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May 26.-SAINT ELEUTHERIUS, Pope and Mart
Same Day.-SAINT AUGUSTINE, Bishop, Ap
England,

May 27.-SAINT MARY MAGDALENE DE PAZ

Same Day.-SAINT JOHN THE FIRST, Pope an

May 30.-SAINT FELIX THE FIRST, Pope and
Same Day.-SAINT FERDINAND THE THIRD, I
Castile, and Confessor,.
May 31.-SAINT PETRONILLA, Virgin,
Same Day.-SAINT ANGELA DE MERICI, Virg

PASCHAL TIME.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

THE HISTORY OF PASCHAL TIME.

WE give the name of Paschal Time to the period between Easter Sunday and the Saturday following Whit Sunday. It is the most sacred portion of the Liturgical year, and the one towards which the whole Cycle converges. We shall easily understand how this is, if we reflect upon the greatness of the Easter Feast, which is called the Feast of Feasts, and the Solemnity of solemnities, in the same manner, says St. Gregory, as the most sacred part of the Temple was called the Holy of holies; and the Book of Sacred Scripture, wherein are described the espousals between Christ and the Church, is called the Canticle of canticles. It is on this day, that the mission of the Word Incarnate obtains the object, towards which it has hitherto been unceasingly tending:-mankind is raised up from his fall, and regains what he had lost by Adam's sin.

Christmas gave us a Man-God; three days have scarcely passed, since we witnessed his infinitely precious Blood shed for our ransom: but now, on the Day of Easter, our Jesus is no longer the Victim of death; he is a Conqueror, that destroys Death, the

PASCH. TIME II.

1 Homilia, xxii.

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child of sin, and proclaims Life, that ur which he has purchased for us. The hum his Swathing bands, the sufferings of his Cross, these are past; all is now glory, Hitself, and glory also for us. On the Da God regains, by the Resurrection of the his creation such as he made it at the the only vestige now left of Death is th to sin, which the Lamb of God deigned to himself. Neither is it Jesus alone that eternal Life; the whole human race also Immortality together with our Jesus. came Death, says the Apostle; and by Resurrection of the dead: and, as in Ad so also in Christ all shall be made alive.1

The anniversary of this Resurrection is the Great Day, the Day of Joy, the Day by the Day to which the whole year looks for pectation, and on which its whole economy But as it is the holiest of days, since it o the gate of Heaven, into which we shall en we have Risen together with Christ,-t would have us come to it well prepared mortification and by compunction of hear for this, that she instituted the Fast of that she bade us, during Septuagesima, lo to the joy of her Easter, and be filled with suitable to the approach of so grand a Weobeyed; we have gone through the period paration; and now the Easter sun has rise

But it was not enough to solemnise the when Jesus, our Light, rose from the dark Tomb: there was another anniversary whi our grateful celebration. The Incarnate on the first day of the week,-that same d on, four thousand years before, he, the

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