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the Ides of July; and having become celebrated by innumerable miracles, was enrolled by Celestine III. in the number of the Saints.

O true disciple of the New Law, who didst know how to spare an enemy for the love of the Holy Cross ! teach us to practise, as thou didst, the lessons conveyed by the instrument of our salvation, which will then become to us, as to thee, a weapon ever victorious over the powers of hell. Could we look upon the Cross, and then refuse to forgive our brother an injury, when God Himself not only forgets our heinous offences against His Sovereign Majesty, but even died upon the Tree to expiate them? The most generous pardon a creature can grant is but a feeble shadow of the pardon we daily obtain from our Father in heaven. Still, the Gospel which the Church sings in thy honour, may well teach us that the love of our enemies is the nearest resemblance we can have to our heavenly Father, and the sign that we are truly His children.

Thou hadst, O John, this grand trait of resemblance. He who in virtue of His eternal generation is the true Son of God by nature, recognised in thee the mark of nobility which made thee His brother. When He bowed His sacred Head to thee, He saluted in thee the character of a child of God, which thou hadst just so beautifully maintained: a title a thousand times more glorious than those of thy noble ancestry. What a powerful germ was the Holy Ghost planting at that moment in thy heart! And how richly does God recompense a single generous act! Thy sanctification, the glorious share thou didst take in the Church's victory, the fecundity whereby thou livest still in the Order sprung from thee: all these choice graces for thy own soul and for so many others, hung

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upon that critical moment. Fate, or the Justice of God, as thy contemporaries would have said, had brought thy enemy within thy power: how wouldst thou treat him? He was deserving of death; and in those days every man was his own avenger. Hadst thou then inflicted due punishment upon him, thy reputation would have rather increased than diminished. Thou wouldst have obtained the esteem of thy comrades; but the only glory which is of any worth before God, indeed the only glory which lasts long even in the sight of men, would never have been thine. Who would have known thee at the present day? Who would have felt the admiration and gratitude with which thy very name now inspires the children of the Church?

The Son of God, seeing that thy dispositions were conformable to those of His Sacred Heart, filled thee with His own jealous love of the holy City for whose redemption He shed His Blood. O thou that wert zealous for the beauty of the Bride, watch over her still; deliver her from hirelings who would fain receive from men the right of holding the place of the Bridegroom. In our days venality is less to be feared than compromise. Simony would take another form; there is not so much danger of bribery, as of fawning, paying homage, making advances, entering into implicit contracts; all which proceedings are as contrary to the holy Canons, as are pecuniary transactions. And after all, is the evil any the less for taking a milder form, if it enables princes to bind the Church again in fetters such as thou didst labour to break? Suffer not, O John Gualbert, such a misfortune, which would be the forerunner of terrible disasters. Continue to support with thy powerful arm the common Mother of men. Save thy fatherland a second time, even in spite of itself. Protect, in these sad times, the Order of which thou art the

glory and the father; give it strength to outlive the confiscations and the cruelties it is suffering from that same Italy which once hailed thee as its deliverer. Obtain for Christians of every condition the courage required for the warfare in which all are bound to engage.

On this same day the whole Church unites in the solemn homage which Milan continues to pay, after a lapse of sixteen centuries, to two valiant witnesses of Christ. "Our martyrs Felix and Nabor," says St. Ambrose, "are the grain of mustard-seed mentioned "in the Gospel. They possessed the good odour of "faith, though it did not appear to men; persecution arose, they laid down their arms, and bowed their "heads to the sword, and immediately the grace that was hidden within them was shed abroad even to 'the ends of the world; so that we can now in all "truth say of them: Their sound has gone forth "into all the earth."

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Let us honour them and ask their intercession by the prayer which the Church addresses to God in commemoration of their glorious combat.

COLLECT.

Grant, we beseech thee, O Lord, that as the festival of thy holy Martyrs, Nabor and Felix, returns for us to celebrate, it may always be accompanied by their intercession. Through our Lord, &c.

Præsta, quæsumus Domine: ut, sicut nos sanctorum Martyrum tuorum Naboris et Felicis natalitia celebranda non deserunt, ita jugiter suffragiis comitentur. Per Dominum.

JULY 13.

ST. ANACLETUS,

POPE AND MARTYR.

THE name of Anacletus sounds like a lingering echo of the solemnity of June 29th. Linus, Clement, and Cletus, the immediate successors of St. Peter, received from his hands the pontifical consecration; Anacletus had a less but still inestimable glory of being ordained priest by the Vicar of the Man-God. Whereas the feasts of most of the martyr Pontiffs who came after him are only of simple rite, that of Anacletus is a semi-double, because of his privilege of being the last Pope honoured by the imposition of hands of the Prince of the Apostles. It was also during his pontificate that the Eternal City had the glory of receiving within its walls the beloved disciple, who had come to fulfil his promise and drink of his Master's chalice. "O happy Church," exclaims Tertullian, "into whose "bosom the Apostles poured not only all their teach"ing, but their very blood; where Peter imitated his "Lord's Passion by dying on the cross; where Paul, like John the Baptist, received his crown by means "of the sword; whence the Apostle John, after coming "forth safe and sound from the boiling oil, was sent "to the isle of his banishment."1

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By the almighty power of the Spirit of Pentecost,

1De præscript. xxxvi.

the progress of the faith in Rome was proportionate to the bountiful graces of our Lord. Little by little the great Babylon, drunk with the blood of the martyrs, was being transformed into the Holy City. This new-born race, so full of promise for the future, could already reckon among its members representatives of every class of society. Beside the boiling cauldron where the Prophet of Patmos did homage to the New Jerusalem by offering within her walls his glorious confession, two consuls, one representing the ancient patrician rank, the other the more modern nobility of the Cæsars, Acilius Glabrio, and Flavius Clemens, together fell by the sword of martyrdom. Anacletus adorned the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, and provided a burial-place for the other pontiffs. Following his example, the distinguished families of Rome opened galleries for subterranean cemeteries, all along the roads leading to the imperial city. There rest innumerable soldiers of Christ, victorious by their blood; and there, too, sleep in peace with the anchor of salvation beside them, the most illustrious names of earth.

Anacletus, an Athenian by birth, governed the Church in the days of the Emperor Trajan. He decreed that a bishop should be consecrated by no fewer than three bishops; that clerics should be publicly admitted to Holy Orders, by their own bishop; and that at Mass all should communicate after the Consecration. He adorned the tomb of blessed Peter, and set aside a place for the burial of the Pontiffs. He held two ordinations in the month of December, and made five priests, three deacons, and six

Anacletus Atheniensis, Trajano imperatore, rexit Ecclesiam, Decrevit ut episcopus, a tribus episcopis, neque a paucioribus consecraretur, et clerici sacris Ordinibus publice a proprio episcopo initiarentur: et ut in Missa, peracta consecratione, omnes communicarent. Beati Petri sepulcrum ornavit, Pontificumque sepulturæ locum attribuit. Fecit

ordinationes duas mense Decembri, quibus creavit presbyteros quinque diaconos tres, episcopos sex.

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