Saint Nicholas of Tolentino.
Artist: Attributed to Jan van Cleve.
Date: 1666 - 1716.
Source/Photographer:
(Wikimedia Commons)
Text from “The Liturgical Year”.
By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 14.
Time After Pentecost.
Book V.
Today, the infant Mary smiles upon the Lily offered to her in her Cradle by the representative of a great Order.
The Hermits of Saint Augustine were being grouped and organised by the Vicar of Christ, when Nicholas was admitted into their family, of which he was soon to become the “Thaumaturgus” [Editor: “Wonder-Worker”].
When he died in 1305 the Roman Pontiffs were befinning their exile at Avignon; and his Canonisation, deferred for nearly a Century and a half through the troubles of the period, marked the close of the lamentable dissensions which followed that exile.
Peace so long lost; peace, of which even the wisest despaired — such was the ardent Prayer, the Solemn adjuration of Pope Eugenius IV, when, towards the close of his laborious Pontificate, he committed the cause of The Church to the humble Servant of God placed by him upon her Altars.
According to the testimony of Pope Sixtus V, the obtaining of this peace was the greatest of Nicholas’s Miracles; a Miracle which moved the latter Pontiff to order the Celebration of the Saint’s Feast as a Double, at a time when days of that Rank were much rarer on the Calendar than now.
Good and faithful servant, thou hast entered into the joy of thy Lord. He has broken thy bonds; and from Heaven, where thou art now reigning, thou repeatest to us those words which determined the sanctity of thy life on Earth: “Love not the World, nor the things that are in the World. For the World passeth away, and the concupiscence thereof.”
How much a man thus forgetful of Earth can do for his fellow-men, is evinced by the gift thou didst receive of solacing all the miseries around thee, and succouring the Souls in Purgatory.
The successor of Saint Peter was not deceived, when, in ranking thee among the Saints, he counted on thy power in Heaven to bring back society from its long continued state of disturbance to the paths of peace.
[Editor: Saint Nicholas. Ora Pro Nobis. The in-fighting and state of Christ’s Church, and its divisions, require your Prayers and intercession. Lord, Hear Us.]
May that word of the Beloved Disciple which thou hast just echoed to us, sink into our Souls as a seed of salvation, and there yield the fruits that it produced in thee: Detachment from temporal things and a longing for eternal realities; that humble simplicity of the Soul’s eye which makes life a peaceful journey towards God; and, lastly, that purity, which made thee the friend of Angels and the favourite of Mary..














