What difference does it make?

What difference does it make?

Recently, Pope Francis, was “pained to hear… a sarcastic comment about a pious [indigenous] man with feathers on his head who brought an offering” during Mass. In humble solidarity with the “pious man,” His Holiness asked: “Tell me: what’s the difference between having feathers on your head and the three-peaked hat worn by certain officials in our dicasteries?” The Supreme Pontiff was referring to the Catholic biretta. Apparently, to the Apostolic Lord of Rome, these types of things make no difference whatsoever.

But we ask ourselves, how come His Supreme Humbleness was “pained to hear” such comment, but did not feel the same pain when His Holiness Himself made some disparaging remarks about young “rigid” priests who wear Cassocks and the Roman hat (“saturno”)? How quickly His Holiness’ pain disappears when those who don’t agree with all that comes out of His Merciful Mouth are the ones who are viciously offended, vindictively attacked, and savagely persecuted by His Holiness Himself or His Holiness’ protégés!

How far is the reigning Pontiff from the example of Pope St. Gregory I when writing to Eulogius of Alexandria: “My honor is the honour of the Universal Church. My honor is the firm position of my brothers. I am really honoured when due honor is not denied to each of them.” Instead, Pope Francis has a preference for attacking, ridiculing, and disparaging whatever may bring visibility to anything that used to bring honor and respect to the Church of God, Her faithful ministers, and Her immemorial practices.

Our “Catholic sensibilities” are not supposed to be hurt by such things, the reasoning goes, or by horrible pagan-like/shamanic ceremonies at the Vatican in the presence of the Pope Himself! According to this logic, what difference does it make to see practices and ceremonies that predate the advent of Christianity performed with the consent and approval of the visible Head of the Catholic Church? It would seem that to His Holiness they are the same as the ceremonies of the Mass – the New Mass, that is, because WE KNOW how His Holiness feels about the Old Mass! WE KNOW that those old immemorial rites, practices, and ceremonies of the Roman Church do make a difference to His Humble Person! So much so, that His Holiness and His Holiness’ friends are willing to lie, persecute, slander, and stamp out anything reminiscent of the old Catholic days… Such “rigidly neopelagian promethean observances that cause deeply-rooted psychological problems” should have no place in the Church of God! Or so is their humble wish.

We could get the impression that, according to His Holiness, the way we feel about Holy Mass is the same way we should feel about ritualistic services to Pachamama (mother earth) with representations of Yacy, Ruda, and Guaracy – all pure and unadulterated pagan idolatry and immodesty ....  this should make no difference at all, they say. Just as it would make no difference to His Holiness and minions if what had taken place had been the burning of incense –or, better yet, the killing of babies!– in honor of the ancient golden calf idolized by the Hebrews after the God of Israel freed them from the hands of Pharaoh.

At the (“fertility ritual”) ceremony that took place in the Vatican gardens on October 4th in honor of Pachamana, the Holy Father was given a black ring (tucum ring – anel de tucum), which has become very closely associated with the principles of Liberation Theology, which in the Pontificate of Pope Francis has reached levels of biblical importance. With regards to the ceremony, Cardinal Baldisseri said: “the purpose is to focus on this garden [the Amazon region] of immense wealth and natural resources… and a territory that’s threatened by the runaway ambitions of human beings rather than being taken care of.”

Honestly, that whole thing reminded us of another Garden (spoken of in the first book of the Sacred Scriptures) where those involved had the ambition to be like gods, and we all know that that led to negative consequences of unparalleled proportions. And here we are in 2019 with high ranking members of the Catholic Church (the Bishop in white included) tempting the same God with a similar ambition and behaving as if the Incarnation of the Son of God had never happened. How horrible is that! And then today we hear that the Holy Father’s friend, the “journalist” Eugenio Scalfari (a Leftist atheist), reports that the Holy Father told him that Christ was not God. We’re not sure about you, but that’s flirting directly with Sabellianism, Arianism, Modalism, Patripassianism, Subordinationism, Nestorianism, and a few other officially certified heresies… nothing new about the heresy, except that the One Who might possibly be dishing it out is none other than the Supreme Pontiff Himself!

In the old days of Faith, the Popes would have been the ones to clarify the correct teaching the faithful were to hold, but that does not seem to be the case these days. Pope Julius, in the times of St. Athanasius, during the Arian heresy, would have said: “Do you not know that this is the custom, that you should write first to Us and that what is right should be settled here?” Pope St. Agatho would have said: “The Apostolic [Roman] Church of Christ, by the grace of Almighty God will never be shown to have wandered from the path of Apostolic tradition, nor has it ever fallen into heretical novelties; but it was founded spotless at the time of the beginning of the Christian faith.” It might be safe to say, and I think you will agree, that Francis the Merciful would cut His Humble tongue out before saying anything like that! Instead, His Holiness would yell at us and at the top of His Apostolic lungs –oops, we forgot His Holiness only has one, though that does not prevent His Holiness from yelling at us anyway!– what’s the difference?

Well, to us, faithful Catholics, it does make a big difference... just as one “iota” made an essential difference in the 4th century with the Arian heresy. As Fr. Adrian Fortescue aptly said: “What, it is asked, can the difference between Homoüsios and Homoiüsios matter? Was it worth while to rend the whole Church for the sake of an iota? Undoubtedly to a person who cares nothing for any dogmatic belief, to whom the Christian faith means either nothing at all or a vague humanitarianism, the discussion will seem absurd… But to people who take historic Christianity seriously one may point out that the question at issue was the vital one of all. It was that of the Divinity of Christ.”

And Fr. Fortescue goes on to say that in combat, soldiers from two different sides whose nations have very similar flags “or [coats of] arms” would not waver in their allegiance to their nation because of such similarity or very slight differences. So, while for the Servant of the Servants of God an indigenous feathered hat might be the same as a biretta, to an actual faithful Catholic, there is a real difference between the two. Just as an actual Catholic will detect a clear difference between real inculturation and neo-paganization!

The Supreme Pontiff may go on and on with all this silly stuff about “pockets of rigidity” and “semi-schismatic ways” that lead to a bad end and to an “unhealthy view of the Gospel,” but the thing is that we somehow still have something called the Ten Commandments. And the first of these commandments still reads: “I am the Lord thy God, Who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt not have strange gods before Me.” Actual faithful Catholics, despite the criticisms and condemnations coming from Bishops, Cardinals, and the Holy Father Himself these days, still want to continue the ancient Catholic practice of worshiping the True God alone by preserving the purity and integrity of the Catholic Faith through absolute loyalty to the Church of Old Rome in Her unchanging dogmas and living traditions, particularly in the true Roman Mass.

The Holy Father also thinks that these rigid neo-palagians want “to change the Pope” by expressing open criticisms that create, according to His Holiness, “confusion” and “division” and “schism.” As Archbishop Lefebvre once said: “I don’t want to disobey the Pope, but he must not ask me to become Protestant,” except that now that would have to be changed to: “I don’t want to disobey the Pope, but he must not ask me to become Pagan.” That seems to be the difference between Paul VI and Pope Francis; the former wanted to protestantize things, but the latter is hellbent on paganizing everything! In response, we could say what Princess Pallavicini said in the 1970s when Paul VI’s Vatican tried to pressure her into not helping Archbishop Lefebvre: “I am a more than convinced Apostolic Roman Catholic … I owe nothing to anybody, I have no honours nor prebends to defend, and I thank God for everything. Within the limits that the Church allows, I may dissent, I may talk, I may act: I have to talk and I have to act: it would be cowardice not to. And allow me say, that in our home, also in this generation, there is no room for the cowardly.”

Long gone are the days when Popes, like St. Leo the Great, would write to world leaders: “… the same Faith must be that of the people, of bishops, and also of kings, oh most glorious son and most clement Augustus!” Or Popes like Leo IX, writing to the heretic Michael Cerularius on the preservation of Church unity: “… Woe to those who break it! Woe to those who ‘with high-sounding and false words and with impious and sacrilegious hands cruelly try to rend the glorious robe of Christ, that has no stain nor spot.’” And, as the same Pope Leo IX wrote to the then ambitious Patriarch of Constantinople: “Let heresies and schisms cease. Let every one who glories in the Christian name cease from cursing and wounding the holy Apostolic Roman Church.” And this was, as it should always be, the case because it is the constant Catholic principle that there MUST NOT BE ANY COMPROMISE in matters of Faith and Morals. Unfortunately, and with utmost sadness and shame, it must be admitted that even faithful Catholics these days fall short of this essential Catholic principle… 

Nevertheless, we’ll continue to pray for our Beloved Pope Francis, despite His Holiness’ love of deception, schism, division, confusion, heresy, scandal, perversion, etc., which will be to His Holiness’ eternal disgrace if no change takes place in His Humble and Merciful Heart before His Holiness meets the Supreme Judge of all. And we, faithful Catholics, must continue with our daily living as Catholics did in the old Catholic days, when Rome was unequivocally “the center and organ of unity,” when Rome’s guidance was “known, respected, and universally accepted.” This current trend of exchanging the teachings of Christ for communist ideas, corruption of morals, and pagan practices does not sit well with us … given that we keep in mind constantly what Galatians 6:7 tells us: “Be not deceived, God is not mocked.”

What an interesting Pontificate this is!

Saint John Mary Vianney

“The reputation of sanctity which surrounds the name of M. Vianney makes all commendation superfluous. A common consent seems to have numbered him, even while living, among the servants of God… It would seem as if God were dealing with us now as He dealt with the world in the beginning of the Gospel.

 

To the corrupt intellectual refinement of Greece and Rome, He opposed the illiterate sanctity of the Apostles; to the spiritual miseries of this age He opposes the simplicity of a man who in learning hardly complied with the conditions required for Holy Orders, but, like the B. John Colombini and St. Francis of Assisi, drew the souls of men to him by the irresistible power of a supernatural life. It is a wholesome rebuke to the intellectual pride of this age, inflated by science, that God has chosen from the midst of the learned, as His instrument of surpassing works of grace upon the hearts of men, one of the least cultivated of the pastors of His Church.” ~Abbé Monnin

 

“You cannot begin to speak of St. John Mary Vianney without automatically calling to mind the picture of a priest who was outstanding in a unique way in voluntary affliction of his body; his only motives were the love of God and the desire for the salvation of the souls of his neighbors, and this led him to abstain almost completely from food and from sleep, to carry out the harshest kinds of penances, and to deny himself with great strength of soul. Of course, not all of the faithful are expected to adopt this kind of life; and yet divine providence has seen to it that there has never been a time when the Church did not have some pastors of souls of this kind who, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, did not hesitate for a moment to enter on this path, most of all because this way of life is particularly successful in bringing many men who have been drawn away by the allurement of error and vice back to the path of good living.” ~John XXIII

 

 

 

“In a word, the one great truth taught us by the whole history of the Curé of Ars is the all-sufficiency of supernatural sanctity. A soul inhabited by the Holy Ghost becomes His instrument and His organ in the salvation of men. To such a sanctity the smallness of natural gifts is no hindrance, and the greatest intellectual power without it does little in the order of grace; for souls are to be won to God, as God created and redeemed them – by love and by compassion; and it was this which shone forth with a surpassing splendor in all the life of this great servant of Jesus, and concealed even the wonderful gifts of discernment and supernatural power with which he was endowed.” ~Abbé Monnin

 

 

 

 

 

“The Spirit of God had been pleased to engrave on the heart of this holy priest all that he was to know and to teach to others; and it was the more deeply engraved, as that heart was the more pure, the more detached, and empty of the vain science of men; like a clean and polished block of marble, ready for the tool of the sculptor. The faith of the Curé of Ars was his whole science; his book was Our Lord Jesus Christ. He sought for wisdom nowhere but in Jesus Christ, in His death and in His cross. To him no other wisdom was true, no other wisdom useful.” ~Abbé Monnin

 

 

 

La Grande Chartreuse: A Lonely Island of Prayer

It is without doubt a very solitary life, that of a Carthusian father. On ordinary days he only leaves his cell three times—at night (10:30) for the great night service, in the morning for high mass, in the afternoon for vespers, and on these three occasions the cell is exchanged for the chapel of the monastery. At those hours you would see the white-robed monk with his white cowl shading his face, noiselessly coming from his house or cell into the cloister, passing silently into his stall in the chapel, and then without a word to any mortal, only the whispered or chanted words to God, returning after service all silent to the solitude of his cell.

Is he ever weary of this strange, prayer-filled, lonely life? What thoughts occupy him, as day after day, year after year, after that brief visit to the chapel, he comes back to that silent home of his? Does he regret the movement and stir of the life he has left behind? Does this solitude and silence pall upon him, weary him? They say not. The general of the Order spoke to me of the serene, quiet happiness of the fathers. There is never a vacant cell. There are many we know waiting for a chance to fill one of these strange, silent homes. Everyone connected with the Order with whom I have spoken, bears the same unanimous testimony. The happiness of these silent, praying men seems to be deep, unbroken, real.

The especial work of the monks of the Grande Chartreuse is not the care of the sick and afflicted, but they maintain homes for the suffering poor, their revenues being sensibly augmented by the great sale of their famous liqueur, manufactured at a distillery a few miles distant from the monastery, and into the composition of which many herbs growing on the slopes of the Alps largely enter. The secret of the liqueur is rigidly kept. But the raison d'etre of the life of a monk of the Chartreuse without doubt is prayer. Such a life, where all is sacrificed for this one end, may not be our ideal of life surely. The busy man of the nineteenth century seeks more definite, more tangible results than the Carthusian father: He would aim at the blessed guerdon of the honoured philanthropist, at the laurels of the great soldier, at the applause ever given to the successful writer.

The solitary believes that only in the silence of his cell—a silence rarely broken, save by the solemn chant and psalm of his more public services, shared in with his brother monks—comes that whisper of the Eternal, the vena divini susurri, which teaches him the language of communion with God, which dictates the words of those earnest, passionate prayers to his God, by which it is his belief he can best help his brothers and sisters struggling and suffering in the world.

 

Who among us who believe in the mighty power of prayer would dare to cast a stone at these devoted men, who, in pursuit of what they deem the highest ideal of life, have given up all that men hold dear and love—home, friends, love, rank, fame, ease, comfort. They have voluntarily cast all these prized things aside, and only live their grave, austere, perhaps joyless lives, to help in the way they deem most effective, their suffering, erring neighbours.

Christmass 2018 Schedule - Church of the Holy Innocents, NYC

CHURCH OF THE HOLY INNOCENTS

(128 West 37^th Street, NYC)

 

CHRISTMAS 2018 SCHEDULE:

 

Monday, December 24 – Masses for Late Advent

7:00AM, 7:30AM, & 12:15PM – (English)

1:15PM – (Latin High Mass)

 

Exposition of the Most Blessed Sacrament

2:30—3:45PM

 

Confessions

7:30—8:30AM

12 noon—1:30PM

3:15—3:45PM

 

Masses for the Solemnity of Christmas – Holy Day of Obligation

 

Monday, December 24 – Christmas Eve

4:00PM (English)

12 Midnight (Solemn High Tridentine Latin Mass)

 

The Midnight Mass will be preceded by Exposition & Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament beginning at 10:00PM with the singing of Christmas Carols at 11:00PM and Benediction at 11:30PM. Midnight Mass will begin with the Procession to the manger and Blessing of the crib at 11:45PM.

 

Tuesday, December 25 – Christmas Day

1:30AM - (Low Tridentine Latin Mass at Dawn)

9AM - (Low Tridentine Latin Mass)

10:30AM - (High Tridentine Latin Mass followed by Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament)

12:30PM (English)

5:00Pm (English)

 

Confessions

9:45—10:30AM

12 noon—12:30PM

 

 

CHRISTMAS FESTIVE RECEPTIONS – There will be TWO festive receptions in the Parish Hall: one immediately following the Christmas midnight Mass and another one immediately after the 10:30am Mass on Christmas Day.

 

Parishioners who would like to help with the receptions should speak to Maria Ignacio (cell phone: 646-371-2582).

Forty-nine years ago today ...

Pope Paul VI forced the New Order of the Mass on the entire Church by means of the Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum, thus attempting to put an end to the most glorious jewel in the Church’s liturgical crown: The Traditional Roman Mass (with its Roman Canon), which, in essence – as Paul VI himself admitted – goes back, at least, to St. Gregory the Great.

 

The false doctrinal and spiritual “riches” he claimed would come from the innovations based on “ancient liturgical sources” never materialized. Under the pretense of going back to ancient and primitive practices, the immemorial sacred Roman Canon was mangled and replaced with other “Eucharistic prayers” that no Apostle or Church Father had ever prayed!

 

The Roman Mass that had been used for centuries in Latin in a unified manner for greater “purity of worship” was forcefully replaced with something that represented “both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass,” as had been solemnly established by the Council of Trent.

 

As Paul VI himself admitted, “The introduction of the vernacular will certainly be a great sacrifice for those who know the beauty, the power and the expressive sacrality of Latin. We are parting with the speech of the Christian centuries, we are becoming like profane intruders in the literary preserve of sacred utterance. We will lose a great part of that stupendous and incomparable artistic and spiritual thing, Gregorian chant.”

 

Well, wasn’t he right about the sacrifice part! But he was clearly wrong about the supposed benefits the use of the vernacular would bring. It is widely known that the Anglican church had the most beautiful English for its liturgy, but it is also widely known that it was useless because it was done before empty pews in comparison with the Catholic Church that had churches full of people devoutly praying the Mass in Latin!

 

Because of Paul VI’s decision to deprive the Church of her immemorial rites, ceremonies, and language, generations of Catholics have helplessly undergone the violent profanation of all that the Christian centuries held supremely sacred. Catholic Worship was rendered unrecognizable by a militant and pernicious anti-Roman spirit, as well as by incredible abuses of every kind and in every sector.

 

The changes were a triumph for a protestantized mentality that would have made Luther himself proud. It took the innovators and progressives less time and effort than it took Protestants to savagely tear, violently sever, and mercilessly mangle the sacred unity of the one seamless garment – the Catholic Church.  They chose to “divide and conquer” (divide et impera) in vehement opposition to Our Lord’s prayer “that they may be one” (ut unum sint).

 

YET, almost 40 years after Paul VI’s violent attempt to destroy Catholic Worship, the traditional Roman Mass made a triumphant return: The Catholic world was officially told that the immemorial Roman Mass was never abrogated, and that there were requests for its greater use not only by people who grew up with it, but also by young persons who “have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist, particularly suited to them.”

  

The liturgical Reconquista has gone on in many places because it is realized that it was THE Roman Mass, for which Martyrs died, for which the Church was persecuted and shed tears of blood, that gave the faithful immeasurable treasures of piety and devotion and built a universal Christian civilization that no other religion or form of worship could accomplish.

 

As Tito Casini said in The Severed Tunic: “Armed with faith, we fight and we will fight, for Israel and within Israel, for the Church and within the Church, mindful of those words ‘non veni pacem mittere sed gladium,’ offering to God even this our pain in having to go to war against ‘enemies’ who are our beloved brethren, laymen, like us, or clerics.”

 

And this is done with the realization that “our Mass goes back, without essential change, to the age when it first developed out of the oldest liturgy of all. It is still redolent of that liturgy, of the days when Cæsar ruled the world and thought he could stamp out the faith of Christ, when our fathers met together before dawn and sang a hymn to Christ as to a God. The final result of our enquiry is that, in spite of unsolved problems, in spite of later changes, there is not in Christendom another rite so venerable as ours.” ~Fr. Adrian Fortescue

The Sin of Lust

LUST -- THE SLAVERY OF SIN

“The wages of sin is death.” — Rom. 6: 23.

From the beginning of the world, sin and Satan have made wretched, helpless slaves of innumerable members of the human family. Bound in the chains of guilt, unable to move to work out their glorious destiny, blind and deaf to the true beauties of God’s world and serving him whose servants they have made themselves in a hundred degrading offices; bound perhaps in the bonds of evil habits; bound sometimes forever in the dungeon of hell, where all hope is left behind, where no order but eternal horror abides.

          If this be true, as it undoubtedly is, of all sin, it is especially true of sins of lust. No sin among the long category which are the links that chain men to death, binds them more firmly, is more difficult to cast off by repentance. None becomes more strong as it is worn longer, none sinks the wretched body and soul more deep in degradation, none is a more probable cause of eternal death. No sin in the long record of man’s crimes has left such a history of shame and sorrow, of degradation and disgrace, of rack and ruin, of death and probable damnation, as the sins of the flesh.

Wars have been waged, nations been wiped from the face of the earth, schisms have arisen and heresies taken their origin in it. Treachery in its most revolting forms, even pestilence and other natural calamities have been the consequences of the indulgence of this passion. Commentators hold, and Holy Writ seems to imply, that it was through the lustful loves of the sons of God with the daughters of men that “all flesh had corrupted its way” in the time of Noah. Wherefore God said: “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, from man even to the beasts, from the creeping thing even to the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” The fearful punishment of the deluge was therefore a mark of God’s resentment against lust. (Gen. 6.)

The lascivious conduct common among the men of Sodom and Gomorrha was the cause of the visitation of God’s wrath in a rain of fire and brimstone, which has left the very sites of those cities undistinguishable even to the searching eye of modern research. (Gen. 19.) The unnatural lust of the men of Gabaa, of the tribe of Benjamin, caused a war in which all the men of that tribe were slain. (Judg. 20). The sons of Juda were struck dead (Gen. 9), Joseph was cast into prison (Gen. 39), Samson was betrayed to his enemies (Judg. 16), Ammon, the son of David, was killed (2 Kings 13), and all in consequence of unbridled lust. David himself became guilty of adultery and murder and brought pestilence upon a whole people, and all through an immodest glance. Solomon departed from the service of God and prepared the way for the division of his people, when he loved strange women. (3 Kings II.)

Profane history teaches the same lesson. The sinful desires of Paris brought about the Trojan war and the destruction of “proud Ilium.” Those of Cleopatra set the Roman world of her day in arms. The mistresses of French kings kept Europe in a deluge of blood for many years. It is a familiar saying that heresy and schism usually end like comedies in a marriage, and it might be added in the marriage of someone, prince or priest, who had no right to marry. Instances in point are well known. Woes incalculable have afflicted the human family either in the natural course of events or as the avenging act of the Almighty upon this vice.

The injury it works to individuals is not less fearfully striking; injury to body and soul, to intellect and will, and worst of all, eternal death. The unclean spirit when, through the habit of this sin, he is permitted to return again and again to the soul, brings with him many other spirits more wicked than himself and, entering in, they dwell there. They take possession, forcible and complete, of the temple of the Holy Ghost which has been given up to them by its unfaithful guardian. The poets have imagined, and ruder ages may perhaps have seen, torture by binding the body of the culprit to a decomposing corpse. No torment could be more horrible. And no figure could be more apt to represent the soul which is chained for life and for eternity to a body consumed with the fires of lust, corrupt with the rottenness of this most degrading of vices.

The body does not escape punishment even in this world. Physicians know, hospitals could testify, our very newspapers bear daily witness to the misery, the desperation of the victims of its horrors. So revolting are the details of this retribution, that while the contemplation of this living death may be salutary even as the meditations of holy Job as he sat upon his dunghill and thought upon death, to speak of them at length would be unbecoming. Let us not, however, neglect to make for ourselves a covenant as holy Job did, not to yield the slightest way to these temptations. The mind also is enchained and the glorious power of thought, by which man is distinguished from the beasts, becomes enfeebled, bestialized. Bound to a body of death it can scarcely be said to reason, but is guided like the beasts by the lowest instincts. It becomes blinded to the teachings of faith. The holy Fathers, accurate observers of all things in the spiritual life of man, unanimously attest that loss of faith is the usual result of this vice.

The intellect becomes incapable of fulfilling any of its duties properly. Its products (witness some modern erotic writers) are more like the wailings of the unclean spirit within them than the coherent utterances of a self-respecting, thinking being. At last it sinks altogether under the weight of its servitude, madness ensues, such madness as might not unreasonably be supposed to be obsession by an impure spirit, and the intellect is, to all intents, dead. The will, too, becomes enfeebled. It loses all relish for what is good. Modesty, purity, justice, charity, hope, faith itself, are crushed out by the python folds of the master of the sinner. The will becomes no longer able to resist temptation. It is allured instead of repelled, as it should be, by all that is corrupt, sinful, and death-dealing. The eyes of the old serpent fascinate it, and in becoming his willing slave it embraces its death. And then comes the parting of soul and body.

When the body is debilitated and the powers of the soul reduced to their lowest, dissolution cannot be far off. And oh, the terrors of the death-bed—if, indeed, he be allowed a bed to die upon–of the victim of lust. Of all the vices, there is none which produces more or greater varieties of despair. From the hard, dull unconsciousness of danger, which seems to court rather than fear the eternal abode with sin, suffering and Satan, to the raving terror of him who knows and dreads his fate, without hope of escaping it. And after death—judgment; and then eternal death, the wages of sin. Death unending, death to God, death to all happiness, death living like the vulture of Prometheus upon the sinner's misery. A dead soul chained to a body of death, confined with all the horrors of entombment with hundreds of other corpses.

O, may He Who rose from the dead deliver us from the body of this death. May Mary Immaculate, and John the Pure, may all the holy choir of virgins, and that bright band who follow the Lamb wheresoever He goeth, intercede for us and keep us from this death. May they obtain for us from the Most Pure the strength to resist temptation; to suffer, as the holy martyrs Agatha, Agnes, and Lucy suffered, rather than yield to the tempter; to resist by violence, even to blood, as many holy monks and hermits resisted, rather than yield even in thought. May Magdalen, Augustine, and all the holy penitents who have felt the sting of the flesh, and, having yielded, gained grace to rise against their tyrant, and casting off their bonds, found safety in the wounds of Christ, obtain of Him for those who have unhappily fallen into this slavery the rending of the chains of the captive, and restoration from that service whose wage is death to the liberty of the children of God.

~~The American Ecclesiastical Review, Vol. 30(3), 1904.