Traditional Catholic evening devotional prayers to close your day with your mind, heart, tongue, and soul on our Lord! The month of November is dedicated to the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Begin and end each day with prayer. This video is a compilation of many traditional evening prayers Catholics say, and should not be considered a replacement for those who have an obligation to pray the Divine Office evening prayers.
06 November 2026
Stations of the Cross According to St Alphonsus Liguori
From the Apostolic Penitentiary:
A plenary indulgence is granted to those who piously make the Way of the Cross. The gaining of the indulgence is regulated by the following rules:
1. Must be done before stations of the cross legitimately erected.
2. 14 stations are required. Although it is customary for the icons to represent pictures or images, 14 simple crosses will suffice.
3. The common practice consists of fourteen pious readings to which some vocal prayers are added.. However, nothing more is required than a pious meditation on the Passion and Death of the Lord, which need not be a particular consideration of the individual mysteries of the stations.
4. A movement from one station to the next is required. But if the stations are made publicly and it is not possible for everyone taking part to go from station to station, it suffices if at least the one conducting the exercise goes from station to station, the others remaining in their places.
5. Those who are "impeded" can gain the same indulgence if they spend at least one half and hour in pious reading and meditation on the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III: XXXVII That Man’s Ultimate Happiness Consists in Contemplating God
From Contemplating History
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 7 March 1274), was a Doctor of the Church, Philosopher, Theologian, Jurist, Dominican Friar, and Priest. Known as Doctor Angelicus "Angelic Doctor," and the Doctor Communis "Universal Doctor" his writings serve as a defense and proof of the validity of Christ's authority over all. The Summa contra Gentiles (also known as Liber de veritate catholicae fidei contra errores infidelium, "Book on the truth of the Catholic faith against the errors of the unbelievers"). The Summa contra Gentiles consists of four books. The structure of Saint Thomas's work is designed to proceed from general philosophical arguments for monotheism, to which Muslims and Jews are likely to consent even within their own respective religious traditions, before progressing to the discussion of specifically Christian doctrine.
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 7 March 1274), was a Doctor of the Church, Philosopher, Theologian, Jurist, Dominican Friar, and Priest. Known as Doctor Angelicus "Angelic Doctor," and the Doctor Communis "Universal Doctor" his writings serve as a defense and proof of the validity of Christ's authority over all. The Summa contra Gentiles (also known as Liber de veritate catholicae fidei contra errores infidelium, "Book on the truth of the Catholic faith against the errors of the unbelievers"). The Summa contra Gentiles consists of four books. The structure of Saint Thomas's work is designed to proceed from general philosophical arguments for monotheism, to which Muslims and Jews are likely to consent even within their own respective religious traditions, before progressing to the discussion of specifically Christian doctrine.
Book III discusses providence and the human condition, that is good and evil acts, human fate and intellect and the relation of created beings to the creator.
Whether you are a history enthusiast, a student of religion, or simply curious about the impact of the Roman Catholic Church on the world, this playlist is designed to provide an informative and engaging journey through its captivating past. Subscribe to the Contemplating History channel for more educational content and immerse yourself in the rich tapestry of history.
Magnifica Humanitas: AI, Catholic Social Teaching, and Pope Leo’s New Encyclical
From Global Georgetown
Pope Leo’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), comes as humanity’s relationship with technology undergoes an epochal change. This major document — the most significant of Leo’s pontificate so far — asks us to consider what it means to promote the common good and safeguard the human person in a context of rapidly developing technology, especially the development of artificial intelligence. Pope Leo insists that this is not a moment for passive adaptation. The encyclical calls us to ask, in every context – work, family, education, public life – whether our technologies are serving human dignity or eroding it.
This dialogue explored how technological changes can enhance, rather than replace, humanity’s co-creative relationship with God. It also considered what new divisions we might face if we allow new technologies to replace our capacities for reflection and communion. Five leaders discussed the new encyclical’s wide-ranging implications.
“God Save the King “ – Imperial Anthem of the British Empire (Rare Version)
God save our gracious King, Long live our noble King, God save the King: Send him victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us: God save the King. O Lord, our God, arise, Scatter his enemies, And make them fall. Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks, On Thee our hopes we fix, God save us all.
Thy choicest gifts in store,
On him be pleased to pour;
Long may he reign:
May he defend our laws,
And ever give us cause
To sing with heart and voice
God save the King.
Church Teaching on Evolution - With Fr Chris Alar, MIC
Evolution and Creationism have always been at odds with each other, with science and modernism being pitted against religion and tradition. Father Chris Alar, MIC, asks if this has to be the case, and does the Catholic Church actually condemn evolution?
The Pope Draws a Line Between Art and AI Output
If Leo is serious, the Vatican needs to stop working with artists like Simone Legno, who designed "Luce", the mascot of the 2025 Jubilee.
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By Daniel Esparza
The Pope called for a renewed alliance between the Church and artists. Behind that appeal is 2,000 years of patronage.
On October 2, Pope Leo XIV addressed artists and curators gathered in the Apostolic Palace for a meeting on “The Art of Possibility: Weaving Together,” organized by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education. What he said went well beyond an opinion on generative AI. It was, for those who have been following Leo’s take on the ongoing technological revolution, a philosophical statement, a theological argument, and a cultural manifesto.
“The Church wishes to renew its alliance with artists,” he told those present. The reason, he explained, is that art performs a function that no algorithm can replicate. First and foremost, art listens. “Art acts like an antenna, picking up the great questions of the human heart — and making them audible, visible, and shareable.” In an age of search engines, the danger is homogenization, standardization.
On the specific question of artificial intelligence, the Pope was characteristically sober and precise. “There is an ontological difference — prior even to the aesthetic — between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of the human.” And then, he made the appeal: “The Church wishes to renew its alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity.”
The restlessness that machines cannot have
To ground this claim, the Pope alluded to Augustine’s Confessions. Art, Leo said, “when authentic, is animated by this restlessness.” The word he chose, restlessness, is philosophically loaded.
Augustine’s inquietum est cor nostrum — “our heart is restless until it rests in Thee” — is not some description of spiritual longing. It is, Augustine first argued, a structural account of human subjectivity. The human being is the creature who cannot rest in what is given. Not because neither the human nor its surrounding world are defective, but because both are oriented beyond themselves, toward a fullness that has not yet been reached and that cannot be simply manufactured. This fundamental orientation is what drives the artist to make something that has never existed before — and it is precisely what an algorithm, however sophisticated, does not have. An algorithm has no cor inquietum. It has, in the end, no death to face.
This is where the existentialist thread, which can be traced back to Augustine himself, enters. Heidegger's account of authentic existence is built around what he called Sein-zum-Tode — being-toward-death, a secular echo of Augustinian thought. The human being, Heidegger famously argued, is the entity for whom its own existence is at issue, for whom death is the most certain and most indefinitely imminent of all possibilities. This awareness — that every moment of making is borrowed time, that the work outlives the maker — is what gives human art its irreducible weight. The artist works in the shadow of finitude. The painting or the poem or the piece of music is, among other things, a way of saying: I was here, and I noticed this, and I wanted it to last.
An AI system processes data. It has no mortality, no Angst, no awareness of its own ending. It cannot make art in the sense Leo means, because it cannot be restless. It does not thirst nor search. It calculates — extraordinarily well, with results that can indeed be beautiful — but the beauty is, to follow Leo’s image of art as “wound” of sorts, downstream of the calculation, not upstream of a wound.
What Benjamin saw coming — and what Leo XIII saw first
The most prescient philosophical treatment of the question Leo XIV is raising came from Walter Benjamin in 1935, in his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Benjamin’s central concept is the aura — the quality of a work of art tied to its presence in a particular time and place, its embeddedness in tradition, its singularity. The aura of a painting is inseparable from the fact that it was made by a specific person, in a specific moment, with a specific hand — that it carries the trace of its own making. Mechanical reproduction, Benjamin argued, strips the work of its aura: the photograph of a painting is not the painting, and the copy, however accurate, lacks the here and now of the original.
Benjamin was not a contemporary of Leo XIII — he was just 11 years old when the great social encyclical pope died in 1903 — but both men were responding to the same underlying historical process: the industrialization of production and its effects on the human being and the things human beings make. Leo XIII, in Rerum Novarum (1891), was responding to the factory and the assembly line — the reduction of the worker to a unit of production, stripped of dignity, of craft, of the relationship between hand and material that had defined human labor for centuries. Benjamin, writing forty-four years later, was responding to the camera, the phonograph, and the printing press — the reduction of the artwork to a reproducible commodity, stripped of its aura, its singularity, its belonging in a specific human moment.
They were diagnosing the same modernity from different angles. Leo XIII asked what industrial reproduction does to the worker. Benjamin asked what it does to the work. Both were pointing at the same wound: the logic of mass production, when applied to human beings and the things they make, dissolves the particular into the generic, the singular into the interchangeable, the irreplaceable into the commodity.
The AI-generated image is the latest and (so far) most radical expression of that logic. It has no original — only outputs. It has no aura, Benjamin might argue, because it has no specific here and no clear now — only the statistical average of everyone else’s here and now, distilled into a plausible surface.
Leo XIV, in his October 2 address, stands at the intersection of both traditions — the Catholic social teaching lineage that runs from Leo XIII through his Magnifica Humanitas, and the cultural-philosophical lineage that runs from Benjamin through the contemporary critique of the attention economy. His insistence on an “ontological difference — prior even to the aesthetic — between art and what a machine can generate” is not choosing between those two traditions. It is holding them together: what Leo XIII said about the worker, Leo XIV is now saying about the work. The spark that machines cannot generate is the same dignity that factories cannot manufacture. The argument has not changed in 135 years, but the machine certainly has.
The Church that built the Sistine Chapel
There is a further dimension to Leo’s appeal that his audience in the Apostolic Palace understood without needing it explained: the Church has been here before. For more than a millennium — from the catacombs to the Council of Trent, from Giotto to Michelangelo, from Palestrina to Bach — the Catholic Church was the single most important patron of art in the Western world. Every major artistic innovation in European culture between roughly AD 400 and 1600 was funded, commissioned, or inspired by the Church. The mosaics of Ravenna, the cathedrals of France, the polyphony of the Renaissance, the iconographic programs of the great basilicas — all of this was the product of an institution that understood art as a form of theology and theology as a form of beauty.
The rupture came gradually and from multiple directions. The Reformation stripped the churches of the northern tradition of their visual programs. The Enlightenment relocated the arts from the service of the sacred to the service of the self — the artist as autonomous genius rather than craftsman in God’s workshop. The Industrial Revolution and the rise of the commercial art market completed the separation: by the 19th century, the Church had largely ceded cultural leadership to the secular academy, the bourgeois salon, and eventually the museum. Paul VI’s famous address to artists in 1964 — from which Leo XIV quoted in his October 2 speech — was an acknowledgment of that rupture and a first attempt at repair. John Paul II’s 1999 Letter to Artists deepened the attempt. Leo is extending it into the AI age.
What would it mean for the Church to become, once again, the great patron of arts — not in a nostalgic or triumphalist sense, but as a genuine cultural counterweight to the Silicon Valley model? It would mean commissioning works that are irreducibly particular, irreducibly human, irreducibly rooted in the tradition of a specific community’s encounter with God and others. It would perhaps mean building institutions — schools, residencies, exhibition spaces, publishing houses — that fund artists on the basis of their humanity rather than their market metrics. It would mean insisting, in the public square, that the question of what art is and what it is for is a question with a theological dimension that cannot be answered by any platform’s engagement statistics.
In a cultural landscape increasingly dominated by a handful of technology companies whose products flatten, homogenize, and commodify human creative expression, the Church’s tradition of beauty — accumulated over 15 centuries of patronage — represents an extraordinary resource. “Algorithms lack the spark of the human,” Leo said. What the Church carries, at its best, is a sustained account of where that spark comes from, what it is for, and why it must be protected.
The alliance he is proposing is not between two institutions with complementary interests. It is between two traditions that share a common enemy: the reduction of the human person to a data point, and the reduction of human creativity to a statistical output. The Church has been thinking about beauty for two thousand years. Artists have been making it. The question Leo XIV is raising — with considerable precision, in the Apostolic Palace, on the feast of the Guardian Angels — is whether that shared history is enough to build something new.
Pictured "Luce", the Vatican's idea of "art"
German Bishop Publicly Rebukes Pope Leo Over Grave Sins by Priests
Ironically, the bishop in question advocates for those most likely to commit those sins.
The Brutal Reality of Medieval Swords
From Modern History TV
Modern History TV explores the evolution, design, and symbolic importance of medieval weaponry. By examining different sword types and their practical applications, the narration delves into the historical craft of bladesmithing and the reality of how these tools were produced and utilized on and off the battlefield.
A compilation of sword related videos in which Jason Kingsley, CBE, the Modern Knight, explores the history of the knight's sword and its significance in medieval warfare. We examine how this iconic weapon defined knighthood, how it was made and used and what it meant.
This video traces the lineage of the medieval weapons most associated with the knightly class. We discuss why the sword became the central symbol of a knight's status. We also analyse a modern reproduction of a brutal blade, similar to those featured in manuscripts, to understand its true power on the battlefield.
Learn how a knight's sword was actually used in combat, including how to strike an opponent in armour from horseback. We break down the reality of sword usage compared to the romanticised legends of the past. This analysis offers a clearer picture of how these bladed weapons functioned in the hands of a trained warrior, separating historical fact from myth.
Traditional Catholic Morning Prayers in English | November
The 2,000-Year-Old Mystery of the Star of Bethlehem Finally Solved
From Totus Catholica
In December of 2025, a scientist at NASA did something unusual for a space agency. He went looking for the Star of Bethlehem. But could a comet explain the light that led the wise men to Jesus without explaining away the miracle? In this video, I explore a modern astronomical hypothesis alongside a much older question: does knowing how God works through creation mean forgetting who its author is? This was personal research, not an official NASA project, and a possible explanation is not proof of the Gospel.
Our journey begins with Balaam's prophecy of a star rising out of Jacob, follows the Magi through Israel's Scriptures, and reaches the child they came to worship. Along the way, we consider an ancient Chinese comet record, the Church's reading of the Epiphany, and the difference between seeking Christ and trusting a horoscope. The deepest question is not whether we can identify the object in the sky. It is whether we will follow the sign to its destination. Read Matthew chapter two slowly this week, offer Christ your best, and let the encounter change the direction of your life.
In this video:
• Could the Star of Bethlehem have been a comet?
• How Balaam's prophecy foreshadows the wise men
• Why a natural cause need not exclude God's providence
• What the Magi teach us about worship, not astrology
⏱ CHAPTERS
0:00 Star of Bethlehem: A Scientist Investigates
1:20 Can a Comet Be a Miracle?
2:45 Balaam's Star Prophecy and the Magi
4:44 Church Fathers on the Bethlehem Star
6:33 The Magi, Astrology, and Christian Worship
7:02 Mark Matney's Comet Hypothesis Explained
9:07 Star of Bethlehem: Answering the Objections
📖 SCRIPTURE REFERENCED
• Numbers 24:17: the star from Jacob and the sceptre from Israel.
• Matthew 2: the Magi seek, worship, and return by another way.
• Revelation 22: Christ, the bright morning star.
• Exodus: God works through a strong east wind at the sea.
• Romans 11: Gentiles are grafted into Israel's olive tree.
• Micah: the prophecy directing the search toward Bethlehem.
⛪ FROM THE CHURCH FATHERS & THE CATECHISM
• St. John Chrysostom (4th century): the star's extraordinary guidance; St. Thomas Aquinas also considers its unusual nature.
• St. Ignatius of Antioch (early 2nd century), Letter to the Ephesians: the star and the overthrow of magic.
• CCC 528: the Epiphany and the Magi as the first fruits of the nations.
• CCC 2116: the rejection of astrology, horoscopes, and divination.
📜 SOURCES & FURTHER READING
• Mark Matney, Journal of the British Astronomical Association: a proposed comet explanation, not an established identification.
• Han dynasty astronomical record: a broom star reported in 5 BC.
• Dead Sea Scrolls: ancient Jewish readings of the star prophecy.
• Josephus: the account of a sword-like star over Jerusalem.
• Tacitus and Suetonius: accounts of expectations concerning Judea.
🔗 EXPLORE MORE
🌍 Website: https://totuscatholica.org/
Rosary Guide: https://totuscatholica.org/rosary
✉️ Contact: https://totuscatholica.org/contact
🔍 Examination of Conscience: https://catholicexaminationofconscien...
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This Japanese Martyr Was an Augustinian Laywoman
Martyred when the Empire of Japan was killingChristians simply for the"crime" of being Catholic. At least they've stopped doing it, though it took a while.
From Aleteia
By Philip Kosloski
St. Magdalene of Nagasaki was an Augustinian tertiary, part of the same religious family as Pope Leo XIV, and was killed for her faith in the 17th century.
There have been many martyrs in Japan over the centuries, as rulers did not look favorably at those who professed the Christian religion, trying to stamp out its influence in the country. Despite such harsh persecution, many Christians were willing to risk their lives for Jesus Christ, refusing to renounce their religion, even when threatened with death.
St. Magdalene of Nagasaki was one of those Christians, as she was martyred in the 17th century at the tender age of 23. She was not afraid to proclaim her faith and did not hide herself when persecutors came to kill her.
Augustinian tertiary
St. Magdalene was born in 1611 near Nagasaki and was the daughter of Christian parents. Early on in life she was attracted to the Augustinian Order, and was spiritually counseled by Francis of Jesus Terrero and Vincent of St. Anthony Simoens. These two priests guided her and led her to a deeper relationship with Christ.
Eventually she became an Augustinian Tertiary, which means that she still lived in the world, but followed the Augustinian spirituality. She never married, but she also never entered any convent.
St. Magdalene taught catechism to children and distributed alms to the poor. Then her two spiritual advisors were martyred and so she sought out two other Augustinians to guide her.
Many were being killed for their faith at the time, but instead of shrinking away from persecution, St. Magdalene freely turned herself into the civil authorities, declaring her Christianity.
Shortly thereafter she was martyred for the faith in the year 1634. She was eventually canonized in 1987 along with St. Lorenzo Ruiz by St. John Paul II, who praised their witness:
Today’s canonization of Blessed Lorenzo Ruiz and his companions, martyred in and around Nagasaki between 1633 and 1637, constitutes an eloquent confirmation of these words. Sixteen men and women bore witness, by their heroic sufferings and death, to their belief in the message of salvation in Christ which had reached them after being proclaimed from generation to generation since the time of the Apostles.
St. Magdalene's courageous faith is inspiring, along with her commitment to the Augustinian religious family, which now has a pope at the head of the Catholic Church. Her annual feast day is October 20 on the Augustinian calendar, while she is also celebrated on September 28, with St. Lorenzo Ruiz.
05 November 2026
Selective Enforcement: The Vatican’s Tale of Two Liturgies
From AdVaticanum
Cardinal Arthur Roche recently addressed liturgical abuse in an interview with AdVaticanum. But while he condemned these abuses, there remains no formal mechanism to stop them. The contrast is hard to ignore: the Vatican operates with meticulous organisation when enforcing its liturgical vision…maintaining an iron-clad plan to suppress the Traditional Latin Mass…yet takes a hands-off approach to irreverence and scandal within ordinary parish walls. Why is there such a vast chasm between how these two issues are handled?
The Promise of Mary
Our Lady of Fatima promised that if we fulfilled her requests and if Russia were consecrated to Her, Her Immaculate Heart would triumph and there would be world peace.
From One Peter Five
By Timothy Flanders, MA
We waste so much energy on what the Pope can do or not do to solve problems in the Church or society.
We were warned. The problems in the Church, in souls, and in societies, were identified by Heaven long before Vatican II.
And long before Vatican II, the solution was provided.
On July 13, 1917, during the third apparition at Fatima, Our Lady warned that if mankind did not repent God was “going to punish the world for its crimes by means of war, hunger, persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father.”
But here’s Mary’s promise:
To forestall this, I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If they heed my requests, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace.
So there it is. A promise and a request.
One request was for the Pope to do something, and the other request was for the faithful to do something.
As Catholics, we waste so much energy on what the Pope can do or not do to solve problems in the Church or society. But it is within our power to
- do our part,
- encourage others to do their part,
- and also do more than others in order to offer that up for them.
All that is necessary is for a soul to sit silently and listen to the voice of Mary, Our Blessed Mother, who was so concerned for her children that she came down from heaven to warn us of danger and then promise us a solution.
The Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays
Catholic brethren: heed the requests of our Lady for our times. Do not neglect our Mother’s wishes. Mary does not ask much of us in this crisis. Do the little that she asks for God’s greater glory and the salvation of souls.
The requests are these: pray one third of the Holy Rosary every day (five decades) and make the following devotion on Five First Saturdays consecutively. Do this in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady.
1. All in a Spirit of reparation
Every sin detracts from the glory of God. Reparation seeks to offer glory to God in penance for yourself and others. It also seeks to avert God’s wrath. Consider the prayer on Thursday after Ash Wednesday:
O God, Who by sin art offended, and by penance appeased, mercifully regard the prayers of Thy people making supplication to Thee, and turn away the scourges of Thine anger, which we deserve for our sins.
Our Lady says that the Five First Saturdays are part of averting God’s wrath in our time. The final battle is between the Serpent and “The Woman” (Rev. XII). That might be why Our God has revealed this devotion in our time through The Woman. Let us fight on the side of The Woman.
2. Confession in the spirit of reparation
Remember your death. Consider the just judgment seat of Christ and confess before His tribunal.
Even if you cannot make it to confession on the First Saturday, at least your monthly confession can suffice.
3. Reparatory Communion
This is the central act of this devotion. Make your Holy Communion with proper preparation, fasting, and in a state of grace.
If you are prevented for a just cause, permission from a priest can dispense this to the Sunday Communion.
4. Recitation of one third of the Holy Rosary (Five decades)
Think about your death and make this the best Rosary before you die. Remember to offer it in a spirit of reparation.
5. 15-minutes of Mental Prayer
Mental prayer is the second level in the Nine Levels of Prayer. This mental prayer must meditate on one or more of the mysteries of the Holy Rosary.
———
Consider, brethren, that this present difficulties will soon be safely under the heel of our Lady. Only heed her requests so that God’s judgement will soon be accomplished. Then our children’s children’s children will tell the tale of how these problems in our times were averted by the Mother of God and many saints.
Pictured: Russian icon of the Theotokos of FatimaSixth Day Within the Octave of All Saints
From Dom Prosper Guéranger's Liturgical Year:
Thou art my portion, O Lord, Alleluia, in the land of the living, Alleluia, Alleluia.—Bring forth my soul out of prison, to confess to thy Name; in the land of the living, Alleluia, Alleluia.—Glory and honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, world without end, Amen: in the land of the living, Alleluia, Alleluia. (Mozarabic Missal)
Such is the opening chant for the departed, in the Mozarabic Missal. With the Greeks, in like manner, no word is of more frequent recurrence in the Office of the Dead, than the Alleluia. (GOAR, nota 6 ad Officium Exsequiarum in Euchologio) Moreover, both Greece and Spain are but observing what was once a general practice throughout the Church.
St. Jerome tells us how, at the death of Fabiola, all the Roman people assembled, the chant of psalms echoed on all sides, and the sublime Alleluia filled the temples till it shook their gilded roofs. (Jerome, ad Oceanum. De morte Fabiolæ) Two centuries later, the story of St. Radegonde’s funeral written by her daughter Baudonivia, proves that, if submissive tears were not forbidden to the survivors and might at times even flow abundantly, the custom in Gaul was, nevertheless, the same as that of Rome. (Baudonivia, Vita Radegundis 28),
And again with regard to a later period, the Manuscript of Rheims quoted by Dom Hugh Ménard in his notes on the Gregorian Sacramentary, (Nota 680) prescribes as a prelude to the burial prayers, the chanting of the Psalm In exitu Israel de Ægypto, with Alleluia and Antiphon.
When St. Anthony buried in the desert the body of St. Paul the first hermit, the biographer of the latter relates that, in accordance with Christian tradition, Anthony sang hymns as well as psalms. Such was actually the universal Christian tradition, identical in all lands. (Hieron. Life of St Paul, 16)
St. John Chrysostom remarks the same fact, and explains it thus: “Tell me, are they not conquerors, the dead whom we carry in procession with shining torches and the singing of hymns? Yes; we praise God and give him thanks; for he crowns the departed one; he has put an end to his labor; and he keeps him near himself, free from all fear. Seek no other explanation for these hymns and psalms: they are an expression of joy.” (Chrys. In epist. Ad Hebr. Homil. iv.)
St. Dionysius speaks in the same strain, in his book on the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. After alluding to the joy of the dying Christian, as he sees approaching the end of his struggle and an eternal security, he adds: “The relatives of the deceased, his friends in God and in holiness, proclaim him blessed for having conquered at last; and they address their songs of thanksgiving to the heavenly Author of the victory. Praying that they themselves may obtain a similar lot, they bear him to the hierarch the distributor of the holy crowns, to whom it belongs to perform the sacred rites prescribed with regard to those who have slept in the Lord.” (Dionysius. De Eccles. Hierarch. Cap 7:1, 2:1-3)
Tomorrow we will give some examples of these last honors paid by the Church to her children.
Certain Churches borrow the following stanzas from the tenth Song of the Cathemerinon, which gave us yesterday the Mozarabic Hymn for the Dead.
Cease now each sad complaint; ye mothers check your tears; let no man mourn the pledges he has given: for this death is the restoration of life.
What mean these sculptured marbles, and these fair monuments, save that what is committed to them is not dead, but laid to sleep?
For this body which we see lying lifeless, yet a little while and it will seek once more the companionship of the spirit that has fled on high.
Quickly shall the time come, when friendly life shall make these cold embers glow; and animating them with circling blood, shall take back her former dwelling.
The motionless corpses, that have lain corrupting in their graves, shall be caught up into the swift air, united to the same souls as before.
Even thus do the dry seeds, dead and buried, become green blades; and, springing up from the sward, recall the former ears.
Receive now, O earth, this deposit into thy care, and cherish it in thy tender bosom: ’tis the form of a man I place in thee, noble remains I entrust to thee.
This was once the home of a spirit breathed from the mouth of its Creator; Christ ruled these members, and his holy wisdom dwelt therein.
Then shelter the body confided to thee: he who made it will not forget it, but will ask back the gifts he had given, and the likeness of his own countenance.
Soon the promised time will come, when God shall fulfill all hope; then thou must needs open thy bosom, and restore this form such as I give it thee. Amen.
The following Responsory is the last of the third Nocturn in the short Office of the Dead per annum. After it we give an ancient prayer, found in the Ambrosian rite, and appropriated to deceased benefactors and relatives. (Oratio super sindonem, in Missa quotidiana pro defunctis fratribus, sororibus, propinquis et benefactoribus.)
℟. Deliver me, O Lord, from the ways of hell, who hast broken the brazen gates, and hast visited hell, and hast given light to them, that they might behold thee * who were in the pains of darkness.
℣. Crying, and saying: Thou art come, O our Redeemer. * Who were.
℣. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine on them. * Who were.
O God, the life of the living, the hope of the dying, the salvation of all that trust in thee, mercifully grant that the souls of thy servants and handmaids, delivered from the darkness of our mortality, may rejoice with thy Saints in perpetual light. Through our Lord.
The following Prose by Adam of St. Victor, though often assigned to other feasts, was sung in several places to celebrate all the Saints.
Let the Church on earth commemorate the joys of her mother the Church in heaven: and while she celebrates annual feasts, let her sigh for those which are eternal.
May the mother assist her daughter in this valley of sorrows: and may our heavenly guardians be at our side in the battle.
The world, the flesh, and the devils wage their several warfares; at the onslaught of so many terrors, the heart’s tranquility is disturbed.
All this brood detests our feast-days, and with united force, endeavors to drive peace from the earth.
Here all is confusion; hope, fear, sadness, joy are commingled: in heaven, scarce half an hour of silence is kept.
Oh! how happy is that city, where there is unceasing festivity! and how joyful is that assembly where care is utterly unknown!
No sickness there, nor old age; no deceit, nor terror of foes; but all one voice of joyful souls, and all one burning love of hearts.
There the angelic citizens in their triple hierarchy rejoice to be subject to a Monarch who is both One and Three.
They admire, and faint not in contemplating, the God upon whom they gaze; they enjoy him, and are not satiated, for the enjoyment brings new thirst.
There are our fathers, ranked according to their merit; all darkness is now dispelled, and in God’s light they see light.
These Saints, whose solemnity is celebrated today, behold with unveiled face the king in his glory.
There is the Queen of virgins, far above the highest choirs; may she, before the Lord, excuse our guilty falls.
And after this present misery, may the grace of Christ, through the intercession of the Saints, lead us to the same glory! Amen.
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