August 31 – St. Raymond Nonnatus, Confessor

St Raymonds is a saint for our times.

†The Ecu-Men†

August closes as it began, with a feast of deliverance; as though that were the divine seal set by Eternal Wisdom upon this month—the month when holy Church makes the works and ways of Divine Wisdom the special object of her contemplation.

Upon the fall of our first parents and their expulsion from Paradise, the Word and Wisdom of God, that is, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, began the great work of our deliverance—that magnificent work of human Redemption which, by an all-gracious, eternal degree of the three Divine Persons, was to be wrought out by the Son of God in our flesh. And as that blessed Savior, in his infinite wisdom, made spontaneous choice of sorrows, of sufferings, and of death on a cross as the best means of our redemption, so has he always allotted to his best loved friends the kind of life which he…

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August 30 – St Rose of Lima, Virgin

†The Ecu-Men†

The fragrance of holiness is wafted today across the dark Ocean, renewing the youth of the Old World, and winning for the New the good will of heaven and earth.

A century before the birth of St. Rose, Spain, having cast out the Crescent from her own territory, received as a reward the mission of planting the Cross on the distant shores of America. Neither heroes nor apostles were wanting in the Catholic kingdom for the great work; but there was also, unhappily, no lack of adventurers who, in their thirst for gold, became the scourge of the poor Indians instead of leading them to the true God. The speedy decadence of the illustrious nation that had triumphed over the Moors was soon to prove how far a people, prevented with the greatest blessings, may yet be answerable for crimes committed by its individual representatives. It is well known how…

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August 29 – Decollation of St John the Baptist

†The Ecu-Men†

“At that time, Herod sent and apprehended John, and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, the wife of Philip his brother, because he had married her. For John said to Herod, It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife. How Herodias laid snares for him, and was desirous to put him to death, and could not. For Herod feared John, knowing him to be a just and holy man, and kept him, and when he heard him did many things; and he heard him willingly. And when a convenient day was come, Herod made a supper for his birthday, for the princes, and tribunes, and chief men of Galilee. And when the daughter of the same Herodias had come in, and had danced, and pleased Herod, and them that were at table with him, the king said to the damsel, Ask of me…

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August 25 – St. Louis, King of France, Confessor

†The Ecu-Men†

It was his Christian faith that made Louis IX so great a prince. “You that are the judges of the earth, think of the Lord in goodness, and seek Him in simplicity of heart.” (Wisdom 1:1) Eternal Wisdom, in giving this precept to kings, rejoiced with divine foreknowledge among the lilies of France, where this great saint was to shine with so bright a luster.

Subject and prince are bound to God by a common law, for all men have one entrance into life, and the like going out. (Wisdom 7:6) Far from being less responsible to the divine authority than his subjects, the prince is answerable for every one of them as well as for himself. The aim and object of creation is that God be glorified by the return of all creatures to their Author, in the manner and measure that He wills. Therefore, since God has called…

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August 16 – St Joachim, Confessor, Father of the Blessed Virgin Mary

†The Ecu-Men†

From time immemorial the Greeks have celebrated the feast of St. Joachim on the day following our Lady’s birthday. The Maronites kept it on the day after the Presentation in November, and the Armenians on the Tuesday after the Octave of the Assumption of the Mother of God. The Latins at first did not keep his feast. Later on it was admitted and celebrated sometimes on the day after the Octave of the Nativity, September 16^th, sometimes on the day following the Conception of the Blessed Virgin, December 9^th. Thus both East and West agreed in associating St. Joachim with his illustrious daughter when they wished to do him honor.

About the year 1510, Julius II placed the feast of the grandfather of the Messias upon the Roman Calendar with the rank of double major; and remembering that family, in which the ties of nature and…

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August 1 – Saint Peter’s Chains

†The Ecu-Men†

Rome, making a god of the man who had subjugated her, consecrated the month of August to Cesar Augustus. When Christ had delivered her, she placed at the head of this same month, as a trophy of her regained liberty, the feast of the chains, wherewith, in order to break hers, Peter the Vicar of Christ had once been bound. O Divine Wisdom, who hast a better claim to reign over this month than had the adopted son of Cesar, thou couldst not have more authentically inaugurated thy empire. Strength and sweetness are the attributes of thy works, and it is in the weakness of thy chosen ones that thou triumphest over the powerful. Thou thyself, in order to give us life, didst swallow death; Simon, son of John, became a captive, to set free the world entrusted to him. First Herod, and then Nero showed him the cost of…

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