Rev. Fr. Alban Butler - Lives of the Saints (with Supplemental Reading: A Brief Life of Christ) [Illustrated]

Translation of Latin inscriptions: The Lord God shall enlighten them, and they shall reign for ever and ever. ( Apoc . 22:5). The just shall shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. ( Matt . 13:43).

Nihil Obstat: John M. Fearns, S.T.D.
Censor Librorum

Imprimatur: Francis Cardinal Spellman
Archbishop of New York
New York
March 15, 1955

Copyright 1878, 1887, 1894, 1954, 1955 by Benziger Brothers, Inc., New York.

Originally published as Lives of the SaintsWith Reflections for Every Day in the Year .

Cover illustration of St. Therese: Painting by her sister, Celine. Used courtesy of Society of the Little Flower, Darien, Illinois. For further information contact the Society of the Little Flower.

Frontispiece from an illustrated edition of Butlers Lives of the Saints published in the 1880s.

Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 95-60703

ISBN: 978-0-89555-530-4

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

TAN Books
Charlotte, North Carolina
2012

Blessed be God
In His Angels and in His Saints!

CONTENTS

THE MOVABLE FEASTS

M OVABLE FEASTS are so called because they have no fixed place in the calendar; their celebration happening sooner or later, year by year, according as the feast of Easter itself occurs at a different period. The latter feast is always celebrated on the Sunday which accompanies or follows the first full moon after the spring equinox. As the movable feasts afford useful lessons, we ought to take them fully to heart.

ADVENT

T HE time of Advent cannot exactly be considered festal, nor can it be classed among the movable feasts; and yet the first day of Advent is, in another sense, movable , inasmuch as it happens always on the fourth Sunday before Christmaswhich festival itself falls on different days of the week. Advent means coming , and the four weeks whereof it consists represent the four thousand years which preceded the coming of the Son of God into this world. Formerly, Advent-time was observed by fasting, abstinence, and mortification, but not in a manner so rigorous as that of Lent. Notwithstanding the alleviations which the Church has thought well to introduce in the course of time, Advent has still remained a period of recollection and prayer. The true Christian ought to take advantage thereof, and by pious yearnings entreat for the coming of the Son of God into his heart by grace, and into the world at large by the spreading of the Gospel.

Reflection All the days in which I am now in warfare I await until my change come. Thou shalt call me, and I will answer Thee.

QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAYTHE FORTY HOURS DEVOTION

Q UINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY is the third day preceding Ash Wednesday. That holy season is approaching when the Church denies herself her songs of joy in order the more forcibly to remind us, her children, that we are living in a Babylon of spiritual danger, and to excite us to regain that genuine Christian spirit which everything in the world around us is striving to undermine. If we are obliged to take part in the amusements of the few days before Lent, let it be with a heart deeply imbued with the maxims of the Gospel. But, as a substitute for frivolous amusements and dangerous pleasures, the Church offers a feast surpassing all earthly enjoyments, and a means whereby we can make some amends to God for the insults offered to His divine majesty. The Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world is exposed upon our altars. On this His throne of mercy He receives the homage of those who come to adore Him and acknowledge Him for their King; He accepts the repentance of those who come to tell Him how grieved they are at having followed any other master; and He offers Himself again to His Eternal Father as a propitiation for those sinners who yet treat His favors with indifference. It was the pious Cardinal Gabriel Paleotti, Archbishop of Bologna, who, in the sixteenth century, first originated the admirable devotion of the Forty Hours . His object in this solemn exposition of the Most Blessed Sacrament was to offer to the divine majesty some compensation for the sins of man, and, at the very time when the world was busiest in deserving His anger, to appease it by the sight of His own Son, the Mediator between Heaven and earth. Pope Benedict XIV granted many indulgences to all the faithful of the Papal States who, during these days, should visit Our Lord in this mystery of His love, and should pray for the pardon of sinners. This favor at first so restricted, afterwards was extended by Pope Clement XIII to the universal Church. Thus the Forty Hours Devotion has spread throughout the whole world and become one of the most solemn expressions of Catholic piety.

Reflection Let us then go apart, for at least one short hour, from the dissipation of earthly enjoyments, and, kneeling in the presence of our Jesus, merit the grace to keep our hearts innocent and detached.

ASH WEDNESDAY

M AN, drawn from the dust, must return to it, and all that he does meanwhile, with the exception of what good he may achieve, is but dust and vanity; the good alone survives. Such are the truths which the Church wishes to engrave in the memory, but still more in the hearts, of her children, by the sprinkling of ashes on this first day of Lent. This custom dates from the first centuries of the Church, and was then observed, not toward all the faithful without distinction, but toward public sinners who had submitted themselves to canonical penance, to obtain thereby reconciliation with the Church and admission to a share in the divine Eucharist. The bishop imposed on them the obligation of wearing the hair-shirt and penitent garb, placing ashes on their head, and then excluding them from the church until the day of Easter. Meanwhile, they had to remain humbly prostrate at the church-porch, imploring the prayers of those who, more happy than they, might assist at the divine mysteries within the sacred building. The custom of putting ashes on the head in token of penitence is even more ancient than Christianity; the Jews practiced it, and the holy King David tells us that he had submitted to the observance. It may be said rather to date from the first ages of the world; for the holy man Job, long before even the time of Moses, followed the custom. Nothing is, in fact, more calculated to lead the sinner to enter into himself than the remembrance of his last end. Nothing is better fitted to beat down pride and put a check on futile projects and guilty purposes than the terrible and sad memento, Remember that thou art but dust! Empires, riches, honors, and dignities, resplendent palaces, triumphal cars, fair adornments, beauty, strength, and power, all crumble away, and their very possessor is but a ruin, and, ere a few days have sped, will have dwindled into dust.

Reflection Bear ever in mind, then, men and sinners, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.

THE FIVE WOUNDS OF OUR LORD

Y E THAT delight in decking your head with costly and superb adornments, who love to cumber your hands with gold and precious jewels, who revel in luxury and in soft garments, approach and see to what a condition Jesus Christ, your Captain and Saviour, is reduced. His head is crowned with thorns and streaming with blood, and every base indignity heaped thereon by ruffian executioners; His feet and hands are pierced by nails, His side gaping with a wide-open wound. Such are the mournful accents uttered by the Church on the first Friday of Lent, two days after she has strewed ashes on the heads of the faithful. For you it is, she exclaims, that the Son of God, the Word made flesh, has undergone these heartrending affronts, with intent to expiate your evil-doings, and to teach you that the idol of your body, which you deck out with so much care and eager delight, deserves, on the contrary, naught but affliction and suffering. How can you, while wreathing yourselves with flowers, venture to tread in the footsteps of a Master Who bears a thorny crown! And with what mind do you propose becoming the disciples of such a Master? That forehead made lustrous with borrowed splendor, those limbs delicately clad and brilliantly adorned, will first become the food of the grave-worm, and afterward the prey of that fire that quencheth not, if you strive not to bend them down to that lowliness which is native to them, to the state of subjection for which they were created, and to the penitence they have merited by reason of sin.