In the splendid ceremony at which we have been assisting, there are two elements: the dedication of the altar and the burying of the relics of martyrs in that altar. At some periods and in some parts of the Catholic world these two elements have been so distinguished that they have even taken place on different days. Since this is the Feast of St Peter's Chains, and St Peter, Apostle and Martyr and first Bishop of Rome, is our great patron, propose to dwell chiefly on the most Roman of these two elements, which were not conflated as they are now until the Middle Ages; and the most Roman of them is the enshrining of the relics of the martyrs in the altar of sacrifice. It was not till after the Roman Empire had officially recognised the legality of the Catholic religion in the early fourth century that we were able to have permanent churches and fixed altars; and then the churches were at first dedicated, set apart for the worship of God in the celebration of Mass, simply by the decree of the Christian Emperor handing them over to religious uses. And the altars which it was the main purpose of those churches to house, were considered sufficiently hallowed by the celebration of Mass upon them. How indeed could they be more or better hallowed?

Saint Austin says, then are holy men most speedfully heard of God, when he gives them not that that they covet (but after that he knows the best for them). God gives unto some men sweetness of devotion in the beginining of their turning for to (draw them out from the love I of worldly things) and for to make them sad and stable in his love. Which sweetness afterward he withdraws that they should get them more meed and higher to be crowned (in the bliss of heaven). For since virtues, as says the philosopher, stands in that thing that a man may not come to (without strength and hardness), therefore that this is most hard to get is most of virtue when it is gotten. [But to be stable and lasting in the love of God and soothfast belief, in time of temptation and withdrawing of all actual and sensible devotion, is more hard than it is when a man feels sweetness and devotion and therefore it is more needful.]

Our Lord, remembering the family occasions in his home town, once remarked on the joy of a mother who has just brought a child into the world. The joy is not merely the negative one of relief from pain; it is, he implies, a human joy because she knows that a man child now has existence apart from her own and yet so close-tied to her own existence that his very blood is hers. Our Lord, thinking of that, must have thought too of the reciprocal joy of the son belonging to his Mother, a separate being and yet the same blood—and more than that, the same mind and the same words, as his bringing forth continues to his maturity. The son belongs to his mother all those years as she, even more than his father, inspires his imagination with homely pictures and places on his lips homely words, the first being those of ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’.