Prayer, Mortification and Almsdeeds.
A special Lenten edition from the pen of Bishop John Gray of the Western District of Scotland writing to his flock in 1867.
I was digging through the Scottish Catholic Archive in Aberdeen recently and came across the Pastoral Letters of Bishop John Gray and Archbishop Charles Eyre, written in 1867 and 1871 respectively for Lent of those years. You will receive Bishop Grays letter today and Archbishop Eyres on the 3rd Friday of March. Please also see some commentary at the end.
Fig.1
John, by the Grace of God and the Apostolic See, Vicar Apostolic of the Western District of Scotland and James, the Coadjutor, to the Clergy and Laity of the District.
Dearly Beloved in Christ, the holy time of Lent, so venerable by its antiquity, and bringing with it so many unspeakable blessings to the Catholic Church, extended throughout the entire world, is about to commence. This time may well be called, in the inspired words Prophet Isaias, as quoted by Saint Paul, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, ‘The acceptable time, the day of salvation; 2nd Cor. vi 2; and in the language of the same Apostle, well may we exhort you ‘not to receive the grace of God in vain'.
This grace of God will be poured upon us during this time of mercy without measure, as the entire Catholic Church, the beloved Spouse of Christ, will be engaged in offering a holy and irresistible violence to Heaven by prayer, fasting and almsdeeds, in behalf of her dearly beloved children. The happy result will be that of our Holy Mother, the Church, will be filled with consolation by the conversion of thousands of her erring children, whom the Father of the Prodigal will, through the Holy sacraments, receive into his tender embraces; as also by the return to the true fold of his many and many a poor sheep who had wandered away into error, and will be brought back upon the shoulders of the Good Shepherd. Great too, will be the joy and consolation of our Good Mother in seeing many of her dear children roused by the graces of this holy season, from a life of lukewarmness, to vigour and activity in the service of God; and still greater will be her delight in beholding numbers of her sainted children, advanced by means of their faithful co-operation with grace, to still higher degrees of sanctity and perfection.
The Power of Prayer
In order that we may afford this consolation to our ever tender and anxious Mother, it is indispensable that we should all, according to our ability, co-operate with the abundant graces which will be given to us during these days of salvation. This necessary co-operation on our part, can only be effected by fervent prayer, salutary mortification, and the holy practice of almsdeeds and good works. ‘Without me’ says our Blessed Saviour, ‘you can do nothing;’ that is, without the aid of Divine grace we are incapable of overcoming the passions of our corrupt nature, of resisting the temptations of our enemies, or avoiding the snares of a corrupt and corrupting world. The graces necessary for these purposes are promised to us on condition that we pray for them; ‘Ask and ye shall receive’. The reason why so many are damned, is because of the neglect of prayer. The Christian who lives in the neglect of morning and evening prayer, of prayer in the time of danger from temptations and evil passions, is living in a state of damnation. Should any of you, dearly beloved be in this most deplorable state, we earnestly entreat you to have recourse during this time of mercy to constant and fervent prayer, to obtain the grace of a true conversion from God, who has declared ‘ that he wills not the death of the sinner, but that he be converted and live’.
During this acceptable time, let all with humble and contrite hearts pray that God, in His mercy, may deliver us from the scourges of the cattle plague, the cholera, inundations, war, famine, with which, in consequence of our sins, He has in His anger afflicted almost the entire world during the past year. We beg of you also to pray, with redoubled fervour, during this holy season, for the Catholic Church, and for its supreme visible head on earth, our most Holy Father the Pope [Bl Pope Pius IX]. In his allocution of the 29th of October last, his holiness has beautifully and strongly expressed unbounded confidence in the efficacy of holy prayer, by exhorting all the faithful to have recourse to fervent prayer for the Church, in the following words: - ‘ And since in so dreadful a tempest our sole and most secure help is prayer, we again and again most earnestly beseech all our venerable brothers, the Bishops of the Catholic world, the entire Catholic clergy, and all the children of our Holy Mother the Church, who have always given us such striking proofs of love and attachment towards us, and have never failed to aid us and this Apostolic See in our deep distresses, we beseech them, we repeat, to offer up, in all faith, and hope, and charity, without ceasing, prayers and supplications to God, that the enemies of the Church may be vanquished, and be brought back to the paths of salvation’. For prayer, is as St John Chrysostom says, ‘ a mighty weapon, a great security, a rich treasure, a broad harbour, a place of greatest safety, if only in sobriety and watchfulness we approach the Lord, with heart called away from every distraction, and completely closed against the enemy of our salvation’. Hom 30, chap. xi.
Mortification
To prayer we must join mortification, which has been all times deemed an essential duty of a Christian life, according to the express words of Jesus Christ, ‘If any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me’. Fasting has been established by Christ, his Apostles, and His holy spouse the Church as one of the principal means of practising the virtue of mortification; hence the institution of the forty days of lent. This fast consists in taking by one meal in the day; owing however to various changes, the Church in these latter times has relaxed somewhat by dispensation the primitive severity of the fast, by allowing one collation, which is never supposed to be an ordinary meal, either in the quality or quantity of the food taken; about 8 ounces of food according to St Liguori, is the quantity which is now generally sanctioned by custom. All persons under the age of twenty-one, those who are engaged in laborious employment, as also those who from age or infirmity are unable to fast, are dispensed from the obligation. Lest however any delusion should be introduced into the mind by self love, regarding a precept which binds so strictly, it will be well to consult the Confessor; and we hereby empower all Confessors to grant such dispensations, both from the fast and abstinence, as their enlightened prudence may think necessary.
As a great part of the population if this comes under one or another of the above mentioned causes for exemption, we may most earnestly implore them to make up for such exception by other acts of self denial; and above all things not to expose themselves to the vengeance of God by desecrating this most holy time of universal penance by intemperance and dissipation. The feast of St Patrick always occurs during the time of Lent. Dearest brethren, take away from amongst you the hideous scandal of profaning the sacred festival of this great Apostle of Ireland by excess and riot, which have too frequently brought disgrace on the land of his labours, and the creed which he planted there so firmly - the glory of his Apostleship.
Almsdeeds
To prayer and mortification we should add almsdeeds and other good works of charity. Regarding almsdeeds we have no need to urge you. As our blessed Saviour from his poverty made us all rich, so, beloved brethren, from you poverty you have contributed, even more than could have been expected, to restore to this once flourishing portion of the Church a great part of her spiritual inheritance, of which she has been despoiled by the malice of the common enemy, who unfortunately triumphed over the fidelity of her once glorious children, causing them to have recourse to all kinds of violence and cruel persecution against the religion of their sainted forefathers. The commodious churches and schools, and other Catholic institutions, which are now spread over this most interesting district, will remain, we trust, till the end of time, as noble monuments of your unbounded generosity and indomitable zeal.
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There is, however, one object of charity which we cannot pass over in silence, it is that of the Peter Pence, which is an alms which our most Holy Father most justly claims from all his faithful children, to enable him to meet the heavy expenses which his government of the Universal Church entails at this period, when the resources he had at his command have been wrested from him by sacrilegious violence. For this purpose, we beg that in every chapel a special box be placed to receive the offerings of the faithful, for this most urgent of all charities.
Moreover we exhort you dearly beloved, above all things, to the practice of the spiritual works of charity; to love one another - even, as our Divine Master commands, ‘our enemies, and those who persecute and calumniate us’, that we be as he says, ‘ the children of our Father who is in Heaven;’ and as the Holy Apostle, St Peter, expresses it, ‘be ye all of one mind, having compassion one for another, being lovers of the brotherhood, merciful, modest, humble, not rendering evil for evil, nor railing for railing, but contrariwise, for unto this you are called, that you may inherit a blessing.’ - 1 Peter, iii.8.
On Catholic Education
While you extend this holy charity to all the brotherhood, you are not to exclude from it your separated brethren, pray fervently for their conversion to the true faith, the faith of their forefathers, which is to be found only in communion with the Catholic Church, in which they lived for so many centuries. Edify them by your good example, and assist them in all their necessities. You must, however, be upon your guard against the exercise of a mistaken charity towards them, which while it would be of no profit to them, might prove injurious to your own dearest interests, to your faith and religion. Hence, avoid most cautiously the sending of your children to any but strictly Catholic schools; in no other places of education can you provide properly their religious training. It is not enough that their faith may not be exposed to the danger in schools by open proselytism, the absence of a wholesome Catholic atmosphere is in itself sufficient, as experience daily teaches, to render their faith sickly and inactive through life afterwards. Divine Providence, in its goodness, has provided a sound Catholic education for the children of the district in the schools almost everywhere established under the watchful care of its zealous pastors; and more especially in Glasgow where the best provision is made for all classes, by the introduction into the city, First, of the Jesuit Fathers, whose reputation for imparting the best religious and literary education is spread over the world; Secondly, of the Marist Brothers, whose zeal and success in their most important work is beyond all praise; and Thirdly, of the holy nuns, who by their spirit of self-sacrifice, and untiring devotion to the education of young females, have earned for themselves the right of being placed foremost amongst the instruments used by our merciful God in keeping live the faith and preserving in chaste freshness the morals of the devout sex. Hence parents can have no excuse, before God, should they, neglecting such opportunities, allow their children to frequent schools where there can be no proper security either for faith or morals.
Cautions
There is another evil, against which we would caution, with all earnestness of our souls, our dear Catholic flock. It is intermarriage with those separated from our holy church, which has forbidden such marriages, and calls them detestable. Experience has fully proved that the Church, in this, as well as in all her other laws for the good of her children, have been guided by the spirit of her holy founder, Jesus Christ. Danger to the faith of the Catholic party, still greater to the faith of the offspring, dissensions and hatred in families from the absence of the marriage blessing, are but too often the bitter fruits of such marriages; nor have the few conversions which has followed such unions been able to console the Church for the dreadful and never-ceasing evils which flow from marriages which, although she may give a reluctant consent to them, she never ceases to detest.
A fatal indifference in regard to these, as well as to other points of sound catholic morality, is not unfrequently the effect of reading works and publications dangerous alike to faith and morals., and which are poured out without number at present from an anti-Catholic and demoralising press, spreading far and wide a most deadly poison, by proving to their unhappy readers the immediate occasion of mortal sin. Those who expose themselves to such occasions, are living in a state which is sure to lead them to perdition. Fly then, dearly beloved, from such danger, ever keeping the admonition of the Holy Ghost in mind, ‘He that loveth the danger will perish in it’.
In conclusion, we desire to impress strongly upon your minds the necessity of a most tender devotion to the passion of our crucified Saviour, and to the dolour’s of his ever Blessed and Immaculate Mother, during this time, which has mainly for its object to prepare the faithful, by mingling their tears of repentance with the sorrows of Jesus and Mary, for a copious participation in the fruits of the Redeemers sufferings, and in the joys of his glorious resurrection.
Your devoted Servants in Christ,
+John Gray
+ James Lynch
Glasgow, 22nd February, 1867.
With thanks to the Scottish Catholic Archive who has given permission for this to be reproduced here. SM 15/12/3.
Photographs:
Fig 1: Saltmarket, seen from Bridgegate, 1868 - 1871 Photograph: Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal
Fig 2: St John the Evangelist, Barrhead. www.stjohns-barrhead.org
Some Notes and Explanations.
Bishop John Gray was Vicariate Apostolic of the Western District of Scotland between 1865 and 1869 and died in 1872. The western district included what is now the Archdiocese of Glasgow, the Diocese of Argyll and the Isles and the Diocese of Galloway.
This being a pastoral letter the Bishop is very much speaking into the issues and problems of the day. We seem to have forgotten just how tumultuous a time it was for the whole of the Catholic Church in the 19th Century - the French revolution and the Napoleonic era, Garibaldi and the attack of Italian nationalists on the Papal States- alongside the other changes happening in Europe at the time - caused major problems for all levels of the Church, especially for the Pope’s in looking after the Catholic flock. As the fledgling nation states as we know them today were born in Europe, the Catholic Church’s influence on ordinary people was of major concern for these new governments. Napoleon’s concordat at the beginning of the 19th C is an example of that.
This letter was written in 1867 but less than 20 years previous hundreds of thousands of Irish people landed on the shores of western Scotland, many heading for Glasgow, all malnourished and poor. This was a huge test for Scottish society to deal with - typhoid and cholera ran amok amongst the closes of Glasgow - something had to be done. So both the Catholic and Protestant churches set up social programmes, especially schools. This, as you can hear in Bishop Gray’s letter was a major worry for the Catholic Church in Scotland. There was a danger these Irish Catholics would be converted via the proselyting programmes from the Church of Scotland and Free Church. Glasgow itself goes from having a Highland Catholic population in the low hundreds at the start of the century to hundreds of thousands of Irish Catholics by the 1850’s/60’s. Then there was the ensuing problem, not only of anti-Catholic and Irish sentiment amongst Scottish Protestants, there was also a divide between Scottish and Irish Catholics. It should also be mentioned this was written only 40 years after the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. So our dear Bishops had a lot to contend with!
Some of the things he writes of is seldom heard in our Parishes now, but nonetheless not only are they still part of the teaching of the Church, they still make sense now. As parents we do not worry about whether the local Church of Scotland minister is going to try and pull our children away from Catholicism; rather the children of both Protestant and Catholic parents share the same enemy - progressive, and relativistic moralism that is literally in the atmosphere of our schools. Intermarriage seems to be dealt with and spoken of in the same way now as then out with Church teaching, but we should acknowledge, there are difficulties.