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ON THE SATURDAY of the preceding week, which was devoted to the consideration of the fall of our first parents both in its own malice and in its sad consequences upon us, we turned our thoughts towards our blessed Lady, who, though a daughter of Eve, was by the special mercy of God preserved from the stain of original sin. Let us end this week with a like act of veneration and love towards this Immaculate Queen of heaven. We, even the most saintly among us, have not only been stained with original sin, we have the actual sins...

GOD CHASTISES THE WORLD by the deluge; but He is faithful to the promise made to our first parents, that the head of the serpent should be crushed. The human race has to be preserved, therefore, until the time shall come for the fulfillment of this promise. The Ark gives shelter to the just Noah and to his family. The angry waters reach even to the tops of the highest mountains; but the frail yet safe vessel rides peacefully on the waves. When the day fixed by God shall come, they that dwell in this Ark shall once more...

GOD PROMISED NOAH that He would never more punish the earth with a deluge. But in His justice, He has many times visited the sins of men with a scourge which, in more senses than one, bears a resemblance to a deluge: the invasion of enemies. We meet with these invasions in every age; and each time we see the hand of God. We can trace the crimes that each of them was sent to punish, and in each we find a manifest proof of the infinite justice wherewith God governs the world. It is not requisite that we...

O GOD OF INFINITE JUSTICE! we have sinned; we have abused the life Thou hast given us: and when we read, in Thy Scriptures, how Thine anger chastised the sinners of former days, we are forced to acknowledge that we have deserved to be treated in like manner. We have the happiness to be Christians and children of Thy Church; the light of faith and the power of Thy grace have brought us once more into Thy friendship, but how can we forget that we were once Thy enemies? And are we so deeply rooted in virtue that we...

WHEN WE REFLECT upon the terrible events which happened in the first age of the world, we are lost in astonishment at the wickedness of man, and at the effrontery wherewith he sins against his God. How was it that the dread words of God, which were spoken against our first parents in Eden, could be so soon forgotten? How could the children of Adam see their father suffering and doing such endless penance, without humbling themselves in imitating this model of repentance? How was it that the promise of a Mediator, who was to reopen the gate of...

ALL FLESH HAD corrupted its way upon the earth. The terrible lesson, then, which men had received by being driven out of paradise in the person of our first parents, had been without effect. Neither the certainty of death, when they would have to stand before the divine Judge, nor the humiliations which attend man's first coming into this world, nor the pains and fatigues and trials which beset the whole path of life, had subdued men's hearts or brought them into submission to that sovereign Master whose hand lay thus heavy upon them. They had the divine promise...

Violet Semidouble (Privilege of the Second Class) THE CHURCH offers to our consideration, during this week of Sexagesima, the history of Noah and the deluge. Man has not profited by the warnings already given him. God is obliged to punish him once more, and by a terrible chastisement. There is found out of the whole human race one just man; God makes a covenant with him, and with us through him. But before He draws up this new alliance, He would show that He is the sovereign Master, and that man, and the earth whereon he lives, subsist solely...

1962 Sunday Missal Mass Readings/Propers for Sexagesima Sunday Colors:  Purple   INTROIT  Psalm 43: 23-26Arise, why sleepest Thou, O Lord? arise, and cast us not off to the end. Why turnest Thou Thy face away, and forgettest our trouble? our belly hath cleaved to the earth: arise, O Lord, help us and deliver us. -- (Ps. 43. 2). We have heard, O God, with our ears: our fathers have declared to us. V.: Glory be to the Father . . . -- Arise, why sleepest Thou, O Lord? . . .   COLLECT -O God, who seest that we...