Friends at Court

New Zealand Tablet, 3 December 1914, Page 3

Friends at Court

GLEANINGS FOR NEXT WEEK’S CALENDAR

December 6, Sunday.— Second Sunday of Advent. ~ 7, Monday.St. Ambrose, Bishop, , Confessor, and Doctor. ” 8, Tuesday.—lmmaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. ~ 9, Wednesday.—St.. Eutychian, Pope and Martyr. - ~ 10, Thursday. —Octave of St. Francis Xavier. ~ 11, Friday. —St. Damasus, Pope and Confessor. ~ 12, Saturday.—St. Stanislaus Kostka, Confessor.

The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her Immaculate Conception was the first of the privileges by which the Blessed Virgin was prepared for the dignity of Mother of God. This privilege signifies that Mary never contracted the stain of original sin ; that her soul, in the first moment of its union with her body, was pure and spotless. She was thus excepted from the universal doom, in virtue of which every member of the human race enters the world stained by Adam’s sin. This doctrine, so admirably in keeping with what the holiness of Mary’s Son required, though expressed more or less explicitly in every age of the Church’s history, was not formally defined until the year 1854. ' St. Eutychian, Pope and Martyr. ' St. Eutychian, a native of Tuscany, succeeded Pope St. Felix 1. in 274. His pontificate, after lasting a little more than eight years, was closed by martyrdom in 283. St. Damasus, Pope and Confessor. St. Damasus was sixty years of age when raised to the pontifical throne in 366. His profound learning, fervent piety, and zeal in maintaining the purity of the faith and rejecting the false interpretations which various heretics endeavored to put upon the teaching of Christ, have caused him to be regarded as one of the most able and illustrious of the early Pontiffs. He died in 384. . ' ,•