Day: March 3, 2020

Lenten Embertide

Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after Quadragesima Sunday (the first Sunday of Lent) are known as “Lenten Embertide,” which, depending on the date of Easter, can come as early as February 11, but which is seen as associated with the season of Spring (March, April, May). Liturgically, the lessons for the Wednesday and Saturday Masses focus on the Commandments given to Moses by God, and on the promises to those who keep them well, all ending with the story of the three lads saved by an angel from Nabuchodonosor’s furnace, as is so for all but Whit Embertide. Continue reading →

St. Lucius, Pope and Martyr

A.D. 253.

ST. LUCIUS was a Roman by birth, and one of the clergy of that church under SS. Fabian and Cornelius. This latter being crowned with martyrdom, in 252, St. Lucius succeeded him in the pontificate. The emperor Gallus having renewed the persecution of his predecessor Decius, at least in Rome, this holy pope was no sooner placed in the chair of St. Peter, but was banished with several others, though to what place is uncertain. “Thus,” says St. Dionysius of Alexandria, “did Gallus deprive himself of the succour of heaven, by expelling those who every day prayed to God for his peace and prosperity.” St. Cyprian wrote to St. Lucius to congratulate him both on his promotion, and for the grace of suffering banishment for Christ. Our saint had been but a short time in exile, when he was recalled with his companions to the incredible joy of the people, who went out of Rome in crowds to meet him. St. Cyprian wrote to him a second letter of congratulation on this occasion. 1 He says, “He had not lost the dignity of martyrdom because he had the will, as the three children in the furnace, though preserved by God from death: this glory added a new dignity to his priesthood, that a bishop assisted at God’s altar, who exhorted his flock to martyrdom by his own example as well as by his words. Continue reading →

Saint Casimir

King of Poland
(1458-1483)

Casimir, the second son of Casimir III, King of Poland, was born in 1458. From the custody of a very virtuous mother, Elizabeth of Austria, he passed to the guardianship of a devoted master, the learned and pious John Dugloss. Thus animated from his earliest years by precept and example, his innocence and piety soon ripened into the practice of heroic virtue. Continue reading →

Meditations for Each Day of Lent by St. Thomas Aquinas

Tuesday After First Sunday of Lent

Christ underwent every kind of suffering

“Every kind of suffering.” The things men suffer may be understood in two ways. By “kind” we may mean a particular, individual suffering, and in this sense there was no reason why Christ should suffer every kind of suffering, for many kinds of suffering are contrary the one to the other, as for example, to be burnt and to be drowned. We are of course speaking of Our Lord as suffering from causes outside himself, for to suffer the suffering effected by internal causes, such as bodily sickness, would not have become him. But if by “kind” we mean the class, then Our Lord did suffer by every kind of suffering, as we can show in three ways: Continue reading →