Truth through Signs

[Weedy]

Truth through Signs

"Presentation of truth through signs has great power to feed and
fan that ardent love by which, as under some law of gravitation, we
flicker upward, or inward, to our place of rest.
The emotions are less easily set alight while the soul is wholly
absorbed in material things. But when it is brought to material signs
of spiritual realities, and moves from them to the things they
represent, it gathers strength just by this very act of passing from
the one to the other."
--St. Augustine--Letter 55, 11

Prayer: Lord, my knowledge and my ignorance lie before you. Where you
have opened to me, let me enter. Where you have closed to me, open
when I knock.
--St. Augustine--The Trinity 15, 51

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September 2nd - Blessed John du Lau and Comp., Martyrs of Sept. 1792
Also known as Martyrs of Paris, Martyrs of Carmes

It is common knowledge that in France on the eve of the great
revolution of 1789 there were a number of Catholic religious, priests
and bishops who could scarcely be called “good shepherds.” In contrast
to these worldly churchmen, there were other clerics who made up for
the weakness of their brothers by defending the faith even with their
lives.

Best known among these Christian heroes were the clerics executed in
September, 1792. Once established, the revolutionary government had
claimed the “republican” right to take control of the Catholic Church
in France. In 1790 it enacted a “constitution” or law that denied to
the pope any authority over French Catholicism. Each French priest and
bishop was ordered to take an oath to uphold this law. Some priests
did so. Most of them decided they could not, because they would then
be denying the universal authority of the popes. For this refusal they
would eventually suffer. The “liberty” for which the French Revolution
was fought, was not very consistent.

As the Revolution moved on, its leadership came more and more into the
hands of extremists. In 1792, the radical Jacobins determined to
punish with death not only the aristocrats, but clergy who had refused
the oath.

The “non-jurors” – those who had refused the oath – were arrested en
masse in August, 1792, and herded into several Parisian monasteries
out of which the resident monks had been driven. These prisoners were
priests, bishops and religious from many dioceses. Then on September
2, a band of violent armed men, perhaps 150 in number, was sent by the
“Committee of Vigilance” to one after the other of these temporary
prisons. One detail arrived at the Abbey of St. Germain just when a
number of prisoners got there, transferred from other places of
detention. The executioners shot them down in cold blood. Then they
went to the old Carmelite monastery, where another group of cutthroats
joined them. They ordered all the prisoners to come out into the
garden, even the oldest and most disabled. The clerics had already
discussed once more the question of taking the oath, and all had
agreed they could not and would not subscribe to it.

Now the gang fell upon the first priests they met and cut them down.
Then they called out, “The Archbishop of Arles!” Archbishop John du
Lau of Arles was praying in the chapel. When summoned, he came out and
he said, “I am he whom you seek.” Thereupon, they cracked his skull,
stabbed him and trampled him underfoot. Then the leader set up a
“tribunal” before which the imprisoned were herded and ordered to take
the oath. All refused; so, as they passed down the stairway, they were
hacked to pieces by the murderers. The bishop of Beauvais had earlier
been wounded in the leg. When summoned, he answered, “I do not refuse
to die with the others, but I cannot walk. I beg you to have the
kindness to carry me where you wish me to go.” For a moment, his
courtesy silenced the assassins. But, when he, too, refused the oath,
he was killed like the rest.

Later on the purge was carried out elsewhere in France. Some 200
clergymen fell that September, and they were only a small percentage
of the 1500 clergy, laymen and laywomen who were massacred in 1792
alone.

Pope Pius XI beatified 191 of the priest martyrs, in 1926, assigning
to them the title of “Blessed John du Lau and Companions, Martyrs.”

They had been the helpless victims of wild revolutionary ideology. As
usual, however, their heroism in the defense of the papacy was
remembered long after the names of their blood-thirsty executioners
had been forgotten. They saved the reputation of France as “eldest
daughter of the Church.”
–Father Robert F. McNamara


Saint Quote:
The more we see that any action springs not from the motive of
obedience, the more evident is it that it is a temptation of the
enemy; for when God sends an inspiration, the very first effect of it
is to infuse a spirit of docility.
--Saint Teresa of Avila

Bible Quotes:
And my people, upon whom my name is called, being converted, shall
make supplication to me, and seek out my face, and do penance for
their most wicked ways: then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive
their sins and will heal their land. [2 Paralipomenon (2 Chronicles)
7:14]

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Short Prayers

Let not the partaking of Thy Body, O Lord Jesus Christ,
which I, all unworthy, presume to receive, turn to my judgment
and condemnation, but through Thy loving kindness may
it be to me a safeguard and remedy for soul and body.
Who livest and reignest world without end. Amen.

Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof;
but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.

The cross is my sure salvation.
The cross I ever adore.
The cross of the Lord is with me.
The cross is my refuge.