Sancta Sacrificia Illibata

Una Voce - Houston

Man has even aspired to become like unto God. This aspiration is at the bottom of all the errors, as well as all the truths, in the world. The errors have been that man has sought to be divinized by his own strength, or thought divinity due to his nature, or deemed himself substantially one with God and only accidentally differentiated from Him. The truth is that in Jesus Christ the divine and human nature have met in one personality. In Him, humanity's aspiration has been realized. The truth is, that each one of us individually finds union with God in Christ offered as victim and given as food in the central act of Christian worship-the Holy Eucharist.

The Civilizing Influence of the Church

during the Middle Ages

From the first century to the fifteenth, the Church labored with untiring zeal and perseverance for the creation of a new order of civilization. During the greater part of that period, by means of its superior intelligence and virtue, it ruled the State, modified its action, and compelled its administrators to consult the rights of man, by protecting the poor, the feeble, and the defenseless. It is not easy to estimate the astonishing progress it effected for civilization, during that long period, called by narrow-minded and bigoted historians, the dark ages. Never before had such labors been performed for humanity. Never before had there been such an immense body, as the Christian clergy, animated by a common spirit, and directed by a common will and intelligence, to the cultivation and growth of the moral virtues and the arts of peace. Then was tamed the wild barbarian, and the savage heart made to yield to the humanizing influence of tenderness, gentleness, meekness, humility, and love; then imperial crown and royal scepter paled before the crosier; and the representative of Him, who had lived, and toiled, and preached, and suffered, and died in obscurity, in poverty, and disgrace, was exalted, and made himself felt in the palace and in the cottage, in the court and the camp; striking terror into the rich and noble, and pouring the oil and wine of consolation into the bruised heart of the poor and friendless.

Wrong, wrong have they been, who have complained that kings and emperors were subject to the spiritual head of Christendom. It was well for man that there was a power above those emperors, kings, and barons, who rode roughshod over the humble peasant and artisan; well that there was a power even on earth, that could touch their cold and atheistic hearts, and make them tremble as the veriest slave. During what are termed the dark ages the Church laid the foundations of modern civilization, breathed into it its humane and gentle spirit, and animated it for an uninterrupted career of peaceful conquest. It was then it established schools and universities, founded scholarships, and prepared for a system of universal education. It emancipated the slave, declared all men equal before God, raised the bare-footed friar to the throne of Christendom, and made the rich sinner disgorge his misbegotten wealth to feed the poor he had robbed, and to serve the interests of humanity.

Our Lady of the Rosary

HE Picture of St. Philip is ever in this Chapel, and his image is ever in our minds. Not only we, who belong to his Congregation, but you, my dear Brethren and Children, who come to worship here under his shadow. You, too, I am persuaded, carry him away with you to your homes, and find by experience the benefit of such a Patron... to enlarge upon the special traits of his character and memorable passages of his life, if not for his sake, at least for our own; if not to do him honor, at least to gain guidance for ourselves, by reason of the light which all that is recorded of him casts upon our vocation, our duties, and our work; for then only are we his true followers when we do as he did. Moreover, although all this is a subject of thought which concerns us, the members of the Oratory, primarily, yet it must have an interest for those also who, like yourselves, my Brethren, make use of our ministrations; for, whereas there are many professions, missions, and undertakings in the length and breadth of the Catholic Church, you will, by considering it, understand more exactly what it is in particular, that the Oratory proposes to do for you.

Let us, then, inquire what St. Philip's times were, and what place he holds in them; what he was raised up to do, how he did it, and how we, my Fathers of the Oratory, may make his work and his way of doing it a pattern for ourselves in this day.

1. His times were such as the Church has never seen before nor since, and such as the world must last long for her to see again; nor peculiar only in themselves, but involving a singular and most severe trial of the faith and love of her children. It was a time of sifting and peril, and of "the fall and resurrection of many in Israel." Our gracious Lord, we well know, never will forsake her; He will sustain her in all dangers, and she will last while the world lasts; but, if ever there was a time when He seemed preparing to forsake her, it was not the time of persecution, when thousands upon thousands of her choicest were cut off, and her flock decimated; it was not in the middle age, when the ferocity of the soldier and subtlety of the sophist beleaguered her, —but it was in that dreary time, at the close and in the fullness of which St. Philip entered upon his work. A great author, one of his own sons, Cardinal Baronius, has said of the dark age, that it was a time when our Lord seemed to be asleep in Peter's boat; but there is another passage of the Gospel still more wonderful than the record of that sleep, and one which had a still more marvelous accomplishment in the period of which I have to speak. There was a time when Satan took up bodily the King of Saints, and carried Him whither he would. Then was Our Most Holy Savior and Lord clasped in the arms of ambition, avarice, and impurity: —and in like manner His Church also after Him, though full of divine gifts, the Immaculate Spouse, the Oracle of Truth, the Voice of the Holy Ghost, infallible in matters of faith and morals, whether in the chair of her Supreme Pontiff, or in the unity of her Episcopate, nevertheless was at this time so environed, so implicated, with sin and lawlessness, as to appear in the eyes of the world to be what she was not. Never, as then, were her rulers, some in higher, some in lower degree, so near compromising what can never be compromised; never so near denying in private what they taught in public, and undoing by their lives what they professed with their mouths; never were they so mixed up with vanity, so tempted by pride, so haunted by concupiscence; never breathed they so tainted an atmosphere, or were kissed by such traitorous friends, or were subjected to such sights of shame, or were clad in such blood-stained garments, as in the centuries upon and in which St. Philip came into the world. Alas, for us, my Brethren! the scandal of deeds done in Italy then is borne by us in England now.

It was an age when the passionate willfulness of the feudal baron was vigorous still; when civilization, powerless as yet to redress the grievances of society at large, gave to princes and to nobles as much to possess as before, and less to suffer; increased their pomp, and diminished their duties and their risks; became the cloak of vices which it did not extirpate, made revenge certain by teaching it to be treacherous, and unbelief venerable by proving it to be ancient. Such were the characteristics of St. Philip's age; and Florence, his birth-place, presented the most complete exhibition of them, —and next to Florence, Rome, the city of his adoption.

Florence was at that time the most intellectual, the most magnificent city of Italy. About a century before, one of its richest merchants and bankers had become its virtual ruler, and had transmitted his power to his descendants, who still possessed it. The history of this family is intimately connected with that of the Holy See; at times they were its enemies: they ended in giving to it three or four princes of their own blood to fill it: but whether in alliance with it or at war, whether at Florence or at Rome, they exerted, at least for many years, an influence prejudicial to its real, that is, its religious well-being.

This was the time of the revival of what is called classical learning; that is, the learning of ancient Greece and Rome. The Turks, who still hold it, had lately taken Constantinople; its scholars, with their traditions and their manuscripts, escaped to Italy, and they found a home at Florence with this powerful family. The heads of this family became the special patrons of Literature and the Arts, and leaders of the classical revival. Under their auspices, public schools were opened; the Greek language was studied; an academy was established for philosophy; a library was founded, and placed in the Dominican Convent of St. Mark. Its librarian in course of time became Pope, and founded at Rome the famous Vatican Library. Books in the languages of the East, —Hebrew, Arabic, even Indian, were collected; the lost writings of Greek and Roman authors were brought to light and published.

So far, you will see, there was little which could be censured; the revival of learning was in itself a great benefit to mankind, and the labor that it involved was well bestowed. But, in this world, evil follows good as its shadow; human nature perverting and corrupting what is intrinsically innocent or praiseworthy. So, in this instance, the pursuit of the old learning became a passion. As the crumbling cloisters of the East were ransacked, and manuscripts were found and deciphered, —as the ruins of pagan edifices were excavated, mounds of earth removed, and the sculptures of classical art disinterred, —an uncontrollable excitement, an intoxication, seized upon the classes which were engaged in the work. It seized upon young and old: while one celebrated archaeologist spent fifty years in the discovery of ancient authors, and another's hair turned white on his losing by shipwreck his cargo of discoveries, noble ladies became prodigies of learning, and a youth of twenty exhibited himself at Rome as the master of twenty-two languages, and proposed nine hundred subjects for disputation.

The wonderful art of printing, which had been lately discovered, added to the excitement, not merely by what it actually did in that day, but by the brilliant future which it opened on the imagination, to the advance both of knowledge and of society.

Nor was this the limit of the discoveries of that remarkable age; —news came of another continent beyond the ocean; America, North and South, became known to Europe, and the extent of the earth was doubled. The strangest tales were circulated, true and false, of the riches, of the gold, silver, and gems, of the animals, of the vegetable productions, of the new hemisphere. The public mind was agitated by a thousand fancies; no one knew what was coming; anything might be expected; a new era had opened upon the world, and enormous changes, political and social, were in preparation. There was an upheaving of the gigantic intellect of man; he found he had powers and resources that he was not conscious of before, and began in anticipation to idolize their triumphs.

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