Pray for Pope Francis!

According to Catholic News Agency,

Here are 15 quotes from Pope Francis to meditate on as the Church mourns his passing:

Prayer for a Deceased Pope 

God, Who, in Thine ineffable providence, didst will that Thy servant Francis ... should be numbered among the high priests; grant, we beseech Thee, that he, who on earth held the place of Thine only-begotten Son, may be joined forevermore to the fellowship of Thy holy pontiffs. Through the same Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen.

Source: Roman Missal

A few months ago I asked my spiritual father the following question. This is a questioned that has burned in me for years since I took over the editorship of OnePeterFive. It is a question that has troubled by conscience and caused me to lose a great deal of sleep. Here’s the question: My spiritual father responded with this wisdom: And so, as an act of humility and love for…

Source

 I had forgotten that this video existed. But today, someone posted it on their facebook. So here it is!

HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS, who died on Easter Monday, 21 April, at the age of 88, came to the papacy in 2013 in circumstances that were more unusual and unsettling than the Church had seen for centuries. Benedict XVI, in advancing age and declining health, had done what then seemed unthinkable and had resigned, preferring to live out his old age in the relative privacy of retirement. It was a stark contrast to John Paul II, whose long and painful decline towards his own death in 2005 was spent in the full glare of the media. 

The conclave of 2013 was therefore highly unusual. When the cardinal protodeacon, the late Jean-Louis Tauran, painfully beset with Parkinson’s disease, appeared on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica on the evening of 13 March, his task was relatively simple: to pronounce the traditional “habemus papam” to the crowd in the square below – and thus to the waiting world – and also to announce whom the conclave had elected. The first announcement was greeted with the usual wild cheering; the second with considerably less: “Cardinalem Bergoglio”.

It was not that the Archbishop of Buenos Aires was an unpopular choice; it was that very few people knew who he was. That situation would change over the following days, months and years; he was a candidate for whom many liberal cardinals had lobbied as they felt he would represent a necessary corrective to the Benedict years – he had in fact come close to being elected in 2005 – and who in their eyes would make the Church seem more relevant to the modern world. His choice of name said it all: “Francis”, after the enigmatic mystic of Assisi who loved nature and gave up all that he had to follow the Lord. It was a strong gesture that captured international attention. 

Born on 17 December 1936, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was ten years old when Juan Perón came to power in Argentina. The charismatic demagogue relied on a cult of personality that revolved around himself and his popular wife, Eva. While a number of Catholic intellectuals commended the early programme of Peronism, Perón ruled in a personal and arbitrary fashion, often relying upon open intimidation against individuals, families, and institutions that opposed him. He was overthrown in 1956, but the preceding decade was one that profoundly affected Argentine life, and spanned the young Bergoglio’s teenage years.

Bergoglio joined the Society of Jesus in 1958, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1969. After various deployments he was elected provincial superior in Argentina in 1973 and later served as rector of the Jesuit seminary at San Miguel. He was named an auxiliary bishop in the archdiocese of Buenos Aires in 1992, by which time his relationship with the Jesuits had become strained; he became Archbishop of Buenos Aires and Primate of Argentina five years later, and was made a cardinal by John Paul II in 2001. He left Argentina to attend the conclave of 2013; unlike John Paul II and Benedict XVI before him he never again set foot in his native land. 

When he appeared as Pope on the balcony of St Peter’s without the traditional red shoulder cape and state stole, it was immediately obvious that his would be a pontificate of image and gesture. John Paul II had been a charismatic warrior and Benedict XVI a gentle scholar. Francis would be neither; rather, he would model his papacy on a down-to-earth approach of inclusion and dialogue, accessibility and immediacy, which would radiate from his robust personal humility. Many people interpreted it at the time as a development that would drag the Catholic Church, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the twenty-first century.

The archbishop who had travelled by public transport in Buenos Aires brought his preference for austerity with him to Rome. He declined to live in the historic papal apartments and chose the Casa Santa Marta instead, but still worked there. Whole sets of new vestments were commissioned to match his simple tastes, and the existing articles mothballed. As some commentators observed at the time, the emphasis on visible simplicity cost far more than if Francis had just followed the time-hallowed customs of his predecessors. Although true, it missed the point; this was a papacy that was intended to appear different to the world at large, and thus also to appeal to it. At the start all things seemed possible.

Twelve years later, however, its fruits have been very mixed. More informal than monarchical, Francis was not legalistic; when asked about homosexuality, he famously asked, “Who am I to judge?” His spontaneity could cause problems – not least for priests on the ground who would be called upon to explain the pope’s latest comments to their people in the pews. Frequently after an off-the-cuff remark that had been picked up by the media a Vatican clarification would need to be issued to emphasise that the Church’s teaching had not changed. On his way to his last World Youth Day, in Lisbon in 2023, he observed that he was still going to “stir things up”.

Such an approach was stimulating, certainly, but it could also be jarring. Frequent sharp words for the parish clergy were not always universally appreciated or well-received. Sometimes they were “rigid”, sometimes pastorally “delinquent” and sometimes “mummy’s boys”; he also called for a generation of priests who played soccer instead of going into communities to “dogmatise”. After Fr Jacques Hamel was martyred in Rouen in 2016 by Islamic extremists who slit his throat while he stood at the altar, Francis refused to attribute specific religious motivation to the murder in the course of another bewildering aeroplane interview: “I don’t like to speak of Islamic violence… There are violent Catholics!”

On other issues he was more robust. Francis’s concern for the environment resulted in a memorable encyclical, Laudato Si’, in 2015; its sequel, Laudate Deum, appeared in 2023. He was compassionately concerned for the plight of migrants, memorably visiting Lampedusa early on in his papacy, and produced motu proprio after motu proprio on a plethora of subjects close to his heart. He made good his promise to keep what he called “the Church at the peripheries” in his sights; only last year he made a gruelling pastoral visit to Asia and Oceania.

On a similar theme, members of the Synod on the Amazon met in Rome in 2019; they brought with them images of a naked pregnant woman which were placed in churches around the city. Presented as “Our Lady of the Amazon”, a row broke out after Francis referred to them as “Pachamama” – an indigenous pagan “Earth Mother” deity – and they were collected and thrown into the Tiber by a young Austrian convert. Francis, “as bishop of the diocese”, immediately asked forgiveness from those offended by the reaction.

Francis had the gift of the arresting phrase: when a gay man challenged him to address his situation, he replied that the most important thing was not that the man was gay, but that he was a human being. Like many of his predecessors he longed to be a peacemaker, but sometimes struggled to be heard on his own terms; when he urged Russia and Ukraine to find a way of settling their differences his comments were interpreted by many in Ukraine and its diaspora as advocating for the appeasement of an aggressor.

When Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner, was raised to the cardinalate in 2018 he gave a dinner after the ceremony for a large number of Rome’s homeless people; Francis turned up unannounced and spent the evening eating with and chatting to the guests. He also promoted women to senior roles within the Vatican, from foreign affairs to finance, which was a substantive change – although observers were surprised when he named a pro-abortion atheist and Catholics who publicly dissented from the Church’s teachings to the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Similar consternation was caused by Francis’s appointment of his fellow Argentinian Víctor Manuel Fernández as Prefect of the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith in 2023; he arrived in Rome with a reputation as a writer of erotic verse and soon became embroiled in controversy when a book of his resurfaced in which Fernández laid out with startlingly intimate detail the differences between the male and female orgasms, the working-out of God’s love in either, and how “orgasm, lived in the presence of God, can also be a sublime act of worship.”

For his part Fernández announced that he had come “to ensure that that both the documents of the dicastery and those of others ‘accept the recent Magisterium’,” and calmly explained that anyone who raised concerns about his appointment – he had also spent some time being investigated for unorthodoxy in his theological works – were the enemies of Francis and of his papacy. Fernández’s first document for Francis, Fiducia Supplicans, cited (with one exception) only Francis’s own teachings and was written vaguely enough to convey the impression, but not the fact, that same-sex relationships might receive the Church’s blessing – which was inevitably how the mainstream press reported it.

Fiducia Supplicans caused so much confusion that a number of bishops’ conferences rejected it: a dangerous moment both for the principle of the reception of the deposit of faith and the teaching office of the Successor of Peter. Having authorised the most controversial papal document since Humanae Vitae, Francis lamented, without irony, what he called “ecclesial ideologies” which caused Catholics to pursue their “own ideas or [their] own projects” rather than seeking Jesus and “the meaning of Holy Mother Church”.

Each Vatican attempt to explain the document, even those of the Pope himself, only contributed to the bewilderment. In the face of robust pushback – including from some entire bishops’ conferences – Francis told La Stampa that “those who protest vehemently belong to small ideological groups.” He said that he was unbothered by the risk of schism, and that “we must leave them to it and move on”. Simultaneously he made startling generalisations about the Church in Africa, calling Africans “a special case” for whom “homosexuality is something ‘bad’ from a cultural point of view”.

Other qualities which made Francis attractively informal could also be problematic in practice. Reliance on special advisers rather than traditional governance structures merely bypassed the Curia, rather than reforming it in any meaningful way. His attempts to be non-judgmental about divorced and remarried Catholics receiving Holy Communion, which he subcontracted to local priests or bishops, ran counter to Tradition and Scripture and were also met with opposition. Meanwhile, his vocal condemnation of clerical abuse was not followed through with systemic change; in the case of clerical abusers in Chile and Argentina there were real and serious errors on Francis’s part, which proved impossible to brush off despite his open willingness to acknowledge and apologise for his mistakes from time to time.

On his way back from World Youth Day in Lisbon in 2023 he insisted, after having met with abuse survivors, that “things are going well”, but many remained unconvinced. An element of personal loyalty to Francis himself, rather than to the Chair of Peter which he occupied, sometimes blurred boundaries. When it transpired that a friend of his, the controversial Fr Marko Rupnik – who had been accused of abusing dozens of women – had been quietly allowed to return to ministry in his native Slovenia, Francis chose the moment of the ensuing media frenzy to denounce what he called the “scandal” of priests wearing traditional clerical garments. The progressive Cardinal Gottfried Danneels presided for 30 years over the catastrophic decline of the Church in Belgium and was seriously implicated in the covering-up of child abuse, but nevertheless enjoyed Francis’s full confidence until his death and was even appointed to the Synod on the Family.

Bishops who tolerated “clown masses” in their dioceses, or others who encouraged their clergy to bless same-sex relationships were left untroubled; meanwhile Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler in Texas, who had been candid regarding his concerns about the direction in which Francis was leading the Church, was removed from office for “administrative” reasons. Cardinal Raymond Burke, a leading traditionalist, found himself regarded as Francis’s “enemy”; he was summarily evicted from his Vatican apartment and his pension was stopped.

In 2016 Cardinal Burke had been among the cardinals who wrote to Francis asking for clarification about the intentions of Amoris Laetitia, a 2016 document so loosely worded as to be capable of a number of different interpretations about the Church’s pastoral response to Catholics who had been divorced and civilly remarried without an annulment. As different dioceses began to implement its instructions in different ways, Francis calmly rose about the fracas by refusing to acknowledge their questions.

After Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025 some commentators detected a game of tit-for-tat; when an outspoken Francis-critic, Brian Burch, was named as the new American ambassador to the Holy See Francis sent one of his protégés, Cardinal Robert McElroy – a noted liberal regarded by many to have been too close for comfort to the scandal surrounding former-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick – to be Archbishop of Washington. Francis’s regular and outspoken commentary about American political life may yet make it difficult for his successor to build bridges with the present US administration.

Francis’s spontaneous style sometimes degenerated into coarseness; in 2023 a group of Spanish seminarians were startled to find the Sovereign Pontiff effing and blinding on the subject of career-minded clergy, while in 2024 the Vatican issued an apology after he was said to have descried “faggotry” in seminaries during a meeting of the Italian bishops’ conference. On other occasions a very hot temper bubbled up from below. Videos continue to circulate of Francis shouting and striking a woman’s hand when she sought to hold onto his, and of him refusing to let a queue of people kiss the apostolic ring, with its associated indulgence. He often seemed impatient of this honour paid by others to his holy office; Queen Sofia of Spain, exercising her privilège du blanc and wearing a towering Spanish veil, was less easily rebuffed.

Surely the defining element of his papacy will be the controversial foray into synodality, however, which neatly summed up Francis’s strengths and weaknesses. It has been a vast listening exercise and an opportunity for the people of God to have their say about the Church. The problem is that some modernisers consider that if a majority criticise Church teaching, then the Church must change. That they were allowed to believe this from the outset is unfortunate, to say the least; the mismatch between expectations and reality may well yet be damaging. The exclusion of the parish clergy from the synodal process – on whom inevitably fell the burden of the management of expectations raised and to whom belongs the pastoral care of bruised and disappointed parishioners – was baffling.

Appropriately for a Jesuit, Francis’s yearning to find a way for the Church to minister in China was very real, yet there continue to be serious concerns about the deal that was struck in the Sino-Vatican Pact; in practice it has meant voluntarily betraying the interests of those who kept the faith alive in the darkest days and subjecting the official church to the godless priorities of the Chinese Communist Party. When Cardinal Joseph Zen rushed to Rome to plead for a reconsideration of the matter, he was refused an audience. The Vatican has received little in return for its own willingness to compromise.

Bizarrely, for all his talk about subsidiarity, Francis reopened the liturgy wars that Benedict XVI had brought to a close. Most traditionalist Catholics are loyal to the pope, but under Francis they were treated as if they were a faction to be suppressed rather than a community with a legitimate desire for dignified worship in the Tridentine Rite; he even claimed that the vestments of their priests “sometimes conceal mental imbalance, emotional deviation [and] behavioural difficulties”. Given all the challenges facing the Church, it exposed a strange set of priorities; it also represented an odd exception to the principle that a local bishop is best placed to understand and order the life of his diocese.

In many ways Francis’s pontificate was exhilarating; he seemed totally untroubled by the fact that during most of it his immediate predecessor was still living, and while paying Benedict regular courtesy calls exercised the Petrine Office as if he were not. At a time of extraordinary change for humanity, as galloping technological advances threatened to outstrip the world’s moral capacity to deal with them, he made the Church attractive to very many people who had been alienated from it for a variety of reasons. At the same time he regularly raised hopes of change in several directions which could never be realised and often showed a taste for the exercise of authority and power as they were dashed. Deep compassion and steely authoritarianism sometimes seemed to go hand in hand: an iron fist in a velvet glove.

Francis seemed untroubled when the President of Argentina, Javier Milei, called him an “imbecile”, a “filthy leftist” and “a malignant presence on earth”; brushing off the insults he later embraced Milei warmly at the Vatican, after which vinegar turned to honey. Elsewhere, his broad smile frequently lit up many a room and comforted many a sufferer; Francis’s unforced joy at being able to spend time and share a kind word with children, the sick and the vulnerable was palpable. His successes were real and he was very greatly loved in many quarters.

He lived long enough to give Urbi et Orbi on Easter morning, although he looked so poorly that it seemed unlikely he had much time left. Surprising to the end, he broke with tradition and met with American vice president JD Vance privately during Mass, before he appeared on the balcony.

To die in the Easter Octave is a particular grace, for pope and peasant alike. As Francis now leaves the world stage, as the Church turns to prayer and preparations are made for the funeral rites which he himself planned, it is no exaggeration to say that a remarkable – if frequently confusing and sometimes bewildering – papacy has drawn to its close. It will be for the historians of the future to evaluate the full extent of its impact in the context of what has been and what is yet to come.

***

O God, Who in Thine ineffable providence didst will that Thy servant Francis should be
numbered among the high priests, grant, we beseech Thee, that he who on earth held the
place of Thine only-begotten Son may be joined forevermore to the fellowship of Thy
holy pontiffs. Through the same Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with
Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

The post His Holiness Pope Francis: 1936-2025 first appeared on Catholic Herald.

The post His Holiness Pope Francis: 1936-2025 appeared first on Catholic Herald.

(by Fr. Prosper Gueranger 1870)

We give the name of Paschal Time to the period between Easter Sunday and the Saturday following Whit Sunday. It is the most sacred portion of the Liturgical Year, and the one towards which the whole Cycle converges. We shall easily understand how this is, if we reflect upon the greatness of the Easter Feast, which is called the Feast of feasts, and the Solemnity of solemnities, in the same manner, says St. Gregory (Homilia, xxii.), as the most sacred part of the Temple was called the Holy of Holies; and the Book of Sacred Scripture, wherein are described the espousals between Christ and the Church, is called the Canticle of canticles. It is on this day, that the mission of the Word Incarnate attains the object towards which it has hitherto been unceasingly tending: mankind is raised up from his fall, and regains what he had lost by Adam's sin.

Christmas gave us a Man God; three days have scarcely passed, since we witnessed His infinitely precious Blood shed for our ransom; but now, on the day of Easter, our Jesus is no longer the Victim of death: He is a Conqueror, that destroys death, the child of sin, and proclaims life, that undying life which He has purchased for us. The humiliation of His swathing bands, the sufferings of His Agony and Cross, these are passed; all is now glory, glory for Himself, and glory also for us. On the day of Easter, God regains, by the Resurrection of the Man God, His creation such as He made it at the beginning; the only vestige now left of death, is that likeness to sin which the Lamb of God deigned to take upon Himself. Neither is it Jesus alone that returns to eternal life; the whole human race also has risen to immortality together with our Jesus. 'By a man came death,' says the Apostle; 'and by a Man the Resurrection of the dead: and as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive (I. Cor. xv. 21, 22).

The anniversary of this Resurrection is, therefore, the great Day, the day of joy, the day by excellence; the day to which the whole year looks forward in expectation, and on which its whole economy is formed. But as it is the holiest of days, since it opens to us the gate of Heaven, into which we shall enter because we have risen together with Christ, the Church would have us come to it well prepared by bodily mortification and by compunction of heart. It was for this that she instituted the Fast of Lent, and that she bade us, during Septuagesima, look forward to the joy of her Easter, and be filled with sentiments suitable to the approach of so grand a solemnity. We obeyed; we have gone through the period of our preparation; and now the Easter sun has risen upon us!

But it was not enough to solemnize the great Day when Jesus, our Light, rose from the darkness of the tomb: there was another anniversary which claimed our grateful celebration. The Incarnate Word rose on the first day of the week, that same day, where on, four thousand years before, He, the Uncreated Word of the Father, had begun the work of the Creation, by calling forth light, and separating it from darkness. The first day was thus ennobled by the creation of light. It received a second consecration by the Resurrection of Jesus; and from that time forward Sunday, and not Saturday, was to be the Lord's Day. Yes, our Resurrection in Jesus which took place on the Sunday, gave this first day a preeminence above the others of the week: the divine precept of the Sabbath was abrogated together with the other ordinances of the Mosaic Law, and the Apostles instructed the faithful to keep holy the first day of the week, which God had dignified with that twofold glory, the creation and the regeneration of the world. Sunday, then, being the day of Jesus' Resurrection, the Church chose that day, in preference to every other, for its yearly commemoration. The Pasch of the Jews, in consequence of its being fixed on the fourteenth of the moon of March, (the anniversary of the going out of Egypt,) fell by turns on each day of the week. The Jewish Pasch was but a figure; ours is the reality, and puts an end to the figure. The Church, therefore, broke this her last tie with the Synagogue; and proclaimed her emancipation, by fixing the most solemn of her Feasts on a day, which should never agree with that on which the Jews keep their now unmeaning Pasch. The Apostles decreed, that the Christian Pasch should never be celebrated on the fourteenth of the moon of March, even were that day to be a Sunday; but that it should be everywhere kept on the Sunday following the day on which the obsolete calendar of the Synagogue still marks it.

Nevertheless, out of consideration for the many Jews who had received Baptism, and who formed the nucleus of the early Christian Church, it was resolved that the law regarding the day for keeping the new Pasch, should be applied prudently and gradually. Jerusalem was soon to be destroyed by the Romans, according to our Saviour's prediction; and the new City, which was to rise up from its ruins and receive the Christian colony, would also have its Church, but a Church totally free from the Jewish element, which God had so visibly rejected. In preaching the Gospel and founding Churches, even far beyond the limits of the Roman Empire, the majority of the Apostles had not to contend with Jewish customs; most of their converts were from among the Gentiles. Saint Peter, who in the Council of Jerusalem had proclaimed the cessation of the Jewish Law, set up the standard of emancipation in the City of Rome; so that the Church, which through him was made the Mother and Mistress of all Churches, never had any other discipline regarding the observance of Easter, than that laid down by the Apostles, namely, that it should be kept on a Sunday.

There was, however, one province of the Church, which for a long time stood out against the universal practice: it was Asia Minor. The Apostle St. John, who lived for many years at Ephesus, where indeed he died, had thought it prudent to tolerate, in those parts, the Jewish custom of celebrating the Pasch; for many of the converts had been members of the Synagogue. But the Gentiles themselves, who, later on, formed the mass of the faithful, were strenuous upholders of this custom, which dated from the very foundation of the Church of Asia Minor. In the course of time, however, this anomaly became a source of scandal: it savoured of Judaism, and it prevented unity of religious observance, which is always desirable, but particularly so in what regards Lent and Easter.

Pope St. Victor, who governed the Church from the year 193, endeavoured to put a stop to this abuse; he thought the time had come for establishing unity in so essential a point of Christian worship. Already, that is in the year 160, under Pope St. Amiicetus, the Apostolic See had sought, by friendly negociations, to induce the Churches of Asia Minor to conform to the universal practice; but it was difficult to triumph over a prejudice, which rested on a tradition held sacred in that country. St. Victor, however, resolved to make another attempt. He would put before them the unanimous agreement which reigned throughout the rest of the Church. Accordingly, he gave orders, that Councils should be convened in the several countries where the Gospel had been preached, and that the question of Easter should be examined. Everywhere there was perfect uniformity of practice; and the historian Eusebius, who lived a hundred and fifty years later, assures us, that the people of his day used to quote the decisions of the Councils of Rome, of Gaul, of Achaia, of Pontus, of Palestine, and of Osrhoena in Mesopotamia. The Council of Ephesus, at which Polycrates, the Bishop of that city, presided, was the only one that opposed the Pontiff, and disregarded the practice of the universal Church.

Deeming it unwise to give further toleration to the opposition, Victor separated from communion with the Holy See the refractory Churches of Asia Minor. This severe penalty, which was not inflicted until Rome had exhausted every other means of removing the evil, excited the commiseration of several Bishops. St. Ireneus, who was then governing the See of Lyons, pleaded for these Churches, which, so it seemed to him, had sinned only through a want of light; and he obtained from the Pope the revocation of a measure which seemed too severe. This indulgence produced the desired effect. In the following century, St. Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea, in his Book on the Pasch, written in 276, tells us that the Churches of Asia Minor had then, for some time past, conformed to the Roman practice.

About the same time, and by a strange coincidence, the Churches of Syria, Cilicia. and Mesopotamia, gave scandal by again leaving the Christian and Apostolic observance of Easter, and returning to the Jewish rite of the fourteenth of the March Moon. This Schism in the Liturgy grieved the Church; and one of the points to which the Council of Nicaea directed its first attention, was the promulgation of the universal obligation to celebrate Easter on the Sunday. The Decree was unanimously passed, and the Fathers of the Council ordained, that "all controversy being laid aside, the Brethren in the East should solemnize the Pasch on the same day as the Romans, the Alexandrians, and the rest of the faithful. (Spicilegium Solemense, t. iv. p. 541)" So important seemed this question, inasmuch as it affected the very essence of the Christian Liturgy, that St. Athanasius, assigning the reasons which had led to the calling of the Council of Nicaea, mentions these two: the condemnation of the Arian heresy, and the establishment of uniformity in the observance of Easter (Epist. ad Afros episopos.).

The Bishop of Alexandria was commissioned by the Council to see to the drawing up of astronomical tables, whereby the precise day of Easter might be fixed for each future year. The reason of this choice was, that the astronomers of Alexandria were looked upon as the most exact in their calculations. These tables were to be sent to the Pope, and he would address letters to the several Churches, instructing them as to the uniform celebration of the great Festival of Christendom. Thus was the unity of the Church made manifest by the unity of the holy Liturgy; and the Apostolic See, which is the foundation of the first, was likewise the source of the second. But, even previous to the Council of Nicaea, the Roman Pontiff had addressed to all the Churches, every year, a Paschal Encyclical, instructing them as to the day on which the solemnity of the Resurrection was to be kept. This we learn from the synodical Letter of the Fathers of the great Council held at Arles, in 314. The Letter is addressed to Pope St. Sylvester, and contains the following passage: "In the first place, we beg that the observance of the Pasch of the Lord may be uniform, both as to time and day, ut the whole world, and that You would, according to the custom, address Letters to all concerning this matter (Concil. Galliae, t. i)."

This custom, however, was not kept up for any length of time, after the Council of Nicaea. The want of precision in astronomical calculations occasioned confusion in the method of fixing the day of Easter. It is true, this great Festival was always kept on a Sunday; nor did any Church think of celebrating it on the same day as the Jews; but, since there was no uniform understanding as to the exact time of the Vernal Equinox, it happened some years, that the Feast of Easter was not kept, in all places, on the same day. By degrees, there crept in a deviation from the rule laid down by the Council, of taking the 21st of March as the day of the Equinox. There was needed a reform in the Calendar, and no one seemed competent to bring it about. Cycles were drawn up contradictory to one another; Rome and Alexandria had each its own system of calculation; so that, some years, Easter was not kept with that perfect uniformity which the Nicene Fathers had so strenuously laboured for: and yet, this variation was not the result of anything like party spirit.of Parliament, in the year 1732. Tr.]

The West followed Rome. The Churches of Ireland and Scotland, which had been misled by faulty Cycles, were, at length, brought into uniformity. Finally, science was sufficiently advanced in the 16th century, for Pope Gregory XIII. to undertake a reform of the Calendar. The Equinox had to be restored to the 21st of March, as the Council of Nicaea had prescribed. The Pope effected this by publishing a Bull, dated February 24, 1581, in which be ordered that ten days of the following year, namely from the 4th to the 15th of October, should be suppressed. He thus restored the work of Julius Caesar, who had, in his day, turned his attention to the rectification of the Year. Easter was the great object of the reform, or, as it is called, the New Style, achieved by Gregory XIII. The principles anti-regulations of the Nicene Council were again brought to bear on this the capital question of the Liturgical Year; and the Roman Pontiff thus gave to the whole world the intimation of Easter, not for one year only, but for centuries. Heretical nations were forced to acknowledge the divine power of the Church in this solemn act, which interested both religion and society. They protested against the Calendar, as they had protested against the Rule of Faith. England and the Lutheran States of Germany preferred following, for many years, a Calendar which was evidently at fault, rather then accept the New Style, which they acknowledged to be indispensable; but it was the work of a Pope! The only nation in Europe that keeps up the Old Style is Russia, whose antipathy to Rome obliges her to be thus ten or twelve days behind the rest of the civilized world.

All this shows us how important it was to fix the precise day of Easter; and God has several times shown by miracles, that the date of so sacred a Feast was not a matter of indifference. During the ages when the confusion of the Cycles and the want of correct astronomical computations occasioned great uncertainty as to the Vernal Equinox, miraculous events more than once supplied the deficiencies of science and authority. In a letter to St. Leo the Great, in the year 444, Paschasinus, Bishop of Lilybea (The modern Marsala) in Sicily, relates that under the Pontificate of St. Zozimus, Honorius being Consul for the eleventh, and Constantius for the second time, the real day of Easter was miraculously revealed to the people of one of the churches there. In the midst of a mountainous and thickly wooded district of the Island was a village called Meltinas. Its church was of the poorest, but it was dear to God. Every year, on the night preceding Easter Sunday, as the Priest went to the Baptistery to bless the Font, it was found to be miraculously filled with water, for there were no human means wherewith it could be supplied. As soon as Baptism was administered, the water disappeared of itself, and left the Font perfectly dry. In the year just mentioned, the people, misled by a wrong calculation, assembled for the ceremonies of Easter Eve. The Prophecies having been read, the Priest and his flock repaired to the Baptistery, but the Font was empty. They waited, expecting the miraculous flowing of the water, wherewith the Catechumens were to receive the grace of regeneration: but they waited in vain, and no Baptism was administered. On the following 22nd of April, the Font was found to be filled to the brim, and thereby the people understood that that was the true Easter for that year (Sti. Leonis Opera, Epist. iii).

Cassiodorus, writing in the name of king Athalaric to a certain Severus, relates a similar miracle, which happened every year on Easter Eve, in Lucania, near the small Island of Leucothea, at a place called Marcilianum. There was a large fountain there, whose water was so clear, that the air itself was not more transparent. It was used as the Font for the administration of Baptism on Easter Night. As soon as the Priest, standing under the rock where with nature had canopied the fountain, began the prayers of the Blessing, the water, as though taking part in the transports of the Easter joy, arose in the Font; so that, if previously it was to the level of the fifth step, it was seen to rise up to the seventh, impatient, as it were, to effect those wonders of grace whereof it was the chosen instrument. God would show by this, that even inanimate creatures can share, when He so wills it, in the holy gladness of the greatest of all days (Cassiforus, Variarum, lib. vii. epist. xxxiii).

St. Gregory of Tours tells us of a Font, which existed even then, in a church of Andalusia, in a place called Osen, and whereby God miraculously certified to His people the true day of Easter. On the Maundy Thursday of each year, the Bishop, accompanied by the faithful, repaired to this church. The bed of the Font was built in the form of a cross, and was paved with mosaics. It was carefully examined, to see that it was perfectly dry; and after several prayers had been recited, every one left the church, and the Bishop sealed the door with his seal. On Holy Saturday the Pontiff returned, accompanied by his flock; the seal was examined, and the door was opened. The Font was found to be filled, even above the level of the floor, and yet the water did not overflow. The Bishop pronounced the exorcisms over the miraculous water, and poured the Chrism into it. The Catechumens were then baptized; and as soon as the sacrament had been administered, the water immediately disappeared, and no one could tell what became of it (De Gloria Martyrum, liv. i. cap. xxiv). Similar miracles were witnessed in several churches in tie East. Joba Moschus, a writer in the 7th century, speaks of a Baptismal Font in Lycia, which was thus filled every Easter Eve; but the water remained in the Font during the whole fifty days, and suddenly disappeared after the Festival of Pentecost (Pratum spirituale, cap. ccxv).

We alluded, in our History of Passiontide, to the decrees passed by the Christian Emperors, which forbade all law proceedings during the fortnight of Easter, that is, from Palm Sunday to the Octave day of the Resurrection. S. Augustine, in a sermon he preached on this Octave, exhorts the faithful to extend to the whole year this suspension of law suits, disputes, and enmities, which the civil law interdicted during these fifteen days.

The Church puts upon all her children the obligation of receiving Holy Communion at Easter. This precept is based upon the words of our Redeemer, Who left it to His Church to determine the time of the year, when Christians should receive the Blessed Sacrament. In the early ages, Communion was frequent, and, in some places, even daily. By degrees, the fervour of the faithful grew cold towards this august Mystery, as we gather from a decree of the Council of Agatha (Agde), held in 506, where it is defined, that those of the laity who shall not approach Communion at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, are to be considered as having ceased to be Catholics (Concil. Agth., Canon xviii). This Decree of the Council of Agatha was accepted as the law of almost the entire Western Church. We find it quoted among the regulations drawn up by Egbert, Archbishop of York, as also in the third Council of Tours. In many places, however, Communion was obligatory for the Sundays of Lent, and for the last three days of Holy Week, independently of that which was to be made on the Easter Festival.

It was in the year 1215, in the 4th General Council of Lateran, that the Church, seeing the ever growing indifference of her children, decreed with regret that Christians should be strictly bound to Communion only once in the year, and that that Communion of obligation should be made at Easter. In order to show the faithful that this is the uttermost limit of her condescension to lukewarmness, she declares, in the same Council, that he that shall presume to break this law, may be forbidden to enter a church during life, and he deprived of Christian burial after death, as he would be if he had, of his own accord, separated himself from the exterior link of Catholic unity (Two centuries after this, Pope Eugenius the Fourth, in the Constitution Digna Fide, given in the year 1440, allowed this annual Communion to be made on any day between Palm Sunday and Low Sunday inclusively. [In, England, by permission of the Holy See, the time for making the Easter Communion extends from Ash Wednesday to Low Sunday.--Tr.]). These regulations of a General Council show how important is the duty of the Easter Communion; but, at the same time, they make us shudder at the thought of the millions, throughout the Catholic world, who brave each year the threats of the Church, by refusing to comply with a duty, which would both bring life to their souls, and serve as a profession of their faith. And when we again reflect upon how many even of those who make their Easter Communion, have paid no more attention to the Lenten Penance than if there were no such obligation in existence, we cannot help feeling sad, and we wonder within ourselves, how long God will bear with such infringements of the Christian Law.

The fifty days between Easter and Pentecost have ever been considered by the Church as most holy. The first week, which is more expressly devoted to celebrating our Lord's Resurrection, is kept up as one continued Feast; but the remainder of the fifty days is also marked with special honours. To say nothing of the joy, which is the characteristic of this period of the year, and of which the Alleluia is the expression, Christian tradition has assigned to Eastertide two practices, which distinguish it from every other Season. The first is, that fasting is not permitted during the entire interval: it is an extension of the ancient precept of never fasting on a Sunday, and the whole of Eastertide is considered as one long Sunday. This practice, which would seem to have come down from the time of the Apostles, was accepted by the Religious Rules of both East and West, even by the severest. The second consists in not kneeling at the Divine Office, from Easter to Pentecost. The Eastern Churches have faithfully kept up the practice, even to this day. It was observed for many ages by the Western Churches also; but now, it is little more than a remnant. The Latin Church has long since admitted genuflexions in the Mass during Easter time. The few vestiges of the ancient discipline in this regard, which still exist, are not noticed by the faithful, inasmuch as they seldom assist at the Canonical Hours.

Eastertide, then, is like one continued Feast. It is the remark made by Tertullian, in the 3rd century. He is reproaching those Christians who regretted having renounced, by their Baptism, the festivities of the pagan year; and he thus addresses them: If you love Feasts, you will find plenty among us Christians; not merely Feasts that last only for a day, but such as continue for several days together. The Pagans keep each of their Feasts once in the year; but you have to keep each of yours many times over, for you have the eight days of its celebration. Put all the Feasts of the Gentiles together, and they do not amount to our fifty days of Pentecost (De Idololatria, cap. xiv). St. Ambrose speaking on the same subject, says: "If the Jews are not satisfied with the Sabbath of each week, but keep also one which lasts a whole month, and another which lasts a whole year; how much more ought not we to honour our Lord's Resurrection? Hence our ancestors have taught us to celebrate the fifty days of Pentecost as a continuation of Easter. They are seven weeks, and the Feast of Pentecost commences the eighth (In Lucan, liv. viii. cap. xxv)."

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The Mystery of Paschal Time

Of all the Seasons of the Liturgical Year, Easter-tide is by far the richest in mystery. We might even say that Easter is the summit of the Mystery of the sacred Liturgy. The Christian who is happy enough to enter, with his whole mind and heart, into the knowledge and the love of the Paschal Mystery, has reached the very centre of the supernatural life. Hence it is, that the Church uses every effort in order to effect this: what she has hitherto done, was all intended as a preparation for Easter. The holy longings of Advent, the sweet joys of Christmas, the severe truths of Septuagesima, the contrition and penance of Lent, the heart rending sight of the Passion, all were given us as preliminaries, as paths, to the sublime and glorious Pasch, which is now ours.

And that we might be convinced of the supreme importance of this Solemnity, God willed that the Christian Easter and Pentecost should be prepared by those of the Jewish Law: a thousand five hundred years of typical beauty prefigured the reality: and that reality is ours!

During these days, then, we have brought before us the two great manifestations of God's goodness towards mankind:--the Pasch of Israel, and the Christian Pasch; the Pentecost of Sinai, and the Pentecost of the Church. We shall have occasion to show how the ancient figures were fulfilled in the realities of the new Easter and Pentecost, and how the twilight of the Mosaic Law made way for the full day of the Gospel; but we cannot resist the feeling of holy reverence, at the bare thought that the Solemnities we have now to celebrate are more than three thousand years old, and that they are to be renewed every year from this till the voice of the Angel shall be heard proclaiming: "Time shall be no more! (Apoc. x. 6)" The gates of eternity will then be thrown open.

Eternity in Heaven is the true Pasch: hence, our Pasch, here on earth, is the Feast of feasts, the Solemnity of solemnities. The human race was dead; it was the victim of that sentence, whereby it was condemned to lie mere dust in the tomb; the gates of life were shut against it. But see the Son of God rises from His grave and takes possession of eternal life. Nor is He the only one that is to die no more, for, as the Apostle teaches us, He is the first born from the dead (Coloss. i. 18). The Church would, therefore, have us consider ourselves as having already risen with our Jesus, and as having already taken possession of eternal life. The holy Fathers bid us look on these fifty days of Easter, as the image of our eternal happiness. They are days devoted exclusively to joy; every sort of sadness is forbidden; and the Church cannot speak to her divine Spouse without joining to her words that glorious cry of heaven, the Alleluia, wherewith, as the holy Liturgy says (Pontificale Rom. In dedicat. Eccles), the streets and squares of the heavenly Jerusalem resound without ceasing. We have been forbidden the use of this joyous word during the past nine weeks; it behoved us to die with Christ: but now that we have risen together with Him, from the tomb, and that we are resolved to die no more that death, which kills the soul, and called our Redeemer to die on the Cross, we have a right to our Alleluia.

The Providence of God, Who has established harmony between the visible world and the supernatural work of grace, willed that the Resurrection of our Lord should take place at that particular season of the year, when even nature herself seems to rise from the grave. The meadows give forth their verdure, the trees resume their foliage, the birds fill the air with their songs, and the sun, the type of our triumphant Jesus, pours out his floods of light on our earth made new by lovely Spring. At Christmas, the sun had little power, and his stay with us was short; it harmonized with the humble birth of our Emmanuel, who came among us in the midst of night, and shrouded in swaddling clothes; but now, He is as a giant that runs his way, and there is no one that can hide himself from his heat (Ps. xviii. 6, 7). Speaking, in the Canticle, to the faithful soul, and inviting her to take her part in this new life which He is now imparting to every creature, our Lord Himself says:

"Arise, my dove, and come! Winter is now past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers have appeared in our land. The voice of the turtle is heard. The fig Tree hath put forth her green figs. The vines, in flower, yield their sweet smell. Arise thou, and come (Cant. ii. 10-13)!

In the preceding chapter, we explained why our Saviour chose the Sunday for His Resurrection, whereby He conquered death and proclaimed life to the world. It was on this favoured day of the week, that He had, four thousand years previously, created the light; by selecting it now for the commencement of the new life He graciously imparts to man, He would show us that Easter is the renewal of the entire creation. Not only is the anniversary of His glorious Resurrection to be, henceforward, the greatest of days, but every Sunday throughout the year is to be a sort of Easter, a holy and sacred day. The Synagogue, by God's command, kept holy the Saturday, or the Sabbath, and this in honour of God's resting after the six days of the creation; but the Church, the Spouse, is commanded to honour the Work of her Lord. She allows the Saturday to pass, it is the day her Jesus rested in the Sepulchre: but, now that she is illumined with the brightness of the Resurrection, she devotes to the contemplation of His Work the first day of the week; it is the day of light, for on it He called forth material light, (which was the first manifestation of life upon chaos,) and on the same, He that is the "Brightness of the Father, (Heb. i. 3)" and "the Light of the world (St. John, viii. 12)," rose from the darkness of the tomb.

Let, then, the week with its Sabbath pass by; what we Christians want is the eighth day, the day that is beyond the measure of time, the day of eternity, the day whose light is not intermittent or partial, but endless and unlimited. Thus speak the holy Fathers, when explaining the substitution of the Sunday for the Saturday. It was, indeed, right that man should keep, as the day of his weekly and spiritual repose, that on which the Creator of the visible world had taken His divine rest; but it was a commemoration of the material creation only. The Eternal Word comes down in the world that He has created; He comes with the rays of His divinity clouded beneath the humble veil of our flesh; He comes to fulfil the figures of the first Covenant. Before abrogating the Sabbath, He would observe it, as He did every tittle of the Law; He would spend it as the day of rest, after the work of His Passion, in the silence of the Sepulchre: but, early on the eighth day, He rises to life, and the life is one of glory. "Let us," says the learned and pious Abbot Rupert, "leave the Jews to enjoy the ancient Sabbath, which is a memorial of the visible creation. They know not how to love or desire or merit aught but earthly things.... They would not recognize this world's Creator as their King, because He said: 'Blessed are the poor!' and, 'Wo to the rich!' But our Sabbath has been transferred from the seventh to the eighth day, and the eighth is the first. And rightly was the seventh changed into the eighth, because we Christians put our joy in a better work than the creation of the world. Let the lovers of the world keep a Sabbath for its creation: but our joy is in the salvation of the world, for our life, yea and our rest, is hidden with Christ in God.(De Divinis Officiis, liv. vii. cap. xix)"

The mystery of the seventh followed by an eighth day, as the holy one, is again brought before us by the number of weeks, which form Eastertide. These weeks are seven; they form a week of weeks, and their morrow is again a Sunday, the Feast of the glorious Pentecost. These mysterious numbers,--which God Himself fixed, when He instituted the first Pentecost after the first Pasch,--were followed by the Apostles, when they regulated the Christian Easter, as we learn from St. Hilary of Poitiers, St. Isidore, Amalarius, Rabanus Maurus, and from all the ancient interpreters of the mysteries of the holy Liturgy. "If we multiply seven by seven," says St. Hilary, "We shall find that this holy Season is truly the Sabbath of sabbaths; but what completes it, and raises it to the plenitude of the Gospel, is the eighth day which follows, eighth and first both together in itself. The Apostles have given so sacred an institution to these seven weeks that, during then no one should kneel, or mar by fasting the spiritual joy of this long Feast. The same institution has been extended to each Sunday; for this day which follows the Saturday has become, by the application of the progress of the Gospel, the completion of the Saturday, and the day of feast and joy (Prologus in Psalmos)."

Thus, then, the whole Season of Easter is marked with the mystery expressed by each Sunday of the year. Sunday is to us the great day of our week because beautified with the splendour of our Lord's Resurrection, of which the creation of material light was but a type. We have already said that the institution was prefigured in the Old Law, although the Jewish people were not in any way aware of it. Their Pentecost fell on the fiftieth day after the Pasch it was the morrow of the seven weeks. Another figure of our Eastertide was the year of Jubilee which God bade Moses prescribe to His people. Each fiftieth year, the houses and lands that had been alienated during the preceding forty nine, returned to their original owners; and those Israelites, who have been compelled by poverty to sell themselves a slaves, recovered their liberty. This year which was properly called the Sabbatical year was the sequel of the preceding seven weeks of years, and was thus the image of our eighth day, whereon the Son of Mary, by His Resurrection, redeemed us from the slavery of the tomb, and restored us to the inheritance of our immortality.

The rites peculiar to Eastertide, in the present discipline of the Church, are two: the unceasing repetition of the Alleluia, of which we have already spoken and the colour of the Vestments used for its two great solemnities, white for the first, and red for the second. White is appropriate to the Resurrection; it is the mystery of eternal light, which knows neither spot nor shadow; it is the mystery that produces in a faithful soul the sentiment of purity and joy. Pentecost, which gives us the Holy Spirit, the "consuming Fire (Heb. xii. 29)," is symbolized by the red vestments, which express the mystery of the Divine Paraclete coming down in the form of fiery tongues upon them that were assembled in the Cenacle. With regard to the ancient usage of not kneeling during Paschal Time, we have already said, that there is a mere vestige of it now left in the Latin Liturgy.

The Saints' Feasts, which were interrupted during Holy Week, are likewise excluded from the first eight days of Eastertide; but these ended, we shall have them in rich abundance, as a bright constellation of stars round the divine Sun of Justice, our Jesus. They will accompany us in our celebration of His admirable Ascension; but such is the grandeur of the mystery of Pentecost, that, from the eve of that day, they will be again interrupted until the expiration of Paschal Time.

The rites of the primitive Church with reference to the Neophytes, who were regenerated by Baptism on the night of Easter, are extremely interesting and instructive. But as they are peculiar to the two Octaves of Easter and Pentecost, we will explain them as they are brought before us by the Liturgy of those days.

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Practice During Paschal Time

The practice for this holy Season mainly consists in the spiritual joy, which it should produce in every soul that is risen with Jesus. This joy is a foretaste of eternal happiness, and the Christian ought to consider it a duty to keep it up within him, by ardently seeking after that life which is in our divine Head, and by carefully shunning sin which causes death. During the last nine weeks, we have mourned for our sins and done penance for them; we have followed Jesus to Calvary; but now, our holy Mother the Church is urgent in bidding us rejoice. She herself has laid aside all sorrow; the voice of her weeping is changed into the song of a delighted Spouse.

In order that she might impart this joy to all her children, she has taken their weakness into account. After reminding them of the necessity of expiation, she gave them forty days wherein to do penance; and then, taking off all the restraint of Lenten mortification, she brings us to Easter as to a land where there is nothing but gladness, light, life, joy, calm, and the sweet hope of immortality. Thus does she produce, in those of her children who have no elevation of soul, sentiments in harmony with the great Feast, such as the most perfect feel; and by this means, all, both fervent and tepid, unite their voices in one same hymn of praise to our risen Jesus.

The great Liturgist of the 12th century, Rupert, Abbot of Deutz, thus speaks of the pious artifice used by the Church to infuse the spirit of Easter into all:

"There are certain carnal minds, that seem unable to open their eyes to spiritual things, unless roused by some unusual excitement; and for this reason, the Church makes use of such means. Thus, the Lenten Fast, which we offer up to God as our yearly tithe, goes on till the most sacred night of Easter; then follow fifty days without so much as one single Fast. Hence it happens, that while the body is being mortified, and is to continue to be so till Easter Night, that holy night is eagerly looked forward to even by the carnal minded; they long for it to come; and, meanwhile, they carefully count each of the forty days, as a wearied traveller does the miles. Thus, the sacred Solemnity is sweet to all, and dear to all, and desired by all, as light is to them that walk in darkness, as a fount of living water is to them that thirst, and as 'a tent which the Lord hath pitched' for wearied wayfarers (De Divinis Officiis, liv. vi. cap. xxvii)."

What a happy time was that, when, as St. Bernard expresses it, there was not one in the whole Christian army, that neglected his Easter duty, and when all, both just and sinners, walked together in the path of the Lenten observances! Alas those days are gone, and Easter has not the same effect on the people of our generation! The reason is that a love of ease and a false conscience lead so many Christians to treat the law of Lent with as much indifference, as though there were no such law existing. Hence, Easter Comes upon them as a Feast,--it may be as a great Feast; but that is all; they experience little of that thrilling joy which fills the heart of the Church during this Season, and which she evinces in every thing she does. And if this be their case even on the glorious day itself, how can it be expected that they should keep up, for the whole fifty, the spirit of gladness, which is the very essence of Easter? They have not observed the fast, or the abstinence, of Lent: the mitigated form in which the Church now presents them to her children, in consideration of their weakness, was too severe for them! They sought, or they took, a total dispensation from this law of Lenten mortification, and without regret or remorse. The Alieluia returns, and it finds no response in their souls: how could it? Penance has not done its work of purification; it has not spiritualized them; how, then, could they follow their risen Jesus, Whose life is henceforth more of heaven than of earth?

But these reflections are too sad for such a Season as this: let us beseech our risen Jesus to enlighten these souls with the rays of His victory over the world and the flesh, and to raise them up to Himself. No, nothing must now distract us from joy. "Can the children of the Bridegroom mourn, as long as the Bridegroom is with them (St. Matth. ix. 15)?" Jesus is to be with us for forty days; He is to suffer no more, and die no more; let our feelings be in keeping with His: now endless glory and bliss. True, He is to leave us, He is to ascend to the right hand of His Father; but He will not leave us orphans; He will send us the divine Comforter, Who will abide with us for ever (St. John, xiv. 16-18). These sweet and consoling words must be our Easter text: The cldldren of tlie Bridegroom cannot mourn, as long as the Bridegroom is with us. They are the key to the whole Liturgy of this holy Season. We must have them ever before us, and we shall find by experience, that the joy of Easter is as salutary as the contrition and penance of Lent. Jesus on the Cross, and Jesus in the Resurrection, it is ever the same Jesus; but what He wants from us now, is that we should keep near Him, in company with His blessed Mother, His disciples, and Magdalene, who are in ecstasies of delight at His triumph, and have forgotten the sad days of His Passion.

But this Easter of ours will have an end; the bright vision of our risen Jesus will pass away; and all that will be left to us, is the recollection of His ineffable glory, and of the wonderful familiarity wherewith He treated us. What shall we do, when He Who was our very life and light, leaves us, and ascends to heaven? Be of good heart, Christians! you must look forward to another Easter. Each year will give you a repetition of what you now enjoy. Easter will follow Easter, and bring you at last to that Easter in heaven, which is never to have an end, and of which these happy ones of earth are a mere foretaste. Nor is this all. Listen to the Church. In one of her Prayers she reveals to us the great secret, how we may perpetuate our Easters even here in our banishment: "Grant to thy servants, O God, that they may keep up, by their manner of living, the Mystery they have received by believing (Collect for Tuesday in Easter Week)!" So, then, the Mystery of Easter is to be ever visible on this earth; our risen Jesus ascends to heaven, but He leaves upon us the impress of His Resurrection and we must retain it within us until He again visits us.

And how could it be that we should not retain this divine impress within us? Are not all the mysteries of our divine Master ours also? From His very first coming in the Flesh, He has made us sharers in everything He has done. He was born in Bethlehem: we were born together with Him. He Was crucified: our old man was crucified with Him (Rom. vi. 6). He was buried: we were buried with Him (Rom. vi. 4). And therefore, when He rose from the grave, we also received the grace that we should walk in the newness of life (Ibid).

Such is the teaching of the Apostle, who thus continues: "We know that Christ rising again from the dead, dieth now no more; death shall no more have dominion over Him: for in that He died to sin, (that is, for sin,) He died once; but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God (Rom. vi. 9, 10)." He is our head, and we are His members: we share in what is His. To die again by sin, would be to renounce Him, to separate our selves from Him, to forfeit that Death and Resurrection of His, which He mercifully willed should be ours. Let us, therefore, preserve within us that life, which is the life of our Jesus, and yet, which belongs to us as our own treasure; for He won it by conquering death, and then gave it to us, with all His other merits. You, then, who before Easter were sinners, but have now returned to the life of grace, see that you die no more; let your actions bespeak your resurrection. And you, to whom the Paschal Solemnity has brought growth in grace, show this increase of more abundant life by your principles and your conduct. Tis thus all will walk in the newness of life.

With this, for the present, we take leave of the lessons taught us by the Resurrection of Jesus; the rest we reserve for the humble commentary we shall have to make on the Liturgy of this holy season. We shall then see, more and more clearly, not only our duty of imitating our divine Master's Resurrection, but the magnificence of this grandest Mystery of the Man God. Easter,-- with its three admirable manifestations of divine love and power, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Descent of the Holy Ghost--, yes, Easter is the perfection of the work of our Redemption. Everything, both in the order of time and in the workings of the Liturgy, has been a preparation for Easter. The four thousand years that followed the promise made by God to our First Parents, were crowned by the event that we are now to celebrate. All that the Church has been doing for us from the very commencement of Advent, had this same glorious event in view; and now that we have come to it, our expectations are more than realized, and the power and wisdom of God are brought before us so vividly, that our former knowledge of them seems nothing in comparison with our present appreciation and love of them. The Angels themselves are dazzled by the grand Mystery, as the Church tells us in one of her Easter Hymns, where she says: "The Angels gaze with wonder on the change wrought in mankind: it was flesh that sinned, and now Flesh taketh all sin away, and the God that reigns is the God made Flesh (Hymn for the Matins of Ascension Day)."

Eastertide, too, belongs to what is called the Illuminative Life; nay, it is the most important part of that life, for it not only manifests, as the last four seasons of the Liturgical year have done, the humiliations and the sufferings of the Man God: it shows Him to us in all His grand glory; it gives us to see Him expressing in His own sacred Humanity, the highest degree of the creature's transformation into His God. The Coming of the Holy Ghost will bring additional brightness to this Illumination; it shows us the relations that exist between the soul and the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. And here we see the way and the progress of a faithful soul. She was made an adopted child of the Heavenly Father; she was initiated into all the duties and mysteries of her high vocation, by the lessons and examples of the Incarnate Word; she was perfected, by the visit and indwelling of the Holy Ghost. From this there result those several Christian exercises, which produce within her an imitation of her divine Model, and prepare her for that Union, to which she is invited by Him, who gave to them that received Him, power to be made sons of God, by a birth that is not of blood, nor of the flesh, but of God (St. John, i. 12, 13)."

In 1997, veteran U.S. diplomat George Kennan stated that ‘expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American foreign policy in the entire post-Cold War era’. Twenty-eight years later, who would say he was wrong?

George Kennan famously authored the U.S. policy of containment of the Soviet Union, in an article in the New York Times of 1947, which he signed X, to maintain his anonymity. His view was that containment would lead to the eventual break up or mellowing of Soviet power and, as it turns out, the former prediction came to pass.

Yet, he was opposed to the expansion of NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union and argued that asking European nations to choose between NATO and Russia would eventually lead to conflict.

In an article in the New York Times of 5 February 1997 he asked: ‘Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centred on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?’

His article was intended to influence discussions ahead of the July 1997 NATO Summit in Madrid which would consider the planned expansion of NATO to include the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Each state had suffered under Soviet repression after World War II but were now free and democratic after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.

Kennan’s warning went unheeded, the NATO Summit agreed to the inclusion of three of the four former Warsaw Pact countries within NATO, excluding Slovakia which had not received the required number of votes in a referendum.

On 1 May 1998, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution approving expansion, as every NATO member state is required to do. After the Senate Resolution, then President Clinton said at the White House, ”by admitting Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, we come even closer than ever to realizing a dream of a generation – a Europe that is united, democratic and secure for the first time since the rise of nation-states on the European continent.’

The idea then, which continues today, is that NATO is a military alliance of countries with the same democratic principles acting as a bulwark against military aggression, by implication, from Russia. Yet, Kennan seemed to consider absurd the idea – which peppers political and media discourse still today – that Russia aspires to conquer western Europe by military means.

In a separate New York Times article on 2 May 1998, the day after the U.S. Senate resolution, Kennan said, ‘I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don’t people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.’

In his 1997 article, Kennan went on to say that Russia would ‘have no choice but to accept [NATO] expansion as a military fait accompli. But they would continue to regard it as a rebuff by the West and would likely look elsewhere for guarantees of a secure and hopeful future for themselves.’

Russia did accept the expansion of NATO as a fait accompli, in part because she was too weak to resist. In 1998, the Russian Federation was possibly at its lowest point after the collapse of the Soviet Union. On 17 August 1998, Russia defaulted on its sovereign debt and devalued the rouble. In visibly declining health, President Yeltsin cut an increasingly weak and erratic figure on the world stage. The billionaire oligarch class had built an outsized role in Russian politics, having swept up state assets under the Loans for Shares scheme, and having bankrolled Yeltsin’s 1996 election success, for their own personal gain. Russia was politically, economically and militarily weak, and internally distracted by a costly war in Chechnya. It was by no measure comparable to the fearsome might of the Soviet Union, or a threat to NATO. Indeed, tentatively, and in ways that were sometimes strained, Russia and NATO ended up collaborating, including in Kosovo in 1999.

The next crunch point came after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC on 11 September 2001.

President Putin was one of the first world leaders to phone President Bush to express his condolences to the president and to the American people and offer his unequivocal support for whatever reactions the American president might decide to take. This led quite quickly to a period of U.S.-Russia cooperation, including concrete Russian assistance to the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan and acquiescence to the establishment of U.S. bases in Central Asia.

Michael McFaul, who is now one of the most vocal anti-Russia hawks, wrote an article for the Carnegie Endowment, saying that ‘the potential to build a new foundation for Russia-American relations is great.’ He advanced a radical agenda, starting with a declaration that ‘the United States no longer recognizes Russia as the successor state to the Soviet Union.’ In substantive terms, this meant a repudiation of the idea that Russia represented a threat to NATO in the way that the Soviet Union had.

McFaul proposed deeper Russia-NATO collaboration and possible future Russian membership, which President Putin had shown a willingness to consider. He also recommended other measures, including removing Soviet era trade restrictions, lifting a ban on NATO countries buying Russian weapons and encouraging a closer relationship between Russia and the EU.

However, one week after McFaul’s article, the Brookings Institution wrote an article, raising a red flag against any departure from U.S. engagement on across the globe as a concession to the new ‘war on terror.’ Among other things, it pointed out that ‘the new premium on Russian cooperation.. might make it harder or more costly for Washington to proceed with current policy plans to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, enlarge NATO, or press for human rights in Chechnya.

Deepening Russian-American collaboration immediately ran up against the separate juggernaut of NATO expansion which had continued to gather pace after the 1998. Nine other former Soviet or Warsaw Pact countries were already waiting in the wings to join NATO, and a comprehensive reboot of relations with Russia would have made expansion more difficult. In the teeth of Russian concern about the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and western concern about President Putin’s clampdown on the oligarchs, U.S.-Russia collaboration lost steam and NATO pressed on regardless. Seven new Members joined the military alliance in 2004, including the Baltic States, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, bringing NATO much closer to Russia’s border.

In his 5 February 1997 article, Kennan said that NATO expansion ‘may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.’

Ten years later, on 10 February 2007, President Putin made his now famous speech at the Munich Security Conference, in which he said, ‘I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?’

The following year at the 2008 NATO Bucharest summit, nonetheless advanced the idea of Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO one day. President Putin, who joined part of the Summit, conceded in his speech that he could not veto NATO expansion. But he went on to asset that ‘if we introduce [Ukraine] into NATO.. it may put the state on the verge of its existence. Complicated internal political problems are taking place there. We should act.. very-very carefully.’

His views were again ignored, and the idea of Georgian and Ukrainian membership of NATO was set in train with the consequences that we see today.

However, a central truth of NATO expansion towards Ukraine, visible to me in 2013 when I first started to focus on Russia, is that western powers have never committed to fighting for Ukraine’s right to join. This is exactly the point that George Kennan acknowledge in his 1998 comments. He said, ‘we have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.’

Looking at Ukraine today, with its de facto exclusion from NATO membership, denied the deployment of U.S. military force to support for its war effort and practically bankrupt from the slow depletion of western financial support, who would say that Kennan was wrong, 28 years ago?

The 1998 New York Times article in which Kennan was widely quoted also noted that ‘future historians will surely remark upon the utter poverty of imagination that characterized U.S. foreign policy in the late 1990’s’. History would surely judge western foreign policy since 2013 more harshly still.

Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation.

(Prudent deployment from Miss B. The timing is remarkable, IYKYK.)

St. Catherine of Siena in prayer, Cristofano Allori, ARSH 1610

Won’t you join me in a Novena to St. Catherine of Siena, asking her intercession for the restoration of the Papacy?

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Heavenly Father, Thy glory is in Thy saints. We praise Thy glory in the life of the admirable St. Catherine of Siena, virgin and doctor of the Church. Her whole life was a noble sacrifice inspired by an ardent love of Jesus, Thy unblemished Lamb.

In troubled times she strenuously upheld the rights of His beloved spouse, The Church. Father, honor her merits and hear her prayers for each of us, and for Thy Holy Catholic Church.

Help us to pass unscathed through the corruption of this world, and to remain unshakably faithful to Thy Holy Catholic Church in word, deed, and example.

Help us always to see in the Petrine See and true Vicar of Christ an anchor in the storms of life, and a beacon of light to the harbor of Thy Love, in this dark night of Thy times and men’s souls.

Grant also to each of us our special petition:

For the restoration of the Papacy from twelve years of usurpation by an Antipope and 28 months of vacancy since the death of Pope Benedict XVI; for a true, valid, virile, deeply Catholic Pope; that we receive the gift of Counsel so that we may quickly and accurately discern the truth of current events and react rightly, and above all, that God’s will be done.

We ask this through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, in the unity of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

St. Catherine of Siena, pray for us.

St. Peter, pray for us.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Giving unhoused individuals the deadly synthetic opioid could eliminate vagrancy, Rex Parris reportedly claimed

A mayor in Southern California is facing a backlash after suggesting the city of Lancaster could address homelessness by providing vagrants with “all the fentanyl they want,” according to the Los Angeles Times. The US has been grappling with a severe opioid crisis.

Originally developed for severe pain management, fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine.

Illicitly manufactured fentanyl has flooded the US drug market, and more than 74,000 Americans died in 2023 from drug mixtures containing the substance, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly double the total number of motor vehicle fatalities tallied that year and over three times the number of reported homicides.

Mayor Rex Parris of Lancaster, California sparked controversy during a February city council meeting after a resident criticized the city’s plan to deal with homelessness by confining them to an abandoned golf course near a residential area, the outlet said on Sunday.

According to footage from the meeting, Parris interrupted the woman’s remarks, saying, “what I want to do is give them free fentanyl.”

“I mean, that’s what I want to do. I want to give them all the fentanyl they want.”

The startled resident responded to the Republican mayor, saying his comment “was not kind.”

Parris, who has served as mayor since 2008, told FOX LA on Friday that he has no “regrets” about his remarks. He clarified that he was referring specifically to unhoused individuals involved in criminal activity who “refuse” assistance, and reiterated his stance on providing them with the highly addictive and often deadly opioid.

“I made it very clear I was talking about the criminal element that were let out of the prisons that have now become 40 to 45% of what’s referred to as the homeless population,” Parris told the outlet.

“They are responsible for most of our robberies, most of our rapes, and at least half of our murders,” he added, without providing any evidence or data to support his claims.

Parris went on to say he hadn’t thought anyone would take his comments “literally,” claiming that fentanyl is “so easy” to obtain on the streets that offering it for free wouldn’t make any difference.

“Quite frankly, I wish that the president would give us a purge. Because we do need to purge these people,” Parris concluded.

In 2013, the Lancaster mayor made headlines for proposing building a Buddhist temple to attract Chinese investment. In 2018, he drew attention again with a push to ban neckties from workplace, citing studies linking them to reduced blood flow to the brain.

Trump Wants a Russian Nuclear Power Plant as Part of the Peace Deal

Paul Craig Roberts

It was only yesterday that I asked what would be the next extraneous factor introduced into the Ukrainian peace deal, and it has already made its appearance.  Trump wants the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, or so the Wall Street Journal claims.

Zaporozhye is part of the territory that voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia, from which it had been torn by Soviet-era officials and again by Washington during the Yeltsin era.  If only Washington could have had the sense to leave Russia alone, there would not be a Ukrainian conflict.

It is extraordinary that Washington thinks it can determine what is Russia and what is not.  So far Trump’s peace deal includes handing over Ukraine’s rare earths to Washington, handing over the Russian gas pipeline that transports gas through Ukraine to Europe, and a Russian nuclear power plant.  Will Trump next want a US veto over Putin’s decisions?

None of these extraneous issues introduced into “peace negotiations” affects Putin’s commitment to negotiation, the implication being that Putin will accept any terms.  One can’t help but wonder at what point Putin regrets not paying more attention to being prepared for conflict than engaging in fruitless negotiations and “peace deals” such as the Minsk Agreement, and quickly bringing a victorious close to the conflict that Washington and its Ukrainian puppet brought to Donbas Russians.  This extraordinary blunder of trusting deals with the West has left Putin with a never-ending, ever-widening conflict with Britain and France threatening war with Russia.  

Israel Still Intends to Start World War III

Where are the American, Russian, Chinese ultimatums to Israel to stop the insanity”

https://www.rt.com/news/616012-israel-mulls-strike-on-iran/ 

Why is tiny Estonia preaching war with Russia?

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna is an example of the mental instability that affects Baltic politicians.  He says Russia is planning to attack Europe in a “couple of years.”

Why?  What does Russia want with the myriad problems of Europe?  Broken economies.  Degenerating cultures. Towers of Babel.  

It is Russia that is under attack from the West.  It is Western governments–France, Estonia, Germany, the UK–issuing military threats to Russia.  Why are militarily impotent countries issuing threats to Russia?

https://www.rt.com/news/616025-estonia-nato-ukraine-tsahkna/ 

Judge Boasberg Makes a Fool of Himself

The activist politicized Democrat judge Boasberg, overruled by the US Supreme Court (https://www.westernjournal.com/trump-admin-scores-second-scotus-win-allowing-move-forward-deportations/?ff_source=email&ff_medium=elliance-patriot-update&ff_campaign=CAN&ff_content=2025-04-18 ), which said the Trump administration has the authority to remove the illegal aliens and which also said that Boasberg has no jurisdiction over the case because the case belongs in Texas, not D.C., alleges that “the fact that his court lacked jurisdiction over the matter does not excuse Trump administration officials from complying with his directives.” https://www.westernjournal.com/white-house-fires-back-judge-boasberg-issues-criminal-contempt-decision-trump-admin/?ff_source=email&ff_medium=elliance-patriot-update&ff_campaign=CAN&ff_content=2025-04-18 

It appears that Boasberg is so politicized that he doesn’t mind making a fool of himself if it puts out a false narrative for the white liberal press to use to demonize President Trump.

The outlet is trying to reignite “Signalgate” and smear the US defense secretary, a spokesman has said

The Pentagon has rejected a New York Times (NYT) report that US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about American strikes on Houthi fighters in Yemen with his wife and brother via a secret chat on the Signal messaging app.

Hegseth was among the key figures in the so-called ‘Signalgate’ scandal, which erupted in late March after the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, accessed a group chat on Signal in which senior members of the administration of US President Donald Trump discussed the strikes in Yemen.

The NYT reported on Sunday that the defense secretary had a second private chat group on the app, which included his wife, Jennifer Rauchet Hegseth, his brother, his lawyer, and a dozen other people from his inner circle. According to the paper's sources, Hegseth posted flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in both groups on March 18.

In a post on X on Monday, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell accused the NYT of trying to bring the ‘Signalgate’ story “back from the dead.”

“The Trump-hating media continues to be obsessed with destroying anyone committed to President Trump’s agenda,” he said.

The spokesman insisted that “the New York Times – and all other Fake News that repeat their garbage – are enthusiastically taking the grievances of disgruntled former employees as the sole sources for their article.”

“They relied only on the words of people who were fired this week and appear to have a motive to sabotage the Secretary and the President’s agenda,” Parnell added.

He stressed that “there was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story.”

Senior Democratic Party members demanded Hegseth’s resignation following the NYT report. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer wrote on X that “we keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at risk. Trump is still too weak to fire him. Pete Hegseth must be fired.”

Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois asked: “How many times does Pete Hegseth need to leak classified intelligence before Donald Trump and Republicans understand that he is not only a f***ing liar, he is a threat to our national security?”

READ MORE: ‘Signalgate’ cause revealed – Guardian

The Democrats made similar calls when the ‘Signalgate’ scandal first broke, although Trump refused to dismiss Hegseth or National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who had mistakenly added Goldberg to the Signal group chat. “I do not fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts,” Trump stated.