|
Dear Apostles of the Living Rosary,
With great enthusiasm and warm affection, I greet you and give thanks to God for your united zeal in wielding well the armament of the Immaculate Conception over the enemies of Holy Mother the Church, and over souls. Your love, sacrifice and zeal, in these days of darkness and terror, are truly a beacon of light!
May the Holy Ghost be the very breath of your soul, its invincible Fortitude, essential Purity, supreme Consolation, and the most sweet and tender Delight of your life! May He impart to you that holiness of which He is the Fount! May He give you valiant courage in the face of persecution, strengthen and sustain you in your weakness, and fill you with Sanctifying Grace to lift you above the things of this earth. And, may all these gifts from His Divine Treasury flow with abundance into your soul through the Immaculate Heart of Mary … for this is the Will of God!
The power of the Living Rosary Association is based upon two concrete principles of the spiritual life: charity and unity. These essential Pillars of Fire are without equal. They are gifts of God the Holy Ghost and are His essence. He is the principle of unity of the Church, of Her organization, and of all the gifts conferred upon Her members. God the Holy Ghost is the source and the secret of that "unity of Spirit in the bond of peace" within the Church. The teaching and pronouncements made by Holy Mother the Church are to be received as sacred and canonical, whole and without question, when presented by the Vicar of Christ to the Universal Church for Her edification, Her instruction and Her sanctification.
O Holy Spirit, Soul of my soul, I adore Thee. Enlighten me, guide me, console me and strengthen me! Tell me what I ought to do and give me the grace, wisdom and humility to do it without question. Thou, O Holy Ghost, are the infallible guide of the Catholic Church, unchanging and faithful, to the end of time!
Holy Mother the Church is not an individual but, rather, is a mystical person and Her endowments are derived from the Divine Person of Her Head, Jesus Christ and that Divine Person, God the Holy Ghost, Who is Her Life. She is imperishable, indivisibly one and infallible – both in Her belief and in Her teaching, because the Voice of the Holy Ghost, and His Illumination are immutable. Holy Mother the Church is never on trial or probation; She is never subject to science or reason, nor is She subject to the Age or to the Times. She can never be affected by the frailty or sins of the human will. What the Church was in the beginning, the Church is now, and ever shall be, in all the plentitude of Her Divine endowments, for all the operations of the Holy Spirit are perpetual and absolute.
The voice of the Living Church, in the hour in which She declares what God has revealed, is no other than the voice of the God the Holy Ghost and She, therefore, generates Divine Faith in those who believe. Our Lord has said, “He that heareth you, heareth me!” The Definitions and Decrees of the Pontiffs, speaking ex-cathedra, or as head of the Church and to the whole Church, whether by Bull, or Apostolic Letter, or Encyclical, or Brief to many or to one person, undoubtedly emanate from a Divine Assistance, and are infallible.
Whether the final words of science, speculation or reason ever solve the riddle of the material universe or historical evidence makes no difference to Catholic doctrine. The Judgments of the Lord are true, and are justified in and of themselves: They stand for all time. A Saint is indeed a glorious and sublime being, but Who makes him so? THE HOLY GHOST! To Him, the Saint owes everything. God the Holy Ghost infuses Sanctifying Grace into his soul at Baptism, inundating him with wondrous light, docility, constant self-restraint and courage, distinguishing him as a creature of rare and singular nobility. He communicates strength and fervor to the will of the Saint, and lavishes him/her with the treasures of heroic virtue, miracles and mystic manifestations. The Holy Ghost moves the Church to pronounce Her beatification or solemn canonization upon the Saint in order that He may place His seal upon the glory of His servant.
From the Holy Ghost comes the sudden, inexplicable, and impulsive movement among the faithful to venerate some Saint or other, which is a remote cause in the determination of the Church to raise that Saint to the Altar. From God the Holy Ghost, likewise, proceeds the solemn judgment of the Church, which pronounces officially upon the virtues and merits of the Saint. The judicial decision that the virtues and miracles of this Saint are authentic, and that he is worthy of public veneration, is an infallible utterance of the Vicar of Jesus Christ – in prescribing the veneration of the Saint throughout the whole world, HE CANNOT ERR! Hence, it is God the Holy Ghost Himself Who moves the Pope to pronounce this binding judgment, and it is God the Holy Ghost Who guides his action.
The Vicar of Jesus Christ solemnly raised Saint Philomena to the Altar, bequeathed upon her a proper Office, and crowned her with two jewels of infinite glory: her titles of "Patroness of the Living Rosary" and "Patroness of the Children of Mary". Saint Philomena reigns in power before the throne of God today and forever. The glorious patron of all priests, that indefatigable Confessor Who could, read both hearts and souls, Saint Jean Marie Vianney, tells us clearly: “To Saint Philomena, God will never refuse anything, for she gave herself entirely to God by her virginity and her embrace of a most heroic martyrdom.” He had no hesitation to admit that Saint Philomena obeyed his wishes, for God Himself obeyed him every day at the Holy Altar. We imitate the Saints, and obey the directives of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, in our devotion to this glorious Saint of the catacombs.
We, as members of the Living Rosary, are bound by a special duty to love Saint Philomena, who is our Patroness and Protectress. Pope Gregory XVI, while blessing Ven. Pauline Marie Jaricot, Foundress of the Living Rosary and Propagation of the Faith, spoke these binding words:
“O Powerful St. Philomena, you are the ''Guardian Angel" of the Association, obtain for us the Gifts of the Holy Ghost in order that we will be given the light to know the Will of God, the science of loving Him, the wisdom of discerning what pleases or displeases Him, the fear of saddening Him, and the strength to obey Him. Now, all the Living Rosary is under the patronage of Saint Philomena. Pray to this great Saint, whatever you ask of her, she will obtain for you.”
These are not my words, dear Associates, but the words of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the voice of the Holy Ghost in our regard!
Our Daily Decade, offered fervently and in union with all the members throughout the whole world, will make in our hearts a nest for the Holy Ghost. They will burn like lamps, of which God Himself is the Divine Oil that will never be extinguished. Olive oil is a symbol of intimate union with God, and the peace and charity that should ever possess us. This Divine Oil, with which our souls must be aflame, is to be bought only with the currency of humility and sacrifice – it will never spoil, and will burn always for the glory of God and for our own welfare. Oh, let us enlarge our hearts that the Holy Ghost may fill our entire being, thereby setting it afire and consuming it in His Honor! May we never dim or sully the lamp of our heart by unnecessary contact with the world, through pride or self. We must ever burn with a longing for Heaven, and must be consumed by pure love to sacrifice ourselves for poor sinners!
The very life and death of our holy Foundress, Ven. Pauline Marie Jaricot, was centered in the Cross. Assailed by creditors, by rebuffs, blame and betrayal, by calumny and scorn, her faith was tested, and her virtue refined to purest gold. By her confidence, her spiritual vigor, her gentleness, patience and serene acceptance of all these crosses, she climbed to the center of the Cross, there to descend into the very depths of that Divine Heart pierced for our salvation.
United today in charity, prayer and intention, the Universal Living Rosary fulfills its mission, all our hearts forming but one heart in the Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, thus constituting the Garden of Delight of God the Holy Ghost: His Paradise on earth, filled with purity and love. All virtues should blossom there – fresh and beautiful, sweetly perfumed, and worthy of Him! Lilies of purity, violets of humility, and roses of love must delight the Holy Ghost in this Garden.
O Mary! Most humble Daughter of the Father, most pure Mother of the Son, most faithful Spouse of the Holy Ghost, Sweet Advocate of Sinners, we bend low before thy Immaculate Heart, Tabernacle of the Most Holy Trinity, Seat of Power, Wisdom and Goodness and, by thy hands, offer our hearts to the Holy Ghost, imploring thy help to spread His Kingdom to the whole world!
Dear Associates, do not let your weapons fall into disuse. Do not allow yourself to be lulled into the false sleep of death. In spite of your weakness and your littleness, you must hope against all hope, and never cease to work and pray. Your most generous and persevering efforts to procure the Glory of God will have their effect in time and eternity! Your own burden will become lighter because of our union. According to our faith, we will be given our desire for the conversion of sinners, that the light of faith may penetrate every nation, and every soul.
The hour is late! Make haste to do everything possible to bring about the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary through the Most Holy Rosary, consecrating yourself totally to Her pure and humble Heart, that God's Will may be done, on earth as it is done in Heaven!
Please know that each and every one of you is remembered daily in my prayers and, in your charity, I beg you to remember me in yours.
Patti Melvin, Universal Director
SAINT PHILOMENA, PATRONESS OF THE LIVING ROSARY AND THE CHILDREN OF MARY,
PRAY FOR US WHO HAVE RECOURSE TO THEE!
"May Christian nations seek the protection of the Mother of God with an ardor that grows greater every day! May they cling more and more to the practice of the Holy Rosary, not only as a remedy for their misfortunes, but as the very badge of Christian piety! The Rosary is the protection of the Mother of God against the enemies of the Catholic Church. To Mary, we must fly. We wish to see it offered more widely in all places and at all times! The great Virgin of the Rosary is the most potent Help of Christians." Pope Leo XIII
“One day, through the Rosary and the Scapular,
I will save the world.”
Mother of God to St. Dominic
|
|
|
THE PASSION OF THE INFANT CHILD
"I am the vine, you are its branches; if a man lives in Me and I in him, then he will yield abundant fruit; separated from Me,
you have no power to do anything." (John XV-5)
The countryman is not impatient because the season of flowers and fruit is swiftly over and the winter is long. He knows that the life sleeping in the earth is stronger than anything, which can assail it. The life in all the living is stronger than death. This is the knowledge, which is the root of his peace. If Christ is to come to flower and bear fruit in our individual lives, there must be seasons of rest in which there is almost no activity but the total giving of self to nourish the life within. Hence, there must be a permanent state of inward rest, founded in peace of mind, which comes from COMPLETE TRUST.
Great was the joy of God at the dawn of creation. In His field, He had one little plot apart, lying under the snow where no foot had ever trodden, silent with the silence of snow that no voice had ever broken. In it, He sowed Living Bread. This little plot was OUR LADY. In her was sown the seed of His Son's Life. Christ is the Bread that gives life to the world!
The man who grows wheat has often held that grain of the wheat in his hand, and that grain is the germ of life. He can look around him at his family and see they are truly the children of the field’s wheat and he can know that not only is he their father who gave them life, but also the laboring man who has given them the joy of health in giving his body to the sowing and growing and reaping of their bread. He is not just “earning a living wage" but working for a sacramental life.
God has sown the world with living bread. He has sown the seed of Christ in the Virgin Mother. He is the Father Who has given us life! And Christ, Who is God made Man, is the laborer in the Father's field…
Christ is the Sower Who went out to sow.
He gave His Body to be our bread!
From the moment of His conception, Christ was earning the bread of life for us; in His acceptance of suffering in infancy, in His own necessity, His hunger and thirst, His need for sleep; in the agony before His Passion and in the consummation of His labors on the Cross. Our souls are alive because Christ is within them. Christ's Life in us gives the color and radiance and purpose of Christ to everything that we do. Much more than this, our human relationships with one another are a giving of Christ to one another, and a receiving of Christ from one another. Since Christ has given Himself to us, our lives have the redemptive quality of His Life, and our relationships with one another are a communion in Him.
Everyone who lives the Christ-life and, therefore, loves with the Heart of Christ, is adding Divine Love to the world. This is the only force that can conquer hate. Christ is the good seed with which our humanity is sown! The grain of wheat, which is our Christ-life, must fall into the ground and die, or else it remains but a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it then yields rich fruit. (John XII-24) The seed must be buried in the earth, which is us. The seed is not buried in angels, but in men. Christ was born not because there was joy in the world, but because there was suffering; not to riches, but to poverty; not to satiety, but to hunger and thirst; not to security, but to danger, to exile, to homelessness, to destitution and to Crucifixion! His incarnation in us is in the suffering world as it is; it is not reserved for a Utopia that will never be, nor does it differ from His first coming in Bethlehem. The seed must rest in the earth. We must allow the Christ-life to grow in us in rest. Our whole being must fold upon Christ's rest in us, as the earth folds upon the seed. Our destiny is to live the Christ-life and to increase Christ's Love in the world; to give Christ's Peace to the world. What miserly and contemptible ambitions we have beside this reality!
The ray of the Holy Spirit penetrates us because Christ is in us. The ray of the Holy Spirit is the Fire and Light that penetrates our lives and draws up the seed of Christ from out of our darkness to flower in the Light of God. "Let the Earth be opened and bud forth a Savior!"
The Divine Infancy in us is the logical answer to the peculiar sufferings of our age and the only solution to its problems. It seems that human anguish is a gathering tide ~ a storm rising higher and higher, sweeping its dark waves wider and wider, closer and closer. We feel futile and utterly helpless to do anything to stop it. The only hands that can hold back that storm are the Hands of Christ; and because the storm and waves are driven by sin, only the Hands of Christ on the Cross can heal the world of its sufferings. Christ on the Cross is the oneness of the world. In Him all our individual suffering is integrated into one redeeming act of Love. It is not "WHAT" we suffer that redeems and gives health; It is "WHO" suffers.
What does it matter that we suffer a little or a lot, but that Christ suffer in us. Not that our lives are small or are lived on a heroic scale, but that they are lived by Christ in us. Our way to share in the world's healing, to mitigate the world's suffering, is simply to foster and cherish the Infant Christ in our souls. Herod ordered the children to be killed because he was afraid that one among them might be Christ. Any child might be Christ! The fear of Herod is the FEAR of every tyrant, the HOPE of every Christian, the most significant fact in the modern world!
Not content to be "a" human being, Christ wishes to be "each" human being and is, in fact, born in the soul of everyone who will receive Him; and in each one in whom He lives, whose life He lives, He is loved infinitely by the Father, loved as what He is, the only Son. God looks down on the wreckage and misery ~ the FIASCO, if you like, that we have made of the world and seeing us in the midst of it says, “THIS IS MY WELL-BELOVED SON!" Our life is as precious to God as Christ is precious to God. On each one in whom Jesus Christ lives, the whole of the Infinite Love of God is concentrated at every moment. If only you and I could realize this, there would be no one who could not fulfill the first condition of rest, which is TRUST. Christ came to take the burden of the suffering of the world on His own back. His Love for men not only made Him live as a Man among men, but made Him live the life of every man who allow Him to enter within. Christ does not change. If He lives in us, He does so in order to motivate our lives and our actions by His own Love of God and man.
Satan has not the power to incarnate himself in our nature, to make himself man to be born of woman. He must always work from the outside. He is Hate and Hate cannot incarnate, as Love is incarnate in the world. Hate can, by no means, be born in generation after generation as Love is. It is a tormenting thing, literally the torment of the damned, for Satan is compelled to witness the indwelling of the Divine Love of Jesus Christ in the dust that we are made of, by the fitting mediums of Grace: water and fire, chrism and oil, wine, bread and salt. Mightily, he who is “Lucifer” strains and agonizes to make something equivalent to the sacramental life for himself. This may be why he never tires of tempting us to sins of the flesh; to sloth, gluttony, drunkenness and lust, and most subtly to the pride of life. Through the pitiful, sniveling sins of the flesh, the devil comes as close as he ever can to the forming of his sacramental system; he cannot be a human being with a body of his own; he cannot be born of a woman; he can never become a little child; but that which he cannot be, he can possess! But he cannot breathe life into any substance, or bestow on it the grace to be a channel of life; but his touch can impart the contagion of death. The very sins he uses to abort the incarnation do not give human nature to him, they weaken it in us. They do not make the devil human, but they dehumanize man.
It is to children and the truly childlike that Our Lady has come from Heaven in our own times, and to them she has entrusted her message of penance as man's last hope. If everyone in whom Christ lives at all, in whom He is an Infant and whose soul is alive, would surrender himself to God, resting in Him, that He might rest in them; in each one of them the world's redemption would begin as it began in Mary, the Mother of God. He trusted the expression of His Love to her. He was dumb ~ her voice was His voice. He was blind ~ her eyes were His sight. His Hands were folded; her hands did His work. His life was her life; His heart-beat was the beating of her heart. From the moment when the Christ-life is conceived in us, our life has but ONE single purpose … to express His Love for God and for the world. By allowing the Infant Christ to rest in us, not only does He grow in us but we are also formed into Him.
At His Death as at His Birth, the CIRCUMSTANCES of Christianity were the same as they are today. We hear continually that this is a post-Christian world; that Christianity is over; that it is a failure, that Christ's teaching is impractical. That wherever the Church is powerful, there is corruption and where Christ is, Judas is. There always has been, and there always will be, a bloody hand to take thirty pieces of silver. But why would anyone doubt Christ? He is consistent, He does not change… Christ remains true to every detail of His Sacred Passion and its circumstances. On the night of the very first Good Friday, Christianity looked like a failure: Jerusalem moaned in her sleep, the Apostles fled, Judas hung from a tree, Christ was dead! Christ rested in the tomb. He had done all that He could do and given all that He had to give. He had trusted His Father. He rested ~ darkness in His Eyes, silence in His Ears, peace in His Heart! Contained in the first heartbeat of the Risen Christ is the Resurrection of the world. He rests in our midst now, in the Sacred Host. He is silent, is secret and hidden in the Host now as He was in Advent or in the tomb. He trusts Himself to His creatures in the Host as He trusted Himself to Our Lady in Advent. Then, He gave Himself to one human creature who was sinless and in whom He could have His Will. Now, He gives Himself into the keeping of sinners. In the Host, He is immobile and He is dependent. He rests in the hands of the priest on the paten, in the tabernacle. He remains with us, resting in cities and lonely and unexpected places, little tin churches and great cathedrals, in schools, hospitals, prisons, asylums and in concentration camps. Wherever human creatures are, He rests in their midst.
Just as His sleeping in the boat that was threatened by the storm made His apostles ask Him: “Master art Thou unconcerned, surely we will sink…" Today, if we ask the same question, His reply will always be the same: “Why are you faint-hearted? Have you still no faith?" Christ could show His power and His glory. He could show that the Host is God. He could break down the pride of those who have no fear of God but He does not! While injustice and arrogance exist, He remains silent and helpless, and seems to do nothing at all. It has always been Christ’s way to come first in a hidden way, to be secret even in those in whom He abides. He is to be gradually recognized by His Love, thus quickening His Life within them and, only afterwards, by the force of His Power, by His Word that commands the wind and water.
When the Christ-Child once more reigns, His throne will be His mother's arms. When He is crowned, as one day He will be crowned as King of the Jews in Palestine, He will rule from the arms of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Czechoslovakia, in a golden cape stiff with gems, from the arms of Our Lady of Prague; in Russia, He will lean from the breast of the tenderest of Mothers, Our Lady of Vladimir. In England, He will be enthroned, firm and merry, on the knee of Our Lady of Walsingham! It is no small wonder that in an age which is the age of Redeeming Childhood, Our Lady is becoming more and more loved all over the world. For, there is no one else who can teach us as she can, how to foster the Infant Jesus in our lives.
It is the littleness, the dependence, the trust of human creatures in the Divine Infancy which will give flower to the seed of Everlasting Life. The Host appears to be divided among us; but in reality we, who are divided, are made one in the Host.
The Host is resting among us in order that Christ may work His miracle of His Love in us, changing us almost imperceptibly into Himself… that through us, HIS LOVE may overcome the world!
… By Caryll Houselander
“My Father, I accept everything! May I be condemned but may they be absolved!
May I die but may they live!
Fiat Voluntas Tua!
|
|
|
