the life one has lived; to be converted, that is, to turn from the world and direct one’s way toward God: this is the first step in the Carthusian life, as in every religious life; with this act we begin this life. Those whom the divine Voice calls to the solitude of our cloisters have heard the words of the Gospel: “Do penance”; and “Go, sell whatsoever thou hast.” Above all, they have set before themselves the task of detaching themselves from all created things, of breaking the chains of our bondage.

 

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The acts of detachment, strictness toward oneself, and submission are and always have been required of a life dedicated to the worship of Him Who has naught to do with things that are not. To live by God alone and for God alone, that is the heart of our secret and the true essence of our solitude.

 

There are not many souls that have the power to recognize the beauty of the Absolute, thus set forth; so deep have the children of Adam fallen. Rare are the souls intrepid enough the acknowledge their very nonentity. Rare are the souls which really dare to be nothing, and which, in that very act, are humble enough to be content to be divine and to be sons of the Most High, to be in short crucified and glorified in Him.

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Without doubt, these things will seem like madness to the world’s wisdom, for the world lives upon the passing shadows of things, while we tell you of reality, pure and eternal. The world has not the power to know either our life or our love.

 

For our life is God; and our love is God again; and our sure, certain and perfect victory is nothing else than God Himself. God is exactly what the world knows not. Therefore, the world can neither estimate the extent of our victory nor gain the slightest inkling of the victory of Christ in us. “Have confidence, I have overcome the world.”

Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus

ST. PAUL, THE APOSTLE OF THE HOLY NAME

 

In the history of Christianity, we know no man who was so profoundly influenced, completely transformed, by the words, “I am Jesus,”[1] as was St. Paul. That word changed a Saul into a Paul. We know no saint who loved that Name so ardently and perseveringly as St. Paul. We know no apostle who was called so directly and explicitly by Christ to preach that Name and who fulfilled the mission so effectively as the apostle St. Paul. He is for every man of the Holy Name Society, especially for the Levites and the members of the priesthood, a perfect model. Before St. Paul understood the profound, the sacred meaning of that adorable Name, he hated it and persecuted it by persecuting those that adored it, “breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord.”[2]

 

When on the way to Damascus, “suddenly a light from heaven shined round about him. And falling on the ground, he heard a voice saying to him: Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Who said: Who art thou, Lord? And He: I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest.”[3] He lost the light of his eyes, but received the light of Faith. Hate was burned out by the flame of love. The persecutor Saul became the apostle, the martyr, the great Saint Paul. The Name of Jesus changed a Saul into a Paul. Fully detached from the world and from self, miraculously, in an instant, totally and forever dedicated and consecrated to that King of Heaven, he said, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?”[4], and the final answer was “Carry My Name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel.”[5] Paul obeyed. “Immediately he preached Jesus in the synagogues, that He was the Son of God.”[6]

 

The Profound Meaning of the Holy Name

In the words “Carry My Name,” addressed by Christ from His heavenly throne to a Saul prostrated in the sand, Christ Himself gives His Name a profound, a comprehensive meaning. Jesus meant by the words, “Carry My Name,” — “Be a witness unto Me. Tell the Gentiles and the kings and the children of Israel all about My Name: My nature, divine and human; My life, from the cradle to the Cross; My mission for the redemption of the world; My reward, so great that no eye can see it, no ear can hear it, and no heart can feel it.” All this, and much more Christ, the Son of God, sums up in the word, “My Name.” No word in heaven or on earth has a meaning so profound. St. Paul, full of the Holy Spirit, understood the Name as Christ gave it, and he also understood His mission. He begins almost all his epistles with words similar to those addressed to the Galatians: “Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead . . . and He gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us from the present wicked world, according to the will of God and our Father, to whom is glory forever and forever.”[7] Or, again, as we read in his epistle to the Romans: “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle ... in all nations, for His Name.”[8]

 

These written words reflected, no doubt, the beginning, the substance and the nature of all the instructions in these discourses, in season and out of season, by St. Paul. In his fourteen epistles we are told he used the name of Jesus more than two hundred times, and the name of Christ more than four hundred times. That Name was constantly in his mind and always on his lips, to manifest and make known the “unsearchable riches”[9] hidden in it. The enemies of St. Paul and of the other apostles understood well the full meaning of the Name of Jesus. They persecuted them, even as Christ had foretold, and said: "Let us threaten them that they speak no more in this Name."[10] They hated that Name because they hated the Person who bore it, because they hated the doctrine and the commandments of that Divine Person. Peter and John answering said to their enemies: “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”[11] All Peter and John had seen and heard in Christ and from Christ during the three years of Christ's public life was for them contained in “that Name.” The meaning the Church gives to that Name, we find clearly expressed in her liturgical prayers. St. Bernardine of Siena, who preached the Name so eloquently and effectively, with such ardor and fervor in all parts of Italy, illustrates his enlightened conception of it in his classic Litany of the Holy Name, which he composed, which the Church approves and recommends, which she has enriched with great indulgences, and uses so frequently in her liturgical services.

 

When we recite that Litany thoughtfully, we know that “Jesus” means, first of all, “Son of the Living God,” and, as Son of God, the “Splendor of the Father,” the “Brightness of Eternal Light,” the “King of Glory,” the “Sun of Justice.” Secondly, “Jesus” means the “Son of the Virgin Mary,” and as Son of man, the “Model of all Virtues,” “amiable,” “admirable,” “most powerful.” Thirdly, “Jesus” means “our Redeemer,” “zealous for souls,” who by the mysteries of His life from His Incarnation to His Glory, “must deliver us from all evil,” from “eternal death,” to be our “Christ of Glory.” The life of Jesus explains and illustrates the Name of Jesus. Our devotion to the Holy Name must not be separated in thought or word from the personality of Jesus, even as the Church forbids us to picture or paint the Sacred Heart separate from the Divine Body. All the devotions to the Son of God have in common that sacred personality of Christ, even as in the Masses which commemorate the various mysteries, the Canon is practically the same. The Collects, Epistle, and Gospel differ. They call our attention to and fix it upon some special mystery or some special virtue of Christ, thereby casting a new, bright, heavenly light on the Canon of the Mass. They make the whole Mass, for instance, in honor of the Holy Name, seem to differ much from that of the Sacred Heart, or from that of the Precious Blood, thus proving the greatness of Christ, and our littleness.

 

As St. Paul was called to carry that Name to the Gentiles, to the kings, and to the children of Israel, every priest has that same sublime mission. Even every Catholic layman, in this respect, belongs to the “Kingly Priesthood.”[12] “Carry My Name to all nations,” said the Master to all His disciples. A great, providential help to bring that adorable Name in its full meaning before the people is the Holy Name Society. Its end is not merely negative, to avoid and prevent sins against the Second Commandment. Its first and most important end is positive, to make known the meaning of that Name, to plant it in the heart of every individual that it may take root, grow and bear fruit that every man may feel the sweet, adorable sentiments so well expressed in the hymn of the Vespers of the Holy Name:

Jesus, the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills my breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest.

 

No sound, no harmony so gay,

Can art or music frame;

No thought can reach, no word can say,

The sweets of Thy blest Name.

 

Jesus, our hope, when we repent,
Sweet source of all our grace;
Sole comfort in our banishment;
Oh, what when face to face!

 

Well, therefore, may Levites, priests and prelates, join the Holy Name Society themselves, fully to enjoy its many advantages, to gain its great indulgences, to pledge themselves publicly and solemnly to endeavor to fulfill the first obligation of membership, namely, “to labor individually for the glory of God’s Name, and to make it known to those who are ignorant of it.”

 

The Crucifix, the Great Book of the Holy Name

St. Paul studied that Name as he saw it nailed over the Sacred Remains on the Cross of Calvary. He knew nothing “but Jesus Christ, and Him Crucified.”[13] The Passion of Christ was the great subject of His meditations, as it has been that of all the great Doctors and mystics of the Church. “Pilate wrote a title also, and he put it upon the Cross. And the writing was: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” “This title, therefore, many of the Jews did read: because the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin.”[14] As we see the Holy Name there, blood-stained, we perceive its value. The cold, pale, wounded, pierced, nailed, thorn-crowned corpse indicates clearly the price a God paid for that Name. “You are bought with a great price,”[15] says St. Paul. There we see that it cost our Saviour much to become a Jesus, a Redeemer, a Christ, which means the Anointed, the King.

 

In that book St. Paul and others study to see the divine power of that Name. It darkened the sun; it shook the earth; it tore the rocks in two. “Holy and terrible is His Name,”[16] but to the good it is like “oil poured out.”[17] It healed the wounds of the penitent robber, it strengthened the soul of the adoring, loving Mary Magdalen. Like oil poured out, it gave light that enlightened the centurion. Like oil consumed, it consoled the Blessed Mother and the Beloved Disciple St. John. On the Cross, St. Paul studied it and learned to realize its breadth. He saw that it is Catholic, all-embracing. He saw it in the three languages of the world, indicating that it was meant for the whole world. He saw representatives of all nations standing under it, looking up to it, and for all of them it was as “music to the ear,” as “honey to the lips,” as “joy to the heart.” St. Paul saw its breadth, and his own mind began to broaden in it. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the Cross, for which cause God also hath exalted Him, and hath given Him a Name which is above all names, that in the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.”[18] Notice in this quotation how St. Paul indeed saw its breadth and depth, reaching from the heights of heaven to the lowest regions of hell.

 

Saul, who had been breathing out threats and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, became the Paul, the lover of all nations. The Name on the Cross taught him to “become all things to all men,” that Christ-like he “might save all.”[19] That Name on the Cross taught him to “count all things to be but loss for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ; for whom,” he says, rejoicing, “I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but dung.”[20] That Name caught his mind, broadened and purified it, lifted it up to Paradise, to the third heaven, and enabled it “to hear secret words, which it is not granted to man to utter.”[21] “Be ye followers of Me, as I also am of Christ.”[22] Like St. Paul, we must study the Holy Name in the Book of the Crucifix. In the history of two thousand years we cannot find a better book to enlighten and broaden our mind, to help us that the mind which was in Christ and in Paul may also be in us. The frequent meditation on the Name of Jesus nailed to the Cross will help us as it helped Paul to go beyond the narrow views of self, of worldly considerations, of national limits, and inspire us to communicate with equal zeal the unsearchable riches of that Name to the Gentiles, the King and the children of Israel. All who follow St. Paul in studying Christ Crucified will, like St. Paul, have the mind of Christ, and hear the secrets of heaven. In the different languages of the people was the Name nailed to the wood of the Cross. In the various languages of the people must that Name be explained to the people.

 

The Crucifix, the Book of Love

No apostle expresses his love for Jesus so fervently and emphatically as St. Paul. “Who, then, shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or persecution, or the sword? Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.”[23] These noble words pronounced by St. Paul, studying that Name on the Cross, he indeed proved true. Tribulations and distress of all sorts he experienced “in journeying often, in perils of water, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own nation, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils from false brethren.”[24] But all these perils could not separate him from the love of Christ. There came imprisonments, shipwrecks, scourgings; but all the pains and tears they brought could not separate Paul from that love of Christ. Finally, kneeling he saw the sword lifted over his head. It separated his head from his body, but that sword could not separate the heart of Paul from the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

This love which Paul learned from Christ Crucified made his own heart Christ-like, Catholic, apostolic, zealous. It made him long to “preach among the Gentiles, the unsearchable riches of Christ,” to make known to all “the charity of Christ which surpasseth all knowledge.”[25] It pressed him— “the charity of Christ presseth us”[26] —to carry that Name to the Gentiles, to the kings, to the children of Israel. So great was his love for all nations that, if possible, he was willing "to be an anathema from Christ,"[27] to bring the Name of Christ to them. The Name of Christ on the Cross lifted the heart of Paul to the Cross—“God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world; for I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus in my body.”[28]

 

Let all the members of the Holy Name Society, “meditate upon these things, be wholly in these things,”[29] These words which Paul wrote to Timothy, apply to every priest. Every priest must meditate on the Name as it stands on the Cross, the expression of greatest love. The love of Jesus must make the priestly heart love the people, and all classes of the people. Jesus on the Cross had a loving parting word for all—His Mother, His Disciple, the penitent Mary Magdalen, the penitent robber, the men who in ignorance reviled and blasphemed Him. Thus, a priest must have a good word for all, to help all in the Name of Christ. The Name of Christ on the Cross transformed the heart of Paul, and formed the heart of Christ in him. That love of the Name of Christ made him the Apostle of the Holy Name.

Paul Loved the Holy Name with All His Strength

St Paul honored his ministry and gave himself to it with all his strength. His long, arduous mission journeys we all know. He did spend himself according to his own words, nobly and fearlessly to bring that Name to all nations. Christ had said: “I will show him how great things he must suffer for My Name's sake.”[30] He suffered with joy “who now rejoice in my sufferings,”[31] for the sufferings made him Christ-like, and helped him to attain the end of his mission, “always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies.”[32] Preaching the Holy Name was the first and principal means he used to make that Name known. The word coming from so loving a heart, is a living word, and touches the heart of the hearers. Frequently he used the pen to prepare the work, and to make the fruit of that work lasting. His fourteen Epistles, as we have remarked before, indicate clearly that he knew nothing but Jesus Christ.

 

His apostolic zeal made him pray for and seek help. Such help he found in his disciples Timothy and Titus. How he exhorted them to “stir up the grace of God which was in thee”[33] as to “meditate upon these things, to be wholly in these things”[34] to “hold the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me in faith, and in the love which is in Christ Jesus,”[35] and then to “preach the word, reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine.”[36] All this to make known Jesus Christ. St. Paul appreciated much the help the saintly women gave him. It is true, he wrote to Timothy: “I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to use authority over the man; but to be in silence,”[37] yet he names and salutes many of them “who hath much labored in the Lord,”[38] as “helpers in Christ Jesus.”[39]

 

Every pastor, every priest needs help. He sees the harvest great and ripe, but the laborers few. The laborers are there, but they stand idle, because no one hires them. The best way to hire the men and get them to work in the fertile fields of the Lord’s vineyard is to make them Holy Name men. It is most edifying to notice how enthusiastic and energetic Holy Name men become for the holy cause, how willing and ready they are to help, if only they have a leader. What good they can accomplish! Every zealous director will soon find men, young and old, like Titus and Timothy, ready and willing to help, and able to help. Every priest and spiritual director will instruct the good women to encourage the men in their Holy Name duties, and to teach the children at home to bless the Name of Jesus with their innocent lips. Every pastor and priest should, like St. Paul, make use of the pen and write about the Holy Name, or the Society of the Holy Name, in church calendars, in parish circulars, in private communications, since for every one of us as for St. Paul, “to live is Christ: and to die is gain.”[40]

St. Paul, divinely chosen and appointed to be the apostle of the Holy Name, enlightened by the Holy Ghost, grasped well the divine meaning of that Name and made it fully his own, “putting on the Lord Jesus Christ.”[41] And then by preaching and praying, by suffering and writing, by ordaining men and encouraging women, he taught all to give honor and glory to Jesus Christ, “the King of Ages, Immortal and Invisible, the only God.”[42] He said little to denounce sin. The sins of profanity and the vain abuse of the Holy Name were probably little known in his day. All took the Name of the Lord seriously, whether they were for it or against it. The mission of St. Paul was more religious; it was to make all love that Name, and call upon that Name in their prayers. “If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, maranathá”[43] (a thousand times condemned).

 

This positive end of the Holy Name Society is too little understood and too much neglected. To avoid and prevent cursing, swearing, profanity is good, but not necessarily a religious act. Every gentleman must do that. The Holy Name Society is essentially a religious society—whose end and means and reward are religious. The Holy Name must be adored. Every knee must bend at the sound, every Christian must use it in his prayer, every soul must be saved by it. Every member of the Holy Name Society is in a special manner consecrated to Christ, and he receives Communion frequently to remain always in that spiritual, holy union with Christ.

 

This is what is needed so much to-day, when irreligion and religious indifference are so widespread. Our men are spiritually lame, like the cripple whom Peter and John met begging at the gate Beautiful of the Temple. Peter said: “Silver and gold I have none; but what I have, I give thee: in the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, arise and walk. And taking him by the right hand, he lifted him up, and forthwith his feet and soles received strength. And he leaping up, stood, and walked, and went in with them into the Temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God.”[44] Our workingmen especially are restless and unhappy. They seek happiness in silver and gold. The pastor, the priest, must take them by the hand, place the Name of Jesus on their lips, keep the image of Christ before their mind, let the light of that Name shine before them, make the love of that Name burn in their heart, that they may enter the temple leaping for joy and praising God.

 

St. Paul received the sublime, the divine mission to carry the Name of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles and the Kings and the children of Israel. He fulfilled his mission faithfully. Dying, he could say: "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the Faith; as to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of Justice, which the Lord, the Just Judge, will render to me in that day.”[45] He will be the crown of glory of all who, like St. Paul, spend themselves to spread His Name "laboring during their whole life for the glory and honor of the Holy Name of God, to merit to share in the glory of the apostles, the martyrs and the confessors, who labored and died for the Name of Jesus Christ."

 

 

Clement M. Thuente, O.P.

Minneapolis, Minnesota.

THE AMERICAN ECCLESIASTICAL REVIEW, Volume 58, 1918.

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[1] Acts 22:8.

[2] Acts 9:1.

[3] Acts 9:3, 4, 5.

[4] Acts 9:6.

[5] Acts 9:15.

[6] Acts 9:20.

[7] Galatians 1:1, 4-5.

[8] Romans 1:1, 5.

[9] Ephesians 3:8.

[10] Acts 4:17.

[11] Acts 3:20.

[12] 1 Peter 2:9.

[13] 1 Corinthians 2:2.

[14] John 19:19, 20.

[15] 1 Corinthians 6:20.

[16] Psalms 110:9.

[17] Canticles 1:2.

[18] Philippians 2:5, 8, 9, 10.

[19] 1 Corinthians 9:22.

[20] Philippians 3:8.

[21] 2 Corinthians 12:4.

[22] 1 Corinthians 2:1.

[23] Romans 8:35, 39.

[24] 2 Corinthians 11:26.

[25] Ephesians 3:8, 19.

[26] 2 Corinthians 5:14.

[27] Romans 9:3.

[28] Galatians 6:14, 17.

[29] 1 Timothy 4:15.

[30] Acts 9:16.

[31] Colossians 1:24.

[32] 2 Corinthians 4:10.

[33] 2 Timothy 1:6.

[34] 1 Timothy 4:15.

[35] 2 Timothy 1:13.

[36] 2 Timothy 4:2.

[37] 1 Timothy 2:11.

[38] Romans 16:12.

[39] Romans 16: 9.

[40] Philippians 1:21.

[41] Romans 13:14.

[42] 1 Timothy 1:17.

[43] 1 Corinthians 16:22.

[44] Acts 3:6, 7, 8.

[45] 2 Timothy 4:8.