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 worthily commemorate  so  wondrous  a  gift during the  spiritual  sadness  and  gloom  of Holy  Week:  devotion  to  the  first  Friday, every first  Friday,  rather  than  to  any  fixed number, even  the  nine,  because  the  Church has given  a  formal  approbation  to  every  first Friday.

Devotion to  the  Blessed  Virgin  is  the  old traditional devotion  of  Ireland;  may  it  continue so  to  the  end. There are  persons  living who can  remember  a  time  when  there  were no sodalities  of  the  Sacred  Heart,  of  the Holy Family,  of  the  Children  of  Mary;  when such forms  of  devotion  were  practically  unknown, and  yet  when  every  Irish  Catholic was a  child  of  Mary,  and  devotion  to  her  as prominent  as  it  is  to-day. One might  find, in the  poorest  cabins,  beads  —  ebony  and silver —  or  portions  of  them,  religiously  preserved and  handed  down  from  parents  to children. During more  than  two  centuries we may  well  apply  to  Irish  Catholics  the  words of St.  Paul  in  his  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews: "They had  trials  of  mockeries  and  stripes, moreover  also  of  bands  and  prisons,  wandering about,  being  in  want,  distressed  and afflicted,  in  deserts  and  mountains,  and  in dens,  and  in  caves  of  the  earth,  stoned,  cut asunder,  put  to  death  by  the  sword." But