De sacrarum stationum veteri instituto a Xisto Quinto pont. max. revocato oratio habita in templo S. Sabinae in die Cinerum

With what sudden and admirable consent of the whole College, requested by the votes of all, and selected by divine counsel, the administration of the holy universal Church was conferred: and with what speed, in the very duty of the Pontificate, he has accomplished things pertaining to the ornament of the City, to the convenience of its inhabitants, to the protection of the Church, to the tranquility of human life, to the propagation of the faith, and to the correction of morals—things which we would scarcely have believed could have been devised, let alone begun, in such a short space of time. If all these things were spoken by me a little more fully, it would have to be doubted, because they might seem not to pertain so appropriately to the institution, whether I would not be offending the most modest ears of the holy Prince in no small way. Yet I will not pass over this one thing, which, Most Blessed Father, it will be right for you to hear with an even mind, because it will pertain not so much to heaping up your praises as to reproving our own inertia and negligence. For let us grant and concede to our coldness that we were more negligent in celebrating the rite of the holy Stationes Stations at a time when we heard the word, and it was reported with a certain confused sound that the matter had once been held in the highest regard, and we believed that these Basilicas had been visited by the Supreme Pontiffs themselves and the sacred college of Cardinals only in the past. But now, when all these things are set before our eyes, our very eyes again; when we see venerable antiquity renewed, the very appearance of the Stationes Stations restored, and the most celebrated discipline of the primitive Church in this matter recovered; how truly lazy we shall have been if we have not added our study and effort to such a glorious thing and such a great endeavor with greater alacrity than we are accustomed! Thus, thus, hearers, it was accustomed to happen in ancient times; thus the Pontiffs themselves visited the stational Basilicas; thus the sacred College of Cardinals gathered; thus the divine solemnities of the Masses were performed. O happy we, through you, Sixtus V, to whom it is given to look into the bodies of those things whose shadows we were hallucinating; to see what we heard; to behold what we believed; so that we do not seem so much