Saint for the Day

• July 28—Sts. Nazarius and Celsus, Martyrs
  St. Nazarius’s father was a heathen, and held a considerable post in the Roman army. His mother, Perpetua, was a zealous Christian, and was instructed by St. Peter, or his disciples, in the most perfect maxims of our holy faith. Nazarius embraced it with so much ardor that he copied in his life all the great virtues he saw in his teachers; and out of zeal for the salvation of others, he left Rome, his native city, and preached the Faith in many places with a fervor and disinterestedness becoming a disciple of the apostles. Arriving at Milan, he was there beheaded for the Faith, together with Celsus, a youth whom he carried with him to assist him in his travels. These martyrs suffered soon after Nero had raised the first persecution. Their bodies were buried separately in a garden without the city, where they were discovered and taken up by St. Ambrose, in 395. In the tomb of St. Nazarius, a vial of the Saint’s blood was found as fresh and red as if it had been spilt that day. The faithful stained handkerchiefs with some drops, and also formed a certain paste with it, a portion of which St. Ambrose sent to St. Gaudentius, Bishop of Brescia. St. Ambrose conveyed the bodies of the two martyrs into the new church .of the apostles, which he had just built. A woman was delivered of an evil spirit in their presence. St. Ambrose sent some of these relics to St. Paulinus of Nola, who received them with great respect, as a most valuable present, as he testifies. Reflection.—The martyrs died as the outcasts of the world, but are crowned by God with immortal honor. The glory of the world is false and transitory, and an empty bubble or shadow, but that of virtue is true, solid, and permanent, even in the eyes of men.

  Taken from the “Pictorial Lives of the Saints: with Reflections for Every Day in the Year”

Sunday Sermon

• Ninth Sunday After Pentecost~ A Christian’s Weapons

  “For 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.” — St. Luke xix. 43.

  We learn from today’s Gospel that we are not to expect to go on smoothly in this life without ever meeting anything that will disturb us. On the contrary, our Lord would have us clearly understand that we are to be tried on every side, for His words are : “And thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side.”

  The axiom has it, “Forewarned is forearmed”; so then we have great reason to be grateful to our Lord for His pointing out what we are to look for during our stay on this earth. The evident reason of this prediction is that we should be prepared to meet whatever befalls us. The question arises, then, Have we the means on hand to combat and overcome our enemies? Yes, in abundance. We have so many helps, my dear brethren, that they are too numerous to mention. Why, to name some of them, we have prayer, the sacraments, our Lord Himself in the Sacrament of the Altar — what more can we ask for? If we are overcome by our enemies we have but ourselves to blame, for our Lord has said, “Come to me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.” Do we do this? Don’t we rather turn to the things of earth and try to drown our sorrows by means of them? I am afraid the latter is what many of us have recourse to, and hence we are vanquished by our adversaries. How many of us, when it pleases the Lord to take from us one whom we loved dearly, turn to Him in prayer and seek assistance in that hour of trial? Is it not often the case when, for instance, a father or a mother is taken away, that the son, terrified at the affliction, endeavors to get rid of it by drinking and carrying on in a disgraceful manner — and to what good? True, drink may make one oblivious of his surroundings for the time being, but when its influence has passed away the trouble returns with redoubled vigor ; whereas, if at the outset he would turn his thoughts to God and beg of Him the grace to bear his trials manfully, it would be a stay for him to sustain his troubles and a source of merit hereafter.

  There is not one of us that is not ready to op pose and conquer the enemy when he threatens the life of our body, and if we are so solicitous about that which, after all, is but to last for a few years, what shall we say when he attempts to deprive us of what is to continue for ever — the soul ? Now, then, an enemy, common, I was going to say, to us all, is detraction ; that is to say, telling the faults of our neighbors to their detriment to every one that will listen. Knowing, then, the adversary, what steps are we to take to put him down?

  Let us take, for example, a person who wants to overcome this vice, and who, nevertheless, is prone to it to such an extent that its commission affords him or her a kind of gratification. Of course, we said above we had abundant means to overcome our enemies and sustain ourselves in the warfare against him ; but the special means to vanquish this enemy is the sacrament of Penance. This person at the start is fully in earnest and means to be successful at the sacrifice of self.

  The first thing such a person does is to institute a daily examination of conscience. At the expiration of each day it is carefully noted down how many times this fault has been committed ; one day, one month, is compared with another, so that in a very short time the state of the con science is pretty exactly known ; and the number in this particular sin comparatively few, sup posing, as we said before, the person is in earnest. This help, together with a weekly or monthly confession, will produce in six months’ time a gratifying result to God and the soul who has had so much success in the warfare against the adversary.