"The life of faith is the untiring pursuit of God through all that disguises and disfigures Him."  Imitation of Christ 1.2

Fatherhood is forever

Once enacted, it participates in the eternal. Undiminished. Ageless. Ceaseless.

It is a seal. It is an identity from which we can never be extricated: it cannot be taken from a father. Strip him of all things; take his clothes, his shoes, his money; deprive him of his good name and all esteem, take from him his honor, his strength, his health; leave him naked and covered in ashes and contumely … take all these things from him; deprive him of hope in every dream. Take this all … and more … but you will not, for you cannot, take from him his fatherhood.

It is a seal upon his soul; it is his ontological presence in the universe, from which vast parts of the universe unfold, generation unto generation.

In his children he is one.

In his children he is become many.

His dignity is great, but it is made great only by and through his children. In his children he is ennobled, however base he may become, and in this sense, they are his redemption. Yes, he has given them life. But they have conferred dignity upon life, for they have made him like unto God Who is Father of us all.

Fatherhood, in its creative impetus, both emulates the Fatherhood of God, and derives from it … and in God alone it participates and endures.

It is not just perpetuity that binds father to child, but eternity. He is forever a father, once having fathered.

Alas for sorrow, in this life, with Rachel he may weep in Ramah, that his beloved children are no more … yes, in this life they may be no more, nor may he swathe them in his anguish, lave them in his tears – but his fatherhood endures … for his children endure – forever.
 

Joy and Sorrow

The very fabric of the universe stirs under the breath of life, even as it respires beyond a father's grasp, is lifted from his bronzed arms, and borne upon the promise of prophets. A father brings to being what he must ever relinquish, and his breath pales on the fringe of glory.

Here, in that penumbra between what was not, what is, what must be, and what will ever be; in that pale nimbus borne trembling upon a father's hands ... fatherhood even enters the sacral, for it enters into, even as it issues forth from, the Motherhood of Mary, who is the Mother of Life – who alone, in all creation, bore within herself the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

The Mother of Sorrows … how well we understand each other. You buried your Son. I buried my child, too.

The world had sifted her through my fingers, and I have wept the tears of death. I have seen the dwelling of Holy Innocents far above the still and empty cradle.

In my grief, have I not cried up to God, my Father:

“Yet she lives! … In Thee! … Unto Thee!  And surely Thou keepest her for me.
I will yet behold the face of my daughter!”

… I have dwelt in Ramah.

But she who was no more, by her very being, swift as a baby’s breath in the incensed wind, gave unto me this gift, this pledge to all that is eternal: I am her father.

I have been anointed with fatherhood. It cannot be reaved of me. Nor can she!

I am, as in no other aspect of my being, my fatherhood. The Most High God gave this to me – through her – as an imperishable gift, an everlasting inheritance! So great is His pledge that it is indefeasible to, inexpungable within, my very being itself.

My children are mine. And I am theirs. It will always, always be.

That is why, in the culmination of his years, heedless of all else, the father ran to his prodigal son. This was his treasure – not what the son had taken, but what he had brought back.

In utter poverty, covered with shame, blemished in sin, discarded by the world, unadorned, unshod … the son bore to his father the treasure of all time, the treasure for all time: flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood … the child in whose absence a father ever longs.
 

But more still …

A father is father to every child in the world. Every baby, every child, is his … too.

Because it is given by God, and is a participation in the Fatherhood of God Himself, fatherhood is a pouring forth upon all children, extends to all children, and because of God's predilection for the abandoned, especially for orphans … for we ourselves are, one and all, adopted sons and daughters of God.

Only Christ is consubstantial with the Father.

We are – each of us – orphans withal, adopted by the Father through the Son. It is not by nature, but by predilection and grace, that we are God’s children. If we are children of the One Father, are we not, then, children of every father who participates in, has received his fatherhood from, the Fatherhood of God Himself?

This is the fatherhood of grace. It is such a breathlessly beautiful fatherhood, for father binds himself to child, and child to father, through love, each of one nature, one love, while not of one flesh, grace yielding each to each other; the one covering innocence with fatherhood, the other investing manhood with fatherhood, and fatherhood with dignity – and both bound up in one love born of grace for it is born of God.

My children, even now, cling to my sunburned neck, those of nature and those of grace, and I know them not apart. Each has possession of my heart. My life is as readily forfeit for the one as the other. Their laughter is a perpetual song, an eternal harmony, in my heart.

A father’s heart, I think, is like unto the heart of God.

There is no fatherless child.

There are only children whom I have not yet found …
 

A Father forever
 

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MORTAL SIN

and HOLY CONFESSION

The Antidote of Death

 

First, Mortal Sin ...

Our excuses are numberless. In fact, they are as numberless as our sins, none of which are now deemed by us (and, for sorrow, by many priests) grievous enough to preclude our receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in Holy Communion. Most often they are reducible simply to this: "I have not committed any mortal sin".

Indeed.

For Catholics who have never been taught the difference between Mortal and Venial sin — which is to say, the entire last generation of Catholics — we must be clear about the notion of sin, especially the distinction between two kinds of sin, before we can proceed to even understand the necessity, as well as the inestimable value of Holy Confession.

Only one analogy suffices to make this distinction clear in a way that is particularly accessible to Western society (I do not say "civilization", for that has ceased). Let us look at the matter somatically, that is to say, through our bodies, or more likely than not, the bodies of others upon which we are, in one way or another, sexually fixated. Perhaps this will provide a visual cue, some imaginative element, to an otherwise immaterial reality:

The distinction between a Mortal Sin and a Venial Sin is akin to the difference between a minor wound ... and death. Is that succinct enough? Are you still unclear about the difference?

In other words, you may accumulate many minor wounds and still live, although each is an impediment to your health and, while small, if left unattended, may yet contribute to something more serious, something more debilitating. It is a small laceration ... awaiting infection.

Mortal wounds, on the other hand, may be many, but any one of them alone will bring you to death. It is not the case that, inflicted with a mortal wound, you may die —the wound is called "mortal" precisely because as a consequence of it, you in fact will die. In fact, we most often understand it in a posthumous context, in the past tense. The person is already dead, and that is why his injury was called "mortal".

It is of the nature of wounds that they are either the one or the other, although the non-mortal wound may be sufficiently grievous to cause lasting deformity or mutilation even if it does not culminate in death.

Physics, Bodies, and Bullets

Clearly, we wish to avoid both, but failing this we immediately tend the wound, see a physician, and apply the recommended remedy. The medicine may be bitter, or the therapy arduous, but we do not curse the doctor for that, still less the laws of physics brought to bear upon human anatomy, in the way, say, of projectiles and the like. Bullets do those things. We do not like it, and we would that bullets behaved otherwise, but the reality is that, however regrettable the result, we cannot, for that reason, alter the path of the bullet nor make it less fatal to the body. The consequences of this concatenation of events are not within our will to change. I believe that we will all agree on this. We may argue that the bullet ought not have been shot, but having been shot we understand the inevitability of the result given laws inherent in physics, bodies and bullets.

That the trajectory of a projectile corresponds to a given amount of energy expended over a given distance — and intersected by the human tegument through which it subsequently passes causing death, is a terrible occurrence to be sure, but not one, in and of itself, that we are likely to imprecate. We do not rage against the laws of physics. Indeed, we would find such indignation ... odd, to say nothing of futile.

The laws inherent in physics and the constitution of the human body, are simply not amenable to our will, and we recognize this. We do not despair over it, but become terribly practical given this recognition: we avoid bullets. However great our outrage, we will not find a sane individual standing long in disputation against it ...

The reality we wish to avoid  — the reality avoided at all costs at the pulpit — is that Mortal Sin is deadly. You die as a result of it. Oh, not to yourself, and certainly not to the world. You will breathe and move and the world will applaud your posthumous existence. But you die to God — your life in God ceases. The fact as little pleases us as it pleases our preachers — sin has real, most often empirical and always inevitable consequences. The ability of sin to harm, and yes, even kill, is as real and as indifferent to our wishes as the laws of physics that impinge on our bodies.

In our post-enlightened, post-modern pretension to sophistication, we frankly find such a notion abhorrent to our effete sensitivities, social sensitivities that we have so delicately honed upon the touchstone of correctitude.

On the one hand, we concede the notion of crime and punishment but somehow never quite attain to any correspondence between sin and condemnation on the other. We attenuate our clemency in the courts of men, given the gravity of the crime, but do not attain to that same rigor in the tribunal of sin ... given the gravity of the sin. There are, apparently, no capital offenses in the city of God, even as they abound in the City of Man. A mortal life is held to be forfeit for a crime, but life immortal is not held forfeit for a sin.

It is an odd state of affairs that few of us believe that we can abolish crime, while most of us appear to believe that we have virtually abolished sin.

Crime, of course can in fact be abolished.

"How?", you ask.

It is simplicity itself. Legitimize what is criminal. Account nothing a crime and you abolish the notion of crime itself — even as you leave the consequences intact.

"But that is absurd!", you exclaim.

In very deed ...

A cursory review of civil legislation over the past 30 years reveals that, not only is it not absurd, but attains to policy:

Few of us, I assume, would seek recourse to such a solution and for good reason. Legitimizing crime does not indemnify us against it — however much we hold ourselves to have abolished it. Yes?

We can say as much of sin.

In fact, we have said as much. Unlike the immediate consequences of crime, the consequences of sin — even temporally — are often deferred, less immediate ... and because we apprehend them as remote, as distant, as impending only, we dismiss them for we fail to immediately see the terrible consequences they entail, consequences so terrible, so far-reaching, so much beyond our ken, that they have become effectively mythical, brooding like demons on some distant bourne that we obscurely perceive and never quite forget, an escarpment lost in light and shade where life quite suddenly drops off that abrupt precipice to death. We know it ... because we know that we dance on the dead.

And now, Holy Confession ...

I am about to state something with which you are likely to disagree, and for good reason: my parish Church is the holiest in all of Christendom; not just in the Archdiocese of Boston, but in all Massachusetts; very likely all New England — perhaps even the entire world.

You will disagree.

In fact, you know your own Catholic parish to be the holiest, perhaps the most sinless parish in the world, and we will both appeal to the same reasons for making this remarkable statement: during Holy Communion the pews are literally emptied.

There is not a sinner among us; at least no sinner guilty of Mortal Sin which prevents our going to Holy Communion, since — as all Catholics know — we add the tremendous sin of sacrilege to whatever mortal sin we carry if we receive Holy Communion while not in a state of grace — which is to say, free of mortal sin.

But as I ponder the empty pews, the stigma of being the sole sinner in the parish heavily upon me as many look askance at my kneeling while all others scramble to make their way to communion — I at least wonder. Do Catholics, do all Catholics, do most Catholics, do at least some Catholics, even know what a mortal sin is any more? Do they know the difference between a mortal sin that sunders the soul from God, and a venial sin that merely impedes its union with God?

Since the entire congregation have had at least 8 years of Catechism, or Religious Education — 8 to 10 years, mind you! — surely so simple, so basic, so fundamental a concept as the difference between serious sin and sins far less grievous in nature, is clearly apprehended.

A very ready analogy may be to the point: in the civic world, all of us know (probably because the penalty is clearly comprehended, immediate and forthcoming) the difference between grievously unlawful, or capital offenses such as murder and grand larceny, and misdemeanors, like receiving a speeding ticket or maliciously destroying a neighbor’s property. It is a no-brainer. We do not think twice, or rather, we do think twice in a given situation about the sanctions and penalties involved. It is, we are told, the means by which we maintain a "civil", a mutually responsible, society.

We acknowledge the concept of justice and understand very clearly why it is maintained and what penalties are incurred if it is violated. We have no problem with that. After all, the law is not some gratuitous abstraction, and you are a fool if you think that you can trifle with it and walk away. If the breach is serious enough you are clapped in irons, removed from the community, and deprived of your liberty until justice has exacted its tribute, until you have "paid your debt to society". By and large we are grateful for the severity of the law, even as its rigors make us uneasy. "There, but for the grace of God, go I ..."

We all recognize that our own behavior has not always been unimpeachable ... if not clearly actionable. We do not personally legislate parallel laws that contravene the laws of the state and hold, at any point of divergence, the private interpretation of the law to abrogate the public law. It is the opposite which is true. We may find the laws of the state repugnant to us, unamenable to our own inclinations, even contrary to our own convictions — in which case we are confronted with three clearly distinguishable alternatives: we can absent ourselves from the polity and choose to live elsewhere, under a constitution that more closely corresponds with our desiderations and convictions, if such exists; we can continue to enjoy the collateral benefits in the present state that constrains us to abide by the laws through which it is defined and by which it is governed — or, we can seek to amend the law through the venues afforded us by the state.

What we cannot do is to enjoy the prerogatives of the state while either acting in defiance of it, or while subverting it. We understand this, and in fact underwrite it through maintaining our citizenship within it. We understand this broadly as a "pledge of allegiance".

In any event, we cannot construct a private and parallel universe of statutes and anticipate that the public universe of affairs will recognize, respect, and honor our privately legislated laws. If we choose to abide only by those laws of the state that we do not find disagreeable to us we have not attained to personal freedom, but to arbitrary license; not to civility, but to anarchy. We become both legislator and law. In such a solipsistic "society" the legislature and the corpus of law are as numerous as the individuals legislating them.

Well and good.

But what of God's Law?

Why, we must ask ourselves, is God's Law somehow less important, less pertinent to our behavior? Why does it have less bearing upon our responsibilities and our choices — and, most especially — within Church? Is the Divine Law, are the laws of the Church, no more than pious and ultimately indolent sentiments — rather than clearly articulated precepts with very real corresponding sanctions and responsibilities — in other words, coherent laws?

Do we give tribute to Caesar but withhold it from God? Is the Fasces mightier than the Cross?

We are indeed a generation which had been nurtured on defiance to authority — only seeing now, in our own children, the fruit of that unbridled defiance which we nurtured in them even as we pretended to "deplore it". Our children were ... "independent" ... not defiant, and we were proud — until we began to detoxify them, to rehabilitate their behavior, to trade notes with our neighbors on "good analysts". And our kids still get the keys to the car, no matter how grievous their transgression ... their money for the mall — just as we still get Holy Communion, no matter how grievous our offenses against God. We are as blind to our sins as we have made our children blind to their own. After all, a "good parent" "spares the rod" and does not descend to "primitive  behavior" such as punishing the child, no? And if we are such "good" parents — how much "better" God? Surely, there is no sin, no offense so grievous, or so trite, as to offend Him ... nothing we can ever do or say such that we would ever forfeit our "right", not to the keys of the car but to the Kingdom of God, through the Bread of Angels ... Holy Communion — that you as arrogantly insist is as much your right as the keys to the car ...

Still pondering the empty pews, it would seem so. Perhaps it is the case that all the parishioners are in fact guiltless of civil crime, however petty (for these, too, are the stuff of Holy Confession) — as well as sin.

The truly defining question appears to be this: to whom, we must genuinely ask ourselves, do we owe more — to God or man? To the City of God or to the city of man?

On your blithe way to Holy Communion, ponder this —- especially given the ultimate sanction placed before us by no less an authority than Saint Paul:

"Whosoever shall eat this bread or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and of the Blood of the Lord."  (I Cor. 11:27)

...are you prepared to add sacrilege to your your sins?

Or has the notion of sacrilege itself gone the way of mortal sin ... also?

Go to Confession. You must go. It is the only antidote of Mortal Sin, and thus the antidote of death.

 

Geoffrey K. Mondello
for the Boston Catholic Journal

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If you listen to no other homily on being a Catholic and your obligation to love God and your neighbor ... listen   to this. The Law of Love by Archbishop Fulton Sheen

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ROMAN MARTYROLOGY Wednesday June 19th in the Year of Grace Season After Pentecost This Day, the Nineteenth Day of June At Florence, St. Juliana Falconieri, virgin, foundress of the Sisters of the Order of the Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was placed among the holy virgins by the Sovereign Pontiff, ClementXII. At Milan, the holy martyrs Gervasius and Protasius, brothers. The former, by order of the judge Astasius, was so long scourged with leaded whips, that he expired. The latter, after being scourged with rods, was beheaded. Through divine revelation their bodies were found by St. Ambrose. They were partly covered with blood, and as free from corruption as if they had been put to death that very day. When the translation took place, a blind man recovered his sight by touching their relics, and many persons possessed by demons were delivered. At Ravenna, St. Ursicinus, martyr, who remained firm through many torments in the confession of the Lord, and consummated his martyrdom by capital punishment, under the judge Paulinus. At Sozopolis, under the governor Domitian, during the persecution of Trajan, St. Zosimus, martyr, who suffered bitter tortures, was beheaded, and thus triumphantly went to heaven. At Arezzo, in Tuscany, the holy martyrs Gaudentius, bishop, and Culmatius, deacon, who were murdered by the furious Gentiles, during the reign of Valentinian. The same day, St. Boniface, martyr, a disciple of blessed Romuald, who was sent by the Roman Pontiff to preach the Gospel in Russia. Having passed through fire uninjured, and baptized the king and his people, he was killed by the enraged brother of the king, and thus gained the palm of martyrdom which he ardently desired. At Ravenna, St. Romuald, anchoret, founder of the monks of Carnaldoli, who restored and greatly extended monastic discipline, which was much relaxed in Italy. He is also mentioned on the 7th of February. And elsewhere in divers places, many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins. Omnes sancti Mártyres, oráte pro nobis. ("All ye Holy Martyrs, pray for us", from the Litaniae Sanctorum, the Litany of the Saints) Response: Thanks be to God.

January	February	March	April	May	June
July	August	September	October	November	December

 

Why the Martyrs Matter Each day we bring you a calendar, a list really, of the holy Martyrs who had suffered and died for Christ, for His Bride the Church, and for our holy Catholic Faith; men and women for whom — and well they knew — their Profession of Faith would cost them their lives. They could have repudiated all three (Christ, Church, and Catholic Faith) and kept their lives for a short time longer (even the lapsi only postponed their death — and at so great a cost!).1 What would motivate men, women, even children and entire families to willingly undergo the most evil and painfully devised tortures; to suffer death rather than denial? Why did they not renounce their Catholic Faith when the first flame licked at their feet, after the first eye was plucked out, or after they were “baptized” in mockery by boiling water or molten lead poured over their heads? Why did they not flee to offer incense to the pagan gods since such a ritual concession would be merely perfunctory, having been done, after all, under duress, exacted by the compulsion of the state? What is a little burned incense and a few words uttered without conviction, compared to your own life and the lives of those you love? Surely God knows that you are merely placating the state with empty gestures … Did they love their wives, husbands, children — their mothers, fathers and friends less than we do? Did they value their own lives less? Were they less sensitive to pain than we are? In a word, what did they possess that we do not? Nothing. They possessed what we ourselves are given in the Sacrament of Confirmation — but cleaved to it in far greater measure than we do: Faith and faithfulness; fortitude and valor, uncompromising belief in the invincible reality of God, of life eternal in Him for the faithful, of damnation everlasting apart from Him for the unfaithful; of the ephemerality of this passing world and all within it, and lives lived in total accord with that adamant belief. We are the Martyrs to come. What made them so will make us so. What they suffered we will suffer. What they died for, we will die for. If only we will! For most us, life will be a bloodless martyrdom, a suffering for Christ, for the sake of Christ, for the sake of the Church in a thousand ways outside the arena. The road to Heaven is lined on both sides with Crosses, and upon the Crosses people, people who suffered unknown to the world, but known to God. Loveless marriages. Injustices on all sides. Poverty. Illness. Old age. Dependency. They are the cruciform! Those whose lives became Crosses because they would not flee God, the Church, the call to, the demand for, holiness in the most ordinary things of life made extraordinary through the grace of God. The Martyrology we celebrate each day is just a vignette, a small, immeasurably small sampling of the martyrdom that has been the lives of countless men and women whom Christ and the Angels know, but whom the world does not know. “Exemplum enim dedi vobis”, Christ said to His Apostles 2. “I have given you an example.” And His Martyrs give one to us — and that is why the Martyrs matter. Joseph Mary del Campos Editor, Boston Catholic Journal Note: We suggest that you see our newly edited and revised "De SS. Martyrum Cruciatibus - The Torments and Tortures of the Christian Martyrs" for an in-depth historical account of the sufferings of the Martyrs.   INTRODUCTION TO THE ROMAN MARTYROLOGY by J. Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore THE ROMAN MARTYROLOGY is an official and accredited record, on the pages of which are set forth in simple and brief, but impressive words, the glorious deeds of the Soldiers of Christ in all ages of the Church; of the illustrious Heroes and Heroines of the Cross, whom her solemn verdict has beatified or canonized. In making up this long roll of honor, the Church has been actuated by that instinctive wisdom with which the Spirit of God, who abides in her and teaches her all truth, has endowed her, and which permeates through and guides all her actions. She is the Spouse of Christ, without spot or wrinkle or blemish, wholly glorious and undefiled, whom He loved, for whom He died, and to whom He promised the Spirit of Truth, to comfort her in her dreary pilgrimage through this valley of tears, and to abide with her forever. She is one with Him in Spirit and in love, she is subject to Him in all things; she loves what He loves, she teaches and practices what He commands. If the world has its "Legions of Honor," why should not also the Church of the Living God, the pillar and the ground of the truth? If men who have been stained with blood, and women who have been tainted with vice, have had their memory consecrated in prose and in verse, and monuments erected to their memory, because they exhibited extraordinary talents, achieved great success, or were, to a greater or less extent, benefactors of their race in the temporal order, which passeth away, why should not the true Heroes and Heroines of Jesus, who, imitating His example, have overcome themselves, risen superior to and trampled upon the world, have aspired, in all their thoughts, words, and actions, to a heavenly crown, and have moreover labored with disinterested zeal and self-forgetting love for the good of their fellow-men, have their memories likewise consecrated and embalmed in the minds and hearts of the people of God? If time have its heroes, why should not eternity; if man, why should not God? "Thy friends, O Lord, are exceedingly honored; their principality is exceedingly exalted." Whom His Father so dearly loved, the world crucified; whom the world neglects, despises, and crucifies, God, through His Church, exceedingly honors and exalts. Their praises are sung forth, with jubilation of heart, in the Church of God for ages on ages. The wisdom of the Church of God in honoring her Saints is equaled only by the great utility of the practice thus consecrated. The Saints are not merely heroes; they are models. Christ lived in them, and Christ yet speaks through them. They were the living temples of the Holy Ghost, in whose mortal bodies dwelt all the riches of His wisdom and grace. They were in life consecrated human exemplars of divine excellence and perfection. Their example still appeals to our minds and to our hearts, more eloquently even than did their words to the men of their own generation, while they were in the tabernacle of the flesh. Though dead, they still speak. Their relics are instinct with sanctity, and through them they continue to breathe forth the sweet odor of Christ. The immortality into which they have entered still lingers in their bones, and seems to breathe in their mortal remains. As many an ardent, spirit has been induced to rush to the cannon's mouth by reading the exploits of earthly heroes, so many a generous Christian soul has been fired with heavenly ardor, and been impelled to rush to the crown of martyrdom, by reading the lives and heroic achievements of the Saints and Martyrs of Christ. Example, in its silent appeal, is more potent in its influence on the human heart and conduct than are words in their most eloquent utterances. The Church knows and feels all this, in the Spirit of God with whom she is replenished ; and hence she sets forth, with holy joy and exultant hope, her bright and ever-increasing Calendar of Sanctity of just men and women made perfect and rendered glorious, under her unearthly and sublime teachings. In reading this roll of consecrated holiness, our instinctive conclusion is, precisely that which the great soul of St. Augustine reached at the very crisis of his life, the moment of his conversion "If other men like me have attained to such sanctity, why not I? Shall the poor, the afflicted, the despised of the World, bear away the palm of victory, the crown of immortality, while I lie buried in my sloth and dead in my sins, and thus lose the brilliant and glorious mansion already prepared for me in heaven? Shall all the gifts, which God has lavished upon me, be ingloriously spent and foolishly wasted, in the petty contest for this world's evanescent honors and riches, while the poor and contemned lay up treasures in heaven, and secure the prize of immortal glory? Shall others be the friends of God, whom He delights to honor, while I alone remain His enemy, and an alien from His blessed Kingdom?" It is a consoling evidence of progress in the spiritual life in this country to find the Martyrology here published, for the first time, in English, and thereby made accessible, in its rich treasures of Sanctity, to all classes of our population. It will prove highly edifying and useful, not only to the members of our numerous religious Communities of both sexes, but also to the laity generally. Every day has here its record of Sanctity; and there is scarcely a Christian, no matter how lowly or how much occupied, who may not be able to daily peruse, with faith and with great profit, the brief page of each day's models of Holiness. These belong to all classes and callings of life; from the throne to the hovel, from the Pontiff to the lowest cleric, from the philosopher to the peasant, from the busy walks of life to the dreary wastes of the desert. Let all, then, procure and read daily the appropriate portions of this Martyrology. Its daily and pious perusal will console us in affliction, will animate us in despondency, will make our souls glow with the love of God in coldness, and will lift up our minds and hearts from this dull and ever-changing earth to the bright and everlasting mansions prepared for us in Heaven! Imprimatur,  J. Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop Baltimore, Maryland 1916   Printable PDF Version ______________________________ 1   The Lapsi were early Catholics who renounced the Faith and either sacrificed to the Roman gods by edict from the emperor, or offered incense to them to escape Imperial persecution and death, and who later returned to the Faith when persecution subsided. However, Christ warns us, “Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven. But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven.” (St. Matthew 10.3-33) 2 St. John 13.15