Who Is the Month of August Dedicated To?

Each month of the year has a special dedication, January to the Holy Name, March to St Joseph, and of course, October to the Holy Rosary.

 

From the National Catholic Register

By Joseph Pronechen

Traditionally, each month is dedicated to some major aspect of our faith such as the Precious Blood, St. Joseph, the Holy Name of Jesus and the Poor Souls. August has its major dedication too.

We know that traditionally May is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. October to the Holy Rosary, and Our Lady of the Rosary. Now it’s time to also remember something little realized or often forgotten. August is the month traditionally dedicated by to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

In fact, August once saw the celebration of the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In 1944 Venerable Pope Pius XII set this feast to be celebrated on Aug. 22 as the Octave of the Assumption. Two years earlier he had consecrated the Christian family and whole human race to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the 25th anniversary of the Fatima apparitions.

Then in 1969, St. Pope Paul VI moved the date to the Saturday after the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (celebrated on the Friday before; the celebrations are next to each other). It means the Immaculate Heart of Mary feast falls on the third Saturday after Pentecost.

For the record, August still has three Marian feasts —the Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major (also remembering Our Lady of the Snows) on Aug. 5; the Assumption on Aug. 15; the Queenship of Mary on Aug. 22.

This might seem all rather recent, but well before August came to be dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary she was celebrated as such for centuries. Let’s take a quick peek at a few highlights.

“The real roots of the devotion to Mary’s Heart are in Scripture, where on two occasions reference is made to Mary’s heart by St. Luke,” points out Father Johanm Roten, a Mariologist at the University of Dayton. He refers to Luke 2:19 “Mary treasured all these things and reflected on them in her heart,” and Luke 2:51 “His mother (Mary) meanwhile kept all these things in memory, meaning in her heart.”

He also explained, “The most beautiful biblical text about Mary’s heart is the Magnificat because it reveals to us the wondrous riches of Mary’s humble and regal heart. Her heart sings the praises of God, but it is not a solitary song, my song about the history of my soul, but the Magnificat is the song of the history of salvation for all God’s people.”

Let’s fast forward to the early 15th century and St. Bernardine of Siena who, as Father Roten notes, has the title, the Doctor of the Heart of Mary. “In that Heart he sees, as it were, seven burning furnaces that give rise to seven flames which are the seven acts of love expressed in the seven ‘words’ of Our Lady found in the Gospel.”

Then in the 17th century, St. John Eudes broadcast the devotion and promoted a feast in honor of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Soon several dioceses in France did so.

Devotion continued and surged in 1830 with the Miraculous Medal. Among the images Our Lady told St. Catherine Labouré to place on the medal was one of her Immaculate Heart placed next to the Sacred Heart.

Our Lady continued to bring devotion to her Immaculate Heart to the forefront, next at Fatima. There, and also later to Sr. Lucia, she made several specific mentions to her Immaculate Heart.

Mary Herself Tells Us

After the revelations at Fatima and those later to Lucia, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary spread rapidly and in even greater climes.

A short reminder: Our Lady mentioned her Immaculate Heart in her second apparition in June. She told Lucia she would stay on the earth after her cousins went to heaven since Jesus wishes you to make me known and loved on earth. He wishes also for you to establish devotion in the world to my Immaculate Heart.

Our Blessed Mother also told her, I will be with you always, and my Immaculate Heart will be your comfort and the way which will lead you to God.

Jesus, her Son, wants to make her known and loved with devotion established in the world to her Immaculate Heart. And the Immaculate Heart will not only be our comfort, but the way that will lead us to God. It’s a perfectly clear reason or instruction why we should be devoted to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Then during the July apparition Our Lady told the children in detail about her Immaculate Heart, the reparation she asked for, and the results if people ignored this request.

She gave the children in this short prayer to say often especially while making a sacrifice to save sinners: O Jesus, this is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for offences committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

In July she also told the children after she showed them hell where poor sinners go — To save them that God wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If you do what I tell you, many souls will be saved, and there will be peace.

Let’s remind ourselves who it was who asked for this devotion: her Son Jesus.

Our Blessed Mother continued, telling the children, in part, about punishments and another war (World War II) if people didn’t listen and repent. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays.

That was not all. Our Lady made it very clear, If my wishes are fulfilled, Russia will be converted and there will be peace; if not, then Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, bringing new wars and persecution of the Church; the good will be martyred and the Holy Father will have much to suffer; certain nations will be annihilated. But in the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph.

The triumph will come through her Immaculate Heart. No way or no one will prevent this. The question is, will we practice devotion to her Immaculate Heart. We have the month of August to remind us.

More Proofs

The Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy makes clear “the memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is a celebration of the complex visceral relationship of Mary with her Son's work of salvation: from the Incarnation, to his death and resurrection, to the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

That’s one explanation why Jesus wants devotion to his Mother’s Immaculate Heart spread.

The same Directory also has this to say about receiving Holy Communion on the Five First Saturdays. “This pious practice should be seen as an opportunity to live intensely the paschal Mystery celebrated in the Holy Eucharist, as inspired by the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary.” Jesus and Mary are brought together here too.

Her Heart and Ways to Honor

First, the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia explains “what seems to attract us above all else is the love of this Heart for Jesus and for God.” And we’ve got to look at all the human heart of Mary suggests including her “joys and sorrows, her virtues and hidden perfections, and, above all, her virginal love for her God, her maternal love for her Divine Son, and her motherly and compassionate love for her sinful and miserable children here below.”

Father Roten has great insight for us into what it means when we speak of Mary’s heart.

“The expression ‘Mary’s heart’ is to be understood in a biblical sense: it denotes the person of the Blessed Virgin herself, her intimate and unique being; the center and source of her interior life, of her mind and memory, of her will and love; the single-mindedness with which she loved God and the disciples and devoted herself wholeheartedly to the saving work of her Son.”

Start in August

Now that we’ve looked at a bit of the history of the devotion and reasons isn’t this month of August a good time we begin, or increase, our honor and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary?

One way is to make or renew our individual consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Pope Pius XII explained that this consecration “tends essentially to union with Jesus, under the guidance of Mary.”

He consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on Oct. 31, 1942. Pope St. John Paul II renewed it twice, the second time in communion with the bishops of the Church, on Mar. 25, 1984. And Pope Francis did so at a Vatican ceremony on Oct. 13, 2013.

“By our consecration we promise to become dependent on Mary in all things: to offer all our prayers and oblations to God through Mary, and to seek every gift from God through Mary,” teach the Dominicans at The Rosary Center. “And we do this with the greatest confidence. Since she is our mother, she knows our needs better than we; and since she is Queen of Heaven, she has immediate access to the infinite treasury of graces in the Kingdom of her Divine Son.”

No wonder we’re advised to consecrate ourselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Jesus chose that we go to him through Mary — “both the mystery of God coming to us through Mary, and our being led to God through Mary, is a work of the Holy Spirit.”

If we make the consecration and honestly try to live it, what the Blessed Mother promised Lucia applies to us too: I will never leave you; my Immaculate Heart will be your refuge, and the way that will lead you to God.

Use St. Louis de Montfort’s method, Father Michael Gaitley’s 33 Days to Morning Glory (more than one method in this book), or other suitable consecration prayers.

Next, the Rosary. “In our devotion to Mary’s Heart there is no more effective prayer than the Rosary which is about the mysteries of her Son’s life and hers. There is no better way to obtain through Mary’s intercession the help we desperately need to learn how to be loving and selfless,” reminded Servant of God Father John Hardon.

Also, since it’s already past for August, aim for September to begin the Five First Saturdays. Or continue to do First Saturdays if you’ve already completed the five. We don’t have to stop at five. We really can and should do them continuously because they honor Our Lady and continuously fulfill her requests.

Finally, during August we should do something extra, something special, something extra special for Our Lady. Get enrolled in the brown scapular, wear a Miraculous Medal, begin praying the Angelus daily, or the Memorare, or why not both? Why not all? To Jesus through Mary.

The Paris Olympic Ceremony: Not Simply Bad Taste, but an Act of War Against Christian Civilization

Dr de Mattei sees last Friday night in Paris for what it is, not just a mockery of the Eucharist, but a declaration of war against our Græco-Roman Culture.

From Rorate Cæli

By Roberto de Mattei, PhD

Among the many symbolic events of our time, the grotesque spectacle that opened the Paris Olympics on July 26, 2024, cannot simply be dismissed as a show of bad taste or a cultural provocation.  It is the latest act of war against Christian Civilization that had one of its historical peaks in the French Revolution.  

At the center of the controversy over the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games was a choreography in which French DJ Barbara Butch, known for calling herself “fat, lesbian, queer, Jewish, and proud to be so,” led the stage wearing a crown in the shape of a halo, surrounded by drag queens, transgender model Raya Martigny, and dozens of gender-uncertain dancers, while singer Philippe Katerine burst in almost naked and painted blue and in the guise of Dionysus. 

The performance seemed to many to be a blasphemous parody of the Last Supper and sparked outrage and protests from Catholics around the world. The creator of the tableau vivant, Thomas Jolly, who is also an openly “queer” character, claimed to have drawn inspiration not from Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting, but from an unknown seventeenth-century artist, Jan Harmensz van Bijlert, author of a painting, Le Festin des dieux, which depicts a banquet of the gods on Olympus.

Whatever the inspiration, the initiative cannot be traced back to a wacky art director, but expresses a message commissioned from him by the highest French authorities, starting with the head of state. President Emmanuel Macron is the one who, last March 4, declared himself proud that France was the first country in the world to include abortion in its constitutional charter, calling this act a universal message. Macron himself, in his arrogance, unscathed by the recent electoral debacle, wanted to propose to the world a new message of anti-Christian “inclusiveness.” Dionysus is the “hybrid” god of pagan orgies, unbridled sensuality, and the blinding of reason, and the stated intention of the organizers was to replace the sublime mystery of Christianity with the Dionysian bacchanal. 

The hatred of Christianity has always needed symbolic depictions, and the French Revolution was fed from the beginning with pagan mythology. There is an obvious continuity between the blasphemous parody of the Last Supper on July 26 and the enthronement of the Goddess Reason on August 10, 1793, in Paris in the guise of the Egyptian goddess Isis. 

In this respect, there is also something sacrilegious about the gratuitous and shameful outrage against Queen Marie Antoinette, depicted in the Paris performance on July 26, holding her guillotined head in her hands while singing the revolutionary hymn Ça ira. Macron and his collaborators wanted to vindicate the French Revolution in what is most abject about it: the killing of the Queen of France, an innocent victim, like King Louis XVI, of revolutionary hatred, which in the French sovereigns wanted to strike at the principle of Christ's Social Kingship.

Marie Antoinette, the most slandered, but also most beloved and even revered queen in history, was guilty of no crime other than embodying an aristocratic grace incompatible with revolutionary egalitarianism. Much has been written about her alleged frivolity and little about her piety. Yet the sovereign's religious spirit, which emerges in the last days of her imprisonment, is rooted in an upbringing and worldview antithetical to the revolutionary one. The mock trial before the Jacobin Tribunal on October 14 and 16, 1793, saw her the victim of infamous charges. An image by English painter William Hamilton depicts her in an immaculate white dress as she exits the Conciergerie, surrounded by the “tricoteuses,” who demand new blood from the Revolution. Henry Sanson, son of the executioner of Paris, recounts in his Memoirs that she ascended the steps of the guillotine with surprising majesty, as if they had been those of the grand staircase of Versailles. The same words with which Pope Pius VI, in his allocution Quare lacrymae of June 17, 1793, called Louis XVI a martyr can be applied to Queen Marie Antoinette. In this allocution, Pius VI, exclaimed, 

“O France, O France! Called by Our predecessors 'mirror of all Christendom and sure pillar of the Faith,' thou who in the fervor of the Christian Faith and in devotion to the Apostolic See never followed the other nations, but always preceded them! How far you are from Us today, with such a hostile mind toward the true Religion: you have become the most implacable enemy among all the adversaries of the Faith that have ever existed!”

 

The killing of the two monarchs is the founding act of the French Republic, and the constitutionalization of abortion represents a symbolic continuity in state murder. However, those who would identify France with the blasphemous show that opened the Olympic Games would be wrong. France is not Guillotine Square, but Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle; France is not Robespierre or Macron, but it is Saint Louis and Saint Joan of Arc. So it would be wrong for those who would identify the spectacle of degeneration that Paris offers these months with the Western civilization to which France has given so much. The West is the story of a religious faith, a way of life, an art, a literature, music, and also of great battles in defense of civilization. 

The external enemies of the West, who are the heirs of Muhammad in the Arab world and those of Lenin in Russia and China, do not hate the decadence of the West, but the West as such: that West that defeated Islam at Lepanto and Vienna and stopped communism in Warsaw in 1920 and in Spain in the 1930s. 

The enemies of the West seek their revenge. For this to happen, for them to succeed in winning the war, they know that the West must cease to be Christian, must return to the ideas and customs of paganism, to fall like a ripe apple, as happened to the Roman Empire. The barbarians did not hate the decadence of Rome, but the power that had subjugated them for centuries. 

The invasion of the Eternal City by Alaric's Goths on the night of August 24, 410, was their triumph. St. Jerome in Bethlehem, and St. Augustine in Hippo shed deep tears over this symbolic event. Who weeps today over the threats of the new barbarians to the West? More importantly, who is willing to defend the West in the name of the principles and institutions that made it great in history? Yet the strength of these values, which stems from the Truth of Christ, is indestructible. The future of the world is not under the banner of Dionysius, nor under that of communism or Islam, but under that of the one victorious God, who is Jesus Christ. Faith and reason attest to this.

How and when will it happen? To God, all things are possible in history. Only those who believe in blind historical determinism think that “history is not made with what-ifs.” History is made with what-ifs precisely because of the wealth of possibilities that each present moment contains. That is why our examination of conscience is based on the failures we have committed, but which we did not have to commit. History too, like our lives, could have gone otherwise and may go, from one moment to the next, in a different way. What would have happened if on July 14, 1789, the dragoons of the Prince of Lambesc, contravening the order not to shed blood given to them by Louis XVI, had wiped out the revolutionary rogues marching to the Bastille? The anti-Christian Revolution had no illusions. The dragoons of the Prince of Lambesc are always, sword in hand, around the corner of history. 

In the Conservative Party, Containment Always Wins

'Yes, you read that right. I was removed from the Conservative Party for stating that we should not chemically castrate children.' There is one less conservative in the 'Conservative' Party.

From The European Conservative

By Connor Tomlinson

Yes, you read that right. I was removed from the Conservative Party for stating that we should not chemically castrate children.

As I sat awaiting a speech by former Home Secretary Suella Braverman at Nat Con DC, I received an email informing me that I had been suspended from the Conservative Party. I had planned to write an article evaluating the merits and faults of each prospective leadership candidate. But whoever holds the crossbar puppeteering the corpse of that former election-winning institution is now irrelevant. If the Conservative Party is incapable of accommodating critics of its disastrous record in government, then it demonstrates its commitment to continuing the very status quo which delivered the worst, well deserved election defeat for a century.

It took two weeks for CCHQ’s (Conservative Campaign Headquarters) crack team of investigators to provide me with a list of offences. From over 4,000 X posts, and thousands of hours of broadcast footage, they produced four tweets and a ten second clip. I was disappointed that they were incapable of compiling my greatest hits—all of which I would have stood by. What were my crimes? Tweets suggesting conditional support for Reform UK’s policies; tweets criticising the hostility of LGBT activists towards the family unit; tweets condemning the chemical castration of children by transgender ideology; and a joke about the undesirable cultural practices of unassimilated immigrants. 

Yes, you read that right. I was removed from the Conservative Party for stating that we should not chemically castrate children.

Most perplexing was the fact that, after being accused of bringing the party into disrepute on social media, I was instructed “not to make any public comment or announcement” concerning my suspension; nor to disclose which of my publicly-accessible posts were grounds for my expulsion. Why they thought I would comply with this closed-doors inquisition is beyond me. 

Within a few hours of the email announcing my suspension, pending investigation, the party Chairman, Richard Holden, resigned in disgrace. This followed a disastrous campaign where he parachuted himself into a safe seat, and reduced a 20,000 majority to winning by just 20 votes after sending his leaflets to the wrong constituency. Yet despite ending the careers of decent MPs like Miriam Cates and Dame Andrea Jenkyns, Rishi Sunak and the surviving members of his cabinet retain their party membership—while I am punished.

I will address each charge, beginning with my posts in support of Reform UK. I condemned the exile of Lee Anderson for suggesting Sadiq Khan’s career history of defending Islamic terrorists may go some way to explaining why the Palestine marches have been given carte blanche to chant genocidal slogans every week in Westminster since October 7th. I commended Reform UK for making Anderson their first MP, and stated that I might be willing to vote for them in a general election. 

I also said that I voted for Richard Tice in my local Bexley by-election in December 2021—before I had reinstated my Conservative party membership, following Boris Johnson’s resignation. I had cancelled my membership renewal in 2020, after the government saw fit to place healthy people under house arrest for almost two years while simultaneously importing 942,000 people in 2021. Johnson then had the temerity to float the notion of ending the lockdowns only after the entire population was compulsorily vaccinated.

I reinstated my membership when Jonhson resigned, in anticipation of the leadership election. After Liz Truss emerged victorious, I hoped for a course-correction on economic and social policies. Forty-nine days later, Truss was coup’d out, and Rishi Sunak installed to continue the status quo. This hubris produced the historic defeat on July 4th. It seems the Conservative Party is filled with suckers for punishment, intent on suffering yet another repudiation by the voting public the next time their brand is put to a vote. 

As former Deputy Leader Ben Habib has said, Reform UK would be a redundant entity if the Conservatives had simply kept their promises on Brexit and immigration since 2019. My career as a critic from within the party, from the Right, would have served no purpose. The rise of Reform UK is an avoidable problem of the Tories’ own making.

If I am fifth columnist within the Conservative party for venting my frustrations at its revolving door of prime ministers, and suggesting Reform were getting a few things right, then why have Sir Jacob Rees Mogg and Dame Andrea Jenkyns not been reprimanded for proposing a coalition with Reform UK during the general election? I am not suggesting they do such a thing, but merely pointing out the double standard. 

Most egregious was the selection of two posts, in which I argued that the ‘LGBT’ community is not “family-friendly” and is associated with bodily mutilation, including of children. Two of the five complaints against me were about my objections to the medical experiment conducted on children by transgender ideologues. 

The fact that the Conservative party uses the ever-expanding ‘LGBT+’ acronym explains why it cannot mount a defence against its Labour, Lib Dem, and Green counterparts. If not the unmolested innocence of children, and the most basic biological distinction between the sexes, what on Earth are the Conservatives in the business of conserving, exactly?

Is it really the party’s position that the 4400% increase in adolescent girls identifying as trans—many of whom have five-or-six mental health comorbidities and a disproportionate number of whom are in foster care—is an organic phenomenon? Is it the Conservative Party’s position that children should be recipients of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and cosmetic surgeries in pursuit of the impossible task of changing a person’s biological sex? Even when numerous studies have demonstrated it does nothing to decrease suicidal ideation? Even when it causes infertility, osteoporosis, various forms of cancers, and worsens underlying mental health conditions? Even when the Cass Review advises against it and the High Court upheld their own government’s ban on it?

How is the Conservative party in such disarray that its government commissioned and implemented the findings of the Cass Review, but its party apparatchiks expel members who have a career history of being consistently right on this issue years before the Review was published?

I have dear friends who were nearly killed, and who cannot have children, because they were told this lie that they can change sex. If the official position of the Conservative party is to continue to tell this lie, then I do not want to be a member.

Yet again, Suella Braverman has used near-identical rhetoric recently, at Nat Con D.C. She went as far as to blame Rishi Sunak by name for flying the ‘Progress Pride Flag’ over government buildings, symbolising the medical experimentation on thousands of children and confused adults. Will she be expelled in due course, because the party is incapable of admitting its moral failings on this issue? Whether or not her party whip is at risk, it’s little wonder she felt it pointless to run for party leader. The party goes apoplectic when encouraged to live up to its namesake.

The final bizarre claim was made that I had “reference[d] a trope that non-white residents of the U.S. are inherently unclean.” They made this leap in logic from a clip from the Podcast of the Lotus Eaters, in which we criticised late-night propagandist Jon Stewart for stating crime, drug use, and defecation on public transport was “the literal price of freedom.” Stewart was criticising Tucker Carlson for asking why poorer and illiberal Russia has a clean, reliable metro system, without the murders, rapes, and intoxicated vagrants seen on the subways in American cities. 

I saw it firsthand when I visited Austin, Texas, earlier this year. San Francisco developed a map to track the abundance of human excrement. Carlson and my point was that it is a decision made by politicians to inflict these squalid conditions on their populations. It does not have to be this way. America, the UK, and Europe all had clean and functioning metro services prior to the progressive social policies encouraged by everyone from Jon Stewart to the United Nations.

The joke I made was provocative: “Abdul crapping on your doorstep means that you’re free? God bless America!” There are, of course, areas of the world where public defecation is commonplace due to a lack of plumbing infrastructure. Pretending otherwise is absurd, especially when record numbers of those peoples are now our neighbours, thanks to Conservative immigration policy. Especially when we now have examples of it happening on video.

Why Conservatives have chosen to die on the hill of the human right to empty one’s bowels on private property is beyond me. But to extrapolate from my hyperbole, directed at Stewart, that “non-white residents of the US are inherently unclean” is a preposterous projection. The Japanese have both better toilets and public transport than America, and aren’t of European stock. As my friend Douglas Murray once said, “if you can hear the whistle, you must surely be the dog.”

But this speaks to a broader absurd language game we are expected to play. Anytime an increase in sexual assault is reported, or a terror attack occurs, we are told that undifferentiated, non-descript ‘men’ are to blame. Even when MPs are heckled to tears at acceptance speeches for their insufficient support for Gaza, they tell us that ‘idiots,’ not Islam, are to blame. I’m not playing that game. I am not looking the other way, denying cultural differences and having to live with the consequences. If the Conservative Party compels their membership to do so, then, as one very senior Tory MP told me, being excommunicated is “a badge of honour.”

The Conservative Party seems set on following Tony Blair’s revolutionary on-rails way of doing politics until it careens off a cliff. They have reached Soviet levels of incapacity for self-reflection. They insist on an abusive relationship with their base: breaking manifesto pledges, making unforced errors while campaigning, and engaging in blatant corruption, while commanding ceaseless loyalty from disappointed supporters. If you point at the naked emperor, you are punished as if you stole his garments. 

I am unbothered by who chooses to drink from the poisoned chalice come November 2nd, when the party will formally pick its next leader. Recent convert to the blindingly obvious, Robert Jenrick, seems sincere. If running, as rumoured, on “the policies of Nigel Farage and the presentation of David Cameron,” he may head some of Reforms defectors off at the pass. But his true role is to stop Kemi Badenoch—hence why Suella’s former supporters fell in behind him so early.

Forces in Kemi’s corner seek to stop the faction looking to recoup losses from Reform, and instead insist on continuing the Cameron consensus. Despite falling out over an affair with her friend, Michael Gove has long backed Badenoch. This has led to accusations by former MP Nadine Dorries that she is the favoured leader of the same CCHQ oligarchy who orchestrated the installation of their friend, Rishi Sunak, and still linger after the election loss. Munira Mirza did, after all, form the Race Equality Commission which catapulted Kemi to stardom among the base. 

This could all be schizoid conspiracy theoretics by an ex-MP with a penchant for weird interviews. But if any of Dorries’s claims reflect the internal machinations of the Conservative Party, then I am not optimistic about its ability to right itself. In any respect, it’s hard not to interpret my expulsion, and that of my colleagues, as an effort to rig the leadership election in favour of more of the same. 

Those looking to make the party a viable electoral prospect again would do well to ignore the One Nation wets, blaming the loss on being insufficiently centrist. Reform UK has begun to understand that to bend the knee is to stoop to the height of the headsman’s axe. But the Conservatives continue to run in circles like decapitated chickens, bereft of principles except doing all they can to avoid offending their opponents. 

So it seems, for the Conservative Party, selecting sex offenders as MPs, populating party headquarters with men who made their living hosting orgies in stately homes, and doing nothing about the class-A drug use at its annual conference was just fine. Saying that we shouldn’t sterilise children was a step too far. 

Bishop Challoner's Meditations ~ August 1st

ON THE PAIN OF LOSS IN HELL

Consider first, that though the fire of hell, with all the rest of the exterior torments which the damned must for ever endure in that woful place be terrible beyond all that an be expressed or conceived, yet it is no ways comparable, in the judgment of divines, to the interior pangs and agonies of the soul, caused by the paena damni, or the eternal loss of God and of all that is good, and the perpetual sense they shall ever have of the greatness of this their loss and all its dreadful consequences. Alas! eternally they have lost their God for ever. They are divorced eternally from him; they are stripped of all his gifts and all his graces; no light is left in their soul; no glimpse of hope; no sense of good, no power of love either for God or their neighbours. Ah! unhappy wretches that cannot love! They are excommunicated from God; they are sent into an eternal banishment far from him; far from his glorious kingdom and the happy society of his children; far from their true country and all its blissful joys, which were once purchased for them by the blood of the Son of God. They are eternally separated from the ocean of all good.

Consider 2ndly, how much the damned will regret this most dreadful of all evils – this eternal separation from God. Alas! poor sinners, here, while they lie grovelling in the mire of the earth, diverted from the thought of God by a thousand impertinences, and yet continually partaking many ways of his sweetness and goodness in some or other of his creatures, have little or no idea of what it is absolutely to lose God for evermore. But the damned, by their own woful experience, will be fully convinced, when it is too late, that none of all the rest of the torments of hell can be compared to this loss. God is an infinite good in himself; and he is the inexhaustible source of all our good, and of everything that is any ways good in his creatures: he is our universal good. In losing him, then the damned have lost an infinite good – form their first beginning and their last end, by whom and for whom they were created: they have lost their sovereign good, their universal good, their immense eternal good, the overflowing fountain, the very ocean of all good, their true and only happiness. They have lost him totally; they have lost him irrevocable; they have lost him eternally; they have lost him in himself; they have lost him in themselves; they have lost him in all his creatures. There is an immense gulf between him and them, never, never to be passed.

Consider 3rdly, still further, how dreadfully the damned will be tormented with the perpetual thinking on this most rueful of all losses. Ah! their lively sense of this most dismal and irreparable loss, and of all the sad consequences of it, will continually rack their despairing souls; they will not be able so much as to turn away their thought one moment from it. For whichever way they shall turn to seek any one jot of ease or comfort in him, or from him, they shall meet with none: all things shall seem to conspire against them – all things shall tell them they have lost their God. They shall always find themselves bound down fast in eternal chains, which will keep them in a state of violence far away from him; and all the efforts of their vehement longing after him will only serve to redouble their misery. Hence there flow a thousand other evils that make their whole soul a hell to itself. Hence black despair, sadness, rage, hatred, and blasphemy.

Conclude never to turn away from God in this life nor to lose him by wilful sin, and then thou shalt effectually prevent this last and worst of all evils, of being eternally separated from him.

1 August, Antonio, Cardinal Bacci: Meditations For Each Day

The Awareness of the Presence of God

1. The cultivation of a continual awareness of the presence of God is such a useful practice that many writers regard it as the fundamental principle of the spiritual life. As St. Alphonsus de' Liguori points out, it obliges us to do three things: (1) To preserve ourselves completely free from sin; (2) To practise virtue in every possible way, and (3) To seek a closer and more loving contact with God. (Al. Div. Servizio, III, 1, 3)

The realisation of the presence of God is a particularly good way of subduing our passions and conquering temptation. “If we were always aware of God's presence within us,” writes St. Thomas, “we should never, or hardly ever, sin.” (Opusc. 58, c. 2)

It is unlikely that a man who is committing sin adverts to the fact that God is watching him and could intervene to punish him at any moment. He has forgotten the presence of God, his Creator and Redeemer, Who has been so good to him and Who will one day be his judge. His mind has been darkened and his heart led astray by the deceptive pleasures of this world.

God is far from the sinner because the sinner ignores His inspirations and advice and has, in short, rejected Him. The unhappy man will never find peace in this world and is doomed to eternal unhappiness in the next.

“If we remained always in the presence of God,” wrote St. John Chrysostom, “we should neither conceive nor do anything evil.” (Homil. 8, ad Phil., 2.)

2. The presence of God, moreover, encourages us to do our best to acquire all the virtues. When He is always before our eyes we have no difficulty in recognising that He is the supreme Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

Let us seek to please God, therefore, by obeying His commandments and inspirations. If we wish to be worthy of His presence, let us seek to adorn our souls with His grace, which is ours for the asking. Our awareness of God's presence should not be a passive state. It should enliven our faith and increase our love for Him.

Do we realise how poor and pitiful we are in the sight of God? Let us ask Him to make us holy. If we are troubled by temptations, let us ask Him for the strength to conquer them. If we are worn out by suffering, let us ask Him to help and console us.

3. If we remind ourselves constantly of the presence of God, we shall always be closely united to Him. Union with God should be the result of our love for Him, for it is an unfailing rule of love that it increases with the nearness of the beloved. If we live in the presence of God and contemplate Him as the perfection of beauty, truth and goodness, we shall be moved to love Him more and more. Our love, moreover, will generate in us the ardent desire of an even closer intimacy with Him.

This sacred union will bring us great peace and tranquility in all the vicissitudes of life, a serenity which will be reflected in our personality and in our conduct for the edification of our fellow-men.

Eastern Rite - Feasts of 1 August AM 7532

Today is the Feasts of the Procession with the Holy Relics of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross of the Lord; the Seven Holy Martyred Maccabees, Their Mother Solome and Their Teacher Eleazar.

✠✠✠✠✠

The origin of this Feast is explained in the Greek Horologion of 1897: “Because of the illnesses which occur during the month of August, it was customary at Constantinople to carry the Precious Wood of the Cross in procession throughout the city for its sanctification, and to deliver it from sickness.”

On the eve (July 31), the Cross was removed from the imperial treasury and placed it upon the Holy Table of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia (which is dedicated to Christ, the Wisdom of God). From August 1 until the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos, there was a procession throughout the entire City, and then the Cross was placed where all the people could venerate it.

In the Russian Church, this Feast is combined with the remembrance of the Baptism of Rus' on August 1, 988. 

Knowledge of the day of the actual Baptism of Rus' is preserved in the Chronicles of the XVI century: “The Baptism of the Great Prince Volodymyr of Kyiv and of all Rus' took place on August 1.”

In the current practice of the Russian Church, the service of the Lesser Sanctification of Water on August 1 takes place either before or after Liturgy. Because of the Blessing of Water, this first Feast of the Savior in August is sometimes called “the Savior of the Water.” Along with the Blessing of Water, there may also be a Blessing of Honey (thus it is also called “the Savior of the Honey),” because on this day, the newly-gathered honey is blessed and tasted.

Troparion — Tone 1

O Lord, save Your people, / and bless Your inheritance! / Grant victories to Catholic Christians / over their adversaries. / And by virtue of the Cross, / preserve Your habitation!

Kontakion — Tone 4

As You were voluntarily crucified for our sake, / grant mercy to those who are called by Your name; / make all Catholic Christians glad by Your power, / granting them victories over their adversaries, / by bestowing on them the invincible trophy, Your weapon of peace!

✠✠✠✠✠

The seven holy Maccabee martyrs Abim, Antonius, Gurias, Eleazar, Eusebonus, Alimus and Marcellus, their mother Solomonia and their teacher Eleazar suffered in the year 166 before Christ under the impious Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes. This foolish ruler loved pagan and Hellenistic customs and held Jewish customs in contempt. He did everything possible to turn people from the Law of Moses and from their covenant with God. He desecrated the Temple of the Lord, placed a statue of the pagan god Zeus there, and forced the Jews to worship it. Many people abandoned the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but there were also those who continued to believe that the Savior would come.

A ninety-year-old elder, the scribe and teacher Eleazar was brought to trial for his faithfulness to the Mosaic Law. He suffered torture and died in Jerusalem.

The disciples of Saint Eleazar, the seven Maccabee brothers and their mother Solomonia, also displayed great courage. They were brought to trial in Antioch by King Antiochus Epiphanes. They fearlessly acknowledged themselves as followers of the True God and refused to eat pig’s flesh, which was forbidden by the Law.

The eldest brother acted as spokesmen for the rest, saying that they preferred to die rather than break the Law. He was subjected to fierce tortures in sight of his brothers and their mother. His tongue was cut out, he was scalped, and his hands and feet were cut off. Then a cauldron and a large frying pan were heated, and the first brother was thrown into the frying pan, and he died.

The next five brothers were tortured one after the other. The seventh and youngest brother was the last one left alive. Antiochus suggested to Saint Solomonia to persuade the boy to obey him so that her last son at least would be spared. Instead, the brave mother told him to imitate the courage of his brothers.

The child upbraided the king and was tortured even more cruelly than his brothers had been. After all her seven children had died, Saint Solomonia stood over their bodies, raised up her hands in prayer to God and died.

The martyric death of the Maccabee brothers inspired Judas Maccabeus, and he led a revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes. With God’s help, he gained the victory and then purified the Temple at Jerusalem. He also threw down the altars that the pagans had set up in the streets. All these events are related in the Second Book of Maccabees (Ch. 8-10).

Various Fathers of the Church preached sermons on the seven Maccabees, including Saint Cyprian of Carthage, Saint Ambrose of Milan, Saint Gregory Nazianzus and Saint John Chrysostom.

Troparion — Tone 7

Let us praise the seven Maccabees, / with their mother Salome and their teacher Eleazar; / they were splendid in the lawful contest / as guardians of the teachings of the Law. / Now as Christ’s holy martyrs they ceaselessly intercede for the world.

Kontakion — Tone 2

Seven pillars of the Wisdom of God / and seven lampstands of the divine Light, / all-wise Maccabees, greatest of the martyrs before the time of the martyrs, / with them ask the God of all to save those who honour you.

✠✠✠✠✠

Saint Solomonia was the mother of the seven Maccabee brothers. She encouraged her sons to remain faithful to the Law of God even when threatened with death.

This admirable mother is honoured and remembered for her great courage, for she watched all seven of her sons die in a single day. May we also be faithful to God’s commandments and the traditions of the Church.

Troparion — Tone 7

Let us praise the seven Maccabees, / with their mother Salome and their teacher Eleazar; / they were splendid in the lawful contest / as guardians of the teachings of the Law. / Now as Christ’s holy martyrs they ceaselessly intercede for the world.

Kontakion — Tone 2

Seven pillars of the Wisdom of God / and seven lampstands of the divine Light, / all-wise Maccabees, greatest of the martyrs before the time of the martyrs, / with them ask the God of all to save those who honour you.

✠✠✠✠✠

Saint Eleazar lived in the second century before Christ and was a scribe. At the age of ninety, he voluntarily endured torture and death rather than violate the Law of God by eating swine’s flesh. By suffering death for the Law of Moses, he left young men, and the whole nation, an example of virtue and courage.

The story of Eleazar is found in II Maccabees, chapter 6.

Troparion — Tone 7

Let us praise the seven Maccabees, / with their mother Salome and their teacher Eleazar; / they were splendid in the lawful contest / as guardians of the teachings of the Law. / Now as Christ’s holy martyrs they ceaselessly intercede for the world.

Kontakion — Tone 2

Seven pillars of the Wisdom of God / and seven lampstands of the divine Light, / all-wise Maccabees, greatest of the martyrs before the time of the martyrs, / with them ask the God of all to save those who honour you.

IN LUMINE FIDEI: 1 AUGUST – THE SEVEN HOLY MACCABEES

IN LUMINE FIDEI: 1 AUGUST – THE SEVEN HOLY MACCABEES: At Antioch in Syria took place the martyrdom of the Seven Holy Maccabees, seven Jewish brothers who lived in Old Testament times. Accor...

IN LUMINE FIDEI: 1 AUGUST – THE CHAINS OF SAINT PETER

IN LUMINE FIDEI: 1 AUGUST – THE CHAINS OF SAINT PETER: During the reign of Theodosius the younger, his wife Eudoxia went to Jerusalem to fulfil a vow, and while she was there she was honoured...

1 August, The Chesterton Calendar

AUGUST 1st

A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy.

'George Bernard Shaw.'

1 August, The Holy Rule of St Benedict, Patriarch of Western Monasticism

CHAPTER L. Of the Brethren who are working at a distance from the Oratory, or are on a journey

1 Apr. 1 Aug. 1 Dec.

Let the brethren who are at work at a great distance, or on a journey, and cannot come to the Oratory at the proper time (the Abbot judging such to be the case) perform the Work of God there where they are labouring, in godly fear, and on bended knees. In like manner, let not those who are sent on a journey allow the appointed Hours to pass by; but, as far as they can, observe them by themselves, and not neglect to fulfil their obligation of divine service.

2 August, The Roman Martyrology

Quarto Nonas Augústi Luna vicésima sexta Anno Dómini 2024

August 2nd 2024, the 26th day of the Moon, were born into the better life:

At Nocera-dei-Pagani, [in Campania, Italy, in the year 1787,] holy Alphonsus Mary de Liguori, Bishop of Santa-Agata-de'-Goti, and Founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. Illustrious for the zeal for the salvation of souls shown both by his writings, his words, and his ensample. Pope Gregory XVI. enrolled his name with those of the Saints, and the Supreme Pontiff Pius IX. gave him the title of Doctor of the Church.
At Rome, in the cemetery of Callistus, [in the year 257,] the holy Pope and martyr Stephen. He was celebrating Mass during the persecution under the Emperor Valerian, when the soldiers broke in. He finished his office before the altar without fear or trembling, and then was beheaded as he sat upon his throne.
At Nice, in Bithynia, [in the fourth century,] the holy Theodota and her three sons, who were all burned [alive] in the fire together by the order of Neretius, Consular of Bithynia, after he had first caused the eldest son, whose name was Evodius, to be beaten with clubs for his faithful confession of Christ.
In Africa, [in the year 211,] the holy martyr Rutilius. He had fled from one place to another in order to escape the persecution, and had sometimes bought himself out of danger, when he was unexpectedly arrested and brought before the President. He was long put to the torture, then given over to the fire, and so crowned with a noble testimony.
At Padua, [in the second century,] the holy Maximus, Bishop of that city, who died a blessed death, famous for miracles.
℣. And elsewhere many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.
℟. Thanks be to God.

Meme of the Moment

Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary (and First Saturdays Devotion)

August is the month dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Our Blessed Mother, and Saturday is a First Saturday. Here is some valuable information on the devotion.

From FishEaters

Luke 2:19: But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.

Luke 2:35: And thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed.

Luke 2:51: And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject to them.
And his mother kept all these words in her heart.
 

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus focuses mostly on His divine love for mankind and encourages our humility, gratitude, obedience, and adoration; devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary focuses on Mary's love for God and encourages our emulating her humility, gratitude, obedience, and adoration. Mary as loving Mother of Jesus Who suffered for us; Mary as Mother of the Church; Mary as obedient daughter, Mary as our Gevirah (Queen Mother of Israel) -- we ponder her interior life in each of these roles, consecrate ourselves to Jesus through her, make reparations for offending her as our Mother, ask her intercession for us with her Son, and emulate her as the model of Christian perfection.

The Feast of Candlemas, which commemorates Mary's ritual Purification and her Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, sheds special light on the nature of devotion to her Immaculate Heart. The old man, Simeon, foretold that "a sword" shall pierce Mary's heart, and meditating on the sorrows symbolized by that sword helps us to understand what Our Lord went through for us. But she knew even before Simeon's words to her; when she uttered to God "Let it be done to me according to Thy will," she knew that she would give birth to the One destined to die to redeem us. She knew that she would have to offer up her Son. And she chose that suffering. Speaking of Mary's joy at Christ's birth, Pope John XXIII said,

This joy, however, is also a scarlet flower of sacrifice: the sacrifice of the Blessed Mother of Jesus, who, having spoken her timely "fiat," at the same time agreed to share in the fate of her Son, the poverty of Bethlehem, in the self-denial of a hidden life, and in the martyrdom of Calvary.

We meditate on Mary's immaculate heart not only on Candlemas, but on the Feast of the Seven Sorrows; during all of Passiontide (the two weeks before Easter), as we make the Stations of the Cross; during August, which is devoted to the Immaculate Heart; on August 22 especially, which is the Feast of the Immaculate Heart; during September, which is devoted to the Seven Sorrows, etc.

While, early on, of course, the Church Fathers wrote of Mary's blessedness, purity, and sorrows, and our Saints -- Dominic, Gertrude, Thomas Becket, Bridget, Bernardine of Siena, Louis de Montfort -- have always had deep Marian devotions, it was after the apparitions of Mary experienced by St. Catherine Labouré at Rue Du Bac, Paris in 1830 that devotions specifically to Mary's Immaculate Heart became formalized.

Specific Devotions

On July 19, 1830, Catherine Labouré, a Daughter of Charity of St. Paul, was awakened when she heard a child's voice beckoning to her from the chapel. When she got to the chapel, Mary appeared to her, saying, "God wishes to charge you with a mission. You will be contradicted, but do not fear; you will have the grace to do what is necessary. Tell your spiritual director all that passes within you. Times are evil in France and in the world."

The Virgin was standing on a globe, rays of light streaming from her fingers, enframed in an oval frame inscribed with the words, "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee." The whole vision "turned" showing the back of the oval inscribed with the letter "M" entwined with a Cross, and the hearts of Jesus and Mary, the former surrounded with thorns, the latter pierced with a sword. 12 stars circled this oval frame. Mary told her to strike a medal in this form -- a medal now known as the "Miraculous Medal" -- and that all who wore it properly after having it blessed would receive graces. The wearing of the Miraculous Medal has become one of the most common devotions to the Immaculate Heart.

Devotion to the Immaculate Heart became even more popularized after Mary's appearing to the three young shepherd children at Fatima, Portugal in 1917 (before the Russian Revolution), when she asked that Russia be consecrated to her Immaculate Heart to prevent the spread of "the errors of Russia." Eight years later, in 1925, Mary appeared to one of the visionaries -- Lucia, who'd since become a nun -- and requested reparations for the various ways in which her Immaculate Heart was offended -- such as attacks against her Immaculate Conception, virginity and divine maternity, and for those who teach their children contempt of Mary or who insult her by desecrating her images.

To make these reparations, she asked that we do 5 things, all with the intention of making reparation to her Immaculate Heart:  

• recite at least Five Decades of the Rosary every day
• wear the Brown Scapular
• offer our daily duty to God as an act of sacrifice (ie., make the Morning Offering)
• make Five First Saturdays of Reparation to Her Immaculate Heart (see below)
• the Pope, in union with all the bishops of the world, must consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart. Russia would be converted through this means, and a period of peace to be given to the world. If this is not done, Russia will "spread her errors throughout the world."

The "First Saturdays of Reparation" (typically referred to simply as "First Saturdays") was not a new devotion, but it was even more popularized after Our Lady appeared at Fatima. It consists of, on the first Saturday of each month for five consecutive months:

• going to Confession (may be 8 days before the Saturday as long as one stays in a state of grace)
• attending Mass and receiving the Eucharist
• praying 5 decades of the Rosary, including the Fatima Prayer
• "keeping her company" for 15 minutes while meditating on all of the Mysteries of the Rosary with the intention of making reparation to her. This can be done by reading Scripture or other writings relevant to the Mysteries, meditating on pictures of the Mysteries, or simple meditation.

The promise given by Mary to those who make the First Saturday devotion is her assistance at the hour of their death