May 24

Spiritual Bouquet: When the Son of man comes, will He find faith on the earth? St. Luke 18:8

OUR LADY, HELP of CHRISTIANS
(1815)

Pope Pius VII, after he returned to Rome in 1815 from several years of captivity imposed by the emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, instituted this feast day in honor of the assistance which the Blessed Virgin had accorded the Church. The occasion of the Pope’s exile and captivity was the emperor’s resistance to the authority of the Vicar of Christ, superior before God to his own.

A decree of the emperor in 1809 had ordered that the papal States be joined to the French empire; violence followed in Rome, when the French tricolor flag was set up and the papal arms broken. The Pope’s very courageous bull of excommunication of the emperor was made public in the following month. Then, one morning, a group of armed men entered the Quirinal Palace by breaking down the doors with axes, and its leader announced that the pope must either renounce his sovereignty over Rome or be taken by the troop to a French General, who would communicate to him his next destination.

The sacrilegious seizure of his person was executed, and he spent five years in exile in various places, finally at Fontainebleau, France. After 1815 the clemency of the great Pope towards the Emperor and his family is a matter of history; the latter were afforded a secure refuge in Rome itself, when Napoleon was exiled. And for the Emperor himself, relegated to the island of Saint Helena, the Pope pleaded for clemency with the Prince-Regent of England. When Napoleon died, it was with the assistance of chaplains sent to him by Pius VII.

Our Lady, Help of Christians, was made better known by Saint John Bosco, who consecrated his Order of Salesian priests to Her. And in Turin, beginning in 1865, he began to raise in Her honor a vast and magnificent church. Without ever having a penny in advance, always the needed sums of money arrived in time. About three-fourths of the gifts offered were presented in thanksgiving for favors obtained through Her intercession.

We will relate just one of those. A certain Senator of the Kingdom of Italy was ill; Don Bosco went to visit him and found him very discouraged and speaking of his imminent death. “What would you do,” said Don Bosco, “if Our Lady Auxiliatrix obtained your cure from God?” “My cure! Well, I would give two thousand francs a month for Her church, for six months.” “Be of good courage,” said the Saint on rising; “I will see that prayers are said for you.” Three days later, Baron Gotta, perfectly cured, went to Don Bosco to make his first payment, giving more than he had promised; and he did not cease to outdo himself in generosity.

Sources: L’histoire ecclésiastique, by M. l’Abbé Darras (Louis Vivès: Paris, 1888), Vol. 40; Les deux intendants de la Providence à Turin (Joseph Cottolengo and Don Bosco) (Librairie St. Paul: Paris, 1904).

SAINTS DONATIAN and ROGATIAN
Martyrs
(†287 or 288)

There lived at Nantes an illustrious young nobleman named Donatian, who, having received the holy Sacrament of regeneration, led a most edifying life and strove with much zeal to convert others to faith in Christ. His elder brother, Rogatian, was not able to resist the moving example of his piety and the force of his discourses, and desired to be baptized. But as the bishop had departed and concealed himself during the persecutions, he was not able to receive that Sacrament. Nonetheless, he was shortly afterwards baptized in his blood, for he declared himself a Christian at a time when to embrace that sacred profession was to become a candidate for martyrdom.

Donatian was sought, first for professing himself a Christian and for having deterred others, particularly his brother, from worshiping the gods. He was apprehended, and having boldly confessed Christ before the governor, was cast into prison and loaded with irons. Rogatian was also brought before the prefect who endeavored first to gain him by flattering speeches. Finding him inflexible, he sent him to prison with his brother.

Rogatian grieved that he had not been able to receive the sacrament of Baptism. Donatian prayed for him that his faith might procure for him the effect of Baptism, and the effusion of his blood that of the Sacrament of Confirmation. They passed that night together in fervent prayer. The next day they were summoned again by the prefect, to whom they declared they were ready to suffer for the name of Christ, whatever torments were prepared for them. By the order of the inhuman judge they were first stretched on the rack, afterwards their heads were pierced with lances, and finally cut off, about the year 287.

Source: Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler’s Lives of the Saints and other sources by John Gilmary Shea (Benziger Brothers: New York, 1894).