St. Pamphilus - God's
Enemies are Filled with Hatred more than ever before: Charity has
been stifled in their hearts – Accept persecutions and sufferings from
enemies WITHOUT RETALIATION, without defending yourself or murmuring
– Persecutions become great treasure for us – Explanation of the Holy Novitiate of the Cross - To Enter the Holy
Novitiate is to enter into the Wounds of Christ: He suffered for LOVE
of us without complaint.
Ecstasy
date September 26, 1878
“I
am Saint Pamphilus martyred under the sacrilegious Emperors for God
and His Holy Name, for the holy Religion, for the consolation of
Christians. It was in the prime of my age I suffered martyrdom before
the judges of the Emperor. I defended my faith and the name of my God
until the last moment of my painful martyrdom. I was laid on a rack
of very sharp points on which I was gripped by wide bands of iron
also spiked in all directions. I could hardly breathe on this
instrument of torture. I had placed on me one day, a band of red-hot
iron from the fire. Nothing is sweeter than to suffer when you do it
for the glory of God! I was crushed, broken, ground, by these
instruments of torture invented by malice and cruelty of men. I was
then thrown in boiling oil. My body was nothing but one wound, my
blood was mingled with this oil. Then I was hung on a tree forming a
cross in front of a wall. There I was again tortured. I had my body
pierced through and through
with iron awls. The greatest pain was felt in my heart, when it was
pierced through. Then I had my nails pulled out, my teeth broken, my
eyes torn from their place. This is where I expired in pain and
tortures.
My
love for Jesus at Calvary was so strong that I wanted to suffer for
years to pay for this recognition of happiness and love. I also had
an ardent love for Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. He was
my support, my strength and my happiness. I was tortured like so many
Christians who have won
this crown. My martyrdom took place during the height of the
persecutions of the Church.
Now
a word on behalf of Our Lord.
In
the past, our Lord had enemies, all (of) His had enemies, the Church
had enemies. Today there are more. Today, the enemies of our God have
no conscience, they no longer think, so to speak, no more heart.
Hatred has stifled the charity of their hearts living in their
bodies. Ah well! Dear Brothers of the Cross, be happy and cry
with happiness, to have enemies (to help you) get closer to the One
who wants to shower you with grace and happiness. Do not retaliate.
Look at Calvary and see the Charity of Our Lord (ready to) break
forth at any moment to engulf you, to consume you, to regenerate (in
you) this Holy Charity that takes you and pushes you to do
everything, to suffer everything, to endure everything for the God of
Calvary. All the persecutions that must follow you from life to
death, only increase your happiness to develop a knowledge of
profound peace. And with that peace you glimpse the mysteries of the
powerful goodness of Our Lord. Brothers and sisters, you can say at
all times:
"We
wear flowers, we breathe their fragrance, because at any time, we
will suffer, at all times we will rise on persecutions."
This
is your flowers and their fragrance! The fragrance of the persecution
do not stop the clouds or the heavens. It goes to heaven to the feet
of our Bridegroom on His eternal throne.
Dear
Brothers of the Cross, take your nourishment in the Sacred Wounds of
Jesus, in your dejection and your abandonment.
Go to this divine meal. Come, you, souls that God has chosen for Him
to win souls for Him, to present Him flourishing graces after your
work, after your mission accomplished! What joy! What transports (of
happiness) to have placed the souls around His eternal throne! Live
love among thorns! How sweet it is to speak the language of love!
This language draws on the cutting edge of thorns, the weight of the
cross of God. Dear
Brothers, study your sermons and conversations at the foot of the
Crucifix and feel the sweet effects of love that has engulfed the
Seraphim and Cherubim.
On earth, brothers of the Cross, you are fed by a valuable and strong
Food, it is the Food of our dear Spouse, it is His grace, His love,
His tenderness. It gives you everything. It invites you to this
Banquet. Go with happiness, go for strength, go where your soul will
expand in this pure love that no creature can give. Your hearts will
become fountains while your eyes were dug in their sources, that is
to say, in tears.
Our
heart, in this fountain, swimming, swims, overflowing with joy, but
of secret joy, joy that is not known to mankind in the body, or in
the miseries of the body. This joy is only known to God, of His
Sacred Wounds. Why the secrecy? This is to make you earn, brother
called by grace, to the participation and the distribution of wealth,
property, of the glories of the Lord thy God! In this passage of
time you all have to be like lambs being sacrificed on the Cross,
without complaining, without murmuring, without saying, "My God,
why this pain?" It is time for sacrifice, it is the hour when
the Lord's sheep will be sacrificed by language, by the mind, by the
vengeance from the enemy's heart.
The
sacrifice is admirable. The sighs of your hearts repeats to God a
song of love and thanksgiving. Why? Because you do not try to defend
yourself, to apologize.
You wear what you are given, you load on your shoulders the cross
that they have prepared for you and is far from being fair, because
they do not believe it just, nor justified in the righteousness of
God. To the eyes of the world, in the eyes of your brothers, you
appear guilty. (i.e. as a Christian following God's laws you will be
made to be the criminal). Leave it be, leave it go, let yourself be
despoiled of this first cloak. (i.e., Do
not worry about what
people say and think of you. Ignore human respect.)
This is not the most beautiful, most perfect. It is probably the
cloak that saves innocence, (i.e. the right to defend your good name)
but it is not the cloak of innocence. (I.e. this right is not
innocence itself.) This one is more hidden, they (your
enemies) will not
achieve it. (i.e. they will try and make themselves out to be the
righteous and take away your innocence, but God and those with eyes
that see know the truth.) What joy! Tremble with happiness and love,
because you are called by the name of the martyrs, martyrs of
patience, martyrs by submission, martyrs by charity and resignation,
martyrs by the loving love, that is to say, by the love that loves
God. Oh! Your portion is beautiful! Ah! If only those who cause your
martyrdom knew your peace! …
Live
in God's love. Love is then at the foot of the Cross. Make the
Novitiate of the Cross, Novitiate of peace, novitiate of love,
cloister of Hope before making your profession in the Heavens,
eternal profession. The Christian life is as the religious
life. Before pronouncing final vows, (i.e.) the (final)
profession, a religious should learn in a novitiate, like a good
worker must first be an apprentice, then afterwards confirmed as a
professional. In the novitiate, there again, is change. This
refers to the old man who must make way for the new man in us all.
In this we are all novices and have a lot (that needs to be)
converted in us. The cross is made for that. The
cloister is a place of silence and prayer, away from the busy world.
The novitiate (i.e. the Holy Novitiate of the Cross) is a school of
meditation. Enter the School of the Holy Wounds of Jesus
Crucified, that is where we learn, that is where intelligence (i.e.
spiritual wisdom) develops.
To
enter the Wounds of Our Lord means understanding that He loved us to
that point. (I.e. He
loved us to the point of enduring torture and agony.)
He who, as God is unchangeable, wanted to show us in His suffering
humanity evidence of the truth of His love: "I carved your
name in the palm of My Hands and in My Heart."
And,
in your development, this Truth becomes Divine because the flow of
the grace of Our Lord gives life, qualifies, makes fragrant, converts
and transforms... The Cross is the portion of God, it was then the
portion the Saints, it is your portion! Cherish it, plant it in the
most beautiful garden of your heart, that is to say, in the most
beautiful place, the more ornate, the richest! ...”
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Notes:
St. Pamphilus was a martyr of Asia Minor, a native of Berytus in
Phoenicia. He studied at Alexandria under Pierius, and then settled
at Caesarea in Palestine, where he was ordained priest. One of the
greatest biblical scholars of his day, he fostered learning and
protected all students. His household became famous for its practise
of fraternal love, slaves and domestics being treated as sons and
brothers. The historian Eusebius assumed the name “Pamphili” in
gratitude for the favours received from St. Pamphilus. After years of
imprisonment and repeated tortures, he was martyred under Galerius in
309 AD. With him suffered his deacon and ten companions. Feast Day,
June 1.
The
“Friends of Marie-Julie / Sanctuary Website” offers the following
commentary:
“...
Galerius hated Christians and was very cruel. He wanted to impose, in
order to maintain unity in the vast empire that threatened to break
apart, the same religion on all subjects, (that is), the worship of
gods and the Emperor. From 295 the persecution raged in the army (the
massacre of the Theban legion - 6000 victims, including St. Maurice
and St. Exupère who refused to sacrifice to the gods). It was a
"cleansing" of civil society. There successively appeared
four edicts:
-Destruction
of all the churches and sacred books
-
Imprisonment of clerics
-
Order the priests to sacrifice to pagan gods
-Order
all Christians to sacrifice to idols and to worship the emperor
For
the glory of God, many Christians refused to submit and were
slaughtered by methods of "ethnic cleansing" that our
twentieth century can not boast of having forgotten. It was not until
the Edict of Constantine in the year 313 to stop such persecution in
the East.”
These
observations from the “Friends of Marie-Julie” are not misplaced,
considering how Our Lord, Our Lady and the Saints continually warned
Marie-Julie about the coming trials and persecutions the Church would
face, including martyrdom, pronouncing the Church will finally be
liberated by a Holy Monarch who will bear the sign of the cross and
declare like Constantine: “In this sign, you shall conquer,”
ushering in the greatest era of the Church and the promised period of
peace.
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