‘St Ignatius, who died on the last day of July, nearly 400 years ago, was described by John Wesley “as surely one of the greatest men that ever was engaged in the support of so bad a cause”. John Wesley was exactly wrong. He thought to defend the founder of the Jesuits from the charge of enthusiasm by representing him as a cool, long-headed businessman. But an enthusiast was just what St Ignatius was. He was full of that fire which never says, “It is enough”.
 
Read his early history, and you find nothing there of the great organiser. All his great schemes for going out and converting the Sultan (copied from St Francis) came to nothing. All his early disciples left him: thou could a people raise, but could not rule, seemed to be his destined epitaph. In a sense, it was the enormous vagueness of his plans that saved the situation; just because he had no blueprint ready formed in his mind of what the Company of Jesus was to be like, the Company of Jesus proved to be exactly what was wanted.
 
If, during the last years of his life, he became the ruler of a world-wide Society, that was because he was a good enough Jesuit to accept the uncongenial task. The real charter which he left to his Society was not any set of rules. It was a set of meditations, chiefly on the following of Christ, which he composed when he was living as a hermit in the cave of Manresa. All that mattered was seeing the love of God as insatiable.
 
We live in times when great importance is attached to planning, and Christian people are apt to catch the infection from their surroundings. We must revise, we must reorganise, we must have a plan or we are lost! But I don’t think St Ignatius would encourage us to echo that cry. Rather, he would find fault with our half-heartedness - ready to believe, to do, to spend just so much and no more. But the fire never has enough’.

Mgr Ronald Knox, 1888-1957

Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as thou deservest, ​to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labour and not to ask for any reward; except that of knowing that we do thy will. Amen. - ​St Ignatius of Loyola, 1491-1556

‘Why do you ask how you were created and do not seek to know why you were made?
 
Was not this entire visible universe made for your dwelling? It was for you that the light dispelled the overshadowing gloom; for your sake was the night regulated and the day measured, and for you were the heavens embellished with varying brilliance of the sun, the moon and the stars. The earth was adorned with flowers, groves and fruit; and the constant marvellous variety of lovely living things was created in the air, the fields, and the seas for you, lest sad solitude destroy the joy of God’s new creation.
 
And the Creator still works to devise things that can add to your glory. He has made you in his image that you might in your person make the invisible Creator present on earth; he has made you his legate, so that the vast empire of the world might have the Lord’s representative. Then in his mercy God assumed what he made in you; he wanted now to be truly manifest in man, just as he had wished to be revealed in man as in an image. Now he would be in reality what he had submitted to be in symbol.

​And so Christ is born that by his birth he might restore our nature. He became a child, was fed, and grew that he might inaugurate the one perfect age to remain forever as he created it. He supports man that man might no longer fall. And the creature he had formed of earth he now makes heavenly; and what he had endowed with a human soul he now vivifies to become a heavenly spirit. In this way he fully raised man to God, and left in him neither sin, nor death, nor travail, nor pain, nor anything earthly, with the grace of our Lord Christ Jesus, who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, now and for ever, for all the ages of eternity. Amen’.

St Peter Chrysologus, c.380-450

‘Can anything be better than to have a “nice disposition”? Not to be sulky, or bad-tempered, or proud, or arrogant: to be biddable, clubbable, imperturbable; to be ready with employers, easy with friends, and affable with those of less degree; and to be all these things not by constant effort but with the ease of a natural manner, just because we really are like that. Surely there are not many of us who would not like to be just that kind of person.

Then why aren’t we? Is is that we were not born that way? Or is it that we don't take the trouble to be nice to people? Anyway, we must feel that the desired disposition can be acquired, or we should not pray, “Grant us the spirit to think and do always such things as be rightful”.

It may be that “disposition” implies something that lies behind actual thoughts. It is the whole set or trend of the mind, and people are prone to display one kind of attitude or another from birth, just as in the horticultural field some beans are by nature tall and some short. 

​If that is so, then the prayer is that any deficiencies in our natural disposition may not be allowed to affect our actual thoughts, much less our actions. Even if we cannot prevent wrong thoughts arising in our minds, we pray to have the wit and wisdom to turn from them and to give ourselves to the thought of something good and lovely and of present usefulness.

...We may recognise only too well that we ourselves do not naturally display that lightness and cheerfulness of disposition. Even to ourselves we seem much heavier on hand than that implies. We are dull, lethargic, apathetic, naturally disposed to see the dark side and to find something to grumble at. If we ever show any quickness of emotion it is likely to be anger. 

Of course we can’t change ourselves. We can’t jump off our own shadow. But what we cannot do, God can. We need a complete change of nature, and God can give it to us. As St Paul says, we really may become new creatures, a new creation. “We, who cannot do anything that is good without thee, may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will”’.

from Reflections on the Collects, 1964
by William Wand KCVO, 1885-1977 (Bishop of London 1945-1955)

O Blessed Virgin Mary, who can worthily repay thee thy just dues of praise and thanksgiving, thou who by the wondrous assent of thy will didst rescue a fallen world? What songs of praise can our weak human nature recite in thy honour, since it is by thy intervention alone that it has found the way to restoration. Accept, then, such poor thanks as we have here to offer, though they be unequal to thy merits; and receiving our vows, obtain by thy prayers the remission of our offences. Carry thou our prayers within the sanctuary of the heavenly audience, and bring forth from it the antidote of our reconciliation. May the sins we bring before Almighty God through thee, become pardonable through thee; may what we ask for with sure confidence, through thee be granted. Take our offering, grant us our requests, obtain pardon for what we fear, for thou art the sole hope of sinners. Through thee we hope for the remission of our sins, and in thee, O blessed Lady, is our hope of reward. Holy Mary, succour the miserable, help the fainthearted, comfort the sorrowful, pray for thy people, plead for the clergy, intercede for all women consecrated to God; may all who keep thy holy commemoration feel now thy help and protection. Be thou ever ready to assist us when we pray, and bring back to us the answers to our prayers. Make it thy continual care to pray for the people of God, thou who, blessed by God, didst merit to bear the Redeemer of the world, who liveth and reigneth, world without end. Amen.

St Augustine of Hippo, 354-430

Bangor Antiphony, 7th century, translated by Fr Adrian Fortescue, 1874-1923

‘The wife and mother is indeed like the sun shining in the family. She shines by her generosity and the way she gives herself to others. She shines by her alertness and watchfulness and by her wise and gentle providing of all that can give joy to her husband and children. She radiates light and warmth.
 
A marriage will prosper if each partner goes into it not for his own happiness but the other’s happiness – but although it belongs to both partners, this emotion, this goal is particularly a quality of the woman. Her very nature as a mother entails it. Her wisdom and prudence mean that even if she encounters troubles she will respond to them with joy; if she is belittled, she will respond with unaltered dignity and respect. She is like the sun that brightens a cloudy morning with the dawn; the sun that illuminates the shower-clouds at dusk.
 
The wife is like the sun shining in the family with the brightness of her glance and the ardour of her speech. Her looks and words enter into the souls of her family, softening them, touching them, raising them up from the tumult of emotion. They recall her husband to joy in good things and delight in family life after his uninterrupted and often heavy work of the day, whether in an office, in the fields, in trade or in industry.
​
The wife is like the sun shining in the family by her unforced, transparent sincerity, by her simple dignity, by her decent Christian behaviour; by her inward thoughts and her upright heart; and also by the appropriateness of her dress and bearing, adorned by her open and honest way of life. Subtle signs of feeling, shades of expression, silences and unmalicious smiles, little nods of approval – all these give her the grace of an exquisite but simple flower opening its petals to reflect the colours of sunlight.
 
If only you could know the full depth of the feelings of love and gratitude that such a perfect wife and mother inspires in her husband and children!’

Venerable Pope Pius XII

‘These two great saints of God, James and his brother John, were human, and had their weaknesses, but they had also their splendour. When they were asked if they were able to drink of this cup and be baptised with this baptism, there was something magnificent in their answer, “We are able”. Our Lord, looking at them with love, and perhaps ineffable sadness, said, “Ye shall”. As they stood by His side in the splendour of their young manhood they little dreamed of the things that life would bring them. They had to see Jesus dying on the Cross; there came a day when James was thrown into prison and knew that on the morrow the sword of the executioner would fall on him; John had to live through years of exile. But we know how in those two splendid men it was fulfilled that they were able to drink of the cup their Lord drank of and glorify God.

There is a time when our religion seems a completely thrilling thing, that no power could ever defeat. That is what James and John had known. But the same Lord Who has opened to us the splendour and reality of spiritual things, will surely ask us one day if we can drink a cup and bear a baptism which will be for us our own particular share in His Passion. That day, when it comes, will be the supreme opportunity of our religion and will bring its own grace with it. We shall be able to drink of that cup, and give Him glory in the day of trial’.

from Meditations for Every Day by Father Andrew SDC, 1869-1946

Festivis resonent compita vocibus

Now let our streets resound with vocal melody,
Now let each countenance shine clear with holy joy;
Raise high the torches bright, lighting our festal way,
As young and old in order go.

Yet while we sing with joy, spare not due meed of tears,
Mindful of him who died, hanged on the bitter tree,
And for the race of men, fallen from first estate,
From many a wound his blood outpoured.

​From the first Adam's sin in Eden long ago
Death’s heavy penalty hung over all mankind;
Now by his life and death our second Adam gives
Life to a fallen race once more.

Since through the highest heaven the Father on his throne
Heard the strong cry that broke from his own dying Son,
Our debt is paid in full by the Redeemer’s blood,
Pardon complete for sin is won.

Henceforth who in that blood washeth his soilèd robes,
Cleansèd from every stain, and like the Angel-hosts
Standing before the King in roseate beauty clad,
Finds grace and favour in his sight.

Therefore let Christian men press on to reach the goal,
Scorning to turn aside from the strait path of life;
Bountiful gifts of grace God gives along the way,
And at the end a glorious prize.

Grant of thy grace and power, Father who rulest all,
That we, whom thou hast bought with thy Son’s precious blood,
And by thy Spirit’s breath dost day by day renew,
May to the crown of heaven attain.

Hymn appointed for the Precious Blood, July 1st
The English Catholic Hymn Book no.829

from The Prayers of Saint Brigid of Sweden

O Jesus! Inexhaustible Fountain of compassion,
Who in a profound gesture of love
Cried from the Cross ‘I thirst’,
Suffering there the thirst for the salvation of the human race.
I beg of Thee, my Saviour,
Inflame within our hearts a yearning towards perfection in all we do,
And extinguish in us the fire of concupiscence
And the passion of earthly desires. Amen.

O Jesus! Strong Lion, Immortal and Invincible King,
Remember the pain which Thou didst endure
When all the strength of Thy body and mind was utterly spent,
Thou didst bow Thy Head and say
‘It is finished!’
Through this anguish and grief, I beg of Thee, Lord Jesus,
Have mercy on me in the hour of my death,
When my mind will be in turmoil
​And my soul in anguish. Amen.

See the dust on the path lamely dragging:
No, let her be, Mary moves towards her peace,
Deep calls unto deep, a grave for a grave,
A carcass drawing towards a carcass in that unhappy morning;
Three days was this one in a grave, in a world that died
In the cry in the afternoon. It is finished,
The cry that drew blood from her like the barb of a sword.

See her, Christ’s Niobe, drawing with her towards the hill
The rock of her pain from the leaden Easter
Through the dark dawn, through the cold dew, through the heavy dust,
To the place where there is a stone that is heavier than her torn heart;
Uneasily the awkward feet find their way over thorns
With the annoyance of tears doubling the mist before her,
And her hands reaching out to him in barren grief.

Her moan is as monotonous as a dove’s,
Like Orpheus mourning Eurydice
She stands amongst the roses and cries without mourning
‘They have taken away my Lord, taken him away’,
To disciple and angel the same cry
‘And I know not where they have laid him’.
And to the gardener the same frenzy.

Made wild. Broken. She sank within herself in her grief.
The understanding reels and reason’s out of joint, until
He comes and snatches her out of the body to crown her -
Quickly like an Alpine eagle falling on its prey -
With the love that moves the stars, the power that is a Word
To raise up and make alive: ‘and he said unto her, Mary,
She turned herself and said unto him, Rabboni’.

Saunders Lewis, 1893-1985

‘As a theologian steeped in Sacred Scripture and in the Fathers of the Church, [Lawrence was]… able to illustrate Catholic doctrine in an exemplary manner to Christians who, especially in Germany, had adhered to the Reformation. With his calm, clear exposition he demonstrated the biblical and patristic foundation of all the articles of faith disputed by Martin Luther. These included the primacy of St Peter and of his Successors, the divine origin of the Episcopate, justification as an inner transformation of man, and the need to do good works for salvation.
 
Lawrence’s success helps us to realise that today too, in pursuing ecumenical dialogue with such great hope, the reference to Sacred Scripture, interpreted in accordance with the Tradition of the Church, is an indispensable element of fundamental importance.
 
…Even the simplest members of the faithful, those not endowed with great culture, benefited from the convincing words of Lawrence, who addressed humble people to remind them all to make their lives consistent with the faith they professed. 
 
This was a great merit of the Capuchins and of other religious Orders which, in the 16th and 17th centuries, contributed to the renewal of Christian life, penetrating the depths of society with their witness of life and their teaching. Today too, the new evangelisation stands in need of well-trained apostles, zealous and courageous, so that the light and beauty of the Gospel may prevail over the cultural tendencies of ethical relativism and religious indifference and transform the various ways of thinking and acting into genuine Christian humanism. 
 
It is surprising that St Lawrence of Brindisi was able to continue without interruption his work as an appreciated and unflagging preacher in many cities of Italy and in different countries, in spite of holding other burdensome offices of great responsibility. 
 
Indeed, within the Order of Capuchins he was professor of theology, novice master, for several mandates minister provincial and definitor general, and finally, from 1602 to 1605, minister general.
 
In the midst of this mountain of work, Lawrence cultivated an exceptionally fervent spiritual life. He devoted much time to prayer and, especially, to the celebration of Holy Mass — often protracted for hours — caught up in and moved by the memorial of the Passion, death and Resurrection of the Lord. 
 
At the school of the saints, every priest, as was emphasised frequently during the recent Year for Priests, may only avoid the danger of activism — acting, that is, without remembering the profound motives of his ministry — if he attends to his own inner life’.

​Pope Benedict XVI

‘This same day [20 July] brings before us a rival of the warrior-martyr, St George: Margaret, like him victorious over the dragon, and like him called in the Menaea of the Greeks, the Great Martyr. The cross was her weapon; and, like the soldier, the virgin, too, consummated her trial in her blood. They were equally renowned in those chivalrous times when valour and faith fought hand in hand for Christ beneath the standard of the saints. So early as the seventh century our Western island rivalled the East in honouring the pearl drawn from the abyss of infidelity. Before the disastrous schism brought about by Henry VIII, the Island of Saints celebrated this feast as a double of the second class; women alone were obliged to rest from servile work in gratitude for the protection afforded them by St Margaret at the moment of childbirth — a favour which ranked her among the saints called in the Middle Ages auxiliaries or helpers. But it was not in England alone that Margaret was invoked, as history proves by the many and illustrious persons of all countries who have borne her blessed name’.

from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger OSB, 1805-1875

Holy Jesus! God of Love!
Look with pity from above,
Shed the precious purple tide
From thine hands, thy feet, thy side,
Let thy streams of comfort roll, 
Let them please and fill my soul.
Let me thus for ever be
Full of gladness, full of thee,
This for which my wishes pine
Is the cup of love divine,
Sweet affections flow from hence,
Sweet above the joys of sense;
Blessed Philtre! how we find
Its sacred worships, how the mind
Of all the world forgetful grown,
Can despise an earthly throne,
Raise its thoughts to Realms above,
Think of God, and sing of love.

​Love Celestial, wond’rous heat
O beyond expression great!
What resistless charms were thine
In thy good thy best design!
When God was hated, Sin obey’d,
And man undone without thy aid.
From the seats of endless peace
They brought the son, the Lord of grace,
They taught him to receive a birth,
To cloath in flesh, to live on earth,
And after lifted him on high,
And taught him on the Cross to die.

​Love Celestial ardent fire,
O extreme of sweet desire!
Spread thy brightly raging flame
Thro’ and over all my frame;
Let it warm me let it burn,
Let my corps to ashes turn,
And might thy flame thus act with me
To set the soul from body free,
I next wou’d use thy wings and fly
To meet my Jesus in the sky. ​

​Thomas Parnell, 1679-1718

‘Sweet Jesus, in my imagination I will prostrate myself on the soil, and lower still if I can manage, because I am the perpetrator and the criminal in [all your] painful death. I want to embrace the foot of the cross, prostrate on the ground... Like this I will lie here to catch some of your blood, sweet Jesu; I will not stir from here until I am marked with your precious blood as one of your own (flock), and my soul is softened in that pleasant bath; and in this way it may come about, sweet Jesu, that it may open my hard heart, which now is as hard as stone, to make it soft, to make what was dead in sin spring to life for your sake through the special influence (of your blood). Sweet Jesus, your precious passion raised up dead men out of their graves, it opened heaven, shattered the gates of hell, the earth trembled at it, and the sun lost its light... Come then, sweet Jesu, as it's your wish, and set alight a tiny spark of love within my soul, as you best know how, a touch of compassion for your suffering, from which my heart can be set ablaze and I can be brought to life through it, until I would be aflame with your love above everything else; and lave me in your blood so that I may forget all the prosperity of the world, and all physical attractions’.

from The Longer Meditations on the Passion by ​Richard Rolle, 1290-1345

In addition to being the memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, today is also the memorial of Saint Osmund, a Norman nobleman and cleric who arrived on English shores with William the Conqueror. In 1070 Osmund was appointed Lord Chancellor of England and, eight years later, consecrated as the second Bishop of Salisbury. It was during his episcopate that the first cathedral, at Old Sarum, was founded and consecrated in 1092. St Osmund was also one of the Chief Commissioners of the Domesday Book, and the progenitor of what became known as the Sarum Use. A century and a half later, after his death in 1099, his successor, Bishop Richard Poore, the founder of the present-day Salisbury Cathedral on its new site, compiled ‘The Register of Saint Osmund’, a work that ‘describes the {principal} persons and their duties; and the privileges and the customs by which Salisbury Cathedral is organised and governed according to the institution of Osmund of blessed memory, founder and bishop of the same’. 

The following is taken from the Customary, found within the Register, which deals that that perennially thorny topic - the ‘ordering of clerics’! 

‘THE ORDERING OF THE CLERICS IN CHAPTER
 
32.1. Now the clerics should sit in chapter in the following order: nearest the bishop on the right-hand side should sit the dean, then the chancellor, the Archdeacon of Dorset, {one} Archdeacon of Wiltshire and then the subdean. On the left of the bishop sit the precentor, treasurer, Archdeacon of Berkshire, then the {other} Archdeacon of Wiltshire, then the succentor: and the canon priests should sit next to these persons; then the canon deacons, then the subdeacons on either side; then the priest vicars, after which come the rest of the vicars from the upper step; then the canons from the second form, then the deacons, the subdeacons and the clerics of minor orders from the same form: and the boys, whether they be canons or not, should stand before the others in the space on each side of the pulpit, arranged in their order.
 
32.2. First, a boy should read, in a surplice, the lesson from the Martyrology without Jube domine or Tu autem. When the lesson is finished, he should announce the obits (if there are any). And if there are obits announced, the priest should stand behind the reader and reply: Anime eorum et anime omnium fidelium defunctorum per dei misericordiam in pace requiescant. The choir should respond Amen, then the priest should say Preciosa est in conspectu domini and the rest of the words pertinent to that hour. When this is finished, the boy reader starts another lesson with Jube domine, and finishes with Tu autem. And the priest, after having performed a blessing on the lesson, should return to his place; and the boy, having finished the lesson, should come down from the pulpit and read the roster’.

​The Seventh Sunday after Trinity from The Christian Year, 1827
by ​John Keble, 1792-1866

‘[Saint Camillus] made many mistakes; for years he was compelled to grope about; feeling his way, not knowing where he would end, perhaps not altogether caring. Still, during those years of groping it is clear that his willpower was being strengthened every day. It is not a little significant that whereas at the age of twenty-three he had not the will to resist a fellow-tramp, when he was thirty he could hold his own conviction against even a St Philip Neri.

Once this willpower had been gained the rest of the growth of Camillus is comparatively easy to explain. He was a soldier by profession, for whom life had no surprises, to whom no degree of degradation came as a shock; he had gone through the worst and he knew. But he also knew that however low a man may fall he remains still a man; when he himself had been at his lowest he had never quite lost the memory of better things, nor the vague desire that he might be other than he was. From his own experience he was sure that the most wretched of men was more to be pitied than to be condemned; and if to be pitied, then to be helped if that was possible. With this knowledge, burnt into his soul during ten bitter years, and with the will now developed to act, the hero latent in Camillus began to appear. Nothing could stop him; not the anxious warning of a saint, not the discouragement of religious superiors, not the appeals of seculars who bade him be content with the good he was doing, not his own want of education, which seemed to exclude all possibility of the priesthood, not his naturally passionate nature, signs of which are manifest in him to the end. Like other saints, he began with nothing; as with them, the bread he gave multiplied within his hands; even more than has been the case with most saints, the stream he has set flowing has not been confined within the limits of a religious Order, but has overflowed its banks, and has materially affected the whole of our civilisation.

Such has been the working of the grace of God in and through Camillus de Lellis, the trooper, the tramp. He founded his Congregation, and it was approved, in 1586, when he was thirty-six years of age. It was raised to the rank of an Order in 1591, and Camillus was appointed its first General. He held that office till 1607, when he persuaded his brethren, and the ecclesiastical authorities, to allow him to resign. He lived for seven years more, a humble subject in the Order which he himself had founded and, as is not uncommon in the lives of saints, if we may judge from certain signs, they were not the happiest years of his life. In 1613 it became evident to himself and to his brethren that he could not live much longer, and at his own request he was taken to Rome, that he might die in the Holy City.

But his preparation for death was characteristic of his life; so long as he could drag himself about he could not be kept from visiting the hospitals. When he could no longer go out, he still continued to visit the sick in his own house; and when that became impossible, then he set himself to writing many letters, to the many in the world who had helped him with their alms, and to his own brethren, that they might continue the good work. For himself, he did not forget what he had been. “I beseech you on my knees to pray for me”, he said to the General of the Carmelites, who visited him on his death-bed, “for I have been a great sinner, a gambler, and a man of bad life”.

As his mind began to wander it always went in the direction of God's mercy; he seemed never to tire of thanking Him for all He had done, through the merits of the Precious Blood of Christ. At length the end came. He stretched out his arms in the form of a cross, pronounced again his thanksgiving for the Blood of Christ, and died’.

from Saints for Sinners, 1930, by Archbishop Alban Goodier SJ, 1869-1939

‘All laud, honour, glory, and thanks be given to thee, O Lord Jesu Christ, for the sacred wound of thy right hand. For this holy wound sake forgive all such offences as I have committed by my five senses, and remit also all such things as I have displeased thee, in thought, word, and deed, in negligence when I served thee, in sinful delectations, whether the same was in sleep, or when I waked, wittingly or ignorantly. And for thy blessed passion sake, give me thy grace to remember as I should do thy holy death and blessed wounds, utterly to mortify my body and to give thee thanks. Amen. 

Laud, honour, glory, and thanks be to thee, most sweet Jesu, for the sacred wound of thy left hand. For the same holy wound sake, be merciful to me, and vouchsafe to change in me whatsoever is displeasant unto thee: give me victory, against all my spiteful enemies and let me by thy grace subdue them all for thy bitter passion sake, deliver me from all perils both in this life & in the life to come and make me worthy of thy grace in thy heavenly country. Amen. 

Laud, honour, glory, and thanks be to thee, most gracious Jesu, for the sacred wound of thy right foot. For this holy wound sake grant that I may do worthy penance for my sins. And I most humbly beseech thee for thy holy death sake, that thou keep me thy servant both day and night in thy grace and favour: deliver me from all misery both of body and soul: take my soul to thy protection and tuition at the dreadful judgement day: and bring it to thy celestial joys. Amen. 

Laud, honour, glory, and thanks be given to thee, good Jesu, for the sacred wound of thy left foot. For this holy wound sake give me pardon and full remission of my sins, that being protected by thee I may deserve to escape the rigour of thy judgement. And for thy holy death sake I beseech thee most merciful Jesu that before my soul part from my body, I may worthily receive the sacrament of thy most holy body and blood, with unfeigned contrition of heart, sincere confession of my sins, perfect penance, with purity of mind and body: And being comforted with Avail, may come to everlasting salvation. Amen. 

Laud, honour, glory and thanks be to thee, most benign Jesu, for the sacred wound of thy blessed side. For this holy wound sake, and for thy infinite mercy sake, which thou showed us, when thy side was pierced with the spear I beseech thee my saviour Jesu that as thou hast cleansed me by Baptism from original sin: so likewise by thy precious blood, which was now at this time both offered and received, all the world over, thou wilt deliver me from all perils, both such as are past, and present, or to come: And for thy holy death sake, give me a right faith, a sure hope, and perfect charity, that I may love thee, with all my heart and all my strength. 

Strengthen me in all good works, and give me grace strongly to continue thy servant to the end: that I may both here and in the life to come, please thee. Amen.

Imprint Lord Jesus Christ thy holy wounds in my heart: and moisten my soul with thy holy blood: that whether so ever I turn I may ever see thee crucified before me: and that whatsoever I cast my eye upon, it may seem to me besprinkled with thy holy blood: and that I may being thus wholly directed to thee, may behold nothing but only thee: who livest with thy Father and the Holy Ghost forever. Amen’.

from Certayne devout Meditations very necessary for Christian men devoutly to meditate upon Morninge and Eveninge, every day in the weeke: Concerning Christ his lyfe and Passion, and the fruites thereof, Anon, c.1576

‘The first degree of humility is obedience without delay. This is the virtue of those who hold nothing dearer to them than Christ; who, because of the holy service they have professed, and the fear of hell, and the glory of life everlasting, as soon as anything has been ordered by the Superior, receive it as a divine command and cannot suffer any delay in executing it. Of these the Lord says, “As soon as he heard, he obeyed Me” (Ps. 17[18]:45). And again to teachers He says, “He who hears you, hears Me” (Luke 10:16). 
 
Such as these, therefore, immediately leaving their own affairs and forsaking their own will, dropping the work they were engaged on and leaving it unfinished, with the ready step of obedience follow up with their deeds the voice of him who commands. And so as it were at the same moment the master's command is given and the disciple's work is completed, the two things being speedily accomplished together in the swiftness of the fear of God by those who are moved with the desire of attaining life everlasting. That desire is their motive for choosing the narrow way, of which the Lord says, “Narrow is the way that leads to life” (Matt. 7:14), so that, not living according to their own choice nor obeying their own desires and pleasures but walking by another's judgement and command, they dwell in monasteries and desire to have an Abbot over them. Assuredly such as these are living up to that maxim of the Lord in which He says, “I have come not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me” (John 6:38).
 
But this very obedience will be acceptable to God and pleasing to all only if what is commanded is done without hesitation, delay, lukewarmness, grumbling, or objection. For the obedience given to Superiors is given to God, since He Himself has said, “He who hears you, hears Me” (Luke 10:16). And the disciples should offer their obedience with a good will, for “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7). For if the disciple obeys with an ill will and murmurs, not necessarily with his lips but simply in his heart, then even though he fulfil the command yet his work will not be acceptable to God, who sees that his heart is murmuring. And, far from gaining a reward for such work as this, he will incur the punishment due to murmurers, unless he amend and make satisfaction’.

from The Rule of St Benedict, Chapter V: On Obedience by  St Benedict of Nursia, c.480-550

​In the Calendar of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter today is the memorial of Our Lady of the Atonement. It is an observance rich in significance for the Ordinariate in North America since Our Lady, under this title, is the patroness of the first Pastoral Provision parish within the United States, Our Lady of the Atonement, in Texas, established in 1983 under the care of Fr Christopher Phillips.

The Pastoral Provision is essentially the precursor to the Ordinariate in the United States and Canada, provided for by Pope St John Paul II in 1981 to allow for the establishment of personal parishes, the ordaining of Anglican priests to the Catholic priesthood, and the retention of elements of Anglican liturgical practice, in a form which later came to be known as the ‘Anglican Use’. Last year the Vatican determined that those remaining parishes of the Pastoral Provision that had not yet entered into the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter were to be transferred to its jurisdiction. It was at this time that Our Lady of the Atonement entered the fold. 

​​The devotion of Our Lady of the Atonement has its roots in the life and work of an Anglo-Papalist priest, Lewis Wattson. In 1899 Wattson, together with a small group of Anglican nuns, founded the Society of the Atonement, referencing Romans 5:11 (“We also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement”), and professed religious vows, with Wattson taking the name Paul James Francis. From its foundation the Society, though a part of the Episcopal Church of the United States, promoted corporate reunion with the Holy See and the primacy of the Roman Pontiff. Ten years later, in 1909, the Society - seventeen members strong - realised this goal for themselves with their own corporate reception into the Catholic Church. The process of canonisation for Father Paul, now Servant of God, was opened by Cardinal Dolan in 2015.

​​Within the Catholic Church the Society soon flourished - and flourishes still. Ten years after their reception into the Church the title ‘Our Lady of the Atonement’ was approved formally by Pope Benedict XV, with today’s feast day being approved by the Holy See in 1946. Given the roots of the devotion it was fitting that Father Phillips and his former Anglican community, now reconciled with the Holy See, should choose to dedicate themselves to Our Lady under this venerable title that is so expressive of that heartfelt desire - of Christ Himself - for his followers to be one with one another in Him. As Father Paul once said: “When we, therefore, give to our Blessed Mother the title of ‘Our Lady of the Atonement’, we mean ‘Our Lady of Unity’”. Father Paul’s prayers, together with those of Our Lady, have certainly sustained the steady growth of her parish in San Antonio over the past thirty-five years, as it has sought to share the treasures of the Anglican patrimony within the Catholic Church as a way of fulfilling Our Lord's prayer that “they may be one”.  

'[Our Lady] is necessarily “of the Atonement” since it was the will of God that she play a necessary part in the atonement or redemption. This is not to say that without her man would have remained unredeemed but that God’s plan gave her a large share in the redemptive work. When we address the Blessed Mother, as “of the Atonement”, we mean then, that there is some very close bond between the atonement and her, that she belongs to the atonement and the atonement to her. Mary, although her part is in no way similar in nature to that of her divine Son’s, cooperated with Jesus Christ, as no other creature did, in his work of reconciling man with God.

Her claim to this high title rests most solidly on the fact that she consented to become, and became the mother of the Redeemer; that she suffered with Jesus during the passion; and that all graces merited for mankind by Christ have come to us through Mary’.

Fr Paul of Graymoor, Servant of God, 1863-1940

Hymn

At morn - at noon - at twilight dim -
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and woe - in good and ill -
Mother of God, be with me still!
When the hours flew brightly by,
And not a cloud obscured the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee;
Now, when storms of Fate o’ercast
Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my Future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine!

Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849

‘A hundred years ago, on 6 July 1902, Maria Goretti died in the hospital at Nettuno, brutally stabbed the day before in the little village of Le Ferriere, in the Pontine Marshes. Her spiritual life, the strength of her faith, her ability to forgive her murderer have placed her among the best-loved saints of the 20th century.

St Maria Goretti was a girl whom God’s Spirit endowed with the courage to stay faithful to her Christian vocation even to the point of making the supreme sacrifice of her life. Her tender age, her lack of education and the poverty of the environment in which she lived did not prevent grace from working its miracles in her. Indeed, it was precisely in these conditions that God’s special love for the lowly appeared. We are reminded of the words with which Jesus blesses the heavenly Father for revealing himself to children and the simple, rather than to the wise and learned of the world (cf. Mt 11,25). 

It was rightly observed that St Maria Goretti’s martyrdom heralded what was to be known as the century of martyrs. It was in this perspective that at the end of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, I stressed that “this lively sense of repentance... has not prevented us from giving glory to the Lord for what he has done in every century, and in particular during the century which we have just left behind, by granting his Church a great host of saints and martyrs” (Novo Millennio ineunte, 7). 

In the homily for her canonisation, Pope Pius XII of venerable memory pointed to Maria Goretti as “the sweet little martyr of purity”, because she did not break God's commandment in spite of being threatened by death. 

What a shining example for young people! The non-committal mindset of much of our society and culture today sometimes has a struggle to understand the beauty and value of chastity. A high and noble perception of dignity, her own and that of others emerges from the behaviour of this young saint, was mirrored in her daily choices, giving them the fulness of human meaning. Is not there a very timely lesson in this? In a culture that idolises the physical aspect of the relations between a man and a woman, the Church continues to defend and to champion the value of sexuality as a factor that involves every aspect of the person and must therefore be lived with an interior attitude of freedom and reciprocal respect, in the light of God’s original plan. With this outlook, a person discovers he or she is being given a gift and is called, in turn, to be a gift to the other. 

It cannot be denied that today the threats to the unity and stability of the family are many. However, at the same time there is a renewed awareness of the child's right to be raised in love, protected from every kind of danger and educated so as to be able to set out in life with confidence and fortitude. 

Those who were acquainted with little Maria said on the day of her funeral: “A saint has died!”. The devotion to her has continued to spread on every continent, giving rise to admiration and a thirst for God everywhere. In Maria Goretti shines out the radical choice of the Gospel, unhindered, indeed strengthened by the inevitable sacrifice that faithful adherence to Christ demands'.

from a message to the Bishop of Albano on the centenary of the death of St Maria Goretti, 6 July 2002
by Pope St John Paul II, 1920-2005