June has passed by us once more, filled with rainbow flags seen in virtually every city of the Western world. In, with, and under the bleating of so many governmental, educational, media, and learned organisations about equity, inclusion, and diversity, they seem to float over the scene like triumphant banners over a conquered foe. Truly, they have made June a month easy to dislike.
Such dislike, though, would be a mistake, because June has a much older and worthier title: the Month of the Sacred Heart. Not well known outside Catholic circles, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is in one sense as old as Christianity, when St. Longinus’ lance pierced it and out flowed blood and water, prefiguring Baptism and the Eucharist. In the Patristic and medieval eras, saints and mystics wrote of it, and of the salvific nature of the wounds and precious blood of Christ. In the latter period, these were ever more bound up with the growth of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament (and miracles arising therefrom) and the stories of the Holy Grail. It was under the banner of the Five Wounds that the Pilgrimage of Grace marched out against Henry VIII in defence of the Old Religion.
Our current version, though, dates back to the 17th century, with the revelations of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. While bound up with making reparation to the Saviour who loves us so much, and suffered death to redeem us, the devotion from the beginning has had a social aspect. One of the requests made to St. Margaret Mary by Jesus was that Louis XIV consecrate his kingdom to the Sacred Heart and place the emblem on his flags and battle colours. This he did not do. But the devotion was taken up by many other royals: Queen Henriette Marie, consort of England’s Charles I; her daughter-in-law, Marie of Modena, James II’s queen; King Augustus I of Poland; King Philip V of Spain; Louis XV’s consort, Queen Marie Leczinska; her father, King Stanislaus of Poland, and her son, the Dauphin Louis; King Augustus III of Poland; Elector Maximilian III of Bavaria; SG Madame Elisabeth of France; her brother, King Louis XVI, who consecrated France privately to the Sacred Heart, and vowed to so publicly if he regained his throne; Maria, Queen of Portugal; King Charles X of France; Henri V, de jure king of France; SG King Francesco II of the Two Sicilies; Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie; Bl. Emperor-King Karl of Austria-Hungary, and his wife, SG Zita; King Alfonso XIII of Spain; Albert I, King of the Belgians; Carlist heir Alfonso Carlos I; and a host of others down to the present.
Such counterrevolutionaries as the Vendeens, the Tiroleans under Andreas Hofer, the Spanish Carlists, and the Mexican Cristeros adopted it as their special badge. Garcia Moreno, president of Ecuador, consecrated his country to the Sacred Heart with its bishops in 1873. Following this, several Latin American countries began performing this national consecration: El Salvador (1874), Venezuela (1900), Colombia (1902), Nicaragua (1920), Costa Rica (1921), Brazil (1922), and Bolivia (1925). In Europe, Ireland’s bishops followed suit in 1873, Spain in 1919, and Poland in 1920. Across Europe and the world, shrines were dedicated in honour of the Sacred Heart—most notably that of Montmartre in Paris. In architecture alone, the Sacred Heart devotion has given the world a priceless treasure to be proud of, to say nothing of the stalwart folk who rallied around the emblem in defence of Christendom’s soul.
But the date of the feast of the Sacred Heart, which gives the whole month its theme, is the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi. This feast, originating in the 13th century, has been commemorated since then throughout Catholic Europe with a procession filled with customs peculiar to the given locale. As Dom Gueranger puts it:
How many glorious processions, with the sun upon their banners, are now winding their way round the squares of mighty cities, through the flower-strewn streets of Christian villages, through the antique cloisters of the glorious cathedral, or through the grounds of the devout seminary, where the various colors of the faces, and the different languages of the people are only so many fresh tokens of the unity of that faith, which they are all exultingly professing in the single voice of the magnificent ritual of Rome! Upon how many altars of various architecture, amid sweet flowers and starry lights, amid clouds of humble incense, and the tumult of thrilling song, before thousands of prostrate worshippers, is the Blessed Sacrament raised for exposition, or taken down for benediction! And how many blessed acts of faith and love, of triumph and of reparation, do not each of these things surely represent! The world over, the summer air is filled with the voice of song. The gardens are shorn of their fairest blossoms, to be flung beneath the feet of the Sacramental God. The steeples are reeling with the clang of bells; the cannon are booming in the gorges of the Andes and the Appenines; the ships of the harbors are painting the bays of the sea with their show of gaudy flags; the pomp of royal or republican armies salutes the King of kings. The Pope on his throne, and the school-girl in her village, cloistered nuns and sequestered hermits, bishops and dignitaries and preachers, emperors and kings and princes, all are engrossed today with the Blessed Sacrament.
In the Middle Ages, various cycles of mystery plays were performed during the processions. And as with Christmas and Easter, the totality of Corpus Christi observances worldwide are something to be exceedingly proud of.
There are any number of things for the European, in both the mother Continent and the daughter countries, to be proud of during this month. Let us take just three random June days: the 10th, the 17th, and the 18th. June 10 was known as White Rose Day to the Jacobites, because it was the birthday of James II’s son, known after his father’s death as James III. Indeed, it was his birth that precipitated the so-called Glorious Revolution. His half-sister being Protestant, the Whig oligarchy was satisfied that when his father died, they’d have a congenial monarch. But his birth, ensuring a Catholic succession, was too much. However, the pope of the day celebrated his birth by transferring the feast day of his ancestress, St. Margaret of Scotland, to his birthday. Alas for James and his subjects, neither his attempts to retake the throne in 1708, 1715, and 1719, nor his son Bonnie Prince Charlie’s venture in 1745, succeeded in driving out the usurper. He and both his sons would die in Rome and be entombed at St. Peter’s. But, with papal permission, James did found the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, for those of his courtiers of that faith—and so provided a final resting place for Keats and Shelley. Although the cause had vanished by the time his younger son, Cardinal York, de jure Henry IX, died in 1807, it underwent a sort of revival in the late 19th century, which continues to this day, in the form of the Royal Stuart Society. Not surprisingly, both the original cause and its resuscitated version were filled with a huge number of writers, composers, and artists, whose works—regardless of one’s view of the concomitant politics—are part of the common heritage of the West, and something to be immensely proud of.
But June 10 is also the anniversary of the death of two famous architects: Antoni Gaudí and Ödön Lechner. In deference to the style in which they both worked, it has been dubbed World Art Nouveau Day. Art Nouveau, of course, was far more than an architectural movement; it was a ‘new’ approach to style in everything from painting and illustration to jewellery and furniture. Indeed, its proponent artists attempted to break down the distinction between the fine and decorative arts. Gaining strength throughout the 1890s, it reached a peak with the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris. During its reign, Art Nouveau spread throughout Europe and the major countries of the world and gave birth to a host of local varieties. Its surviving elements, from apartment houses and public buildings to magazine covers and perfume bottles, are highly prized for their intense beauty. It in turn derived from a similarly widespread phenomenon, the arts and crafts movement. The totality of these styles is part of the common heritage of the West and should be yet another source of pride.
There are three birthdays on June 17 which should delight every literate individual: Etienne Gilson, the great Thomist philosopher; William Butler Yeats, Ireland’s leading poet; and Dorothy Sayers, the so-called ‘female Inkling,’ whose mystery stories, religious writings, and translations continue to delight readers the world over. Wildly diverse as the three are, they should serve to remind us of the greatness of Western thought and literature.
The following day sees three historical anniversaries. The first is the battle of Patay, on this date in 1429. Despite the loss of St. Joan of Arc, the French trounced the English, and paved the way for the coronation of the Dauphin as Charles VIII at Reims the next month. In 1633 on this date, Charles I was crowned King of Scots at St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh; it was the last coronation in Scotland thus far. It is also the date of the battle of Waterloo, in which the united forces of Europe defeated the French Revolution at last. These are key events, to say the least, in the growth of identity of the nations involved.
June 24 is the feast of St. John the Baptist; on his eve, across the Continent and in favoured parts of the Americas, bonfires are lit in his honour. Again, Dom Gueranger’s description:
‘Saint John’s fires’ made a happy completion to the liturgical solemnity; testifying how one and the same thought possessed both the mind of Holy Church and of the terrestrial city; for the organisation of these rejoicings originated with the civil corporations and the expenses thereof were defrayed by the municipalities. Thus, the privilege of lighting the bonfire was usually reserved to some dignitary of the civil order. Kings themselves taking part in the common merry-making would esteem it an honour to give this signal to popular gladness; Louis XIV, as late as 1648, for example, lighted the bonfire on the place de Grève, as his predecessors had done. In other places, as is even now done in Catholic Brittany, the clergy were invited to bless the piles of wood, and to cast thereon the first brand; whilst the crowd, bearing flaming torches, would disperse over the neighboring country, amidst the ripening crops, or would march along the ocean side, following the tortuous cliff-paths, shouting many a gladsome cry, to which the adjacent islets would reply by lighting up their festive fires.
Taken together, the random collection of Church holy days, saints’ days, birthdays and death days of various notables, and the anniversaries of various historical events, convey a month full of things for Europe’s sons and daughters around the world to be very proud of indeed, for the soul of Europe is encapsulated therein. Since the 1960s in Europe, and more recently in the settler countries around the world, it has become unfashionable to be proud of our inheritance; for the pride our fathers once had in their civilisation and their Faith has been substituted that which is called pride, albeit in something which was considered shameful not long ago. But this change may not be unwarranted in a certain sense, for all of the wonderful and proud gifts of June are ultimately based upon the Faith that made Europe, and which Europe and her daughter nations have rejected. In refusing the Cross, we are given the rainbow. Nevertheless, in taking to heart all the proud gifts of June our fathers left us, we may in time deserve to regain the pride they had.
The Real Pride Month
June has passed by us once more, filled with rainbow flags seen in virtually every city of the Western world. In, with, and under the bleating of so many governmental, educational, media, and learned organisations about equity, inclusion, and diversity, they seem to float over the scene like triumphant banners over a conquered foe. Truly, they have made June a month easy to dislike.
Such dislike, though, would be a mistake, because June has a much older and worthier title: the Month of the Sacred Heart. Not well known outside Catholic circles, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is in one sense as old as Christianity, when St. Longinus’ lance pierced it and out flowed blood and water, prefiguring Baptism and the Eucharist. In the Patristic and medieval eras, saints and mystics wrote of it, and of the salvific nature of the wounds and precious blood of Christ. In the latter period, these were ever more bound up with the growth of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament (and miracles arising therefrom) and the stories of the Holy Grail. It was under the banner of the Five Wounds that the Pilgrimage of Grace marched out against Henry VIII in defence of the Old Religion.
Our current version, though, dates back to the 17th century, with the revelations of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. While bound up with making reparation to the Saviour who loves us so much, and suffered death to redeem us, the devotion from the beginning has had a social aspect. One of the requests made to St. Margaret Mary by Jesus was that Louis XIV consecrate his kingdom to the Sacred Heart and place the emblem on his flags and battle colours. This he did not do. But the devotion was taken up by many other royals: Queen Henriette Marie, consort of England’s Charles I; her daughter-in-law, Marie of Modena, James II’s queen; King Augustus I of Poland; King Philip V of Spain; Louis XV’s consort, Queen Marie Leczinska; her father, King Stanislaus of Poland, and her son, the Dauphin Louis; King Augustus III of Poland; Elector Maximilian III of Bavaria; SG Madame Elisabeth of France; her brother, King Louis XVI, who consecrated France privately to the Sacred Heart, and vowed to so publicly if he regained his throne; Maria, Queen of Portugal; King Charles X of France; Henri V, de jure king of France; SG King Francesco II of the Two Sicilies; Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie; Bl. Emperor-King Karl of Austria-Hungary, and his wife, SG Zita; King Alfonso XIII of Spain; Albert I, King of the Belgians; Carlist heir Alfonso Carlos I; and a host of others down to the present.
Such counterrevolutionaries as the Vendeens, the Tiroleans under Andreas Hofer, the Spanish Carlists, and the Mexican Cristeros adopted it as their special badge. Garcia Moreno, president of Ecuador, consecrated his country to the Sacred Heart with its bishops in 1873. Following this, several Latin American countries began performing this national consecration: El Salvador (1874), Venezuela (1900), Colombia (1902), Nicaragua (1920), Costa Rica (1921), Brazil (1922), and Bolivia (1925). In Europe, Ireland’s bishops followed suit in 1873, Spain in 1919, and Poland in 1920. Across Europe and the world, shrines were dedicated in honour of the Sacred Heart—most notably that of Montmartre in Paris. In architecture alone, the Sacred Heart devotion has given the world a priceless treasure to be proud of, to say nothing of the stalwart folk who rallied around the emblem in defence of Christendom’s soul.
But the date of the feast of the Sacred Heart, which gives the whole month its theme, is the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi. This feast, originating in the 13th century, has been commemorated since then throughout Catholic Europe with a procession filled with customs peculiar to the given locale. As Dom Gueranger puts it:
In the Middle Ages, various cycles of mystery plays were performed during the processions. And as with Christmas and Easter, the totality of Corpus Christi observances worldwide are something to be exceedingly proud of.
There are any number of things for the European, in both the mother Continent and the daughter countries, to be proud of during this month. Let us take just three random June days: the 10th, the 17th, and the 18th. June 10 was known as White Rose Day to the Jacobites, because it was the birthday of James II’s son, known after his father’s death as James III. Indeed, it was his birth that precipitated the so-called Glorious Revolution. His half-sister being Protestant, the Whig oligarchy was satisfied that when his father died, they’d have a congenial monarch. But his birth, ensuring a Catholic succession, was too much. However, the pope of the day celebrated his birth by transferring the feast day of his ancestress, St. Margaret of Scotland, to his birthday. Alas for James and his subjects, neither his attempts to retake the throne in 1708, 1715, and 1719, nor his son Bonnie Prince Charlie’s venture in 1745, succeeded in driving out the usurper. He and both his sons would die in Rome and be entombed at St. Peter’s. But, with papal permission, James did found the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, for those of his courtiers of that faith—and so provided a final resting place for Keats and Shelley. Although the cause had vanished by the time his younger son, Cardinal York, de jure Henry IX, died in 1807, it underwent a sort of revival in the late 19th century, which continues to this day, in the form of the Royal Stuart Society. Not surprisingly, both the original cause and its resuscitated version were filled with a huge number of writers, composers, and artists, whose works—regardless of one’s view of the concomitant politics—are part of the common heritage of the West, and something to be immensely proud of.
But June 10 is also the anniversary of the death of two famous architects: Antoni Gaudí and Ödön Lechner. In deference to the style in which they both worked, it has been dubbed World Art Nouveau Day. Art Nouveau, of course, was far more than an architectural movement; it was a ‘new’ approach to style in everything from painting and illustration to jewellery and furniture. Indeed, its proponent artists attempted to break down the distinction between the fine and decorative arts. Gaining strength throughout the 1890s, it reached a peak with the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris. During its reign, Art Nouveau spread throughout Europe and the major countries of the world and gave birth to a host of local varieties. Its surviving elements, from apartment houses and public buildings to magazine covers and perfume bottles, are highly prized for their intense beauty. It in turn derived from a similarly widespread phenomenon, the arts and crafts movement. The totality of these styles is part of the common heritage of the West and should be yet another source of pride.
There are three birthdays on June 17 which should delight every literate individual: Etienne Gilson, the great Thomist philosopher; William Butler Yeats, Ireland’s leading poet; and Dorothy Sayers, the so-called ‘female Inkling,’ whose mystery stories, religious writings, and translations continue to delight readers the world over. Wildly diverse as the three are, they should serve to remind us of the greatness of Western thought and literature.
The following day sees three historical anniversaries. The first is the battle of Patay, on this date in 1429. Despite the loss of St. Joan of Arc, the French trounced the English, and paved the way for the coronation of the Dauphin as Charles VIII at Reims the next month. In 1633 on this date, Charles I was crowned King of Scots at St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh; it was the last coronation in Scotland thus far. It is also the date of the battle of Waterloo, in which the united forces of Europe defeated the French Revolution at last. These are key events, to say the least, in the growth of identity of the nations involved.
June 24 is the feast of St. John the Baptist; on his eve, across the Continent and in favoured parts of the Americas, bonfires are lit in his honour. Again, Dom Gueranger’s description:
Taken together, the random collection of Church holy days, saints’ days, birthdays and death days of various notables, and the anniversaries of various historical events, convey a month full of things for Europe’s sons and daughters around the world to be very proud of indeed, for the soul of Europe is encapsulated therein. Since the 1960s in Europe, and more recently in the settler countries around the world, it has become unfashionable to be proud of our inheritance; for the pride our fathers once had in their civilisation and their Faith has been substituted that which is called pride, albeit in something which was considered shameful not long ago. But this change may not be unwarranted in a certain sense, for all of the wonderful and proud gifts of June are ultimately based upon the Faith that made Europe, and which Europe and her daughter nations have rejected. In refusing the Cross, we are given the rainbow. Nevertheless, in taking to heart all the proud gifts of June our fathers left us, we may in time deserve to regain the pride they had.
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