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The Time After Pentecost
shatterings of the whole body; and let all the dreadful torments of the devil come upon me.
Only let me attain to Jesus Christ.” 28 Such is the spirit in which St. Ignatius of Antioch went to
meet his death. Ignatius was a Christian of heroic stature.
St. Charles Borromeo was obliged to pass daily in his palace a picture which represented
death holding a sickle. But the saint had a golden key substituted for the sickle. Such is the
Christian attitude toward death: it is a key and not an instrument of destruction.
“I think thoughts of peace and not of affliction. . . . I will bring back your captivity” (Introit).
Death marks our release from this life of temptation and sorrow and the beginning of our glorified
life. The liturgy looks upon the day of death as our birthday, our dies natalis, the day on
which the Christian is born into eternal life.
Prayer
Remit, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the sins of Thy people, that by Thy kindness we may be delivered
from the trammels of our sins, in which through our frailty we have become entangled.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Twenty-Fourth and Last Sunday after Pentecost
The Mass
We have arrived at the last Sunday after Pentecost, the end of the ecclesiastical year. “The day of
Christ” is about to dawn. At the moment when the night seems darkest, at the moment when
the spirits of evil seem to have reached the height of their power, at the moment when evil men
seem to have wandered away from God as far as possible, the Son of Man will appear suddenly
in the clouds. Every knee shall bend and acknowledge that He is the Lord, that it is He who has
overcome the powers of evil, and that He comes now to call His faithful ones to their kingdom.
For this reason the liturgy looks upon the day of the coming of Christ as a day of joy, a day to
be longed for, a day of victory for Christ, a day which will see the triumph of the Church and
her entry into the rest and peace of her eternal home with God.
Today we bear witness to the arrival of Christ and His eventual victory, to the day when Christ
will bring his Church, composed of all nations and tribes, to the peace and joy of heaven. At the
thought of all this our hearts rejoice and are glad. We catch a glimpse of our Redeemer, clothed
in the power and majesty of His glorified body, coming down to us from the heavens. “I think
thoughts of peace,” He tells us, “and not of affliction. . . . I will bring back your captivity” (Introit).
We press forward eagerly to meet Him and sigh for the revelation of the glory of the children of
God. We cry out Kyrie eleison: “Lord have mercy.” Then we find ourselves sitting at the feet of
the Apostle who, though bound in chains at Rome, does not cease to pray for us that we may
be worthy of God, may please Him in all things, and bring forth fruits worthy of Him, thanking
Him that he “hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light” (Epistle).
These are the precious fruits of the blessed year of grace which we are just now bringing to a
close. He “hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom
28
St. Ignatius, Epistle to the Romans, chap. 5; trans. from The Ante-Nicene Fathers, I, 75 f.
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