Introduction

This blog contains regular postings relating to the Traditional Latin Liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church. It includes regular commentary on the saints days and the liturgical cycle, with brief background and extracts from the liturgy both in Latin and English. Much of the material has been extracted from the 'St Andrew's Daily Missal', Dom Gueranger's 'Liturgical Year', or similar sources.

Related website: http://www.liturgialatina.org/





Sunday, 15 January 2017

15th January, St Paul the Hermit

St Paul the Hermit

St Paul, father of hermits, had St Jerome for his historian. Having become an orphan at the age of fifteen, he gave up his possessions and retired into a desen where a flourishing palm-tree, a symbol of his vinues (Introit) provided him with food and clothing.

He meditated in solitude on the science of sciences which is to know Jesus Christ (Epistle) and the Father whom Christ reveals to the humble (Gospel). He lived thus to the age of 112, enjoying in the heroic exercise of prayer and penance the sweetness of the Lord's yoke (ibid.).

The great St. Anthony of the desert visited him a little before his death and St. Paul asked him, as a last favour, to allow him to sleep his last sleep in the cloak of St. Athanasius, the invincible defender of the divinity of Christ. He thereby affirmed that he died in the communion of this saint and that his own long life of penance had encouraged those who fought against the Arian heresy. He died towards 342. During this season after Epiphany, consecrated to the manifestation of the Divinity of Jesus, let us with St Paul the Hermit, endeavour to convince ourselves that a Christian life consists in recognizing Christ as the Son of God and in sanctifying ourselves by making His divine holiness our own (Epistle).

Justus ut palma florebit: sicut cedrus Libani multiplicabitur: plantatus in domo Domini: in atriis domus Dei nostri. * Bonum est confiteri Domino: et psallere nomini tuo, Altissime.
The just shall flourish like the palm-tree: he shall grow up like the cedar of Libanus: planted in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God.
(Psalm 91:13-14,2 from the Introit of Mass)

Deus, qui nos beáti Pauli Confessóris tui ánnua sollemnitáte laetíficas: concéde propítius; ut, cujus natalítia cólimus, étiam actiónes imitémur.
O God who dost gladden us by the annual solemnity of blessed Paul Thy confessor, mercifully grant that we who celebrate his heavenly birthday may also imitate his example.
(Collect)

From the Catholic Encyclopaedia: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11590b.htm
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