INDEX

The Pilgrim of Our Lady of Martyrs.

(LITTLE MESSENGER OF THE SACRED HEART.)

VOLUME XII.-1896.

APOSTLESHIP OF PRAYER (League of the Sacred Heart).

THE PILGRIM

OF

OUR LADY OF
OF MARTYRS

(LITTLE MESSENGER OF THE SACRED HEART.)

XII. YEAR.

JANUARY, 1896.

No. I.

THE

THE HAPPIEST YEAR.

BY J. E. U. NEALIS.

HE year has gone in the still midnight;
It made no sign as it passed away,

Like a breath of mist in the cold starlight,
Or a fleck of foam on the ocean gray;
With its record of mysteries, joys and tears;
It has gone to swell th' eternal years.

Some day, once more, we shall meet again!
Some day, or night, when our work is done;
When we kneel in trembling, fear and pain,
To learn our doom from the Holy One,
All, all alone, in our sore distress,

And the years of our life are the dread witness.

In that court divine, each year will read
Our record for day and month and year;

For praise, or pity, or blame to plead—
For "nothing hidden but shall appear.
Graces neglected, misused, despised,
Our meanest hypocrisies, undisguised!

Copyright, 1896, by APOSTLESHIP OF PRAYER.

I

2

THE MATERNAL JOYS OF OUR BLESSED LADY.

Year by year, they will pass before us,
(The years we greeted so joyously)

O God! will none of them witness for us,
On that awful brink of eternity?
Will none of those faces, so sad and stern,
Remembering something, relent and turn?

Yes, one (of the last perhaps) draws nigh,
And gently lifts th' avenging rod;

And smiles as he reads (where we trembling lie),
"I am the year when you turned to God!
The year of repentance, prayer and tears,
That blots out the record of other years!"

THE MATERNAL JOYS OF OUR BLESSED LADY.

IN

NCOMPREHENSIBLE and unspeakable are the prerogatives of our holy Mother, in that she was chosen of all women to be the Mother of the Eternal Word-the Mother of Him of whom God is the Father from all eternity. This is the root of all her greatness. Hence she was conceived without sin, sanctified above all the children of men, espoused to the Holy Ghost in everlasting wedlock. Thus she was brought into closest relationship with the three persons of the most adorable Trinity-the beloved daughter of the Eternal Father, the privileged Mother of the Eternal Son, the chosen spouse of the Holy Ghost.

Yet these are mysteries which daze the human mind, and overwhelm it with their inaccessible light. There are other more human and home-like relations, if we may so speak, between herself and her divine Son, which are more approachable to us, and which may be said to constitute her maternal joys. These relations consist in that close intimacy which existed between herself and her divine Son, during the thirty years which He vouchsafed to dwell under the same roof with her, and to be the loving object of her solicitude, care and attention.