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Martyrology - 16th of March
Upon the 16th day of March, were born into the better life:
At Rome, the holy deacon Cyriacus.
After long suffering in prison, he was covered with pitch, stretched upon a block, racked, and cudgelled, and at last beheaded along with Largus Smaragdus and twenty others, by command of the Emperor Maximian.
Their feast is kept upon the 8th day of August, upon the which day blessed Pope Marcellus exhumed their bodies and buried them again with honour.
At Aquileia, the blessed martyrs Hilary, Bishop of that see, and the Deacon Tatian, who after suffering the rack and other torments were martyred, along with Felix, Largus, and Denis, under the President Beronius, in the persecution under the Emperor Numerian.
In Lycaonia, the holy martyr Papas, who for Christ's faith's sake was hided, torn with iron hooks, and made to walk in shoes with nails through them, and then tied up to a barren tree, which became fruitful when he passed away to be with the Lord, [fourth century.]
At Anazarba, in Cilicia, the holy martyr Julian, who suffered a long course of torture under the President Martian, and was at length put into a sack along with serpents and drowned in the sea, [probably under Diocletian.]
At Ravenna, the holy Confessor Agapitus, Bishop of that see, [in the year 341.]
At Cologne, holy Heribert, Bishop of that see, famous for his holiness, [in the year 1021.]
In Auvergne, holy Bishop Patrick.
In Syria, the holy hermit Abraham, [in the year 370,] whose acts have been written by the blessed Deacon Ephrem.
And elsewhere many other Holy Martyrs, Confessors and Holy virgins.
R. Thanks be to God
Morning Prayer
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Place Yourself in the Presence of God, and adore His holy Name.
Most holy and adorable Trinity, one God in three Persons, I believe that Thou art here present: I adore Thee with the deepest humility, and render to Thee, with my whole heart, the homage which is due to Thy sovereign majesty.
An Act of Faith
O my God, I firmly believe that Thou art one God in three divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; I believe that Thy divine Son became man, and died for our sins, and that He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the holy Catholic Church teaches, because Thou hast revealed them, who canst neither deceive nor be deceived.
An Act of Hope
O my God, relying on Thy infinite goodness and promises, I hope to obtain pardon of my sins, the help of Thy grace, and life everlasting, through the merits of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Redeemer.
An Act of Love
O my God, I love Thee above all things, with my whole heart and soul, because Thou art all-good and worthy of all my love. I love my neighbour as myself for the love of Thee. I forgive all who have injured me, and ask pardon of all whom I have injured.
Thank God for All Favours and Offer Yourself to Him.
O my God, I most humbly thank Thee for all the favours Thou hast bestowed upon me up to the present moment. I give Thee thanks from the bottom of my heart that Thou hast created me after Thine own image and likeness, that Thou hast redeemed me by the precious blood of Thy dear Son, and that Thou hast preserved me and brought me safe to the beginning of another day. I offer to Thee, O Lord, my whole being, and in particular all my thoughts, words, actions, and sufferings of this day. I consecrate them all to the glory of Thy name, beseeching Thee that through the infinite merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour they may all find acceptance in Thy sight. May Thy divine love animate them, and may they all tend to Thy greater glory.
Resolve to Avoid Sin and to Practice Virtue.
Adorable Jesus, my Saviour and Master, model of all perfection, I resolve and will endeavour this day to imitate Thy example, to be, like Thee, mild, humble, chaste, zealous, charitable, and resigned. I will redouble my efforts that I may not fall this day into any of those sins which I have heretofore committed (here name any besetting sin), and which I sincerely desire to forsake.
Ask God for the Necessary Graces.
O my God, Thou knowest my poverty and weakness, and that I am unable to do anything good without Thee; deny me not, O God, the help of Thy grace; proportion it to my necessities; give me strength to avoid anything evil which Thou forbiddest, and to practice the good which Thou hast commanded; and enable me to bear patiently all the trials which it may please Thee to send me.
The Lord’s Prayer...
The Hail Mary...
The Apostles’ Creed...
At this point, please go to the relevant text of Fr Hamon’s Meditation. Once I have read and meditated on the text, and its various points . I complete my meditation by saying:
Evening Prayer
Thursday in the Third Week: The Hatred God has for Sin
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation
We will meditate tomorrow on a second motive for contrition; it is the supreme displeasure which, first, venial sin; second, mortal sin cause to God. We will then make the resolution: first, very carefully to avoid the least venial sins, since God has such a great horror of them; second, to weep, all the days of our life, over the mortal sins which we have had the unhappiness to commit during the past. We will retain as our spiritual nosegay the words of the Psalmist: “My sin is always before me” (Ps. l:5).
Meditation for the Morning
Let us prostrate ourselves with trembling before the justice of God pursuing sin with implacable hatred (Wis. xiv:9). O God, Thy justice is higher than the mountains and deeper than the abysses (Ps. xxxv:7); it surpasses all imagination. I adore it without understanding it, but at the same time I love it, because everything in Thee is amiable! Be Thou forever praised and blessed in Thy justice as well as in Thy goodness.
How we ought to weep over venial sins, inasmuch as they displease God
God hates venial sin so much that in the next life He visits it with chastisements which, during almost an eternity, are a kind of hell, and He keeps the gates of His Paradise closed against souls which are His friends and are dear to Him until the complete expiation of the least of their sins. He hates it so much that even in this life He has often visited it with terrible chastisements. The wife of Lot permitted herself to indulge in thoughtless curiosity; at that very instant she is struck dead (Gen. xix:26). A man is discovered picking up a little wood on the Sabbath day; stone him and let him die, said the Lord (Num. xv:32 et seq.). Moses indulged in a little mistrust of God; he is not allowed to enter into the promised land, which he had deserved to see by forty years of service (Deut. i:37). A prophet, through complaisance, remains a little longer than necessary in the place to which he had been sent; a lion comes out of the forest and devours him (I Kings xiii:22, 24). David, animated by secret vanity, causes his people to be numbered; seventy thousand men die of the pestilence (II Sam. xxiv:15). O God, what then is venial sin in presence of Thy divine Majesty? How bitterly ought we to weep over evil which displeases Thee so supremely! and how just it is to bring every time to the holy tribunal a lively contrition for our sins, accompanied with a firm resolution to correct ourselves of them. Is it thus that we act?
How much we ought to weep over mortal sin, inasmuch as it is supremely displeasing to God
When we reflect on the terrors of hell, and when we call to mind that those who are suffering such incredible torments there were the children of God, His well-beloved, for whom He had given the whole of His blood; and that a single mortal sin, converting such ineffable love into such implacable anger, will make the whole weight of His divine vengeance weigh them down throughout eternity, we are seized with stupor, and we exclaim: Oh, how much, then, does mortal sin displease Thee, O my God, and with what hatred dost Thou pursue it! If from hell we raise our thoughts to heaven, what do we see? Empty places which were formerly occupied by angels, pure spirits, shining with admirable beauty, clothed with the most magnificent perfections, masterpieces of the hand of God. A day comes when they allow themselves to indulge in a proud thought; at that very moment God pronounces against them a terrible sentence. But, O Lord, if Thou wouldst grant them pardon, they would praise Thee throughout eternity; if Thou wilt cast them into hell they will blaspheme Thee everlastingly, and will drag down to eternal damnation millions of men; it does not signify: let them fall into the bottom of the abyss. But they have only committed one single sin; it is their first sin, and, after all, it is only a sinful thought; it does not signify: let them fall into the bottom of the abyss.
O holiness of my God, how pitiless is thy hatred of sin! But if Thou dost thus punish the officers of Thy court, what ought not I to fear I, the last of Thy servants, guilty of a thousand treasons; I who have sinned, not only once and in thought, but millions of times and in all my senses, all the members of my body, in all the powers of my soul, and against the majority of Thy commandments (St Bernard). From heaven, thus depopulated of a portion of its inhabitants, I descend to the terrestrial paradise, and I there see the place which Adam occupied when he was innocent. A day came when he had the misfortune of yielding to an intemperance, which seems apparently very slight; he ate a certain fruit which God had forbidden him, and immediately he lost all the graces of his first state; he was condemned to all kinds of evils, even to death, and not only he, but all his posterity. All men, down to the end of the world, will be a prey to innumerable miseries, to war, to pestilence, to famine, to murders, to tempests, to ignorance, to concupiscence; nay, every one of them would have been damned if the entirely gratuitous mercy of God had not redeemed us.
Great God! how many punishments at one and the same time for a single sin! and if one single sin displeased Thee to such a degree as to make Thee resolve to visit the world with so many calamities, what will be the consequence of my innumerable sins? Can I ever weep enough for them, and conceive a sufficiently lively contrition for them? Nevertheless, my God, it is not even in these things that is shown in all its intensity the horror which Thou hast for sin. I take my crucifix in my hand, and I say to myself: He whose image I contemplate was the only and well-beloved Son of God; He was God, but because He took upon Himself the semblance of sin, His heavenly Father launched upon His head all the weight of His anger; He delivered Him up to the most cruel of torments, the most terrible ignominy, to death, and death upon the cross. O sin! how horrible thou art in the sight of God; how I ought to regret and to weep over the evil I committed in allowing thee to enter into my heart! If, for the mere semblance of sin, God thus treated His only Son, how for so many real sins will He treat a rebel and contemptible subject like me? If wood that was green had to pass through such a furnace, what will it be with dry wood which is ready to be consumed by fire? (Luke xxiii:31) Behold here the most powerful of motives for weeping over sin and conceiving a better contrition for it.
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.
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