FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Introit: Ps 84(83):10 11, 2 3
Collect: Guard Your Church, Lord, we pray, with Your continued mercy, and since our human mortality must fail without You, keep it always by Your help from all that may hurt it, and direct it in the way of salvation. Through our Lord.
Epistle: Ga 5:16 24
Gradual: Ps 118(117):8 9
Alleluia: Ps 95(94):1
Gospel: Mt 6:24 33
Offertory: Ps 34(33):8 9
Secret: Grant us, we pray, Lord, that this saving Victim may both purify us from our sins and propitiate for us Your almighty power. Through our Lord.
Communion: Mt 6:33
Postcommunion: May Your sacraments, Lord, at all times purify and defend us; and may they bring us to the fullness of eternal salvation. Through our Lord.

September 15, 1946

Azariah says:
"As an individual creature, or as a society united in a single organism, the Christian and Christians encounter all assistance in being protected in relation to the Eternal Lord by his beloved Son.

"Just as when one person addresses another to greet him or help him or reproach him, or simply to get to know him, he does not look at the other's hands or feet, shoulders or chest, but looks fixedly at his face, so your Father, when He turns to hear your entreaties or gets angry over your sins or observes you to know your actions and thoughts what does He look at first? The Face of Him with whom He is well pleased and who shines in the spirits of the good, but who also remains upon the infirm members of the great Body which is the Church of all Catholic Christians.

"First of all, He encounters the gaze of his Christ, and his anger is placated, and his mercy grows out of justice and exultation. Justice for Christ has already atoned for the sins of all men who afterwards return to the Lord in repentance or for whom another Christian prays and suffers together with Christ. Exultation for in every just man who implores the Lord He hears again the voice of his beloved Beseecher and is happy to grant favors in his Name.

"That is why the liturgy uses the formula 'Through Jesus Christ Our Lord.' All good comes through Him, the Great Victim who, with the out flowing of his Blood and the fullness of his pain, forced open the dikes of mercy and love, closed to limit God's sentiments an act of violence which God had applied to Himself, in anger over Original Sin.

"Knowing that everything is obtained through the Christ and that the Father is unable to remain severe if the one who uplifts his supplicating glances is Christ, the Head of the Church, you can thus pray with confident words for Her that needs so many prayers to be strong, solid, and holy. Satan's hour lashes like a storm upon the shores marked by the Cross. One promise stands like a reef in defense of the Apostolic Church. Jesus' words: 'They shall not prevail.'

"But observe the words accompanying this promise! They recall a quality of the Church. And they prompt another Gospel comparison. They say, 'You are Peter, and on this Rock I shall build my Church.'

"A solid building, therefore. Of rock. Not of soft mud which the wind dries up and disperses or water dissolves, not of lime mortar which time deteriorates, not of bricks which a pick can undermine if introduced between them or shatter if smacked against them with rage. But of rock. A single rock powerful, indestructible, unassailable, solid, firm. Do you remember John the Baptist? What is the praise Jesus utters of his Forerunner? It is this: 'What did you go out to see in the desert? A reed shaken by the wind.

"John, the Precursor, was a not a reed shaken left and right by the wind and broken by a child's hand or a passing animal. He was strong to the point of violence that violence by which the Kingdom of Heaven is defended and conquered. John, the Forerunner of Christianity, had to be this force which nothing cracks and knocks down. Otherwise, how could he have prepared the ways of the Lord if he had been a weak man whom just anyone could have cast aside?

"But is the Church Militant not perhaps the one which precedes the eternal Church Triumphant and prepares the great Victory of the Lamb in the Heavenly Jerusalem? How could the Bride dress herself in resplendent linen for her wedding, with no more weeping, if she changed from a queen into a slave, if before Satan's waves she were stripped of her members like leaves torn away by a whirlwind or she crumbled like a collapsing house? It would be horrible! Indescribably horrible. But he who saw Heaven and the Last Time says, 'There came a great red dragon..., and with his tail he drew after him a third of the stars and made them fall.'

"Pray, Christians, pray that no more than a third will fall, swept away by Satan, by his seven accursed hydras, by the tenfold infernal weapons, by his serpentine, diabolical work.

"Pray, pray that the organism of the believers, the Church Militant, will remain the 'Rock' and not become mud, lime mortar, or brick. Raise up around her the shield of your prayer, for the hour is really tremendous. More tremendous than the hour of darkness in which Christ was immolated. For Christ was then standing up against the spite of a world rendered Satanic, and against Him its prevailing was relative, for his power and Holiness are measureless; but in this hour, long and ever darker, the Satanized world which is rising up against you Christians, against the Church, is faced only with men that is, beings in whom, as the Prayer states, it is mortal human nature which, without the aid of God, succumbs. And the more it is already infected and softened by the fumes of the world and the science of the world, the more it succumbs.

"Pray, indicating to the Father the mystical Head of the Church so that, out of respect for the Face of his Christ, the Most High will intervene to impede the affronts He already suffered on Good Friday, a figure of those which over the centuries and with increasing violence would be hurled against the Head and the Mystical Body of Christ. And to pray with merit, pray as just men that is, as the Blessed Paul says, 'Walk according to the spirit,' not satisfying the desires of the flesh.

"The select part is the spirit. Give precedence to the spirit; give it regality. The flesh is the handmaid; the spirit is the king. If the handmaid were unlawfully to become the queen, your nature in which the Creator's likeness is outlined, making man the link joining the created perfections of animals, plants, and minerals to the angelical supercreations, and, even more, in giving you a spiritual part, as we are, and giving you a carnal part, like the one Christ Himself assumed in order to redeem, He makes you similar to the Divine Brother, to the Firstborn of the Living would lose its likeness to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit because of spiritual immortality, the power to unite yourselves to Jesus, fulfilling in your flesh what is lacking to the Passion of Christ, the intellect set aflame by the infused Virtues and the Seven Gifts, and you would become similar to inferior animals that are only flesh and, when breathing ceases, no longer exist.

"In the perpetual clash between flesh and spirit your field of battle and victory be steadfast in giving all weapons to the spirit so that it will be the executioner of the flesh. Holy justice which wounds, tames, and breaks so as to give its identical eternal glory one day to the matter it now wounds so that it will be healed! Holy combat that frees you from the severity of the Law, for he who is guided by the spirit does not sin in a voluntary, premeditated way, but, even if he yields through a sudden assault of matter, immediately gets up again, and his fall is no longer a misfortune, but something good, for it marks a victory over discouragement, lack of confidence, and pride. The Evil One against his will serves Good. For the Evil One is 'a chained freeman.' Always remember this. He can still do harm, but not beyond a certain limit, and his presence, his possible cunning, and his untiring attention to causing wounds serve to keep you watchful, make you call upon God's help, and give you a crown of victory.

"God is Goodness. He makes everything 'good.' If Satan had really been 'invincible' for men, God would not have left this 'evil thing.' But in his perfect evil Satan contributes to the glorification of the heroes of the spirit, the Lord's true faithful ones.

"And for these heroes of the spirit the Law of severity no longer exists. Just as their will rejects the things of the flesh, so the Divine Will and Justice annul involuntary weaknesses, immediately redressed through loving desire, and open the gates of the Kingdom to the faithful children. God opens them while the earthly day still lasts, giving his gifts, which are charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, continence, chastity. The virtues which were in the perfect Man, in Our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though God, when He took on flesh, becoming like you, wanted to give his spirit the gifts and virtues to be able to withstand Satan and the world and keep Himself perfect in the eyes of the Father and of men.

"'Who among you can convict me of sin, Oh, what peace, peace before accusers and judges and death and God, to be able to utter this sentence! And this divine sentence can blossom luminous and sweet, prompting respect in whoever hears it and calm and serenity in whoever utters it in those who have walked according to the spirit by crucifying like Christ, to whom they belong their flesh in its vices and concupiscences. Then, serving the Most Holy Spirit with the spirit king, you will deserve the Angel of the Lord, and he will save you when the assault of Satan and his servants is too furious for your capacity to withstand.

"Do not fear! Do not fear, 0 sweet souls who love the Lord to the point of sacrificing yourselves and his very joys provided the world is saved and the Kingdom of God comes.

"Do not fear! You have understood the Truth, who has spoken to you. You have sought the Kingdom of God before all else, and not for yourselves alone, but for everyone. And it is in you. It is already in you. And this alone has value. The other things will be given to you in addition. But even if they were not given to you, because the war waged by Satan and men destroyed them while they came down to you from Heaven, do not fear. It is as if you had accomplished everything, and given, and received. Those who will not have the things given in addition are not you. They are the others.

"It is not given to whoever does not want to receive. It is not given to whoever would like to receive, but not for the spirit rather, for the concupiscences and works of the flesh. But nothing and no one can snatch the gifts of the Spirit away from those who love Him with their whole self to the point of sacrifice.

"And now let us venerate the Blessed Woman with the Transfixed Heart. Maria, isn't this a gift? To see Her. Just as John gazed at Her at the foot of the Cross.

"Little John, take your place. Console your Mother. The Apostle, too, was tormented, and yet he consoled the Most Tormented One. For he had his own pain alone. She, all the present and future pains of the Co Redemptrix. Including the ones which you know.... Imitate John you, little John broken by your pain, which is so great, but is nothing in comparison to the pain of the Mother of Sorrows. The Mystical Rose all the thorns of the immense rose garden which is the world not excluding any kind are pointed at her pure white heart and turn it crimson.... Drink in her weeping and remain under her mantle. She is your Mother. In Heaven you will discover how much ......

And I see Our Lady of Sorrows.... And I see a hand flinging into her heart a sheaf of thorns.... And She turns her head in the opposite direction of that masculine, powerful, hooked hand and weeps without sobbing.... A rain of tears which fall to the right, to the ground .... The distress of Mary Most Holy.... Oh, I cannot express all that I see ... ! I forget my pain in the face of hers, and I call Her with all the love I am capable of....

I am a poor, little creature.... But, oh, Mother, increase my capacity to console you for all those who strike you strike us this way ... !

Mother! Is it not enough to have asked that every sweetness, every ecstasy of love be taken from me for their sake? When will I restore to them, then, the spirit that You would like in them? When will I die?

May God's Will be done.... But love me and be consoled by my love, Mother, Mother, Mother of Sorrows....