From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   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.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)