Prayer to Saint James the Great Apostle from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Louis Paschal Guéranger, O.S.B., 1904.(In honor of Santiago Matamoros)
Prayer to Saint James the Great Apostle from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Louis Paschal Guéranger, O.S.B., 1904.
(In honor of Santiago Matamoros)
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Patron of Spain, forget not the grand nation which owes to thee both its heavenly nobility and its earthly prosperity; preserve it from ever diminishing those truths which made it, in its bright days, the salt of the earth; keep it in mind of the terrible warning that if the salt lose its savor, it is good for nothing any more but to be cast out and to be trodden on by men. At the same time remember, O Apostle, the special cultus wherewith the whole Church honors thee. Does she not to this very day keep under the immediate protection of the Roman Pontiff both thy sacred body, so happily rediscovered, and the vow of going on pilgrimage to venerate those precious relics?
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Where now are the days when thy wonderful energy of expansion abroad was surpassed by thy power of drawing all to thyself? Who but He that numbers the stars of the firmament could count the Saints, the penitents, the kings, the warriors, the unknown of every grade, the ever-renewed multitude, ceaselessly moving to and from that field of stars, whence thou didst shed thy light upon the world? Our ancient legends tell us of a mysterious vision granted to the founder of Christian Europe. One evening after a day of toil, Charlemagne, standing on the shore of the Frisian Sea, beheld a long belt of stars, which seemed to divide the sky between Gaul, Germany, and Italy, and crossing over Gascony, the Basque territory, and Navarre, stretched away to the far-off Province of Galicia. Then thou didst appear to him and say: “This starry path marks out the road for thee to go and delivery my tomb; and all nations shall follow after thee.” And Charles, crossing the mountains, gave the signal to all Christendom to undertake those great Crusades, which were both the salvation and the glory of the Latin races, by driving back the Mussulman plague to the land of its birth.
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When we consider that two tombs formed, as it were, the two extreme points or poles of this movement unparalleled in the history of nations: the one wherein the God-Man rested in death, the other where thy body lay, O son of Zebedee, we cannot help crying out with the Psalmist: Thy friends, O God, are made exceedingly honorable! And what a mark of friendship did the Son of Man bestow on His humble apostle by sharing His honors with him, when the military Orders and Hospitallers were established, to the terror of the Crescent, for the sole purpose, at the outset, of entertaining and protecting pilgrims on their way to one or other of these holy tombs? May the heavenly impulse now so happily showing itself in the return to the great Catholic pilgrimages, gather once more at Compostella the sons of thy former clients. We, at least, will imitate St. Louis before the walls of Tunis, murmuring with his dying lips the Collect of thy feast; and we will repeat in conclusion: “Be Thou, O Lord, the sanctifier and guardian of Thy people; that, defended by the protection of Thy Apostle James, they may please Thee by their conduct, and serve Thee with secure minds.”