Meditations On The Holy Sacrifice of the Latin Mass: Of the Priests descending from the Altar. And how thereby is represented the expulsion of Adam out of Paradise.

Of the Priests descending from the Altar. And how thereby is represented the expulsion of Adam out of Paradise. 

The Priest having placed the Chalice upon the Altar, presently descendeth and standeth below at the foot of the same: representing thereby the little space of time wherein Adam remained in the state of innocency and original justice, and how, for his transgression, he was presently thrust and expelled out of Paradise. How his wretched estate after his fall. JOHN HEIGHAM A Devout Exposition of the Holie Masse 1622

                                                                                                                                     

I. Part, Meditation I. 
Genes. 3.1. D.Th. 2. 
THE II. POINT.  

The second Point shall be to call to memory the sin of our first parents Adam and Eve, who having been created in paradise, and in original justice, broke the commandment of almighty God, eating the fruit of the tree the which upon pain of death he had prohibited them; for the which they were cast forth of Paradise, and incurred the sentence of death, and other innumerable miseries, as well for themselves, as for all their offspring. 

Upon this verity of faith, I may discourse as upon the former, considering how liberal almighty God was to our first parents, creating them of his mere goodness according to his own image and likeness, and placing them in a paradise of delights, giving them his grace and original justice: subjecting their appetites to reason, and the flesh to the spirit; freeing them from mortality and penalties, to which by nature they were subject, and granting them a happy and most contented estate. And all this he did of his pure grace and mercy, granting it them, not only for themselves, but also for their successors, if they had persevered in his service. 

Secondly, I am to ponder how ungrateful they were to almighty God, and what motive they had thereunto: for the serpent coming to tempt Eve, and promising her guilefully, that if she did eat of the forbidden fruit she should not die, but should rather be as God himself, having knowledge of good and evil: she suffered herself to be beguiled, ate of the fruit, and invited Adam thereunto, who to please her, ate also thereof, treading under foot the pleasure of God for the pleasure of his wife, without making account neither of the benefits that God had done him, nor of the punishments that he had menaced and threatened him withal. 

Then will I ponder how terrible almighty God showed himself in chastising them, casting them out of paradise, depriving them for ever of original justice, subjecting them to death, and to all the miseries of a corruptible body: which miseries all we his children incur, because we all sin in him, and for his cause we are born the children of wrath, enemies of God, and adjudged and condemned to the selfsame death. And that which more affrighteth is, that from this original sin that we inherit of him proceed, as from their root, those innumerable sins that are in the world, and the inundations of miseries that overflow it: whereby I may perceive how terrible, dreadful, and hideous an evil mortal sin is, seeing one only depriveth of so much good, bringeth so much evil, and so highly provoketh the wrath of almighty God, though he be much more inclined to mercy than to the rigour of justice.

                       

Colloquy

Who shall not fear thee, O king of the worlds! who shall not abhor so great a mischief as to offend thee! My soul, if thou knowest what thou didst when thou sinnest like Adam, doubtless thou wouldst tremble at the heavy burden wherewith thou loadest thyself. O sin, how heavy art thou to me? Thou deprivest me of grace; robbest me of virtues; chasest me out of Paradise; condemnest me to eternal death; subjectest me to temporal death; takest away the life of my children (which are my works), depriving them of the merit of glory; disquietest the kingdom of my soul, and fillest it with innumerable miseries. O my God, deliver me from so great an evil. O my soul, fly from sin (as the Wiseman counselleth thee) more than from snakes and serpents, sith one alone is more cruel and venomous than they are all being put together. 

Besides this, I am to make comparison of my sin with that of Adam, like as in the precedent point: for I (wretch that I am), being tempted by the devil, suffered myself to be deluded by him, not once but often: my flesh hath been like to seduced Eve, that hath provoked me to sin, and my spirit, effeminated like Adam, to please it, hath a thousand times displeased God by breaking his commandments: my pride and ingratitude hath arrived to that height, that I have often desired to be as God, usurping to myself that which is proper to his deity. Then, if God inflicted such punishment on my first parents for one sin of disobedience and pride, founded upon no more than eating one apple contrary to the precept of almighty God, how great punishments have I deserved for so many disobediences and prides, and for so innumerable offences as I have committed against him? O how just had it been that at my first sin death should have swallowed me, or all the miseries of the world showered down upon me! 

Lastly, I will ponder what a long penance Adam and Eve did for this sin of theirs, how bitter that morsel was unto them, and how dear it cost them: for Adam, having lived more than nine hundred years, spent them all in weeping and mourning, and suffering a thousand incommodities which the estate of his corruption attracted unto it: but in the end (as saith the divine Wisdom) through penance he obtained pardon; and with this example I am to animate myself to lament my miseries, and to do penance for my sins, that almighty God may deliver me from them, imitating in penance him whom I imitated in sin, and beseeching our Lord to chastise me as much as he will in this life, so that he pardon me and deliver me from the torments of the other. LUIS DE LA PUENTE Meditations upon the Mysteries of our Holie Faith (VOLUME ONE) 1619

Crazed Paris Terrorist Cuts Down 3 Women, Screams ‘Allah Commanded Me!’

Paris attack: man shouts 'Allah' after stabbing 3 women

Massive wildfires rage across France and Spain | FOX 10 Phoenix

Glasgow immigration protests descend into chaos as police clash with protesters

Germany: Berlin Pride attack believed to be an act of Islamic extremist terror • FRANCE 24 English

The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost. The Gospel. Luke 19:41. Sunday Meditation Plaine Path-way to Heaven ~ THOMAS HILL 1634

The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost.
The Gospel. Luke 19:41.

When Jesus approached near to Jerusalem, beholding the city, he wept over it, saying: “If thou also didst know, and even now in this thy day, which is to thee for peace! But these things are now hidden from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” And he went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought; saying unto them, “It is written, My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves.” And he taught daily in the temple.

Sunday Meditation

Mphides, a philosopher, used to say that cities were theatres of naughtiness. And another, called Stratonicus of Athens, being gone forth of the city Heraclea, looked back upon it with an extraordinary eye, and viewed the gates and walls thereof so earnestly, that one observed him and asked him what it was he beheld so earnestly. He answered: “I am ashamed to be seen to go out of a common stews,” signifying that the city, by reason of the frequency of people of all sorts, and of the occasions of all manner of vice, had not only a common stews of bawdry in it, but was itself a stews of all manner of vices. And so no doubt are other populous cities and towns: theatres or a stews of all manner of vice and iniquity.

And for a disastrous presagement hereof, he that built the first city in the world, which was Cain the son of Adam, was a reprobate, and accursed of God. But of all other cities in the world, none comparable to Jerusalem, which, besides her other abominable sins, committed the most heinous and exorbitant sin of all sins—the crucifying of Christ Jesus, the Saviour of the world—laying violent hands, and that in a most violent and barbarous manner, upon God himself; for so was Christ perfect God as well as perfect man.

This perfect God and perfect man, Christ Jesus, three or four days before his Passion, approaching near unto this city, and beholding it, and withal seeing and foreseeing all the abominations thereof, and that they would most maliciously put him to death, and all the miseries and calamities that were to light upon it for the same (far better than Stratonicus saw the sins of Heraclea), and presented them before his eyes as lively as a little after he did the sins of the whole world in the garden of Gethsemane (which made him sweat blood and water), he wept over the city.

This he did to give us example to have compassion of other men’s sins and calamities, and to comfort and assist them in what we can, at least with our earnest prayers and supplications to God for them, we being members all of one body. And if natural members do as it were condole and help one another, much more mystical members of one and the same body the Catholic Church, as Catholics are of one another, compacted and united together with the sinews of faith and charity, wherewith we may stir up ourselves to compassionate one another, as well as they, yea and command and enforce ourselves thereunto by our free will, far beyond nature; the virtues of faith and charity being divine and theological, descending from heaven, and mounting thither again, above nature; and oftentimes, as in martyrdom, with the destruction of nature, or as in other saints and holy people, with the mortification and subduing thereof.

Wherefore if we do not compassionate the miseries and calamities of others, as Christ did here of Jerusalem, it is a sign we are not true members of one another, and consequently not members of that body the Catholic Church, whereof Christ is the head.

Concerning this charitable compassion towards others, St. Paul, proposing himself for an example, saith thus of himself: “Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not?” (2 Cor. 11:29). And according to this he writeth to the Corinthians thus: “I fear, lest when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and that I shall bewail many which have sinned already, and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed” (2 Cor. 12:21). Thus the good man was afraid that, out of his compassion, he should not be able to be merry and comfortable amongst them, but sorry and afflicted for the miseries of others as his own.

And what the benefit of this compassion is, we may learn out of a vision of the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek. 9:4–6), which was this: Certain men were commanded to pass through the city of Jerusalem with swords in their hands, and to kill man, woman and child, and to spare none, but those that did bewail the sins and abominations of the rest; one man being sent before with an inkhorn, to mark them in the forehead with the letter T, called in Hebrew and Greek Tau, which hath the form of the cross of Christ, and those only to be spared from the general destruction. Those that live among wicked people and lament their sins are marked with a cross in their forehead, and they shall be spared, and find mercy at the hands of God, though they live amongst never so bad people, as Lot was delivered out of Sodom.