That God may use these poor efforts of mine to open the eyes of many, is the prayer of her who, with the man whose eyes the Lord once opened, can say, “Once I was blind, now I see.”
DEVOTIONAL BOOKS USED BY SISTER MARY AGNES, O.S.B.
“MANUAL OF DEVOTIONS TO OUR HOLY FATHER, ST. BENEDICT, ABBOT AND PATRIARCH OF THE WESTERN MONKS; TO HIS SISTER, ST. SCHOLASTICA, VIRGIN AND ABBESS; AND TO ALL SAINTS OF HIS ORDER.” (London: Catholic Publishing and Bookselling Co. Limited.)
Father Ignatius calls himself a Benedictine monk, and his nuns belong to the same order. One would have supposed that though he imitated Rome in the worship of the wafer and of the Virgin, he would still have hesitated to go the full length of Romish superstition by obliging his nuns to put their trust in such questionable characters as Gregory VII., Thomas à Becket, etc. Yet on page 185 of the above book they are required to ask Gregory VII. to pray for them, and on the following page Thomas à Becket is invoked in the same manner. Who and what these two Romish saints were, truthful English history abundantly proves.
As the title of the book shows, it is intended to foster devotion to St. Benedict, to his sister Scholastica, and to all the other canonized saints of the Benedictine Order. Now, who canonized these supposed saints? Was it not Rome?
The first part is entirely devoted to the honouring and invoking of St. Benedict. Throughout this part we frequently meet with the verse, “Pray for us, O holy Father St. Benedict.” There are also a number of litanies, in which he is called upon as being now “placed over the choirs of monks,” as “the star of the world,” as “the equal of the prophets,” as “protector of his order,” as “the scourge of devils,” as the “Abraham of the New Testament,” and is entreated with the cry, “We beseech thee to hear us.” On page 47 the following invocation occurs: “Beseeching thee (holy Father St. Benedict) to be so faithfully present to me at the hour of my death, as to oppose thyself on every side where thou shalt see the assaults of the enemy most violently raging against me, that, being defended by thy presence, I may securely escape the snares of the enemy, and arrive at the joys of heaven.”