+Ash Wednesday+
Prayer Society Intention for March, Month of St. Joseph
“O glorious St. Joseph, defender of the Church founded by Jesus, most confidently do I implore thy powerful aid for for all the Church militant on earth.” (Raccolta)
Introduction
We begin with a treatise on Ash Wednesday by the much-respected author Rev. Hugo Doyle, who also wrote Cana is Forever, Sins of the Parents and other works. A review of some of the material presented in our last blog post will follow. Wishing all a blessed and profitable Lent.
Reflections on the Passion, (Censor Librorum, 1956)
“Love moves and governs all things. Tell me what you love, and I shall tell you what you are. If your love is for the world, you are its slave. If your love is for Jesus Christ, you are free; you are becoming conformed to His image; your conversation, that is your life and conduct even here below, are continually in heaven.
Jesus Christ is alone worthy of your whole heart. But you cannot love Him if you do not know that “God so lived the world as to give His only-begotten Son,” that He emptied Himself out,” and that He laid down His life for His flock.” We must know the details of His sufferings, if we would know the excess of His love.
This little volume — Reflections on the Passion — was written for just this purpose. It should provide the laity with short, pointed considerations for quiet prayer, the religious, with ready material for personal and profitable meditation, and the clergy, with suitable matter before-Mass reading to the faithful or for sermon seeds for Lenten courses.
It is related that King Louis XIV of France, shortly after his ascent to the throne, stood at an open window in his palace and silently admired the simple beauty of the church of St. Denis, standing some distance away. A servant ventured to remark that all of the king’s ancestors laid buried in that church and that, doubtless, it would also be His Majesty’s last resting place. The very next day the king ordered another palace built so that the Church of St. Denis would be hidden from his view.
Holy Mother the Church is much more realistic. She has her priests bless ashes and then place some of these ashes on the foreheads of her children, saying at the same time, “Remember, man, thou art but dust, and into dust thou shalt return.”
Sin and death go together. Because Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, they had to submit to this dreadful penalty, and in like manner, all their descendants. To remind us of this grim fact, the Church places ashes on the foreheads of her children on each Ash Wednesday, saying, “Remember, man, thou art dust, and into dust thou shalt return.”
There is still another death which the Church would remind us of today – the death of our vices and concupiscences through mortification and penance. The word mortification comes from two Latin words meaning “To make death”; and so in asking us to mortify ourselves during Lent, the church begs us to deaden our appetites and passions by discipline so that we might live supernatural lives.
The imposition of ashes, then, is not only symbolic of death, but of penance and mortification too. Since there would be no death if there had not been sin, so there can be no supernatural life without mortification and penance. The ashes should remind us, since holy men like Job and David associated ashes with penance, and the Church has been doing the same for almost 2000 years.
So you see, life, death, mortification, penance, are all brought to our minds by the simple but deeply meaningful ceremony of the imposition of the blessed ashes. Could a more effective way be found to signify the beginning of the penitential season of Lent? The external application of ashes to our foreheads will be useless and meaningless unless and until we resolve in our hearts to use the forty days ahead to do penance in reparation for our past failures and practice mortification to condition our souls and bodies for the struggle ahead.
Spend some time today in considering the fact that you will sooner or later die and that everyone and everything you hold near and dear to you must be left behind. “To fear death before it comes,” says St. Gregory, “is to conquer it when it comes.”
Say often this prayer of David: “O Lord, make me know my end, and what is the number of my days that I may know what is wanting in me” (Ps. 38:5).
Thursday after Quinquagesima Sunday: TRUE devotion in its highest meaning includes love for, and imitation of, the person to whom we are devoted, and Holy Mother the Church presents our prayerful devotion during Lent, the Sacred Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, with fervent hope that we shall be aroused to imitate Him.” (End of Rev. Doyle quotes – to be continued next week.)
Prayer and Penance
In our last blog, the need for prayer and penance was emphasized which is indeed the overriding theme of Lent. What so many fail to realize is that God has punished us for our sins by taking away the papacy and with it the Mass and Sacraments. Most, however, are not accepting this punishment as a penance in the spirit it in which it was intended. Below we see how Daniel prophesied concerning the cessation of the Mass and Sacraments and who will cause them to cease.
“And it was magnified even unto the strength of heaven: and it threw down of the strength, and of the stars, and trod upon them… And it was magnified even to the prince of the strength: and it took away from him the continual sacrifice and cast down the place of his sanctuary. And strength was given him against the continual sacrifice, because of sins: and truth shall be cast down on the ground, and he shall do and shall prosper.” (Dan. 8: 11-12). In the prayer of Daniel, (Ch. 9) we read how he prayed, fasted and did penance because of what he saw in his visions — the magnifying of the powers of the prince of strength and the cessation of the continual sacrifice. Commentators unanimously agree that the cessation applies to the time of Antichrist as well as Daniel’s time, and this has been verified by the unanimous agreement of the Fathers on this event.
Reading Daniel’s words above, first we see how the papacy was usurped (it took the sacrifice away from him and cast down his sanctuary). The “prince of strength” is described by Rev. Haydock as referring to contentions over who possessed the high priesthood, mentioning that the priests had neglected the sacrifices and were being punished for this. This could be applied to Roncalli, who was made strong by the sins of the faithful and clergy alike, lobbying for liturgical renewal even before his “election.” For certainly he and Montini cast truth to the ground; did evil and prospered. All this because of sins, sins so many do not repent from or do penance for because they still believe themselves to possess the true Mass. Daniel, on seeing the destruction of Jerusalem in his vision, fell to his knees and begged God’s forgiveness.
“I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, concerning which the word of the Lord came to Jeremias the prophet, that seventy years should be accomplished of the desolation of Jerusalem. And I set my face to the Lord my God, to pray and make supplication with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes. And I prayed to the Lord my God, and I made my confession, and said: I beseech thee, O Lord God, great and terrible, who keepest the covenant, and mercy to them that love thee, and keep thy commandments. We have sinned, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly, and have revolted: and we have gone aside from thy commandments, and thy judgments… And we have not hearkened to the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his law, which he set before us by his servants the prophets…
“All this evil is come upon us: and we entreated not thy face, O Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities, and think on thy truth… O Lord, against all thy justice: let thy wrath and thy indignation be turned away, I beseech thee, from thy city Jerusalem, and from thy holy mountain. For by reason of our sins, and the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem, and thy people are a reproach to all that are round about us. Now therefore, O our God, hear the supplication of thy servant, and his prayers: and shew thy face upon thy sanctuary which is desolate, for thy own sake.” Ch. 9, vs, 1-17).
Repeating themes in Apocalypse
We then return to the chastisement by Our Lord addressed to the Laodicea church, identified by Pope Pius XI as applying to these times. Various themes emerge in this chastisement that are addressed also to the other churches and reiterated in Holy Scripture. It may be my imagination, but it seems that Christ, in the words below, is inviting those rejecting the Laodicea church, the seventh and the last — those whom He has rebuked and chastised by taking away the Latin Mass — to commune with Him spiritually.
“Such as I love, I rebuke and chastise. Be zealous therefore and do penance. Behold, I stand at the gate, and knock. If any man shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that shall overcome, I will give to sit with me in my throne: as I also have overcome and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches” (Apoc. 3: 20). We also see how Christ’s coming as a thief is repeated throughout Apocalypse and elsewhere. In Apoc. 16:15, St. John writes: “Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame. And he shall gather them together into a place, which in Hebrew is called Armageddon.” Apoc. 3:17-18 is identical to the warning in Apoc. 16:15.
These words warning of Christ coming suddenly are also repeated in Apoc. 3: 1-5: “And to the angel of the church of Sardis, write: These things saith he, that hath the seven spirits of God, and the seven stars: I know thy works, that thou hast the name of being alive: and thou art dead. Be watchful and strengthen the things that remain, which are ready to die. For I find not thy works full before my God. Have in mind therefore in what manner thou hast received and heard: and observe and do penance. If then thou shalt not watch, I will come to thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know at what hour I will come to thee. But thou hast a few names in Sardis, which have not defiled their garments: and they shall walk with me in white, because they are worthy. He that shall overcome, shall thus be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, and I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.”
Other mentions include: “But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it, shall be burnt up” (2 Peter 3:10). And: “For yourselves know perfectly, that the day of the Lord shall so come, as a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). “For I testify to every one that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book: If any man shall add to these things, God shall add unto him the plagues written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from these things that are written in this book. He that giveth testimony of these things, saith, Surely I come quickly: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus” (Apoc. 22: 18-20).
Rev. H.M. Feret on overcomers
The overcoming theme also is repeated numerous times. Of this Rev. H.M. Feret, O.P. says in the conclusion to his Apocalypse commentary: “The whole history of modern times is essentially that of Christ’s truth confided to the faithful and spread by them throughout the world till the day of triumph when the consummation will take place. That is why the Christian has been given the title of ‘overcomer.’ It applies to him and his supernatural state but it also expresses a duty on his part. He has earned the hope of attaining it through the very fact of being baptized in the victorious resurrection of Christ and he is as assured of victory as truth itself insofar as he remains faithful to it. But it also carries with it the sense of duty, in fact men’s primary duty. In the eyes of the world the Christian, by the testimony of his whole life, should cut the figure of an overcomer or conquer. Too many believers passively lament the evils of our day. They make wickedness responsible for all of our ills without apparently suspecting that wickedness momentarily has the upper hand only because of their weakness.
Surely their conscience should be pricked by the generosity and bravery which are at times lavished on the most baleful causes. They have failed to understand the sublime paradox of St. John who insistently saluted the persecuted Christians with the title of overcomers while in the sight of man they were only poor nondescripts born in obscurity in Asia minor. If Christians today would bring the mentality of overcomers to bear upon contemporary realities in the service of truth and above all that of the gospel, the world would once more be compelled to bow to their testimony. It is when witnesses apparently dead come back to life that men give glory to God. May our witness be thus revived; may it become strong again so that the new spirit of the life of the gospel may enter into our spirits and into our lives. Then we shall again stand upright on our feet and the enemies of Christ will once more be reduced to silence. False messianisms will lose their attraction and the power of seduction and that will mark a new stage in the progress of truth through history. All that is needed is that we shall become spiritually strong, behaving like overcomers so that nothing we do may deserve the terrible denunciation of the judge towards the end of the Apocalypse against the cowardly and the timid” (The Apocalypse Explained, 1958).
Conclusion
It is our bounden DUTY, in these times, to be overcomers. Rev. E. Sylvester Berry says of Apoc. 2: 27: “The faithful are warned of the necessity of good works for salvation. Those who persevere in them unto the end shall have part with Christ in the judgment of the wicked. They shall participate in the power He has received from the Father to rule the nations with a rod of iron.” Regarding Ch. 11: 1, where St. John is ordered to measure the temple, “the altar and them that adore therein” with “a reed, like unto a rod.” Berry writes: “The temple is a figure of the Church and those who worship there are the faithful who remain steadfast during the great persecution of Antichrist.” Commenting on Ch. 11:2 he says: “The outer court cast off and given over to the Gentiles signifies that a great number of Christians will fall away from the faith in those days” (The Apocalypse of St. John, 1921).
Rev. H. Bernard Kramer wrote: “The rod of iron is a scriptural symbol of divine chastisement or LAW ENFORCEMENT by which the good are separated from the wicked” (The Book of Destiny, 1956). The iron-clad rod or club has to do with protection, discipline and punishment, as in excommunication and exclusion from Church membership. Normally the shepherd uses his crook to guide or direct the sheep — the crook Christ is carrying in the many depictions of Him as the Good Shepherd. But the iron rod is reserved for predators and the sheep who stubbornly refuse the direction of the shepherd. Catholics who refuse to accept correction and chastisement by observing the laws of the Shepherd will not be counted among those wearing white garments at the Final Judgment.
If we truly wish to reign in Heaven with Christ as our King, which so many profess to be their most fervent desire, we will use our Lent to practice penance by studying the truths of Faith, the encyclicals and other papal documents. As the angel told Daniel, “Many shall be chosen, and made white, and shall be tried as fire: and the wicked shall deal wickedly, and none of the wicked will understand, but the learned shall understand” (Ch. 12:10). Pray, then, that Our Lord appears soon to end this nightmare on earth occasioned by the absence of a true pope and the cessation of the Continual Sacrifice. “Amen. Come Lord Jesus!”
