Vol 8 Issue 30 ~ Editor: Rev. Fr. Courtney Edward Krier
July 25, 2015 ~ St James the Greater ~ St Christopher

1. Baptism: Means of Salvation (26)
2. Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
3. St. Anne
4. Christ in the Home (1)
5. Articles and notices

Dear Reader:

This Sunday faithful Catholics throughout the world are celebrating the Feast of St. Anne. The world takes the concept: It takes a village to raise a child. This is not something the Catholic Church has accepted as true—nor can it, since the child is taken from the family and becomes the possess ion of the village, i.e., the state. The Church’s stance has always been that it takes a family—and that family extends to that of the family of the parents. Saint Anne was the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary and therefore the grandmother of Jesus Christ. What actual influence she had directly in the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ is not recorded in Scripture. If she did have the opportunity to participate in the child rearing of her daughter Mary’s Son, it would have followed the expectations desired of every grandmother: the support of the mother and assistance she needs in raising the child by caring for the child, teaching the child prayer, counseling the mother through the wisdom of experience, and supporting the mother in nurturing the body and soul of the child. She would not supplant the mother, belittle the mother, or liberate herself from the daughter (or son). There are few examples in Scripture of the Grandmother’s participation other than what St. Paul writes to Timothy: Calling to mind that faith which is in thee unfeigned, which also dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and in thy mother Eunice, and I am certain that in thee also. (2 Timothy 1:5) But the Old Testament would indicate many holy women were present at their grandchild. In the Book of Ruth one reads:  Booz therefore took Ruth, and married her: and went in unto her, and the Lord gave her to conceive and to bear a son. And the women said to Noemi: Blessed be the Lord, who hath not suffered thy family to want a successor, that his name should be preserved in Israel. And thou shouldst have one to comfort thy soul, and cherish thy old age. For he is born of thy daughter in law: who loveth thee: and is much better to thee, than if thou hadst seven sons. And Noemi taking the child laid it in her bosom, and she carried it, and was a nurse unto it. And the women her neighbours, congratulating with her and saying: There is a son born to Noemi. . . . (Ruth 4:  13-17).

As always, enjoy the readings and commentaries provided for your benefit.—The Editor

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Baptism

Means of Salvation

Preparation for Grace

Introduction (c)

Church Documents Concerning Faith (4)

Within the definition of Faith by the Vatican Council there is the rejection of the errors against Faith: Naturalism (Pelagius) and Rationalism (Hermes) as also the extreme other side of the argument, Fideism (Bautain). As Rationalism was in vogue and just as Baius attempted to reconcile Faith with the Protestants (Luther, Calvin), so Hermes attempted to reconcile Faith with the Rationalists (Kant, Fichte):

For the philosopher can, through his own discerning perceive very definitely his natural duties, and he will always be convinced that he does so perceive them. Consequently, practical reason cannot oblige him to look for this perception outside of himself, or to accept it if offered to him unsought, whether by another person or by superhuman agency. (George Hermes, in CE)

The Vatican Council decreed the following Canons with the Dogmatic Constitution on Faith:

1810 1. [Against the autonomy of reason]. If anyone shall have said that human reason is so independent that faith cannot be enjoined upon it by God: let him be anathema [cf. n. 1789].

1811 2. [Some things must be held as true, which reason itself does not draw from itself]. If anyone shall have said, that divine faith is not distinguished from a natural knowledge of God and moral things, and that therefore it is not necessary to divine faith that revealed truth be believed because of the authority of God Who reveals it: let him be anathema [cf. n1789]

1812 3. [In faith itself the rights of reason must be preserved]. If anyone shall have said that divine revelation cannot be made credible by external signs, and for this reason men ought to be moved to faith by the internal experience alone of each one, or by private inspiration: let him be anathema [cf. n. 1790].

1813 4. [The demonstrability of revelation]. If anyone shall have said that miracles are not possible, and hence that all accounts of them, even those contained in Sacred Scripture, are to be banished among the fables and myths; or, that miracles can never be known with certitude, and that the divine origin of the Christian religion cannot be correctly proved by them: let him be anathema [cf. n. 1790].

1814 5. [The liberty of faith and the necessity of grace: against Hermes (see n.1618 ff.)]. If anyone shall have said that the assent of the Christian faith is not free, but is necessarily produced by proofs from human reasoning; or, that the grace of God is necessary only for that living faith “which worketh by charity” [Gal. 5:6]: let him be anathema [cf. n 1791]

1815 6. [Against the positive doubt of Hermes (see n.1619)]. If anyone shall have said that the condition of the faithful and of those who have not yet come to the true faith is equal, so that Catholics can have a justcause of doubting the faith which they have accepted under the teaching power of the Church, by withholding assent until they have completed the scientific demonstration of the credibility and truth of their faith: let him be anathema [cf. n. 1794].

4. Faith and reason

[Against the pseudo-philosophers and the pseudo-theologians, concerning whom see n. 1679 ff.]

1816 1. If anyone shall have said that no true mysteries properly so-called are contained in divine revelation, but that all the dogmas of faith can be understood and proved from natural principles, through reason properly cultivated: let him be anathema [cf. n.1795f.].

1817 2. If anyone shall have said that the human sciences should be treated with such liberty that their assertions, although opposed to revealed doctrine, can be retained as true, and cannot be proscribed by the Church: let him be anathema [cf. n.1797-1799].

1818 3. If anyone shall have said that it is possible that to the dogmas declared by the Church a meaning must sometimes be attributed according to the progress of science, different from that which the Church has understood and understands: let him be anathema [cf. n.1800].

1819 And so, fulfilling the obligation of Our supreme pastoral office, by the incarnation of Jesus Christ We beseech all the faithful of Christ, but especially those who have charge of, or who perform the duty of teaching; and in fact, by the authority of Our same God and Savior, We command that they bring their zeal and labor to arrest and banish these errors from Holy Church, and to extend the light of a most pure faith.

1820 But, since it is not sufficient to shun heretical iniquity unless these errors also are shunned which come more or less close to it, we remind all of the duty of observing also the constitutions and decrees by which base opinions of this sort, which are not enumerated explicitly here, have been proscribed and prohibited by this Holy See.

Pope St Pius X would address the Modernists who took an eclecticism of all the modern errors and systematized them into a theology that was evolutionary, a continual process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Pius X would call it: the synthesis of all heresies (Pascendi Gregis). Faith would be a personal experience (phenomenon), therefore, subjective. There is no revelation from God from without, but only by god within.

It must, therefore, be looked for in man; and since religion is a form of life, the explanation must certainly be found in the life of man. Hence the principle of religious immanence is formulated. Moreover, the first actuation, so to say, of every vital phenomenon, and religion, as has been said, belongs to this category, is due to a certain necessity or impulsion; but it has its origin, speaking more particularly of life, in a movement of the heart, which movement is called a sentiment. Therefore, since God is the object of religion, we must conclude that faith, which is the basis and the foundation of all religion, consists in a sentiment which originates from a need of the divine. This need of the divine, which is experienced only in special and favourable circumstances, cannot, of itself, appertain to the domain of consciousness; it is at first latent within the consciousness, or, to borrow a term from modern philosophy, in the subconsciousness, where also its roots lies hidden and undetected. (ibid.)

In this sense, one who does not have these sentiments (the Atheist), does not have faith, but also cannot be blamed for not having faith since the Atheist’s lacks this sentiment, or phenomena, in life.

Remember Bergoglio’s remark that Atheists can be saved in his homily on May 22, 2013. He also wrote:

I do not approach the relationship in order to proselytize, or convert the atheist; I respect him and I show myself as I am. Where there is knowledge, there begins to appear esteem, affection, and friendship. I do not have reluctance, nor would I say that his life is condemned, because I am convinced that I do not have the right to make a judgment about the honesty of that person. . .  (On Heaven and Earth, 12-13) Here one sees the phenomenology in Modernism. The whole script of his letter to Eugenio Scalfari, published in La Repubblica on 11 September 2013, is exactly the arguments Pope St Pius X said the Modernists give in Pascendi Dominici Gregis. One should read Pius X’s encyclical and then this letter of Jorge Bergoglio to Scalfari and one will see that according to Pius X, Jorge Bergoglio writes and speaks exactly as a Modernist.

Pius X condemns the Modernist notion of faith, a faith that believes in one’s own experience and that, when extended to the unknowable, is a belief in what cannot be known in order to satisfy the desire to know yet knowing that it cannot be known and is therefore expressed by symbolism which meanings change as knowledge increases.

The object of science they say is the reality of the knowable; the object of faith, on the contrary, is the reality of the unknowable. Now what makes the unknowable unknowable is its disproportion with the intelligible – a disproportion which nothing whatever, even in the doctrine of the Modernist, can suppress. Hence the unknowable remains and will eternally remain unknowable to the believer as well as to the man of science. Therefore if any religion at all is possible it can only be the religion of an unknowable reality. And why this religion might not be that universal soul of the universe, of which a rationalist speaks, is something We do see. Certainly this suffices to show superabundantly by how many roads Modernism leads to the annihilation of all religion. The first step in this direction was taken by Protestantism; the second is made by Modernism; the next will plunge headlong into atheism. (Pascendi, 39)

And what was the source of Catholics falling into Modernism? Negating God in Science and Philosophy. The consequence is that then science (man) determines God rather than God determining man (Science).

Yet, it would be a great mistake to suppose that, given these theories, one is authorised to believe that faith and science are independent of one another. On the side of science the independence is indeed complete, but it is quite different with regard to faith, which is subject to science not on one but on three grounds. For in the first place it must be observed that in every religious fact, when you take away the divine reality and the experience of it which the believer possesses, everything else, and especially the religious formulas of it, belongs to the sphere of phenomena and therefore falls under the control of science. Let the believer leave the world if he will, but so long as he remains in it he must continue, whether he like it or not, to be subject to the laws, the observation, the judgments of science and of history. Further, when it is said that God is the object of faith alone, the statement refers only to the divine reality not to the idea of God. The latter also is subject to science which while it philosophises in what is called the logical order soars also to the absolute and the ideal. It is therefore the right of philosophy and of science to form conclusions concerning the idea of God, to direct it in its evolution and to purify it of any extraneous elements which may become confused with it. Finally, man does not suffer a dualism to exist in him, and the believer therefore feels within him an impelling need so to harmonise faith with science, that it may never oppose the general conception which science sets forth concerning the universe. (ibid. 17)

Thus it is evident, as stated and as witnessed today, that science is to be entirely independent of faith, while on the other hand, and notwithstanding that they are supposed to be strangers to each other, faith is made subject to science.

Pius X condemned, in his decree of 3 July, 1907, sixty-five propositions of the Modernists. Here are several of those directly opposed to Faith:

3. From the ecclesiastical judgments and censures passed against free and more scientific exegesis, one can conclude that the Faith the Church proposes contradicts history and that Catholic teaching cannot really be reconciled with the true origins of the Christian religion.
4. Even by dogmatic definitions the Church’s magisterium cannot determine the genuine sense of the Sacred Scriptures.
5. Since the deposit of Faith contains only revealed truths, the Church has no right to pass judgment on the assertions of the human sciences.

20. Revelation could be nothing else than the consciousness man acquired of his revelation to God.
21. Revelation, constituting the object of the Catholic faith, was not completed with the Apostles.
22. The dogmas the Church holds out as revealed are not truths which have fallen from heaven. They are an interpretation of religious facts which the human mind has acquired by laborious effort.

25. The assent of faith ultimately rests on a mass of probabilities.
26. The dogmas of the Faith are to be held only according to their practical sense; that is to say, as preceptive norms of conduct and not as norms of believing.

58. Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him.
59. Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine applicable to all times and all men, but rather inaugurated a religious movement adapted or to be adapted to different times and places.
60. Christian Doctrine was originally Judaic. Through successive evolutions it became first Pauline, then Joannine, finally Hellenic and universal.
61. The chief articles of the Apostles’ Creed did not have the same sense for the Christians of the first ages as they have for the Christians of our time.
62. The Church shows that she is incapable of effectively maintaining evangelical ethics since she obstinately clings to immutable doctrines which cannot be reconciled with modern progress.
63. Scientific progress demands that the concepts of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption be re-adjusted.
64. Modern Catholicism can be reconciled with true science only if it is transformed into a non-dogmatic Christianity; that is to say, into a broad and liberal Protestantism.

And, to give assurance that Priests understood these errors were to be rejected, Pius X imposed upon all those ordained to take an oath against Modernism on 1 September 1910, in which are contained the following words which give expression to the true understanding of Faith:

In the first place, I profess that God, the beginning and the end of all things, can be known with certitude and His existence demonstrated by the natural light of reason from the things that are made, that is, from the visible works of creation, as a cause is known from its effects.

Secondly, I acknowledge and admit the external arguments for revelation, namely, divine facts, especially miracles and prophecies, as most certain signs of the divine origin of the Christian religion, and I hold that these are perfectly suited to the intelligence of every age and of all men, including our own times.

Thirdly, I also firmly believe that the Church, the guardian and teacher of God’s word, was directly and absolutely instituted by Christ Himself, the true Christ of History, while He lived among us; and that the same Church was founded on Peter, the prince of the apostolic hierarchy, and on his successors to the end of time.

Fourthly, I sincerely accept the doctrine of faith in the same sense and always with the meaning as it has been handed down to us from the apostles through the officially approved fathers.  And therefore, I wholly reject the heretical notion of the evolution of dogmas, according to which doctrines pass from one sense to another sense alien to that which the Church held from the start.  I likewise condemn every erroneous notion to that effect that instead of the divine deposit of faith entrusted by Christ to His spouse, the Church, and to be faithfully guarded by Her, one may substitute a philosophic system or a creation of the human mind gradually refined by men’s striving and capable of eventual perfection by indefinite progress.

Fifthly, I hold as certain and sincerely profess that faith is not a blind religious sense evolving from the hidden recess of subliminal consciousness, and morally formed by the influence of heart and will, but that it is a real assent of the intellect to objective truth learned by hearing, and assent wherein we believe to be true whatever has been spoken, testified, and revealed by the personal God, our Creator and Lord, on the authority of God, Who is the perfection of Truth.

Paul VI, in 1967, suspended the obligation of the necessity of taking this oath where it was still administered—surely because it was blatantly exposing the Modernism that had seized every quarter of the Conciliar Church and was a document that supported faithful Catholics who raised objections that their Churches were being usurped by Modernists. Now these papal documents are part of the Church past for which the present Conciliar popes are making to bea stain in the history of the Church. (Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 43)

In summary, once more, the Church defines Faith as:

. . . a supernatural virtue by which we, with the aid and inspiration of the grace of God, believe that the things revealed by Him are true, not because the intrinsic truth of the revealed things has been perceived by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God Himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. . . . (Vatican Council Sess. III, cap. 3; D 1789)

(To be continued)

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Week of Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Benedict Baur, O.S.B. 

The proper use of grace

1. “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play” (Epistle). Such frivolity could happen even at Mount Sinai shortly after God had appeared in His majesty in thunder and lightning. The Israelites had soon forgotten the miracles God had wrought for them: the passing of the Red Sea, His presence in the pillar of a cloud and in the pillar of fire, and the miraculous manna which God gave them daily. The people at the foot of the mountain eat and drink and dance, paying homage to a golden calf, the idol of the Egyptians. “All these things. . . are written for our correction, upon whom the ends of the world are come” (Epistle).
2. “If thou didst know the gift of God” (John 4: 10), the value of sanctifying grace! Sanctifying grace lifts us beyond the merely natural man and his way of perceiving, and makes us participants in the life of the triune God. Being closely connected with God and immersed in the light and fire of the divinity, the soul takes on the splendor, ardor, and spirituality of God, receiving a beauty, nobility, and life resembling divine beauty and life. Thus the soul assumes a form of existence corresponding to the purity and spirituality of the divine nature, to which is attached as a reward the virtues of faith, hope, and charity. By the virtue of faith we see God, the world and its events, and the actions of men with the eyes of God: we see correctly. Hope lifts us above all created things: we repose in the lap of God, our loving Father, and aided by His power we endeavor to strive for the highest good, which no created power can attain by itself. Love alone can reach God: we love God because He is God, after the manner in which He loves us and the eternal Son loves Him. By the virtue of holy love we become immersed in God as if we were one nature with Him. Can there be any possession in this world equal to sanctifying grace and the divine virtues immediately flowing from it?

“If thou also hadst known. . . the things that are to thy peace; but now they are hidden from thy eyes” (Gospel). These words are also addressed to us. The greatest evil we can suffer is that of underestimating grace and supernatural values. “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.” We place a higher value on worldly accomplishments than we do on grace. Sometimes even without noticing how frivolously we act, we prefer earthly pleasures and goods, perhaps even forbidden and sinful things, to the gifts of grace, and we thus reject this precious gift of God. Failing to understand the importance of judging in the light of faith, we think and judge according to merely natural human principles, and thus adjust our standards to those of the world. We likewise underestimate grace when we act out of merely natural human motives, when we fulfill our duties and take up our crosses without the support of faith and the ideals of grace. We make light of prayer, which alone can assure us of the graces necessary for our eternal salvation, and as a result our hearts, like trees, wither away for want of nourishment, even though outwardly our work flourishes. Above all, we neglect to sanctify our thoughts, our words, and our works by supernatural intentions, thus failing to make them meritorious for ourselves, for the Church, and for our fellow men. “If thou also hadst known. . . the things that are to thy peace; but now they are hidden from thy eyes.” Because we underestimate the necessity of grace and things supernatural,—the sacraments, the Church, her doctrines, and her precepts—we remain sterile and make no headway toward our heavenly destiny. Thus we oppose the interests of God, of His Church, of the souls of others, and of our own soul as well. We have good reason to fear that the Lord will weep over us, too, when we disregard His grace and love, preferring instead the vanities of this world.

3. Let us beseech the Lord to deliver us from the misfortune of underestimating the value of grace and the sonship of God. “Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; and defend me from them that rise up against me” (Alleluia). These enemies are our worldliness and our lack of faith. Praying thus, we implore the Lord for all our brethren in Christ.

“My house is the house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves” (Gospel). We are this house and temple of God as long as we are in possession of the sonship of God. By virtue of this intimate relationship to God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost dwell within us, rendering our soul a house of prayer. We, on our part, glorify the divine guest dwelling in our soul by our service of charity, homage, and devotion. “But you have made it a den of thieves.” This sad state of affairs has occurred to us if we prefer worldly things to the grace of being a child of God and of living for the Father. Then we profane and desecrate this sanctuary by worldly, vain, and sinful thoughts and desires, by bad conduct towards the God living within us, by our many infidelities, and by our disobedience towards His holy will.

PRAYER

Let Thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of Thy suppliant people; and that Thou mayest grant them their petitions, make them ask such things as shall please Thee. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. 

The neglect of grace

1. As Jesus rides solemnly into Jerusalem, the multitude cries: “Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matt. 21:9). Jesus, however, weeps over the city. He loves Jerusalem, and because He loves it He is deeply grieved that it has not known the time of its visitation.
2. “The days shall come upon thee, and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side; and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee; and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation” (Gospel). Did Jerusalem have no opportunity to recognize the time of its visitation? When the three Magi came from the East to seek the newborn king of the Jews, were not the priests and scribes able to direct them to Bethlehem? When a deputation of the priests in Jerusalem came to John the Baptist at the Jordan asking him who he was and why he baptized, did not John answer in unmistakable terms: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Isaias. . . . I baptize with water; but there hath stood one in the midst of you, whom you know not. The same is He that shall come after me: . . . the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to loose” (John 1:23 ff.). Did not the Lord during the time of His public life work enough miracles before the eyes of all the people of Galilee and Jerusalem, deeds that testified to His divinity? Only a few days had passed since He raised Lazarus to life, and now a few days later He enters the gates of Jerusalem.

It is Jerusalem’s own fault that it did not know the time of its visitation. It had expected a national and political Messias who would fulfill its earthly dreams; it did not know the time of its merciful visitation and did not acknowledge the real Messias sent by God. Now Jerusalem has incurred just punishment. In a few days the veil of the temple will be rent; God’s covenant with His people will be torn asunder. Pentecost will be the birthday of a new chosen people, of the New Covenant, of the Church of Christ; salvation will be taken from the chosen people and given to the Gentiles. Scarcely one generation will pass before the Romans will come and cast a trench about Jerusalem, will conquer and utterly destroy it. Truly they will not leave a stone upon a stone, because Jerusalem has not known the time of its visitation. “All these things. . . are written for our correction” (Epistle). The visitation of the Lord, which we did not recognize through our own fault, and the grace which we refused and misused, cry out for vengeance, for punishment and expiation. Yet the Lord loves us still; He wishes to save us. But if we will not receive Him, He makes use of the rod of correction in order to make us understand that we must walk in His ways.

“Thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord hath rejected thee” (I Kings 15:26). King Saul heard the word of God, yet he despised it and acted against God’s command. He therefore is rejected by God, and the crown of kingship is bestowed on another man. Whenever we resist grace or abuse it, we are in danger of losing our eternal salvation. One grace is always linked to another one, to a whole series of graces. If we make good use of one grace, it is followed by another, greater one; this grace, in its turn, is followed by a series of new and more perfect graces. If we make light of one grace and lose it, we lose with this one grace a whole series of graces connected with it. It is possible that our salvation may depend upon this present grace. At all times and in all places this law holds good as a punishment for one misused grace: God deprives us of new graces. When the Holy Ghost knocks at the door of our soul and we refuse Him entrance, He will depart. When He speaks within us and we do not listen to His word, He will be silent. When He makes His light rise upon us and we close our eyes, He will withdraw.

3. “Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted and perished” (Epistle). The Israelites knew God’s command, yet they ignored Him in order to find out, as it were, whether His commands were seriously meant. “Neither let us tempt Christ.” Let us not despise His grace, His call, His inspirations, His will, presuming, perhaps, that the Lord will not insist on His word and inspirations.

Let us resolve now to be faithful to His grace and to manifest our esteem for it. “The justices of the Lord are right, rejoicing hearts, and His judgments sweeter than honey and the honeycomb; for Thy servant keepeth them” (Offertory). This promise of fidelity to the Lord and His grace we place on the paten during Mass.

“He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood, abideth in Me, and I in him” (Communion). The fruit of the Mass and Holy Communion is the union of our souls and hearts with Christ the Lord. We are of one heart and one soul with Him, one love and one will. When He gives Himself to us, He permeates us with His light, that we may know the time of His visitation. He gives us strength that we may lovingly comply with the inspirations of His grace. “Behold God is my helper, and the Lord is the protector of my soul” (Introit).

PRAYER

Let Thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of Thy suppliant people; and that Thou mayest grant them their petitions, make them ask such things as shall please Thee. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

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JULY 26

St. Anne, Mother of Our Lady

1. Chosen by God to be the mother of the virgin Mother of God, Anne presented to mankind her from whom the Light of the world would come. Holy Scripture does not mention Mary’s mother, but already in the second century her name had become widely mown from the “proto-gospel of St. James.” The name Anne means “rich in grace” and it is so firmly established as the name of Mary’s mother in the tradition and usage of the Church that there can be no real doubt about it. Concerning Anne’s life we have only legendary, unauthenticated details. She is said to have been married to Joachim, a man of outstanding virtue and piety, and to have become a mother late in life. The veneration of St. Anne goes back to the eighth century in the East. About 1350 her feast was celebrated everywhere in the West as well; in 1584 Pope Gregory XIII ordered it to be celebrated by the whole Church. St. Anne is the heavenly patron of mothers, of marriage, of widows, and of orphans.
2. “Rejoice we all in the Lord, as we keep holiday in honor of blessed Anne” (Introit). Even if we know nothing more about St. Anne than that she was the mother of Mary, that is enough to make us rejoice and thank God. One of the responsories at Matins praises her thus: “Exalted and wonderfully salutary, venerable Anne, is the fruit of thy womb, the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Lord, consolation of the world, place of rest for the weary, hope of the sorrowing. Rejoice and be glad, happy mother, for the fruit of thy womb is Mary, mother of the Lord.” Whoever loves Mary must necessarily honor her in whose womb God prepared this sublime sanctuary. We must contemplate with reverence her to whom God entrusted the Mother of His Son; we praise the mother of the Mother of God for her unique greatness; it is proof that her holy and just life of faithful service was pleasing to God. With proper admiration do we sing of her virtue in the Lesson: “Unrivaled art thou among all the women that have enriched their homes. Vain are the winning ways, beauty is a snare; it is the woman who fears the Lord that will achieve renown. Work such as hers claims its reward; let her be spoken of with praise at the city gates.”

“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field; a man has found it and hidden it again, and now, for the joy it gives him, is going home to sell all that he has and buy that field” (Gospel). St. Anne discovered that treasure: loving fear of God. Busily engaged as she was in household affairs (cf. Lesson) her mind nevertheless steadily dwelt on higher things, on the God she loved and lived for. It is a truly wise woman who evaluates so shrewdly, in order to serve God unhindered. Only to such a conscientious woman, with her wealth of interior life, could God entrust the one whom the whole Church greets in the words of an angel: “Hail, full of grace; the Lord is with thee,” In the womb of St. Anne was Mary conceived without sin, filled with grace, and wholly pleasing to God. Anne was privileged to nourish this child, to live with her and teach her, and to be a witness to the plenitude of her child’s grace. Mary is Anne’s treasure, the precious pearl of which the Gospel speaks; the reward, humanly speaking, the supremely delightful fruit of her many years of petitioning God with prayers and with confident service.

3. St. Anne was chosen by God to cooperate in the redemption of mankind. But she had to make herself worthy of this holy life. God demands cooperation. Thus, the liturgy can sing of St. Anne: “Thou hast been a friend to right, an enemy to wrong. And God, thy own God, has given thee an unction to bring thee pride” (Gradual). God anointed her with the joy of becoming the mother of Mary. One whom God honors thus, we too must honor. We beg her to obtain for us the grace to carry out our God-given vocation with the same perfect fidelity which led to her renown. “Vain are the winning ways, beauty is a snare; it is the woman who fears the Lord that will achieve renown” (Lesson).

Collect: O God, who wast pleased to bestow Thy grace upon blessed Anne, so that she might fitly become the mother of her who was to bear Thy only-begotten Son, grant us this boon, that we who keep her feast may be helped by her protection. Amen.