This past Saturday I had occasion to spend some time looking around historic St. Aloysius church in the District of Columbia. This large church was dedicated in 1859, by the Jesuits, to be associated with Gonzaga College, well-known today as Gonzaga College High School. The nicest feature, by far, is the altar painting of St. Aloysius receiving first communion from St. Charles Borromeo, which was done by Constantino Brumidi, notable for his frescoes in the Capitol building.

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The spiritual advice is modern, but I thought the style incomparable. From a card found several weeks ago at St. Alphonsus in Baltimore:

It is well for you to consider what you lose every morning that you pass up Holy Communion:

With Ecclesiastical Approval
Chicago, December 6th, 1940
Compliments of the CRUSADERS For The VIRGIN MARY

In the course of four days spent in upstate New York, amidst new friends, natural splendor, and an astonishing diversity of bodily pains, I could not help but think on my pilgrimage of last year with three dear members of this humble Society. Together we traveled to Paris, and from there, in company of the remnants of European Christendom, we marched to the majestic Cathedral at Chartres. It was there I first learned the various discomforts of organized marching – about hobbling onwards in a strange mix of pride and penitence, of struggling to pray and sing and walk while so desperately wanting to collapse in some expressive and melodramatic fashion, and of blistering my feet for our Lord. And so, gentle reader, do forgive my telling this tale in burdensome reference to that fondly remembered pelerinage.

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This august Society is again readying a contingent of its humblest pilgrims in anticipation of the Twelfth Annual Auriesville Pilgrimage for Restoration. Although distinctly alarming absences are rumoured in this year’s Saturday delegation, our company shall be fortified by new souls whose penitential zeal will no doubt set us all aflame with charity.

To all those within several hours travel of Fonda, NY, I invite you to think of joining the pilgrimage on Saturday the 29th of September. There’s no charge and no need to register in advance. Upstate New York is about as beautiful as it can be at this time of year, and there’s Mass, singing, preaching and penance to be had. What’s more, the Pope has freed the traditional Mass, the Mass of All Time, the Mass of the North American Martyrs themselves, and it is our duty to offer Thanksgiving!

For those who are unable to attend, we’ll again be posting pictures and commentary soon after we return. Incidentally, I am planning to make the entire pilgrimage, starting on Wednesday, so I’ll have a tale and pictures from then, as well.

Finally, and the reason for my posting: this is the ideal day to begin a novena to the North American Martyrs, whose feast is the 26th of September, the first day of the pilgrimage. I have included below a novena prayer of internet origin.
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My attendance at St. Alphonsus in Baltimore this summer has been something less than regular, and so this Sunday was the first time in quite a number of months that I’ve heard Mass said by Fr. Casimir Peterson. His sermon today expounded on the qualities of prayers pleasing to God. In addition to the supreme enjoyment I had from his insights on this topic, and his urging us to pray for the conversion and consecration of Russia, he also shared a poem which I very much liked.

Not ordinarily known for poetic interludes – certainly nothing of the homily-in-verse stylings of one Father of the Society’s acquaintance – the motivation for his uncharacteristic recitation was the poem’s being printed in this month’s Fatima Findings, a noble periodical which Fr. Peterson often brings to Mass. I have been meaning to write about this newsletter for a long time, especially for the eminently classy tagline: The Smallest Newspaper in the World, for the Greatest Cause in Heaven. It generally contains exhortations on the messages of Fatima, and serial selections from reasonably obscure spiritual works.
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Following the Liturgical Year with the good Abbot Gueranger, a reflection of merit for the Friday of the Third Week After Easter:

Church of Jesus! that wast promised by him to the earth during the days of his mortal life; that camest forth from his sacred Side when wounded by the spear upon the Cross; that wast organized and perfected by him during the last days of his sojourn here below; we lovingly greet thee as our mother; thou art the Spouse of our Redeemer, and it is through thee that we are born to him. It is thou that gavest us life by baptism; it is thou that ministerest to us the helps, whereby we are led, through our earthly pilgrimage, to heaven; it is thou that governest us, in the spiritual order, by thy holy ordinances.

Under thy maternal care we are safe; we have nothing to fear. What can error do against us? Thou art the pillar and ground of the truth! What effect can the revolutions of our earthly habitation have upon us? We know, that if everything else should fail us, thou wilt ever be with us. It was during these very days which precede the Acension, that our Lord Jesus said to his Apostles, and through them, to their successors: Behold! I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. What a promise of duration was this! If we consult the history of these last eighteen hundred years, it will tell us that this promise has never once been broken. The gates of hell have risen up against thee innumerable times; but they have never prevailed against thee, no, not for one single moment!
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Possible Spoilers Herein

This weekend I went to see “Into Great Silence,” now playing at only few theaters here in the states, including DC, at least for a week or two. Even if the movie had failed to impress, it would nearly have been worth it to see the amusingly composed audience. The artsy folks probably had the upper hand, but the Catholic presence, particularly the clerical, were a strong second.

Into Great Silence is a 2004 documentary which takes you into the Carthusian monastery of the Grand Chartreuse – founded in 1084 by St. Bruno himself. Of course, the movie doesn’t tell you anything about how awesome St. Bruno was. Or how the evil French kicked the monks out in 1903. Even more disappointing, there’s no talk of chartreuse, that most invigorating spirit. It does, however, give you nearly three hours of silence, and the opportunity to see the monks pray, work in the garden, get haircuts, eat, read, and take their weekly constitutional (which, incidentally, seemed considerably more ambitious than the monastic mountaineering featured in that fiftyist fantasy, the Sound of Music).
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It was my junior year in public high school when Y2K swept by, banishing, in particular, the fevered talk of technological doom so peculiar to those days. I was a teenager then, and smirking came more easily than it does now. I must admit, however, that despite my contempt for popular currents of opinion, I used to wish that just one of the disasters might come true. Anything to bring real life one step closer to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, ya know…

Anyways, it was not long after these secret hopes fizzled that I espied a book left out for free on a table in our town library. The title, in serious red, white, and black, was “Spiritual Survival During the Y2K Crisis.” Thinking on what a nugget of cultural history I had found, I pocketed the book, and I’ve kept it ever since. Much cheer has it brought me, when I dredge it out, and read things like this:
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During all the centuries in which these Emperors were trying to bring the Church under the same subjection as the State their most steadfast opponents were the Popes of Old Rome, their most servile agents the Patriarchs of New Rome. The story, then, of the rise of the See of Constantinople is not a creditable one. It has no splendid traditions from the earliest age; it had none of the lustre of Apostolic origin; its dignity could not be compared with that of the old Patriarchates, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch; it had nothing of the sacred associations of Jerusalem. A new see, in itself of no importance, its claims were pushed solely because of a coincidence that had nothing to do with the Church. It was only because of the presence of the Emperor and through his tyrannical policy that the Church of his city managed to usurp the first place among the Eastern Churches, and at last to lead them all in a campaign against the See of Peter.

At last John IV, the Faster, of Constantinople, thought he could assume the title “Oecumenical Patriarch.” It is well known how St. Gregory the Great sternly forbade him to use this name, which is not even used by the Pope. “Who doubts,” he says, “that the Church of Constantinople is subject to the Apostolic See? Indeed the most pious Lord Emperor and our brother the bishop of that city both eagerly acknowledge this.” Again: “I know of no bishop who is not subject to the Apostolic See.” It is also known how in opposition to this pompous title he assumed for himself with proud humility the title borne ever since by his successors, “Servant of the Servants of God.” Althought the Patriarchs of Constantinople went on using their title till it became, as it still is, their official style, it is noticeable that even Photius never dared call himself Ecumenical Patriarch when writing to the Pope.

The legates then at last prepare a bull of excommunication. They are still on quite good terms with the Emperor, and they are very careful to say nothing against the Byzantine Church. “As far as the pillars of the Empire are concerned, and its wise and honoured citizens, the city is most Christian and Orthodox.” “But we,” they go on, “not bearing the unheard-of offense and injury done to the holy Apostolic and first See, wishing to defend in every way the Catholic faith, by the authority of the holy and undivided Trinity and of the Apostolic See, whose Legates we are…declare this: That Michael, patriarch by abuse, neophyte, who only took a monk’s habit by fear and is now infamous because of many very bad crimes, and with him Leo, called Bishop of Achrida, and the Sacellarius of the said Michael, who with profane feet trampled on the sacrifice of the Latins and all their followers in the aforesaid errors and presumptions shall be Anathema Maranatha…with all heretics, and with the devil and his angels, unless they repent. Amen.”

It was Saturday, July 16, 1054, at the third hour. The Hagia Sophia was full of people, the priests and deacons are vested, the Prothesis of the holy Liturgy has begun. Then the three Latin legates walk up the great church through the people, go in through the Royal Door of the Ikonostasis and lay their bull of excommunication on the altar. As they turn back they say: Videat Deus et iudicet. The schism was complete.

It is always rather dangerous to claim that misfortunes are a judgement of God, and indeed no one could have thought of satisfaction at the most awful calamity that ever happened to Christian Europe. At the same time one realizes how, from the day the Legates turned back from the altar on which they had laid their bull, the Byzantine Church has been cut off from all intercourse with the rest of Christendom, how her enemies gathered round this city nearer and nearer each century, till at last they took it, how they overturned the Latin altars, took away the great church as he had taken away ours, and how since that the successors of the man who would not bow to the Roman Pontiff have had to bow to, have had to receive their vestiture from, the unbaptized tyrant who sits on the throne of Constantine; one realizes this and sees that the words of the Legates were heard and that God has seen and judged.

And we need too, the righter balance that would be restored by reunion with the Orthodox. In spite of our loyalty to our own rite, and in spite of our natural pride in being not only Catholics but Latins and members of the greatest Patriarchate, we have to realize that the Latin Church is not, has never been, the whole Body of Christ…And we need their ideas, their traditions and spirit in the church as well as our own. Their conservatism now means only fossilization; joined to our life it would be sane and useful balance. Their love of liturgy and dislike of innovations has something to teach our people. If we refret the too sudden way in which new devotions spread amongst us, the gradual divorce of people from the real rites of the Church, the slight regard paid to her seasons, the exaggeration of pious fancies above the old and essential things, the abuses in such matters as indulgences, privileges, and special favours against which the Council of Trent already spoke, we should find the remedy of all these things in the solid piety and the unchanging loyalty towards the customs of their fathers among Eastern Christians.

From Adrian Fortescue’s The Orthodox Eastern Church.

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There is nothing more delicate, more defenceless, or more beautiful, than the young girl whose virtue has never been sullied by the corrupt influence of the world. The peerless soul of the virgin is the brightest spot on earth, and the most pleasing to God. He has frequently, in the history of the world, chosen the weak and humble frame of girlhood for the most extraordinary manifestations of His power or of His goodness. He has sent, from time to time, beings who seemed to be angels clothed in human form, to attract us by the loveliness of virtue, and to show us the great mystery of love in which He unites Himself to the human soul. God has ever been wonderful in His saints – He gave them His power when they asked it, and those extraordinary suspensions of the laws of nature which we call miracles were ordinary actions to them. But there was nothing so consoling as the power, the consolation and protection He imparted to the defenceless daughters of the Church in the terrible times of persecution. When dragged before tyrants for their faith and their virtue, He Himself took them as it were into His own hands, and made them not only triumph over the brutal rage of the pagan, but made them apostles and witnesses of the divinity of Christianity, the example, the glory, the crown of His Church. Their virginal chastity was more dear to Him than the stars of heaven, and He invariably smote with the lightning of vengeance the wretch that would dare to cast an unchaste look on those angels in human form. Although He permitted them to fall under the axe of the lictor, it was that their death might be the triumph of their chastity and their faith, and the commencement of their ineffable reward in the paradise of God. Neither persecutions, nor yet the more powerful blandishments of the attractive but false joys of life, could ever induce the Christian female of the first centuries to yield up her right to the sublimest titles that heaven has given to earth – Christian and Virgin. The triumph of the youthful martyrs was the most perfect and absolute that history knows; but could it be otherwise? It was the triumph of Him who reigns in the highest heavens, who laughs at the malice of His enemies, and against whom nations rage in vain.

But whilst we look back in admiration at the thrilling and sublime lessons of heroism and virtue given to us by the Christian heroes of the early ages, a secret feeling of regret steals over us that these days of triumphs are gone. The seductions, the blandishments, the immoralities of our days of peace and repose have been more destructive than the fire, or sword, or wild beasts of the pagans. It is rare to find now-a-days a true virgin – one who would suffer death rather than permit the slightest breath of corruption to sully the brilliancy of the gem of chastity. Alas! what the rack, the scourge, or brutal violence could not touch in the days of the past, may now be blasted by a look, a squeeze of the hand, or a playful liberty, the corrupt influence of the worldly, and very often even irreligious education permitted by the careless and indifferent parents of these times, has swept away the safeguards of modesty, and our children have lost their treasure ere they have known to prize it. But woe to the wretch who allows himself to become the instrument of Satan for the destruction of innocence! He will sink into the awful torments of hell, deeper than the impious Ulpian, who plotted the ruin and shed the blood of the virgin Martina.

From The Martyrs of the Coliseum, or the Historical Records of the Great Amphitheater of Ancient Rome, by Fr. A. J. O’Reilly, D.D – previously reviewed here.