Friends at Court

New Zealand Tablet, 8 June 1911, Page 1035

Friends at Court

CLEANINGS FOR NEXT WEEK’S CALENDAR June 11, Sunday. Trinity Sunday. „ 12, Monday.—St. Leo 111., Pope and Confessor. ~ : ,13, Tuesday.St. Anthony of Padua, Confessor. „ 14, Wednesday.— St. Basil, Bishop, Confessor, and Doctor. ~ 15, Thursday. —Feast of Corpus Christi. „ 16, Friday. — St. Antoninus, Bishop and Confessor. ~ 17, Saturday. St. Paschal 1., Pope and Confessor. ' Trinity Sunday. , To-day we are not asked to imitate the virtues of some saint',-or to contemplate the merciful dealing of God wtih man. We are taken up, as it were, into the Holy of Holies, and invited to gaze on the radiant perfection of God as the Blessed see Himone God in Three Divine Persons. Until the fourteenth century this feast was hoc generally celebrated in the Church, for the reason that all festivals in the Christian religion are truly festivals of the Holy Trinity, since they are only means to honor the Blessed Trinity, and steps to raise us to It as the true and only term of our worship. As Pope Alexander writes, in the eleventh century: ‘ The Homan Church has no particular festival of the Trinity, because she honors it every day, and every hour of the day, all her offices containing Its praises, and concluding with a tribute of glory to It.’ Feast of Corpus Christi. As the Adorable Trinity is the essential and primary object of all religion and of all festivals, so the august Eucharist is the perpetual sacrifice and the holiest worship we can render to the Trinity. In other words, every day is a festival of the Trinity which we adore, and of the Eucharist by which we adore It. The special feast of the Blessed Eucharist, which we celebrate to-day, was instituted in the thirteenth century. ‘ Without doubt,’ says Urban IV., in the Bull of institution, ‘ Holy Thursday is the true festival of the Holy Sacrament, but on that day the Church is so much occupied in bewailing the death of her Spouse that it was good to take another day, when she might manifest all her joy and supply for what she could not do on Holy Thursday.’ 7_ GRAINS OF GOLD NO MORE. It was the lonely gloom of night; My heart was numb with pain, My weary eyes could find no light Across the tempest main, And thunder crashed its ghastly fright Till hope was madly slaip. I called the Master; where was He All through that bitter hour? 0 was His silence mocking me Within the Pilot tower? Why did that Voice of majesty Deny its peaceful power? And I had sought some creature then, To grasp its mortal care; O fool! I thought with fickle men My loneliness to share. But, lo ! I called on Christ again, And peace was everywhere. He stood, and looked through loving tears Beside the morning shore. .‘0 little faith, O foolish fears!’ This mild rebuke He bore; ‘ 0 come, and show through all the years So little faith no more!’ —Ave Maria. What we need is eyes to see. The presence of the benevolent God is evidenced in a thousand ways, but we lack the power or the disposition to appreciate this marvellous fact ; Many a man has seen a country graveyard, but it reouired a Gray to see it in a great poem. Literature is filled with gems that genius has rescued from the rubbish heaps. So a cultivated spiritual sense may see everywhere tokens of the Divine Presence, and the common is transformed into the uncommon by the glory of it. Think what we lose when we are' faithless to some small duty imposed by the law of love. We lose character and life itself. For, after all, life cannot be satisfactorily measured by the excitement of striking occasions, or bV the thrill of great sensations, or by the joy of overnowering emotions. The greater part of life for most of us is made up of small, humdrum duties; of routine. And routine can be inspired (so Jesus teaches) by a high sense of duty and unselfishness can be combined with loyalty to noble ideals of faith and love and transformed into the onnortunity of spiritual growth. 1 P