The Mass of the Saints.

The age of mere generosity, the age of
Ecclesia Dei, is coming to an end.

Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul

TU EST PETRUS

The Year of Saint Paul

St. Paul Apostle to the Nations.

San Josemaria

Saint Jose Maria Escriva

Oremus:

O God our Father, you chose St. Josemaría to proclaim the universal call to sanctity
and apostolate in the Church.
By his example and prayers, grant
that in faithfully carrying out our daily work
in the Spirit of Christ, we may be formed in the likeness of your Son,
and together with the most Blessed Virgin Mary,
serve the work of redemption with an ardent love.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ
your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

Protestant Iconoclastic riot.
desecration of an image of the
Mother of God.

St. Derfel Gadarn :

5th or 6th century. According to legend, Saint Derfel was a great Welsh soldier
who fought at the Battle of Camlan (537), where King Arthur was killed. He may
have been a monk and abbot at Bardsey and later a solitary at Llanderfel,
Merionethshire, Wales, thus becoming its founder and patron. A wooden statue of
him mounted on a horse and holding a staff was greatly venerated in the church
at Llanderfel until it was used for firewood in the burning of Blessed John
Forest, Queen Catherine of Aragon's confessor, at Smithfield, England.

In 1538, Dr. Ellis Price, Cromwell's agent for the diocese of Saint Asaph, wrote
to Cromwell about Derfel's statue. He wanted to know how he should dispose of
it, because "the people have so much trust in him that they come daily on
pilgrimage to him with cows or horses or money, to the number of five or six
hundred on April 5. The common saying was that whoever offered anything to this
saint would be delivered out of hell by him." (We know that only Jesus Christ
can save us from hell, but this testimony is an indication of the power of
Derfel's prayers.)

Cromwell ordered him to send it to London. The local people of Llanderfel paid
Price a 40 pound bribe, but the statue was still removed. On May 22, 1438, John
Forest of Greenwich was to be burnt for refusing the Oath of Supremacy. Just
before his execution, Derfel's "huge and great image" was brought to the
gallows. A centuries-old Welsh prophecy had predicted that "this image should
set a whole forest afire; which prophecy now took effect, for he set this friar
Forest on fire and consumed him to nothing." The remains of Derfel's staff and
horse can be seen in Llanderfel

(Attwater2, Benedictines, Delaney, Farmer).

The Blessed John Forest

June 24th

Blessed John Forest, confessors to Catherine of Aragon, after several years of imprisonment, was tried for denying the Oath of Supremacy and condemned to death. On 22 May 1538 he was brought to Smithfield. A large crowd gathered, including the bishop of London, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and the Lord Mayor. Forest made a brave confession of faith; according to one bystander:

"That if an angel should come down from Heaven and show him any other thing than he had believed all his lifetime past he would not believe him, and that if his body should be cut joint after joint or member after member, burnt, hanged, or what pain soever might be done to his body, he would never turn from his old sect of this Bishop of Rome."

They hanged him from the gibbet, with a chain placed around his waist. They then lit a fire and placed on it a statue of a Welsh saint, Derfel Gadarn. Curiously, according to tradition, it had been predicted that this venerated statue would one day ‘set a Forest on fire'. ‘The holy man', we read, ‘beat his breast with his right hand, and then raised both his hands to Heaven and said many prayers in Latin, his last spoken words being, Domine, miserere mei: and when the fire reached his breast he spoke no more and gave up his soul to God'.

(Roman Miscellany: June 24, 2007)

Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

"Do not be afraid, Zechariah,
for your prayer is heard,
and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son,
and you shall call his name John."

June 24

"He was indeed a man endued with all virtue, who exhorted the Jews to the practice of justice towards men and piety towards God; and also to baptism, preaching that they would become acceptable to God if they renounced their sins, and to the cleanness of their bodies’ added purity of soul."
__Josephus