‘Sylvester I reigned as Pope from 314 to 335, succeeding Pope Melchiades. Because of his banishment to Mount Soracte, he was considered a “confessor” and counted among the martyrs. During his pontificate the Church began to come out of the darkness of the catacombs. He was a friend of Emperor Constantine, confirmed the first General Council of Nice (325), gave the Church a new discipline for the new era of peace. He might be called the first “peace Pope” after centuries of bloody persecution. A series of illustrious basilicas were erected during his reign (Lateran, St Peter’s, St Paul’s).

Numerous legends dramatise his life and work, e.g., how he freed Constantine from leprosy by baptism; how he killed a ferocious dragon that was contaminating the air with his poisonous breath. Such legends were meant to portray the effects of baptism and Christianity’s triumph over idolatry. For a long time the feast of St Sylvester was a holyday of obligation. The Divine Office notes: He called the weekdays ferias, because for the Christian every day is a “free day” (the term is still in use; thus Monday is feria secunda)’.

​from The Church’s Year of Grace, 1953, by Pius Parsch, 1884-1954

Today, in the Calendar of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, is the Feast of Saint Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his martyrdom on this day in 1170 whilst on his way to Vespers. Saint Thomas is the Patron of the pastoral clergy in England and Wales. The above photographs were taken in May 2015 during a parish pilgrimage to Canterbury, where I was privileged to be able to offer Mass according to Divine Worship: The Missal in the Chapel of All Saints at Canterbury Cathedral. Saint Thomas Becket, pray for the clergy.

The Archbishop preaches in the Cathedral on Christmas morning 1170.

‘“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men”. ​The fourteenth verse of the second chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke.
 
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
 
Dear children of God, my sermon this morning will be a very short one. I wish only that you should ponder and meditate the deep meaning and mystery of our masses of Christmas Day. For whenever Mass is said, we re-enact the Passion and Death of Our Lord; and on this Christmas Day we do this in celebration of His Birth. So that at the same moment we rejoice in His coming for the salvation of men, and offer again to God His Body and Blood in sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. It was in this same night that has just passed, that a multitude of the heavenly host appeared before the shepherds at Bethlehem, saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men’; at this same time of all the year that we celebrate at once the Birth of Our Lord and His Passion and Death upon the Cross. Beloved, as the World sees, this is to behave in a strange fashion. For who in the World will both mourn and rejoice at once and for the same reason? For either joy will be overborne by mourning, or mourning will be cast out by joy; so it is only in these our Christian mysteries that we can rejoice and mourn at once for the same reason. But think for a while on the meaning of this word ‘peace’. Does it seem strange to you that the angels should have announced Peace, when ceaselessly the world has been stricken with War and the fear of War? Does it seem to you that the angelic voices were mistaken, and that the promise was a disappointment and a cheat?

Reflect now, how Our Lord Himself spoke of Peace. He said to His disciples ‘My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you’. Did He mean peace as we think of it: the kingdom of England at peace with its neighbours, the barons at peace with the King, the householder counting over his peaceful gains, the swept hearth, his best wine for a friend at the table, his wife singing to the children? Those men His disciples knew no such things: they went forth to journey afar, to suffer by land and sea, to know torture, imprisonment, disappointment, to suffer death by martyrdom. What then did He mean? If you ask that, remember then that He said also, ‘Not as the world gives, give I unto you’. So then, He gave to His disciples peace, but not peace as the world gives.
 
Consider also one thing of which you have probably never thought. Not only do we at the feast of Christmas celebrate at once Our Lord’s Birth and His Death: but on the next day we celebrate the martyrdom of His first martyr, the blessed Stephen. Is it an accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of Christ? By no means. Just as we rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and in the Passion of Our Lord; so also, in a smaller figure, we both rejoice and mourn in the death of martyrs. We mourn, for the sins of the world that has martyred them; we rejoice, that another soul is numbered among the Saints in Heaven, for the glory of God and for the salvation of men.
 
Beloved, we do not think of a martyr simply as a good Christian who has been killed because he is a Christian: for that would be solely to mourn. We do not think of him simply as a good Christian who has been elevated to the company of the Saints: for that would be simply to rejoice: and neither our mourning nor our rejoicing is as the world’s is. A Christian martyrdom is no accident. Saints are not made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of a man’s will to become a Saint, as a man by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity. Not so in Heaven. A martyr, a saint, is always made by the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom. So thus as on earth the Church mourns and rejoices at once, in a fashion that the world cannot understand; so in Heaven the Saints are most high, having made themselves most low, seeing themselves not as we see them, but in the light of the Godhead from which they draw their being.
 
I have spoken to you today, dear children of God, of the martyrs of the past, asking you to remember especially our martyr of Canterbury, the blessed Archbishop Elphege; because it is fitting, on Christ’s birth day, to remember what is that Peace which He brought; and because, dear children, I do not think I shall ever preach to you again; and because it is possible that in a short time you may have yet another martyr, and that one perhaps not the last. I would have you keep in your hearts these words that I say, and think of them at another time.
 
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen’.

from Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot OM, 1888-1965

‘The execution was sad, cruel and universal: no abatements made for the dire shriekings of the mothers, no tender-hearted soldier was employed, no hard-hearted person was softened by the weeping eyes, and pity-begging looks of those mothers, that wondered how it was possible any person should hurt their pretty sucklings; no connivances there, no protections, or friendships, or consideration, or indulgences, but Herod caused that his own child which was at nurse in the coasts of Bethlehem, should bleed to death; which made Augustus Caesar to say, that in Herod’s house it were better to be a hog than a child, because the custom of the nation did secure a hog from Herod’s knife, but no religion could secure his child.
 
Jesus, when himself was safe, could also have secured the poor babes of Bethlehem, but yet it did not so please God. He is Lord of his creatures, and hath absolute dominion over our lives, and he had an end of glory to serve upon these babes, and an end of justice upon Herod; and to the children he made such compensation, that they had no reason to complain that they were so soon made stars, when they shined in their little orbs and participations of eternity, for so the sense of the Church hath been that they having died the death of martyrs, though incapable of making the choice, God supplied the defects of their will, by his own entertainment of the thing; that as the misery and their death, so also their glorification might have the same author in the same manner of causality; even by a peremptory and unconditioned determination in these particulars’.
 
Jeremy Taylor, 1613-1667 (Anglican Bishop of Down and Connor 1661-1667)

The photos above show the Church of St John the Evangelist, Calgary, in the Canadian province of Alberta, whose Feast of Title it is today. It was my very great privilege to be able to serve this parish for almost nine years as both the Anglican priest-in-charge and, six months later, the Catholic parish priest, a feat that was only possible on account of the courage and faith of the people in accepting, all the way back in 2010, the gracious invitation of Pope Benedict XVI to enter into the fulness of Catholic communion under the provision of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus. It was a document that gave life and hope for the future to this historic Anglo-Catholic Prayer Book parish in the Anglican Diocese of Calgary (second only in age to the cathedral). Happy feast day, St John’s clergy and parishioners!

Hosanna! yet again,
Another glorious day,
Ye cherubs sing and play,
Ye seraphs swell the strain.
 
Hail! highly favour’d man,
Thy name and lot transcend
All praise that e’er was penn’d
Since first the verse began.
 
O dear to Christ supreme,
His bosom friend declar’d,
And yet for all he car’d
With tenderness extreme.
 
As Benjamin was blest,
When he to Egypt came,
By Joseph full of fame,
And honour’d o’er the rest.
 
But Christ was meek and poor,
No chariot his to ride,
No Goshen to divide,
No favours to procure.
 
Yet in his realms above,
Which are the highest heav’n,
First of th’ elect elev’n,
Thou claim’st thy master’s love.
 
Christopher Smart, 1722-1771

​When the first Christian Martyr died,
He saw the Heav’ns unfolded wide,
And Jesus, all alone,
Surrounded by no white-rob’d band,
In solitary glory stand
Beside th’ Omnipotent’s right hand,
Ready His Saint to own.
 
Years went and came—and, one by one,
Departing as their work is done,
The Saints ascend the skies;--
Blest Mary, with th’ Apostles true,
Martyrs and Virgins, not a few,
And thousands that the world ne’er knew,
Whom age on age supplies.
 
If Heav’n to-day should drop its screen,
Far other sight would now be seen
Than sooth’d St Stephen’s end;
Jesus, not as before alone,
But circled with a blazing zone
Of myriads, who around His throne
In adoration bend.
 
O, bold indeed! and shall we say,
Those gathering throngs, from day to day,
No difference make on high?
That time, as still it onward steals,
And its progressive scheme reveals,
From all their prayers no influence feels,
Rain’d from the golden sky?
 
Forbid it, Heav’n!—It were all one,
Christ from His glory to dethrone;--
Souls of the Sainted dead!
Look down from your exalted height;
Great is our need, and great your might;
Except ye pray, in vain we fight;
Assist us, ere we perish quite;
For we are sore be-sted.

Edward Caswall, Cong. Orat., 1814-1878

‘[W]e make a holiday of Christmas only if we have the strength of mind to creep up the nursery stairs again, and pretend that we never came down them. And that is what we are doing when we pay our visit to the Christmas crib. We are going back to the nursery where life, supernatural life, first dawned for us; trying to recapture some breath of our own first innocence, as we look at the girl Mother, and the divine Infant, and the manger which was all the cradle he had. It is difficult, at first, to get acclimatised to its atmosphere; everything is so quiet, so secret; the world is so remote; you feel as if there were a conspiracy afoot to keep you out of it. But this is where you belong; you, too, have been born into the family of grace, and this is the cradle of it. Unto us a Child is born, to restore something of childhood, year by year, even to the most jaded, even to the most sophisticated, even to the most disillusioned of us’.
 
Mgr Ronald Knox, 1888-1957

‘O Virgo Virginum, the last of the Great O Antiphons in the old English liturgy of Sarum, occurs on December 23rd. Its structure is quite different from all the other Great O Antiphons. The first part is a question addressed to the Virgin Mary; in the second part she replies with another question, and then, gives her answer.
 
O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be? For neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after. Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me? That which ye behold is a divine mystery.
 
Here, at Silverstream Priory, since the beginning of Advent, we have been singing O Virgo Virginum each morning as the Marian Antiphon at the end of Lauds’.

Dom Mark Daniel Kirby OSB, Prior of Silverstream Priory, Co. Meath, Ireland, writing in 2012

​‘The last of the seven titles of Jesus before the Vigil of Christmastide is without doubt the most beautiful of all. Emmanuel: God-with-us. Both in the sound of the word and its meaning, the Christian mystery is summed up succinctly and mellifluently. In Jesus, God is personally present to the world. On the eve of the Nativity ‘Emmanuel’ is telling those who wait for God that he is closer than they could possibly imagine. In that name God and man are hyphenated, conjoined forever, just as God’s nature and ours are joined in the one to whom the name belongs. God, through his Son, with us in Jesus the man. The marvellous depth of the incarnation is given here for our contemplation in a single word. As long as our capacity for wonder lasts, the wonder of this miracle will never be exhausted’.
 
from Seven Bells to Bethlehem: The O Antiphons by Fr Oliver Treanor

​‘In the universal struggle against evil which is common to all who espouse progress, and particularly progress in world peace, [the] emphasis on human dignity is what unites every effort for good. Here the desire of the nations converges on the aim of the Kingdom. But because the nations rely on earthly means for achieving what they desire, and because the citizens of the Kingdom on earth are still vulnerable to sin, respect for the human person is not always recognised as the cornerstone of positive growth.
 
…Only sacrifice can bring about what the Kingdom promises. Only the incarnation of Christ can persuade that such sacrifice is worthwhile. In his birth as man, by his death for others, Jesus reveals the hidden glory of human nature in each person – no matter how depraved – and the worthiness of each person in God’s eyes of love. This is why every other ideology, even humanism, falls short of what is needed… Until [Christ] returns, while the Advent of time continues, the Church will not cease to pray for that Kingdom to come in which all the desires of the human heart will be satisfied and men of clay will live in peace’.

from Seven Bells to Bethlehem: The O Antiphons by ​Fr Oliver Treanor

‘The Church hails Christ as the Rising Sun at eventide on December 21st - the mid-winter solstice and darkest day of the year. It is the time of the night’s predominance, when the darkness seems to have overcome all. The sun is at its furthest remove from the northern hemisphere. It appears to pause as if in death - but only to return, rising once more to begin a new cycle in the seasons of life. The timing of the antiphon is perfect. It reflects the people's hope in the birth of a child destined to die that he might rise in a dawning that would conquer darkness forever. His appearance is a celebration of the true feast of Sol Invictus - the Unconquered Sun, whose brief pause in the tomb for three days would be followed by an eternal spring. So the unrestrained revelry of Christian Saturnalia is not, like its old pagan forerunner, some desperate antidote to the fears of winter. It is a sparkling elixir of joyful hope that, as Christ has triumphed over sin and death, so those he has redeemed will share his victory of every bleakness in the human condition that winter symbolises’.

from Seven Bells to Bethlehem: The O Antiphons by ​Fr Oliver Treanor

‘It was the simple humanity of Jesus that unlocked the hearts of those he met. They recognised in him one who “did not cling to his equality with God as a thing to be grasped” but became as all men are (Phil 2:6). Seeing this opened a new hope of holiness in them – from Nathaniel and the apostles to Mary Magdalene and the prostitutes. Sanctity was no longer an unreachable goal. Nor was it to be confused with the sanctimonious externals of their Jewish leaders. Heaven was to be found within themselves. 
 
...What was true in Jesus’ time is still true today. The key that releases hope and permits the heart to soar is on the outside. It takes another to turn it so that doors will open on earth and therefore also in heaven. Christians are called to do what Christ did: to set others free to be themselves that they might perceive the value of what they they, might rise above what is false within them and put underfoot all that hinders growth of is unworthy of them’.

​from Seven Bells to Bethlehem: The O Antiphons by ​Fr Oliver Treanor​

‘[T]he heavenly community, with which the Bible closes, will be one in which the sufferings of God’s people will be recompensed. Exchanging their cross for the tree of life, they will see face to face the One who turned all pain to good account. Those who washed their clothes in the blood of the Lamb, those who came through the great persecution, those who resisted the beast – symbol of evil – preferring to endure all that the Church must, rather than opt for compromise. And in the centre of the new Jerusalem stands the source of the revelation: “I Jesus have sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and offspring of David” (Rev 22:16). Spanning the life of the Church in heaven with the Church on earth, Jesus unites both communities as the vine unites the ground and sky, the above and below, North and South, East and West, by its prodigious extension. At the end of time, as this last word of scripture affirms, the pruning will be complete. Its effect will have been so to fortify the vine that it will easily support the new heaven in its branches, the new earth in its roots, and the entire company of the blessed as its weighty crop, “twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month” (Rev 22:2). Until that final consummation, the victory song of the saints and martyrs already round the throne of glory mingles with the hymn of the Advent Church still struggling. “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come’ to the offspring of David (Rev 22:17), or as the liturgy puts it on December 19th, “O Root of Jesse, you stand as a signal for the nations; O come to deliver us, and do not delay”’. 

from Seven Bells to Bethlehem: The O Antiphons by Fr Oliver Treanor

‘[T]he Church in Advent calls upon the coming Christ as “O Adonai”. It is a direct application of the Holy Name, in its covert form, to Mary’s son. One of the earliest Christian faith-formulas was “Jesus is Lord”. “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead”, wrote St Paul to the Romans, “you will be saved” (10:9). It was the great and sustaining creed of the post-resurrection Church at Pentecost, when the full redeeming significance of Jesus’ name burst forth upon the Christian community like light from heaven, like a terrific fire that burned and yet never consumed. “Know assuredly,” cried the apostle Peter in his Pentecost sermon, “that this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, God has made both Lord and Christ, Leader and Saviour” (Acts 2:23, 36; 5:31). Not by accident was Jesus crucified, nor by the whim of tragic fate, but by deliberate, pre-destined design, in order that sin might be forgiven through the name of Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of that name by poured out and received (Acts 2:38).
 
… The Advent antiphon’s supplication – “O Adonai, you gave the Law on Sinai. O come and save us with your mighty power’ – is not however for the Jewish law or the Mosaic covenant. It is for the reality that these things signified and which came to pass at Christian Pentecost: the new covenant, the new law is now inscribed not on tablets of stone but on human hearts. This was what the prophet Jeremiah had declared would come about in the latter days, in the age of Messiah. “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them out of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people” (31:31-33). The waiting Church of Advent today keeps these words in mind as it imitates the first disciples of the Acts who waited in the upper room for this promise from the Father to appear. Christmas therefore is a type of Pentecost. Men awaiting a birth. The birth of the Lord in a stable. The birth of the Church in an upper room in Jerusalem. The re-birth of hearts in a fiery baptism of the Spirit, God’s “mighty power” sent in response to the prayer, “O come and save us”’. 

from Seven Bells to Bethlehem: The O Antiphons by Fr Oliver Treanor

‘To intone the great “O Wisdom” of the antiphon is to stand against Efficiency and Success. It is to recognise that idolatry does not change, only its forms. It is to acknowledge the absurdity of contemporary wisdom – the depersonalisation of the Unborn; the degradation of human dignity through genetic engineering; the despoliation of relationships by laboratory parenting; the human sacrifice of the unemployed to the demigod, Economy; the inadequate concern for the poor and homeless, the elderly and the ill. It is to acknowledge also the blindness of a society which, after approving such absurdity, then queries naively the rising crime rate, increased incidence of suicide, disaffection of its citizens and widespread collapse of family life’.

from Seven Bells to Bethlehem: The O Antiphons by Fr Oliver Treanor

​‘Like children awaiting the Christ Child, we are hardly able to restrain our happiness over the coming of the Lord. Actually it is Christmas joy anticipated. The Church modifies her colours; instead of violet she uses rose, a softened hue of violet and thus a compromise between the colours symbolising penance and joy. Unlike other days in Advent, the altar is adorned with flowers; organ music is permitted; and at the High Mass the assistant ministers against wear the tunic and dalmatic. Persons who love the liturgy should celebrate such extraordinary days in a special manner and make the most of their distinguished features. The colour rose ought to predominate in the church (vestments, altar hangings) and in the home too (at the dinner table, for example). Pastors could use the occasion to preach on the adornment proper to the house of God. Rarely is the Church’s mood so unmistakable. Of course, our Advent joy must be deepened and purified; this is done through the day’s liturgy’.  

from The Church’s Year of Grace, 1953, by Pius Parsch, 1884-1954

‘Why need they observe certain rites and ceremonies? Why need they watch, pray, fast, and meditate? Why is it not enough to be just, honest, sober, benevolent, and otherwise virtuous? Is not this the true and real worship of God? Is not activity in mind and conduct the most acceptable way of approaching Him? How can they please Him by submitting to certain religious forms, and taking part in certain religious acts? Or if they must do so, why may they not choose their own? Why must they come to church for them? Why must they be partakers in what the Church calls Sacraments?
 
I answer, they must do so, first of all and especially, because God tells them so to do. But besides this, I observe that we see this plain reason why, that they are one day to change their state of being. They are not to be here for ever. Direct intercourse with God on their part now, prayer and the like, may be necessary to their meeting Him suitably hereafter: and direct intercourse on His part with them, or what we call sacramental communion, may be necessary in some incomprehensible way, even for preparing their very nature to bear the sight of Him.
 
Let us then take this view of religious service; it is “going out to meet the Bridegroom”, who, if not seen “in His beauty”, will appear in consuming fire. Besides its other momentous reasons, it is a preparation for an awful event, which shall one day be. What it would be to meet Christ at once without preparation, we may learn from what happened even to the Apostles when His glory was suddenly manifested to them. St Peter said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord”. And St John, “when he saw Him, fell at His feet as dead”.

This being the case, it is certainly most merciful in God to vouchsafe to us the means of preparation, and such means as He has actually appointed. When Moses came down from the Mount, and the people were dazzled at his countenance, he put a veil over it. That veil is so far removed in the Gospel, that we are in a state of preparation for its being altogether removed. We are with Moses in the Mount so far, that we have a sight of God; we are with the people beneath it so far, that Christ does not visibly show Himself. He has put a veil on, and He sits among us silently and secretly. When we approach Him, we know it only by faith; and when He manifests Himself to us, it is without our being able to realise to ourselves that manifestation.
 
Such then is the spirit in which we should come to all His ordinances, considering them as anticipations and first-fruits of that sight of Him which one day must be. When we kneel down in prayer in private, let us think to ourselves, Thus shall I one day kneel down before His very footstool, in this flesh and this blood of mine; and He will be seated over against me, in flesh and blood also, though divine. I come, with the thought of that awful hour before me, I come to confess my sin to Him now, that He may pardon it then, and I say, “O Lord, Holy God, Holy and Strong, Holy and Immortal, in the hour of death and in the day of judgement, deliver us, O Lord!”
 
Again, when we come to church, then let us say: – The day will be when I shall see Christ surrounded by His Holy Angels. I shall be brought into that blessed company, in which all will be pure, all bright. I come then to learn to endure the sight of the Holy One and His Servants; to nerve myself for a vision which is fearful before it is ecstatic, and which they only enjoy whom it does not consume’.

Blessed John Henry Newman, 1801-1890

‘Would that men might at last understand that it is impossible to attain to the thicket of manifold riches of the wisdom of God without entering into the thicket of manifold suffering, making that its consolation and desire! And how the soul which really longs for divine wisdom first longs for suffering, that it may enter more deeply into the thicket of the cross!
 
For this reason Saint Paul encouraged the Ephesians not to lose heart in tribulations, but to be strengthened, and rooted in love, that they might have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth; and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that they might be filled with all the fulness of God. For the gate whereby one may enter into these riches of his wisdom is the narrow gate of the cross. Many long for the delights to which that gate leads: but few they are indeed who are prepared to pass through it’.

from the Spiritual Canticle of St John of the Cross, 1542-1591

‘The Apostle Paul teaches us that in the fulness of time God sent his Son, born of a woman, to redeem us from sin and to make us his sons and daughters. Accordingly, we are no longer servants but children and heirs of God. Therefore, the Church must proclaim the Gospel of life and speak out with prophetic force against the culture of death. May the Continent of Hope also be the Continent of Life! This is our cry: life with dignity for all! For all who have been conceived in their mother’s womb, for street children, for Guadalupe! To you we present this countless multitude of the faithful praying to God in America. You who have penetrated their hearts, visit and comfort the homes, parishes and dioceses of the whole continent. Grant that Christian families may exemplarily raise their children in the Church’s faith and in love of the Gospel, so that they will be the seed of apostolic vocations. Turn your gaze today upon young people and encourage them to walk with Jesus Christ. O Lady and Mother of America! Strengthen the will be celebrated throughout America with the liturgical rank of feast.

O Mother! You know the paths followed by the first evangelisers of the New World, from Guanahani Island and Hispaniola to the Amazon forests and the Andean peaks, reaching to Tierra del Fuego in the south and to the Great Lakes and mountains of the north. Accompany the Church which is working in the nations of America, so that she may always preach the Gospel and renew her missionary spirit. Encourage all who devote their lives to the cause of Jesus and the spread of his kingdom. O gentle Lady of Tepeyac, Mother of indigenous peoples and Afro-Americans, for immigrants and refugees, for the young deprived of opportunity, for the old, for those who suffer any kind of poverty or marginalisation.

Dear brothers and sisters, the time has come to banish once and for all from the continent every attack against life. No more violence, terrorism and drug-trafficking! No more torture or other forms of abuse! There must be an end to the unnecessary recourse to the death penalty! No more exploitation of the weak, racial discrimination or ghettoes of poverty! Never again! These are intolerable evils which cry out to heaven and call Christians to a different way of living, to a social commitment more in keeping with their faith. We must rouse the consciences of men and women with the Gospel, in order to highlight their sublime vocation as children of God. This will inspire them to build a better America. As a matter of urgency, we must stir up a new springtime of holiness on the continent so that action and contemplation will go hand in hand’.

from a homily given during his Apostolic Journey to America, 23 January 1999
​by Pope St John Paul II, 1920-2005

‘Liberius died on the 24th of September 366, and Damasus, who was then sixty years old, was chosen Bishop of Rome and ordained in the basilica of Lucina, otherwise called St Laurence’s, which title he bore before his pontificate. Soon after Ursinus, called by some moderns Ursicinus, who could not bear that St Damasus should be preferred before him, got together a crowd of disorderly and seditious people in the Church of Sicin, commonly called the Liberian basilica, now St Mary Major, and persuaded Paul, Bishop of Tibur, now Tivoil, a dull, ignorant man, to ordain him Bishop of Rome, contrary to the ancient canons, which require three bishops for the ordination of a bishop, and to the ancient custom of the Roman church, whose bishop was to be consecrated by the Bishop of Ostia, as Baronius and Tillemont observe. Juventius, prefect of Rome, banished Ursinus and some others of his party. Seven priests, who adhered to him, were seized to be carried into exile, but were rescued by their partisans and carried to the Liberian basilica. The people that sided with Damasus came together with swords and clubs, besieged the basilica to deliver these men up to the prefect, and a fight ensued in which one hundred and thirty-seven persons were killed, as Ammianus Marcellinus and St Austin relate. In September the following year, 367, the Emperor Valentinian allowed Ursinus to return to Rome; but, on account of new tumults, in November banished him again with seven accomplices into Gaul. The schismatics still kept possession of a church, probably that of St Agnes without the walls, and held assemblies in the cemeteries; but Valentinian sent an order for that church to be put into the hands of Damasus; and Maximin, a magistrate of the city, a man naturally inclined to cruelty, put several schismatics to the torture. Rufin clears Damasus of any way concurring to, or approving of such barbarous proceedings, and the schismatics fell into the snare they had laid for him, by which it seems they demanded an inquiry to be made by the rack, which turned to their own confusion and chastisement. It appears by certain verses of Pope Damasus that he had made a vow to God, in honour of certain martyrs, to engage their intercession for the conversion of some of the clergy who continued obstinate in the schism; and that these clergymen, being converted to the unity of the church, in gratitude adorned at their own expense the tombs of these martyrs. By the same poem we learn that the warmest abettors of the cause of Ursinus, after some time sincerely submitted to Damasus. His election was both anterior in time, and in all its circumstances regular; and was declared such by a great council held at Aquileia in 381, composed of the most holy and eminent bishops of the western church, and by a council at Rome in 378, in both which the acts of violence are imputed to the fury of Ursinus. St Ambrose, St Jerome, St Austin, Rufin, and others, bear testimony to the demeanour and to the due election of Damasus’.

​from The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints by Fr Alban Butler, 1710-1773

Teach me to tarry till Thou bidst me go,
Waiting in patience, listening quietly,
Resting contented, sleeping dreamlessly
Like Samuel of old, for well I know
That Thou wilt call me when ‘’Tis time to go’.

Teach me to tarry till the light doth shine,
Knowing full well there is no night with Thee;
And if I cannot work, then tranquilly
Offer my worship in my prison here
Till in the East some stretch of dawn appear.

Teach me to tarry till the fight be done,
And to die fighting though I seem to fail
With dented helm and broken hand and mail,
All hewn and tarnished, so my poor life’s loss
May life where falls the Shadow of Thy Cross.

Teach me to tarry till Thou bidst me come;
Teach me to tarry till my heart is pure,
Trusting thy love for me Thy purpose sure:
Lord, Thou wilt fit me for Thy Father’s Home,
Teach me to tarry, but yet bid me – Come!

Father Andrew SDC, 1869-1946

‘God comes to us in his word. That is why it does not seem altogether incongruous to devote the second Sunday in Advent to prayer about the Bible. In any case it was almost inevitable that in 1549, the period of the first English Book of Common Prayer for which this collect was composed, the pride and joy of the Reformers in the rediscovery of the Bible should find expression in one of the new prayers. The collect prays that this priceless treasure of God’s word may be used to the fullest advantage. It emphasises the truth that the scriptures comes from the hand of God.
 
…[T]hey should be read intellectually, like any other book. In such an approach there are a number of stages. One begins by simply reading them or hearing them read. One should at the same time ‘mark’ them or give particular attention to them. (And how hard that is sometimes, when for instance the lessons are read in church!) Then one should learn them, or at least select portions of them, by heart. What a relief it is in sickness, or in the ‘slow watches of the night’, to be able to repeat the beloved words to oneself.
 
And then, of course, one should ‘inwardly digest them’. That means to understand them and let their meaning enter into the very fibre of one’s being. And intelligent person will want to understand the purport of what he reads, particularly when the subject-matter is an important as this. He will therefore seek explanation od the more difficult passages either from published commentaries or from some of the clergy whose special province it is to expound the scriptures.
 
This means that he will study the Bible intelligently, not using it as a talisman, or fetish, not thinking that there is any special value in knowing the list of the kings of Israel or the journeys of St Paul, but realising that in the scriptures God uses the talents of chosen writers and through them speaks to his chosen people’. 

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

​‘The feast of our Lady’s Immaculate Conception is the promise and the earnest of Christmas Day; our salvation is already in the bud. As the first green shoot heralds the approach of spring, in a world that is frost-bound and seems dead, so in a world of great sinfulness and of utter despair that spotless conception heralds the restoration of man’s innocence. As the shoot gives unfailing promise of the flower which is to spring from it, the Immaculate Conception gives unfailing promise of the Virgin Birth. Life had come into the world again. And it grew there unmarked by human eyes. No angels sang over the hills to celebrate it; no shepherds left their shepherding to come and see; no wise men were beckoned by the stars to witness that prodigy. And yet the first Advent had begun. Our Lady, you see, is the consummation of the Old Testament; with her, the cycle of history begins anew. When God created the first Adam, he made his preparations beforehand; he fashioned a paradise ready for him to dwell in. And when he restored our nature in the second Adam, once more there was a preparation to be made beforehand. He fashioned a Paradise for the second Adam to dwell in, and that Paradise was the body and soul of our blessed Lady, immune from the taint of sin which was the legacy of Adam’s curse. It was winter still in all the world around, but in the quiet home where St Anne gave birth to her daughter, spring had begun’. 

from a meditation published in The Tablet, 1939, ​by Mgr Ronald Knox, 1888-1957

‘The Church of the Lord is built upon the rock of the apostles among so many dangers in the world; it therefore remains unmoved. The Church’s foundation is unshakable and firm against the assaults of the raging sea. Waves lash at the Church but do not shatter it. Although the elements of this world constantly beat upon the Church with crashing sounds, the Church possesses the safest harbour of salvation for all in distress. Although the Church is tossed about on the sea, it rides easily on rivers, especially those rivers that Scripture speaks of: The rivers have lifted up their voice. These are the rivers flowing from the heart of the man who is given drink by Christ and who receives from the Spirit of God. When these rivers overflow with the grace of the Spirit, they lift up their voice.

​Drink, then, from Christ, so that your voice may also be heard. Store up in your mind the water that is Christ, the water that praises the Lord. Store up water from many sources, the water that rains down from the clouds of prophecy.
 
Whoever gathers water from the mountains and leads it to himself or draws it from springs, is himself a source of dew like the clouds. Fill your soul, then, with this water, so that your land may not be dry, but watered by your own springs’.

from a letter to pastors by St Ambrose of Milan, c.337-397