RIGHT REV. L. DE GOESBRIAND, D.D. IN TWO VOLUMES Volume I. Sancta Maria, intercede pro Clero NEW REVISED EDITION BENZIGER BROTHERS NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO BENZIGER BROTHERS Printers to the Holy Apostolic See Mibil Obstat. REMY LAFORT, S.T.L., Imprimatur, JOHN M. FARLEY, Archbishop of New York. NEW YORK, December 8, 1906. COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY L. DE GOESBRIAND. ск .C34 658463 ها PREFACE. A book in the English language containing a course of meditations for the use of the secular Clergy is very much needed in the United States and elsewhere. The work of which we give a translation was not, however, written by a secular priest; it is the work of a reverend Jesuit Father, who died in 1883 at Angers. But the venerable Father had received of God the special vocation to devote himself to the sanctification of the secular Clergy, with the details of whose life he was perfectly acquainted. Father Chaignon wrote of himself: "Through a merciful and providential disposition, for which we shall be forever thankful, God deigned to make use of us in a great number of pastoral retreats, during more than thirty years, to remind His ministers of the glorious privileges and the grave obligations of the priest and the pastor." It has also been written of Father Chaignon: "Over three hundred retreats, preached with admirable success in nearly every diocese of France, are an evidence of his particular vocation." The learned lecturer has reproduced the substance of his conferences in books which are known and admired by all priests. They constitute a remarkable monument of eloquence and piety, which secures to their author a conspicuous place amongst the most eminent masters of the spiritual life. The idea of the dignity and excellence of the priesthood had taken possession of the whole soul of Father Chaignon, and to communicate it, strong and luminous, to the minds of the Clergy he applied all the resources of his talent and the wealth of his learning. THE TRANSLATOR. 21749 Not |