Agnus Dei

“ After discussing the 6th and 7th mark of the Church the “spirit” once more seizes him. The caricature of Popery with which he is wont to pacify his conscience here again figures with the whole of the inevitable paraphernalia: “ [Holy] water, salt, herbs, tapers, bells, images, Agnus Dei, pallia, altar, chasubles, tonsures, fingers, hands. Who can enumerate them all? Finally the monks’ cowls,” etc. A page further we again read: “Holy water, Agnus Dei, bulls, briefs, Masses and monks’ cowls.... The devil has decked himself out in them all.” ”

“ This is a favour seldom refused to strangers of a decent appearance. In this they shew the chimney, and some other furniture, which, they pretend, belonged to the Virgin when she lived at Nazareth; particularly a little earthen porringer, out of which the infant used to eat. The pilgrims bring rosaries, little crucifixes, and Agnus Dei’s, which the obliging priest shakes for half a minute in this dish; after which, it is believed, they acquire the virtue of curing various diseases, and prove an excellent preventative of all temptations of Satan. ”

“ The celebrant then says the Agnus Dei three times.
5. While the choir sings the Agnus Dei and the Communion, the celebrant proceeds, still “secrete,” with the remainder of the office, which though printed as part of the canon is more conveniently called the communion and post-communion. After the prayer for the peace and unity of the Church (“Domine Jesu Christe, qui dixisti”) he salutes the deacon with the kiss of peace, saying, “Pax tecum”; the subdeacon is saluted in like manner, and then conveys the “pax” to the rest of the clergy who may be assisting. ”

“ His gift for rich, well-sounding melodies, and his feeling for inviting harmonies and tasteful orchestration make many of his compositions ideal for programs of light music, even salient portions of Carmen.
Agnus Dei is a vocal adaptation (to a liturgical Latin text) of the intermezzo from Bizet’s incidental music to L’Arlésienne. It is also found as the second movement of the L’Arlésienne Suite No. 2. A dramatic dialogue between forceful strings and serene woodwinds leads into a spiritual religious song. ”

“ Symbolism and Use.—The symbolism of the Agnus Deis is best gathered from the prayers used at various epochs in blessing them. As in the paschal candle, the wax typifies the virgin flesh of Christ, the cross associated with the lamb suggests the idea of a victim offered in sacrifice, and as the blood of the paschal lamb of old protected each household from the destroying angel, so the purpose of these consecrated medallions is to protect those who wear or possess them from all malign influences. ”

“ The word ἄγος (agos) , a thing to which religious awe attaches, gave the adjective ἄγνος (agnos) , sacred or pure, whence was named the tree whose twigs the Greek matrons strewed on their beds during the festival of Demeter, and which the Romans called by a reduplication of its title in both languages, the Agnus Castus. Agnus, the Latin for a lamb, is said to have come from the consecration of those creatures to sacred purposes; and thence, too, came Agnes, the name of the gentle Roman maiden, the place of whose martyrdom named the church of Sant' Agnese. ”

“ Aunt Agnes has spoken to me at last. Abruptly and sternly, as if more angry with herself than repenting or rejoicing, she said to me this morning, "Child, those words of Dr. Luther's have reached my heart. I have been trying all my life to be a saint, and so to reach God. And I have failed utterly. And now I learn that I am a sinner, and yet that God's love reaches me. The cross, the cross of Christ, is my pathway from hell to heaven. I am not a saint. I shall never be a saint. Christ is the only Saint, the Holy One of God; and he has borne my sins, and he is my righteousness. ”

“ Angus? Has not Jesus Christ kept his gracious promise to you and given you rest? Pardon me, I am a missionary too. I have thought much of you, and prayed for you, as I do for all my friends. I have feared that—that you have not cast all your burden upon Him. You are trying to bear part of it alone. Sorrow or sin He has atoned for and has promised to take. Oh, do give it all up to Him! For your own sake, for the sake of those in your charge, I entreat you, try His love in all its fulness. It cannot, will not, fail you. ”

“ He knows that the theologian does not know, and he has the courage to say so.
He knows that the religious creeds rest on assumption, supposition, assertion—on myth and legend, on ignorance and superstition, and that there is no evidence of their truth. The Agnostic bends his energies in the opposite direction. He occupies himself with this world, with things that can be ascertained and understood. He turns his attention to the sciences, to the solution of questions that touch the well-being of man. ”

“ The Lord’s Supper testifieth unto us that we have perfect remission of all sins, for the sake of that only sacrifice of Christ, which Himself once fully performed on the Cross — also, that we by the Holy Ghost arc ergrafted into Christ, who now according to his human nature is not on earth but only in heaven at the right hand of His Father, and will have our worship addressed to Him there. But in the Mass it is denied that the quick and dead have remission of sins for the only Passion of Christ, except Christ be still daily offered on their behalf by the Mass Priests ”

“ Many other books from the same source, too many to enumerate here, were given us by Father Ignatius (and truly a man is known by his books) , or were read with his sanction.
He did not approve of one thing which St. [130] Thomas Aquinas taught; namely, that if a Superior should teach what is sinful or contrary to God’s law, the obedience would be illicit, and the nun would not be breaking her vow if she refused to obey. Father Ignatius taught us that he himself could not command what was wrong, because he was the father and founder of the revived monastic life in the Church of England. ”

“ But since his acquaintance with Agnes, without his knowing exactly why, thoughts of the Divine Love had floated into his soul, filling it with a golden cloud like that which of old rested over the mercy-seat in that sacred inner temple where the priest was admitted alone. He became more affable and tender, more tolerant to the erring, more fond of little children; would stop sometimes to lay his hand on the head of a child, or to raise up one who lay overthrown in the street. ”

“ But Father Ignatius consulted the light and grace of his own soul, he penetrated to the true principle, he recalled his own history, he saw that conversion is the work of God, that the work itself is the work of grace, and that all that man can do, is to invoke God to put forth His power. Prayer that is pure, sincere, earnest, and of many souls, God always hears and inclines to grant. ”

“ The scientific theologian admits the Agnostic principle, however widely his results may differ from those reached by the majority of Agnostics.
But, as between Agnosticism and Ecclesiasticism, or, as our neighbours across the Channel call it, Clericalism, there can be neither peace nor truce. The Cleric asserts that it is morally wrong not to believe certain propositions, whatever the results of a strict scientific investigation of the evidence of these propositions. He tells us "that religious error is, in itself, of an immoral nature." ”

“ Old Angus had long ago learned to look for that glance, and returned it by a glow from his deep eyes. Whenever they sang the 112th psalm in Algonquin Presbyterian church,
"How blest the man who fears the Lord,
And makes His law his chief delight,"
the minister looked down and thought how well the words described the sunny-faced old saint, and Angus looked up and felt how aptly they fitted his pastor. ”

“ Agnosticism tells us that history, like ever other science, deals entirely with phenomena, and the consequence is that God, and every intervention of God in human affairs, is to be relegated to the domain of faith as belonging to it alone. In things where a double element, the divine and the human, mingles, in Christ, for example, or the Church, or the sacraments, or the many other objects of the same kind, a division must be made and the human element assigned to history while the divine will go to faith. ”

“ The works of the fathers are now mutilated by the same ruthless hand, to maintain the new phase which Christianity is forced to assume. "Ignatius, who is called Theophorus to the church which is at Ephesus in Asia, deservedly happy, being blessed through the greatness and fulness of God the Father, and predestinated before the world began, that it should be always unto an enduring and unchangeable glory; being united and chosen, through actual suffering, according to the will of the Father and Jesus Christ our God, all happiness by Jesus Christ and his undefiled grace." ”

“ No sooner had Father Ignatius entered the Church than he put himself with all simplicity and obedience under the guidance of the venerable prelate, my predecessor, Bishop Walsh, who sent him to Rome, there to enter on a course of ecclesiastical studies. In 1830, there we find him in the holy city, imbibing that Apostolic light, and bending himself over the written laws of that truth which was to fit him, not only for the priesthood, but also for a singular call and an unprecedented vocation. ”

“ But Christ himself is the rock, not a mortal man. "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ,"--a truth reiterated even by Saint Augustine, the great and acknowledged theologian of the Catholic Church, although Augustine's views of sin and depravity are no more relished by the Roman Catholics of our day than the doctrines of Luther himself, who drew his theological system, like Calvin, from Augustine more than from any other man, except Saint Paul. ”

“ Some of their worldly affairs became, therefore, complicated, and Father Ignatius, unfortunately, was not the man to rectify matters and put them straight. He was a sage in spirituals, but the very reverse in temporals.
Many of the religious became disheartened at the prospect. Some lost their vocations. Many fought manfully with contending difficulties, weathered all the storms, and, tempered and taught by those days of trouble, look with smiling placidity on what we should think serious crosses in these days. ”

“ Thus they are led to represent him as the divine Priest, the ideal hierophant, in whom are united the functions of the three chief classes of Ṛigvēdic sacrificial priests, the hōtā, adhvaryu, and brahman, and hence as an all-knowing sage and seer. If infinite zeal and ingenuity in singing Agni's praises and glorifying his activities can avail to raise him to the rank of a great god, we may expect to find him very near the top. But it is not to be. The priests cannot convince the plain man of Agni's super-godhead, and soon they will fail to convince even themselves. ”

“ Who that remembers those days does not recall the amenities of a character of humanity so gentle and true, that even in the midst of the most intense political strife he embittered no one, and drew on him no personal attack. By his noble relatives, Father Ignatius was received with the old affection, and their entire conduct towards him was an exception indeed to the treatment which so many members of other families have experienced in reward for their fidelity to God and to their conscience. ”

“ The instilling into young minds religious motives for their actions was a frequent topic of conversation with Father Ignatius in his after-life. He was once speaking with some of our young religious on this subject in general; one of them remarked how easy it was to act upon holy motives practically, and instanced his own childhood, when the thought that God would love or hate him kept him straight in his actions: this was the simple and perpetually repeated lesson of his mother, which he afterwards forgot, but which finally stopped him in a career of ambition, and made him a religious. ”

“ Bishop Jansen of Ypres in Belgium had devoted his life to the study of Saint Augustine and to the elucidation of the doctrines of that great father of the church. Saint Augustine is the spiritual forefather of those who in religious thought are believers in determinism, in religious fatalism, with all the consequences which it involves, such as predestination and the doctrine of primitive sin which man is apparently endeavoring in vain to expiate. ”

“ Agnes, by that lively faith which animated thee from thy most tender years, and rendered thee so acceptable to God that thou didst merit the crown of martyrdom; obtain for us the grace to preserve entire in our hearts the Catholic Faith, and sincerely to profess ourselves Christians not only in word but also in deed; so that while we confess Jesus openly in the face of men, Jesus may give favorable testimony of us before his heavenly Father. ”

“ Where does God know the truth to exist? Must we all put ourselves in a Cartesian doubt for a starting-point? And so on. The only answer could be—The Catholic Church. And might he not as well ask them to pray for that at once? Father Ignatius was not at all obstinate in sticking to this proposal as a theory he might reduce to practice, it came up at times in his conversation, and was dropped as easily. ”

“ Let us plead to God through the Mother of God, and let her plead for her sons on earth to her Son in Heaven, and behold our prayer is tripled in its strength. So Ignatius looked to God through the eyes of Mary, prayed to God through the heart of Mary, and appealed through the purity of Mary, for a people who had forgotten her. And he went forth on his Apostleship of prayer over Italy and France, and Hungary and Austria, and the rest of Germany; and over Belgium and England, and Ireland and Scotland, and he corresponded with the other kingdoms of Christendom. ”