Friday, April 30, 2004

The feast of Pope St. Pius V, O.P.
is today. There is information on him here.
Happy feast day to all the Dominicans out there !
" St. Pius became Pope in 1566, and Selim became Sultan in that very same year. What a strange contrast did Rome and Constantinople present at that era! Neither was what it had been. But they had changed in opposite directions. Both had been the seat of Imperial Power; Rome, where heresy never throve, had exchanged its Emperor for the succession of St. Peter and St. Paul; Constantinople had passed from secular supremacy into schism, and thence into a blasphemous apostasy. The unhappy city, which, with its subject provinces had been successively the seat of Arianism, of Nestorianism, of Photianism, now had become the metropolis of the false Prophet; and, while in the West, the great edifice of the Vatican Basilica was rising anew in its wonderful proportions and its costly materials, the Temple of St. Sophia in the East was degraded into a Mosque! O the strange contrast in the state of the inhabitants of each place! Here, in the city of Constantine, a God-denying misbelief was accompanied by an impure, man-degrading rule of life, by the slavery of woman, and the corruption of youth. But there, in the city which Apostles had consecrated with their blood, the great and true reformation of the age was in full progress. There, the determinations in doctrine and discipline of the great Council of Trent had lately been promulgated. There, for twenty years past, had laboured our own dear saint, St. Philip, till he earned the title of Apostle of Rome, and yet had still nearly thirty years of life and work in him. There, too, the romantic royal-minded saint, Ignatius Loyola, had but lately died. And there, when the Holy See fell vacant, and a Pope had to be appointed in the great need of the Church, a Saint was present in the Conclave to find in it a brother Saint, and to recommend him for the Chair of St. Peter, to the suffrages of the Fathers and Princes of the Church."- Venerable John Henry Newman,C.O., Historical Sketches, Volume One

It is also the feast of St. Joseph Benedict Cottolengo, Priest and Founder, Blessed Marie Guyart of the Incarnation,S.U. and Blessed William Southerne, Priest and Martyr..

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home