Abbey-Roads2

What they saw. 

Today, February 20, is the feast of the blessed cousins of Sr. Lucia of Fatima, whose cause for beatification is now pending.  All three seers continued to have mystical experiences after the formal apparitions of Our Lady at Fatima.  Although Francisco seems to have attained a high degree of prayer, his experience was more in keeping with that pure spirit of faith John of the Cross writes about.  Jacinta experienced several visions and locutions before her death.  We do not know for certain, but it is believed Sr. Lucia also continued to have visions and locutions throughout her life.  I found the following passage on the nature of visions from Tanquerey:

“Visions are supernatural perceptions of some object naturally invisible to man.  They are revelations only when they disclose hidden truths…

Sensible or corporeal visions, also called apparitions, are those in which the senses perceive some real object that is naturally invisible to man.  It is not necessary that the object be a real human body; it suffices that it be a sensible or luminous form.  (As Our Lady’s at Fatima.)

When the Blessed Virgin appeared at Lourdes, her body remained in heaven, and at the spot of the apparitions there was but a sensible form which represented her.  This explains how she could appear now under one aspect, now under another.” - The Spiritual Life, Chp. III, 1491  

Seeing visions.

Everyone who reads this blog knows I have major problems with a certain  ”Catholic” website that may be more aptly described as a sensationalist “Catholic Tabloid” - not unlike some other Catholic sites I’ve encountered.  The main problem I have with the Catholic tabloid is how the editors focus on every fake apparition, false mystic, and freak natural phenomenon that comes along as being a sign from God.  This preoccupation with extraordinary phenomena and private revelations offers little for the edification of the faithful; instead, it more often excites the curiosity and imagination of many who are not mature in their faith.  As an article from TimesOnline  points out:

While the faithful may accept or reject such revelations, most, according to the Vatican, involve false seers who are either deluded or on the make, and these are beginning to cause problems for the Church.

First, they create tensions between the faithful who believe in them and bishops who do not. Secondly, unauthorised cults often congregate around charismatic seers who claim a direct line to God but who teach in opposition to the Church. - Appearances can be downright deceptive

All the other voices.

Obviously, there are many other natural voices out there as well.  some of these are from dissident Catholics who promote new teachings in opposition to the Church, others who are enemies of the Church preaching new spiritualities, still others who are secularists who seek to undermine the Church, and so on and so forth.  After these, we have the many who think they hear God speaking directly to them, or experience their own visions, often after visiting sites such as Medjugorje, or some other charismatic spot. 

Over the last 50 years, there has been a plethora of supposed Marian apparitions and numerous souls who claim to have private revelations and locutions.  Among these, priests, nuns, and lay people.  Some of the best known have been Fr. Geno Burresi - a stigmatist purported to have ”succeeded” Padre Pio, Fr. Gobbi, founder of the Marian Movement of Priests, and Mama Rosa of San Damiano, who claimed messages and apparitions of Our Lady of the Roses.  I have met all three of these people at one time or another, none of whom impressed me as mystics.

Silenced by the Vatican.

They obviously never impressed the Vatican either, because all were eventually censored to some degree.  In fact, Burresi was sanctioned by Pope Benedict himself, denying the priest any benefit of appeal.  The ruling forbade Burresi from preaching or hearing confessions, give interviews, publish or broadcast.  Fr. Geno Burresi was a favorite amongst devotees of Padre Pio, and Fatima; one famous name among those who promoted him was Fr. Robert Fox, who wrote a book about him and led pilgrimages to his place outside of Rome.  Included in the charges leveled against Burresi was that of homosexuality.  (Story here.)

Fr. Gobbi’s locutions were likewise labeled as natural and not supernatural in origin, and he was forbidden to publish under the title of “Our Lady Speaks to Her Beloved Priests.”   While Mama Rosa of San Damiano  and her spurious apparitions was pretty much condemned from the get go.  (Mama Rosa is one of the visionaries who claimed Pope Paul VI had been replaced by an imposter.  LOL!)

What confuses many people (which by the way is one of the reasons the evil spirit loves fake locutions and visions), is the big events, the so-called apparitions of Medjugorje, Garabandal, and the Lady of All Nations apparitions to Ida Peerdaman in Holland, remain so uncertain.  Conflicting reports claim the faithful may go to these places, while others claim the Vatican has forbidden pilgrimages.  At any rate, the apparitions lack Vatican approval.  Yet these sites all have a cult following, which is oftentimes in opposition to Church authorities.  Nowhere is this more evident than at Medjugorje and amongst many of those who follow those apparitions - ”back-home” locutionists and others.

What St. John says.

As one would expect, John of the Cross wrote cautiously regarding locutions and devotes several sections of the Ascent of Mt. Carmel explaining what they are and why they are dangerous.  He of course teaches that the soul should rather walk in the way of the pure and perfect spirit of faith.  His chapters on the subject are very good for those discerning these matters.  I was impressed with a section he wrote, that could well be repeated for our times:

“I knew someone who in his experience of these successive locutions formed, among some very true and solid ones about the Blessed sacrament, others that were outright heresies.

And I greatly fear what is happening in these times of ours:  If any soul whatever after a bit of meditation has in its recollection one of these locutions, it will immediately baptize all as coming from God and with such a supposition say, ‘God told me,’ ‘God answered me.’  yet this is not so, but as we pointed out, these persons themselves are more often the origin of their locution.”  Ascent, Bk. II, Chp. 29:4

Vain rejoicing in spiritual goods. 

I also have known people with hot-lines to God.  One friend, a former prioress of a Carmelite monastery, who left to “complete the reform of St. Teresa of Avila”, often spoke with me in the parlour of the monastery and indiscreetly revealed many things Our Lady supposedly told her.  Being quite young and vulnerable, as well as impressed with strictly enclosed nuns, I was pleased to be privy to her supernatural revelations.  Nevertheless, when she abandoned Carmel for her own project, I couldn’t help being dis-edified.  Later, I discovered there were many inconsistencies about her spiritual life that suggested she may have been deluded in her mystical revelations. 

Many times when religious people encounter those who claim to have special charisms from God, they become anxious to know directly what God has in mind for themselves.  Not a few seek the same favors God has deigned to bestow upon the saints or chosen souls.  The soul often loses much more than it gains and is no longer humble, believing itself to be good or ‘highly favored’.  Rather than pleasing God, the soul offends Him by acting contrary to His will.

St. Therese of Lisieux rightly said of supernatural favors, “I prefer not to see.”  Meaning she preferred the austere way of pure and perfect faith.  It is the safest path for little souls.  

Wearing down Catholic resistance to the “G” agenda.

I have given up blogging about “G” issues for Lent, so this post is not really about that.  It is about psychology - kind of, sort of.

Vox Nova has a post, The APA and “H” that includes an excerpt of a review by Sally Satel wherein there is an “interesting tidbit about the APA’s decision to eliminate homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders.”  I believe the reversal of diagnosis occurred sometime in the early 1970’s.  Millions of “G” people were no longer nuts.  Perverts no more!  Since then, many people in medicine and psychiatry felt the psychiatric industry had been coerced into taking homosexuality off the list of mental disorders by “G”  activists.  Hence the author of the entry posed the following question:

The APA changes its position on homosexuality after protest and harassment and people lose faith in the authority of its pronouncements? Go figure. It’s worth noting, though, that the conduct members of the APA were subjected to by those gay activists is just an extreme example of the social pressures scientists, academics, and other professionals are subjected to generally to conform their conclusions to the opinions of their social group. A researcher whose work tends towards some politically unpalatable conclusions is not likely to have people picketing his house, but he is likely to face a subtle ostracism from his friends and colleagues. - APA and “H”

I linked to the post and you can read it for yourself - the comments especially are rather interesting.  In fact, my main interest in the Vox Nova  piece centered upon the many comments it received.  I was impressed with how (some)  of the comments by defender of the Faith-style  Catholics,  paralleled similar positions taken by (some)  ”G” activists on their blogs when defending the “H” lifestyle.  The following two comments may help demonstrate my point.

“The misconceptions of many people”

 Gerald Augustinus Says:
February 18, 2008 at 1:00 am

Psychologists follow the same “manual” as psychiatrists. My wife’s a doctor of clinical psychology (which is why she can bear with me, coincidentally) and doesn’t think it’s an illness either, nor does she think that the orientation can be “cured”. She’s counseled HIV patients in the past, many of whom Catholic, unfortunately many a gay person took some serious damage from the way they were treated by (some) Catholics and resent the Church now. It seems nigh impossible to pull off the “hate the sin, love the sinner” act. In particular when people use the term “Sodomite”. (On this note - just how on earth was Lot any better than the men clamoring for the angels ? Hospitality > having virgin daughters gang-raped. Sweet…)

Common ground.

 Gerald Augustinus Says:
February 18, 2008 at 3:01 am

It is hard to tell the symptom from the cause in this matter. Certainly, it doesn’t help with psychosexual development to be widely stigmatized, in particular in the past. Regardless of what one thinks of Church rule on this subject, it must be horribly difficult to identify one’s desire for companionship, love, and, yes, sex with being ‘objectively disordered’. Suppression and sublimation certainly results in a secretive culture. The more open someone is, the less likely they are to engage in the more appalling elements of male gay culture. It’s the ‘closeted’ ones that tend to get caught in restrooms, park, and so forth. The sex abuse scandal in the Church largely happened because of sexually immature homosexuals who entered the priesthood as a ‘beard’ or in the hope to overcome their inclination. Such immaturity then resulted in abusing their emotional ‘equals’, teenage boys.

One could go on forever about the misconceptions of many people - like to claim that homosexuals ‘define’ themselves by their sexuality. For one, that which separates one from the majority sticks out like a sore thumb and by virtue of that becomes defining from both sides. In addition, to reduce homosexuality to a collection of sex acts is just as absurd as if one did that for heterosexuals.

Of course, due to the ‘deviant’ nature (de-viare, off the path) of homosexuality, there are problems caused by the fact that man and woman are made for each other (and even that isn’t all fun and games), and man and man, woman and woman, are not. Hyper-sexuality in the former, and hypo-sexuality in the latter, are quite common.

Lastly, while a gay person, in particular a man, is more likely to be more promiscuous, lead a more dangerous lifestyle (meth, in particular) etc, it ain’t necessarily so - there are many homosexuals who are quite ‘boring’ and ‘normal’.

I have a friend in Courage, I am not sure that ‘re-programming’ is part of that ?

P.S. “Sodomite” is as inappropriate a term as “onany”. The question in the story was the respect for guests, a big thing in the culture. That the women wouldn’t come clamor is self-explanatory. Neither seems ‘Lot’ to have deemed his fellow ‘Sodomites’ to be homosexual, but rather bi-, since he offered them his virgin daughters instead…(who later would go on to jump their drunken fathers and both managed to get pregnant, conveniently giving birth to ‘Ammon’ and ‘Moab’, thus paving the way for future genocide of the respective -ites.

The Catholic Church must conform! 

Contrast those comments with Michael Bayly’s  post (indeed, his website) regarding the APA’s decision, which also figures in well with his campaign for the Roman Catholic Church to discard Her own teaching on the subject:

Dr. Gonsiorek then proceeded to provide some insightful background information on the origins of NARTH – origins inseparable from the wider cultural debate on homosexuality and, specifically, the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from its official manual that lists mental and emotional disorders (followed two years later by the passage of a similar resolution of the American Psychological Association).

This change in the diagnosis of homosexuality was the result of the wealth of research data gathered since the early 1950s that showed no difference between homosexual and heterosexual populations in terms of “adjustment.”

In time, the psychoanalytical establishment also changed in its understanding of homosexuality; it now has the same sets of policies and principles about sexual orientation as the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association. Yet there were “old guard” psychoanalysts who were disgruntled about being displaced and seeing their organization change its views on homosexuality. This disaffected group of psychoanalysts formed an alliance with conservatively- and religiously-oriented psychotherapists. It was from this alliance that NARTH was established. - Debunking NARTH

How queer is that?  Seems like that agenda thing may be working out after all.

Links:

http://www.powells.com/review/2008_02_14.html

And sinners.

I’ve been thinking of Lourdes daily since February 11th, thanks to my Magnificat - the apparition of Our Lady to St. Bernadette is depicted on the cover of the prayerbook.  The apparitions took place every day from February 11 until the feast of the Annunciation in 1858.  (On this date, February 18, Our Lady asked Bernadette to return every day for a fortnight.)  The last apparition occurred on July 16th, feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, which seemed to presage Fatima, since in Our Lady’s last appearance there, she appeared clothed as Our Lady of Mt. Carmel.  Carmel signifies penance, and in both apparitions Our Lady called for penance and prayers for sinners.

Our Lady is most definitely the Refuge of Sinners, and her apparitions are always missions of love, pleading for souls, and asking for penance and prayer for the conversion of sinners.  She told Bernadette she could “not promise her happiness in this life, but only in the next.”   When questioned what the Holy Virgin meant by sinners, or rather, what is a sinner, Bernadette answered, “A person who loves sin.”

Obstinate sinners.

I have always been fascinated by St. Bernadette’s very simple explanation, and it has helped me understand the gravity of sin and its consequences.  To be obstinate in loving sin, one must essentially reject God and the right order of good - that is, the Law of God.  Mortal sin makes man an enemy of God.  Every mortal sin we commit insults God by rebellion or disobedience, by lack of gratitude for his gifts, in contempt for God.  To persist in sin is what it means to be obstinate in sin, and therefore a sinner, or “one who loves sin.”  This may sound  strange,  but many sinners may love the pleasure of sin, yet hate the sin itself - habitual sinners would understand that.  In addition, habitual sinners are not always obstinate sinners.

Our Lady understands well that life on earth is indeed “a vale of tears”, as we say in her prayer, and the Blessed Virgin knows that “nothing the world affords comes from the Father.”- (Jn 2:16)  The Blessed Mother  also respects man’s free will, and she recognizes that man’s tendency is for good, hence the Blessed Virgin has compassion on our feeble attempts at charity, as well as our longing for love, no matter how disordered.   Therefore, as she explained to Bernadette, she seeks to correct our mistaken notions of fulfillment  when she told the saint,  “I cannot make you happy in this world, but only in the next.”  That is not to say our life on earth is joyless at all, in fact, living according to the commandments and loving God is the only source of genuine happiness on earth, as Jesus taught us.

True happiness.

“Anyone who loves me will be true to my word, and my father will love him; we will come to him and make our dwelling place with him.”(Jn 14:23)  That is heaven on earth!  The beginning of eternal beatitude.  Jesus consoles us further:

“My peace is my gift to you; I do not give it to you as the world gives peace.” (Jn 14:27)  The world’s peace is false and unstable, thus leading  souls untroubled along the easy way that leads to hell.  Jesus encourages faithful souls when he says:

“Live on in my love.  You will live in my love if you keep my commandments, even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and live in his love.  All this I tell you that my joy may be yours and your joy may be complete.”(Jn. 15:10-11)  Thus we understand what Our Lady’s instruction to Bernadette meant when she said, “I cannot make you happy in this world, but only in the next.”   Bernadette suffered throughout her life, no doubt, yet she also experienced supernatural joy.   Our Lady taught her the true road of happiness, illuminating her on the difference between the sinner’s contentment, and the joy and peace which is the lot of those who repent and submit to God. 

Vain rejoicing. 

On the other hand, the sinner vainly seeks his happiness and fulfilment in worldly compromise.  Rebelling against God, he perverts the law and the prophets according to his own design.  Or rejecting them all together, he refuses obedience to God, and justifies his sin with worldly wisdom that is foolishness in the sight of God.  Self-satisfaction with his cleverness, leads to a complacency misunderstood as peace of conscience… the false and dangerous peace of the world.  As the psalmist affirms, “Sin speaks to the sinner in the depths of his heart.  There is no fear of God before his eyes.  He so flatters himself in his mind, that he knows not his guilt.”(Ps. 35)

The love of the Mother of God compels her to roam the earth seeking sinners, weeping and mourning in this vale of tears, pleading with us to pray and sacrifice for their conversion.  We must heed Our Lady’s call to penance and pray for the conversion of sinners.  A soul who loves sin,  is in danger of condemning himself to hell forever.  It is the worst calamity in the world.  Such souls need to be brought before the Holy Virgin, refuge of obstinate sinners; she can refuse no one who has recourse to her, neither the sinner, or the repentant sinner praying for his brother.  

[Photo credit: Hallowed Ground]

“Put on then the full armor of God.” - Ephesians 6:11 

Yesterday a discussion arose concerning Roman Catholic clerical wear.  It was brought to my attention that non-Catholics mistakenly refer to the cassock and other tunic-like garments priests or bishops wear as “dresses”.   Many Protestant clergy also wear similar garb, while ministers of most religions throughout the world wear some form of ritual attire.  For instance, the Dalai Lama, Shinto priests in Japan, Hindu holy men, Muslim men, and others, wear tunic-like garments or robes.  I’m confident most people would agree their clothing is not at all feminine. 

In the West it is very common for women to wear slacks or pant suits, and their femininity is rarely questioned for it.  That said, most people, including men, would clearly differentiate a woman’s dress from the cassock and surplice, or alb, worn by an altar girl or boy.  And it goes without saying that liturgical garb, just as judicial robes, academic robes, and so on, is recognizable attire for whatever station represented. 

While looking for a site that traces the origins, history, and development of style of Roman Catholic liturgical vestments and clerical wear, I found a rather neutral site, Catholic Priestly Vestments.  It is a Christian site with descriptions and proper names of the garments typically worn by Roman Catholic clergy.  As I mentioned, Protestant clergy, as well as dissident clergy - including unlawfully ordained women priests - pretty much wear the same garments.  I doubt any of these people would refer to clerical garb as feminine, or their vesture as a dress.

Links:

The New Liturgical Movement, History of the Roman Vestment - Excellent resource.

The History and Use of Vestments 

Run!

Russia is claiming the United States plan to shoot down an errant satellite in the next week or so is really a weapons test.  No kidding.  Story here. 

Objectifying men in Holy Orders.

Catholic news is often full of stories about liberal nuns who want greater equality in a male dominated Church, along with reports of their counterparts who either lobby for female ordination or go ahead and have themselves ordained. 

Then there are the periodic reports of the occasional scandal involving a priest leaving orders to marry a parish worker or some Camille he may be counselling.  Media, including Catholic bloggers love to exploit these stories.  Such stories also provide an excellent opportunity for uber-Catholics to proclaim their orthodoxy and fidelity to everything traditional, while condemning the heretics.  It’s something to blog about.

However, I find it curious that women, like gay men, seem to have an inordinate attraction not only to the priesthood, but to priests themselves.  I’ve heard some very traditional women say they think the priest is sexy in his cassock - even if he may have ho-hum looks.

Of course, Donatella Versaci has been rather vocal about her attraction to Monsignor Ganswein, the Pope’s secretary; last year she based a portion of  her men’s collection on clerical wear because of him.  The Monsignor also seems to be popular with female bloggers - Catholic and non-Catholic, and as one would expect, gay men seem to have the hots for him as well.  The poor Father is just too sexy for his cassock.

Respecting boundaries. 

Fatal attractions for priests and religious are nothing new, the movie, “The Devils” based upon the book by Aldous Huxley, ”The Devils of Loudon”, contains several scenes of Vanessa Redgrave’s character lusting after the local parish priest.  She was especially turned on by her fantasy of him naked beneath a lacy alb.    I don’t really know what it is that women find so attractive about priests and seminarians - and although I have a few ideas, I won’t go there.  (Photo: Oliver Reed from “The Devils”, Ken Russell, 1971.  Shown here is his scene as a fantasy of Christ for the prioress [Redgrave] who lusted after him.)

Even the most devout and sincere woman can mistake attraction for  devotion and dedication to her faith or position in the parish, although in many instances, she is most likely in denial.  I expect that must be the case when it leads to a priest leaving ministry for the woman he either worked with or counseled.  There are all sorts of situations which can befall a priest, and although it takes two in cases involving romance, the woman may indeed have greater responsibility in the affair.  Why?  If, as studies suggest, women are more intuitive than men, they ought to be more sensitive to the onset of infatuation and lust.  Men, ordained or not, often just don’t see it until it  happens. 

In such cases women would do well to recall the old saying; “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”  Although before it gets that far, they ought to keep in mind the  other saying;  ”Where there’s fantasy there’s desire”.

It may be better to pray for priests, rather than to foster crushes on them.

Links:

Priests and Emotional Love, by Rev. Thomas G. Morrow - A very good article on the subject.

 [Top photo:  Monsignor Ganswein with another prelate.]

Yo! 

Traditionalists I worked with in the bookstore I once managed, made fun of me for putting out books on black saints for Black History Month.  Some very conservative people do not believe African-Americans need a special month of their own.  Indeed, some very nice people, white and black, don’t realize they are racists either.  I think if secular culture celebrates black people who have made history, we Catholics ought to celebrate black people who made it into the calendar of saints.

That said,  I completely overlooked St. Josephine Bkhita’s feast day this year!  (February 7)  She is one saint our Holy Father refers to by name in his recent encyclical, Spes Salvi.

St Josephine Bakhita

As a little girl she was captured in Sudan and forced into slavery.  Having the good fortune to be ‘owned’ by an Italian family, she was able to enter a convent of Canossian Sisters as a religious, responding to Our Lord’s call.  He chose her from birth, through her terrible ordeal and suffering, to be His bride.

That is so awesome to me.  Treated like an animal, she suffered abuse greater than most of us are able to comprehend.  She was dehumanised and treated as a commodity or a functional piece of livestock.

She is a patron for her Sudan, the poor of Darfur suffering genocide in our own time.  She is a patron of the abused, and the enslaved through sexual exploitation.  St. Bakhita is also the patron of our Afro-American brothers and sisters, descendants of slaves.  Her life can help us understand better the anguish of being kidnapped from their homeland and families, and sold into slavery. 

White people have difficulty understanding black people living under the burden of their heritage.  (Even the most affluent and successful people of color experience a sense of being ‘other’ by society.  It’s peculiar to Americans, although elsewhere in the world, not so much.  I know people will get angry with me for saying that however.  You just have to have been marginalized at one point in your life to understand it.)  Many believe, because of guaranteed equal rights, all the sins of the past should be forgotten.  Try to tell the same thing to the Jew whose family died in the Nazi concentration camps, or the Cambodian refugee - victims of that ‘other’ genocide… an effect remains in the unconscious of their descendants.  Unless one comes from a background of terror and abuse, one cannot fathom it’s dreadful legacy.

St. Bakhita is one who witnesses to the Lord’s providential design in suffering and abuse and slavery.  She shines with the healing mercy of the One who emptied Himself and took the form of a slave.  Her redemption from slavery, and exaltation to the glories of Heaven, give hope to all of us who suffer the ignominious slavery to sin, yet on a more natural level, those who are the descendants of slavery, and those who find themselves enslaved today - children exploited for labor or sex throughout the third world.

Go to the Vatican website for a brief history on the life of St. Bakhita.  Pray to her, asking her intercession that we may all live as brothers and sisters, without hatred, in peace. 

The translation of his relics, that is.

I’m fairly certain this day is no longer celebrated outside of Padua as a memorial of St. Anthony of Padua.  (Perhaps not even there.)  February 15 was observed  in the old Franciscan calendar as the feast of the Translation of the relics of St. Anthony.  St. Bonaventure was present at the event, but I am unsure as to what year the translation actually took place.

Feast days in honor of the translation of relics (remains of the saints) date back to the at least the 2nd century.  Liturgical celebrations, along with processions, and days of prayer honoring the saint reached a zenith in the Middle Ages.  Since then, until the Second Vatican Council, these celebrations continued to be conducted with equal solemnity and pomp.  I am not certain how things are done today.  We should have an opportunity to witness one such event with the upcoming translation of the relics of St. Padre Pio into his new shrine at San Giovanni Rotondo.  

On the translation of relics:

At the same time the solemnity attached to translations was by no means a peculiarity of the Celts. The story of the translation of St. Cuthbert’s remains is almost as marvellous as any in Celtic hagiography. The forms observed of all-night vigils, and the carrying of the precious remains in “feretories” of gold or silver, overshadowed with silken canopies and surrounded with lights and incense, extended to every part of Christendom during the Middle Ages. Indeed this kind of solemn translation (elevatio corporis) was treated as the outward recognition of heroic sanctity, the equivalent of canonization, in the period before the Holy See reserved to itself the passing of a final judgment upon the merits of deceased servants of God, and on the other hand in the earlier forms of canonization Bulls it was customary to add a clause directing that the remains of those whose sanctity was thus proclaimed by the head of the Church should be “elevated”, or translated, to some shrine above ground where fitting honour could be paid them. - New Advent

On the commemoration of a feast for relics:

It has long been customary especially in churches which possessed large collections of relics, to keep one general feast in commemoration of all the saints whose memorials are there preserved. An Office and Mass for this purpose will be found in the Roman Missal and Breviary, and though they occur only in the supplement Pro aliquibus locis and are not obligatory upon the Church at large, still this celebration is now kept almost universally. The office is generally assigned to the fourth Sunday in October. In England before the Reformation, as we may learn from a rubric in the Sarum Breviary, the Festum Reliquiarum was celebrated on the Sunday after the feast of the Translation of St. Thomas of Canterbury (7 July), and it was to be kept as a greater double “wherever relics are preserved or where the bodies of dead persons are buried, for although Holy Church and her ministers observe no solemnities in their honour, the glory they enjoy with God is known to Him alone.” - New Advent   

PRAYER TO ST ANTHONY FOR THE RECOVERY OF LOST GRACES

O great and faithful friend of the Lord, who, by the great purity of thy heart, didst merit to see and converse with Him even in this life, thou to whom He has granted, according to the firm belief of the faithful, the gift of recovering for those who invoke thee the precious gifts which they had lost, obtain for us (or for N.) by thy prayers and merits, all the holy friendship and union with God which we should have had if we had always been faithful to Him.  Amen. - Source